The Dog That Didn’t Bark

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’m feeling very guilty today, because yesterday I was kind of rude to someone on email, the someone having — admittedly — tried to put me in my place both as to my — rather hilariously presumed — youth and to my saying that he was underestimating the American people. This person might or might not be a living legend, (it’s a common name) but his message was a long “do you know who I am?” and also arrived at a time when I had an infernal splitting headache I’d been nursing for two days.

Now, this is not an excuse for being rude. Consider this a weird bend in my early upbringing that I’d be less guilty about having beat someone (with cause) than being rude to an almost stranger. It also shows, very bizarrely, that early cultural upbringing lingers, which btw is the greatest impediment to open borders, period. Because culture matters.

If after self-consciously acculturating as well as I could figure out how to, and making it my main task for five years — something few people are self-aware enough to do in the turmoil of adapting to just daily life in a different land (this can be difficult even across the country.) — I retain this idea that speaking rudely (which mostly means forcefully, btw) to a stranger is the worst sin possible, full acculturation might be in fact impossible.

But part of the reason I was forceful — which my back brain says is rude — at a stranger is that I’m getting sick and tired of people born and raised in America thinking they know America and Americans, our potential, and our abilities.

And mostly most American-born people think that Americans are JUST like the rest of the world. Or rather, I’m telling it wrong. American-born people assume, in their “never really understood how the rest of the world lives” little heads that the rest of the world is just like America.

Even Heinlein suffered from this, which means no amount of thought or intelligence can vanquish this mental map. He was absolutely convinced world-government would be a sort of Post WWII America written large. Everyone would become more or less American.

His belief that world government would be a good idea was defeated by a world tour, which means he was unusually thoughtful and able to see what was in front of our eyes, unlike most of our statist internationalists. He still had characters acting more or less like Americans regardless of country, culture and religion, which btw these days is the most unbelievable part of his work. Well, for me. I think American born and raised people don’t see how ridiculous this is.

Most of our open borders, kumbaya, everyone sing together internationalists, who want to be ruled by international law and the UN are in fact complete and thorough idiots. And most of them right now are ready to kneel to China, because they think it’s the proper model of what a world government would be.

I’m telling you right now and please believe me, no matter how much these clever fools want it, world government is beyond a pipe dream and the attempts at establishing it the complete idiots are making are only going to bring about a resurgence of nationalism like you’ve never seen it before. On stilts. With rivers of blood.

Man is a social ape. And the social ape we are lived in bands long before we learned about bigger units. Nation states for most of us slide in under the combined “territory defending” and “band.”

There is another set of fools, whom I love and whom I wish were right, but they’re not, and those are the Libertarians who dream of extra territorial nations.

This notion is amazing and could only occur to knowledge workers, so convinced that because their friends are spread out all over the world (my office-mates I keep in regular touch with …. well, some are on the other side of the world, so I get it) and they agree on many things, they should be able to form their own nation, more or less completely excluding those who live around them, and ignoring their dictates.

It’s a pleasant fantasy. But listen to the old ape in your back brain. Soil is a half of blood-and-soil. And you can dispense with blood — though it makes us rather insane, for a nation, it’s not unheard of — but not with soil.

Why? Well, as President Trump proved, you can’t have everything from essential medicines to armament made across the world and not risk having this used against you. You can’t trust suppliers or even visitors who won’t adhere to modern sanitary and health norms. You can’t in fact control soil you have no one of yours in.

So the charming idea of many many “nations of creed” living side by side and sharing a physical plant, while adhering to different laws is not in fact possible. And where tried those minorities in blood-and-soil nations will get destroyed. Or worse, used and oppressed generationally. We know that. This story has been told before. (Waves to friends celebrating Passover though heaven knows they’re not the only such minority.)

They were also, at least initially, an example of a creedal nation. Just like the US is — stop arguing. All the arguments are insane and mostly based on the left trying to pretend the constitution doesn’t matter for who we are, and that they are in fact still our countrymen — largely a creedal nation. The ancient Israelites could be joined by people who converted to their belief. “Wherever thou goest I shall go. Your people shall be my people. Your G-d shall be my G-d.”

Creedal nations seem to scare the spit out of blood and soil nations. I think it’s the idea that you can voluntarily sever the links to a tribe and join another because (and this is another argument against open borders and the world singing kumbaya together) listen carefully: 99% of people CAN’T. Yes, even those who immigrate here. 99% of them will go to their graves still part of the tribe they were born into. They usually come here to better their families and, heck, intend to go back “home.”

So the US, being an attractive nuisance on the world has been hated ever since it started existing. Yesterday I had trouble not laughing at an article calling Meghan Markle “American” because the British commenter thought her whining and perpetual victimhood was part of being “too individualistic.” At which point I banged my head on the desk. What it actually is is part of being Hollywood most of which is No Longer Our Countrymen. Victimhood is the desperate search for a tribe of the blood, and the conviction that if that tribe suffered this makes one special. (That last is part of Marxism and maleducation, of course.)

So, the rest of the world hates America, not knowing what America is, but perceiving it as a threat. As a place that can attract their best and brightest and seduce them away from the tribe.

And America meanwhile, like the aspergers kid in the kindergarten class, is utterly incapable of reading the rest of the world, and goes around in the amiable belief everyone is like us.

Don’t tell me that’s just the left either. Over the last three months three things have driven me UTTERLY insane.

One is the giving up, throwing oneself on the floor and saying all is lost. We’re now going down for the long count, worse than Venezuela. We’re going down like CHINA under the boot of the mandarins forever.

Look, can you guys stop that? My eyes keep rolling under the sofa and getting covered in cat hair.

We’re not Venezuela and we’re certainly not China.

All of Latin America goes dancing with the devil every so often. They can’t help it. I think because their system which is derived from the decay of Rome (Rome never fell. It just dispersed and went colonial.) is already based on castes, on have and have nots, on hereditary victimhood. You need to have attended an American college for at least a doctorate to be as completely messed up as a South American campesino. This culture both makes them vulnerable to communism, and makes communism sort of an “on steroids” version of their own governance. It’s just the reign of the crazy emperors, only more so.

Yes, Venezuela is an example of the applied principles of socialism. It was also allowed to go for a ride on the crazy train because its culture predisposes them to it and — listen carefully — because it could fall without destroying the rest of the world. Handouts from China and the mullahs keep them from outright starving.

China? Well, I doubt our homeless would want to live like the average Chinese peasant. Or be willing to. Or in fact be able to. The red emperors are just…. emperors. And because they are using the crazy cakes handbook of Marxism, the Chinese hegemony is circling the drain, after punching itself in the balls and putting itself in a downward population spiral.

That last worries me for America too, but then the whole world — as serious demographers are starting to catch on (this feels like more of the covidiocy. I’ve been screaming it for 20 years) — is on a downward population spiral. The best thing we can do for that is restore freedom and discredit colleges and from-the-top governance.

But other than that? None of it applies. American culture is not the same as the rest of the world. We don’t even pretend to be blood and soil. We can’t. Even those descended from revolutionary war soldiers (smiles across the hall at husband in his office) have imports in the last three generations. Other generations, mind you — looks bemusedly at her 23 and me report — are no more blood and soil than we are, but the mix is usually older and comes slower, so they can pretend.

And America is the power house; the economic engine of the world. If we went down for the long count and became as bad as China, then the rest of the world will be in the stone age. Yes, in my worst moments I think that’s possible. But I don’t think it is. Why not? Well, because we’d starve well before then. Communists always destroy food production, and there is no one to feed us, as we fed the USSR and as we to an extent — a large extent, or they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of installing a puppet government — are feeding China. And because we’re spoiled. Americans aren’t willing to live like Chinese peasants. At the very worst, everyone starts ignoring the government, openly and obviously. The worst that will happen is anarchy, not China.

But more on how Americans are different later. For now, trust me that you are. And I am too, to the extent I’ve acculturated. We are a new thing in the world. Which is why the world hates and fears us.

Which brings me to the second thing that’s making me scream over the last three months. Would you crazy people stop making plans for where to move? No, I’m serious. And those of you who think you’ll be safe in Brazil need a special dose of reality check, and a smack upside the head.

At least those aren’t as bad as the rest of the idiots, because yeah, in Brazil your race won’t matter much, or perhaps at all. Brazilian notions of race are crazier than American notions (Trust me on this. Not having been raised here, I’m routinely surprised by people who claim to be black. Or white. Or martians. With the evidence to the contrary written on every feature.) Blood and soil won’t matter much.

Your problem rather is that Brazil is already what America will become if things go really bad: a barely controlled anarchy. Sure. Food grows really well. And if you’re going with a mercenary army of 400, and buying land amounting to several thousands of acres, you’ll be okay. Until the local government or the national one, decides you’re an enemy in their midst.

Eschew the idea that Brazil is the country of the future. It would be, if it ever got its act straight enough to have minimal law or property rights anyone can trust.

The same goes for most of South of the border, but with an additional caveat. You might not see it, but most of those are blood-and-soil. They can tell their difference from the neighboring countries. They’re also atavistic and tribal. Americans without the implied protection of a strong America will be known as prey. (Sometimes they are, anyway.)

Europe? Don’t be ridiculous. Europe will eat itself without America to keep it in order. And it might, anyway, even if we get our way out of this. Their intelligentsia is stupider than ours by magnitudes, and have told far more elaborate lies. More on that later.

But more importantly, Europe is blood and soil. I used to be able to tell the ancestry of Americans, the complete mix, because people in Europe know the physical difference between them and their neighbors, which often means two villages over. If you anticipate things getting that bad? you’ll be eaten first, because that’s the law of the tribe. The stranger gets killed when the tribe is pinched.

So, your best bet is to stay here. Your second best bet is not to count the US out.

Because we are different.

Beyond the realities of our size, and our economic importance in the world, and that no one will support us while we lose our minds, we are different. We are different at a basic, gut level.

Oh, perhaps not those of us who arrived from elsewhere and live in enclaves of their countrymen. But anyone who has been here for decades has insensibly become a little American. How little depends on how hard they fought it.

Other countries fear us — and imitate us — because our culture is viral. They in fact imitate us even when what we’re doing is self-hating and destructive, like most of Hollywood’s products.

They can’t help it.

And the left is trying to make sure we know we don’t have a right to free speech, because that’s at the base of what makes us different. That, and of course the ability to shoot them if needed.

There is a dog that didn’t bark in the night, in the rest of the world: the biggest difference visible in the age of instant international communication.

Other countries, other than the anglosphere and even there the other countries are more tentative, by and large don’t have blogs. They don’t take to the blogsphere to argue politics, scrum over economics, or report the news the “respectable” organs disdain to print.

In the rest of the world traditional news and traditional publishing remain safe professions with a future.

At first I thought “This is just because the rest of the world is not as technological.” But this is not true. They’ve taken everything else, except those.

Despite the fact that in most countries in Europe, the cost of living is such that an indie writer could live the life popular imagination associates with bestsellers, there are almost no indie authors from Italy or Greece or Portugal. And sales of indie books there are minimal.

And there are blogs for recipes and kids and trips and everything…. except matters of self governance and news.

This is a profound divide. Yes, I know, the British too have learned to lie to the polls and vote to spite the left, but they are the closest to us in culture.

Us? We are rapidly reaching the point of trusting NO institutions. This is actually unbelievable to Europeans.

Trust me, temperamentally, when it comes to politics, I’m closest to mom. And yet, I’ve exhausted myself shouting at her about the covidiocy and the lies she’s being sold.

She’s now scared of the British variant, the Japanese variant and whatever comes next, and convinced that mostly young people die from this virus.

Because she trusts the official news. Because THERE IS NO OTHER.

And before you say “oh, the laws” — laws my ass, this is the culture — Portuguese have never much obeyed laws. But the culture says that only those in authority know the truth. And btw, Portugal is relatively iconoclastic compared to the rest of Europe.

There are no news blogs, because they can’t imagine displacing the “official” news.

Yes, they’re going to fall hard, because you and I are in for a rough four or five years. And they don’t have the reserves (if you haven’t, please stock up on pet food. It’s having glitches in supply. And that means the human glitches are just down the road.)

But their most likely turn of events is going hard blood and soil. And it will take them a good three or four generations to get rid of socialism from their system.

They will never get rid of top down governance because that’s who they are.

That’s not who we are. We don’t recognize the right of “our betters” to tell us what to do. Sure, the covidiocy was dispiriting. It was also a novel approach to make people obey. And it’s fraying all over.

They burned the last remaining shreds of institutional credibility to get rid of Trump, because they thought Trump, Svengali-like, had hypnotized us into rebelling against the sages of socialism.

Because American leftists too are American. They think the rest of the world is like us. And if “sage” communists in China can govern that country forever, they can govern us forever, absent of course, the great hypnotist.

They don’t realize, in fact, they’re dealing with Americans. Americans don’t realize the left is dealing with Americans. Or what that means.

And it’s time we did. We need to be American as hard as we can. Which means ungovernable, unless we consent. And this bunch of mal-educated morons don’t even know how to earn our consent.

Hold on to the sides of the boat. Things are going to get rough. But not as rough as in all those countries where the dog has forgotten or never knew how to bark.

415 thoughts on “The Dog That Didn’t Bark”

  1. I’m not reading carefully enough to identify the third wrong thing.

    Which is a little concerning, because the first two things, and the preceding material, could be read as saying ‘Bob is correct’.

    I’m not sure that was what you were going for. 😉

    1. I wrote my comment before seeing yours…. but yes. All this post is saying is that everywhere else is so fundamentally incompatible with civilization or morals that even the slightest mistake lands them in the nuclear carpet bombing target zone.

      1. It’s not that bad.

        Sure, the Wilsonians are blind idiots who, objectively, in the here and now, should not be trusted not to cut themselves with plastic safety scissors.

        The Jeffersonians, the Hamiltonians, and the Jacksonians are also blinded to modern foreign policy realities by American culture.

        Extreme Bobism assumes that the rest of the world can join together in pushing world government on the US by force, and hence our rational primary foreign policy goal should be the readiness to kill them all, in sure knowledge that the readiness is impossible to actually realize. But the objective reality is that the rest of the world would have efforts in that direction destroyed by infighting before it comes to an actual fight.

        Foreign populations are an attractive nuisance, sure.

        But the real problem here is the American rich idiots who have been enabled by ordinary Americans.

        American culture tells us we can get along with our Korean, Nigerian, Ukrainian, or Argentinian neighbors while living in America, and we incorrectly assume that this would also hold if we had instead spent the same amount of time living in South Korea, Nigeria, the Ukraine, or Argentina.

        But the rich idiots have screwed things up for Americans native and immigrant, so we are going to be changing our behavior in some way yet unknown. This will almost certainly mean that we stop enabling the rich idiots.

        Once we stop enabling the rich idiots, ignoring the other problems might be pretty safe.

        Seriously, if the Swedes, Persians, Thai, and Bantu can learn to cooperate together enough to put up a real fight, that might well require them to reinvent the traits that made us Americans. Then, and only then, dealing with them might be tolerable.

        Sarah has only shown that dealing with the rest of the world is a sucker’s game at best.

        She has not proven that we must kill them all.

        1. I think Heinlein was like most Americans who have actually lived overseas for several years before returning. You have to live in the country long enough to see past the Tourist Veneer. Unfortunately, the rich are isolated by class, in a perpetual tourist mode, and the middle class tourists rarely, it ever, get the chance to see past it. I have the tendency to ask questions and then just shut up an listen to the conversations with folks from different countries. Been doing that since I joined the military. That, and reading about various country’s histories make a difference. Thing is, while I objectively understand that everyone is different, the default mode is to take them as being local Americans. There has to be a reason for me to evaluate them differently. Heinlein didn’t have a reason to make his characters non-Amero-centric for his stories to sell; so the default wasn’t a problem.

          1. “Heinlein didn’t have a reason to make his characters non-Amero-centric for his stories to sell; so the default wasn’t a problem.”

            As RAH was primarily selling his stories to Americans, any such reason would have had to be quite strongly compelling.
            ~

          2. I am assured that you are right about this – although I was military overseas – I lived on the local economy in Greece and in Spain. That is, I resided in local rental houses. Coped with conditions as they were to locals, paid for services … like propane gas bottle delivery for the stove and hot water heater in Spain. The conditions in a three-story apartment house in suburban Athens. Where I had to provide not only a stove to my second-floor flat, but light fixtures, when I moved in.
            Living on the local economy, shopping in the regular street market, or in the local shops … yes, that was a very enlightening experience.

            1. Wait, what??? Four days and three nights in a 3-Star tourist hotel does not provide the Full Foreign Experience?

              I am sooooo disillusioned.
              ~

      1. Were you thinking more the glowie ‘violence nao or you have surrendered’ or the GOPe ‘2022’ or something else entirely?

      3. Too much completion for #3

        Here’s one:

        if we can all just get rid of Christianity (Or at least the Christians of it) and all its stupid god bothering bugaboos we can have the happy shiny Star Trek-esque Questionable Content world? Never mind that everyone in that comic is a mule.

        Or the corollary, that if we all just embrace the superficial culture of Christendom Western Civilization we will be transported back to 1950 or Reagan’s America. Never mind that was the society that put us here?

        Or if we can just do this one thin that… Never mind. There’s a lot of #3s.

        How about my favorite: If we do not hang together we will most assuredly all hang separately.

          1. I suspect he’s thinking of, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” That this was the directive of God ( in the person of Christ) to man has never occurred to him.

            1. The only thought that jerk has is an image of his boyfriend’s c**k. Mr. Ticklefingers has an IQ of about 89.

            2. Also, people who quote that are guilty of very selective quoting:

              Matthew, Chapter 7:

              7.1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

              2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

              3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

              4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

              5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

              6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

              It is an injunction to mercy and understanding, not against judgement, a reminder that as you judge so shall you be judged. If one is not to judge, how will one discern swine and dogs?

              I suspect the Catholic Church hierarchy is happy to be judged by the standard of “does not accept the idea of gay marriage” against their actions.

            3. I wonder how many of the other injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount those who use Matthew 7:1 to demand we not judge also obey.

              How are they are about Matthew 6:1-4 and doing their alms in secret so they are rewarded in Heaven and not by man?

              Perhaps they are good about Matthew 6:19-21 and placing their treasure not in this world.

              Don is clear about his lack of adherance to Matthew 6:14-15, arguably the topic of this post, and offering forgiveness for trespass to his fellow men…well, maybe not as he’s been clear he doesn’t see his opponents as human.

              Okay, rant off.

              1. How are they are about Matthew 6:1-4 and doing their alms in secret so they are rewarded in Heaven and not by man?

                AAAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHHAAHAAHAHHAHAH

                Yeah, no.

            4. They always leave out the bit that goes after “don’t judge” saying “unless you’re willing to get judged by God with exact same measure. (So don’t get cocky!)

              A better go-to would be Christ telling fornicatin’ folks that He does not approve (the woman at the well: Now go, and cut it out already!) while telling the wider society “… And don’t execute her unless you’re not guilty either.” (The casting the first stone interaction.Though I think there’s also folks that stretch that to include “You can tell folks that something ought to be (or ought NOT to be) done, but you cannot publicly condemn them for it.” Kind of the anti-Karen principle.

              Of course, the perennially funny part of the Don Lemmon article is his judgment condemning people who judge others. You cut that out, right now!

    1. She’s shown the disproof for some of the alternatives.

      That is not the same as proving the whole train of craziness.

      We can still strongly suspect that the later step I err on is another example of taking too seriously a simplified model of human society or societies.

      1. Actually, I’m pretty sure your step in error has to do with human nature. Men* ain’t angels, my friend, and no matter what vices we eliminate, some dumbass will re-invent them, by and by.

        For reference, see Moloch, Planned Parenthood.

        *gender inclusive. Unfortunately.

    2. That’s the problem; the crazier the Left gets, the more appealing Bob’s solution looks.

        1. Well, she referenced Bob Heinlein’s incorrect thinking, and later correction, on the matter of foreigners.

          It is just that you and I had parallel thoughts about her discussion of the American fallacies of foreign policy, and whether those implied if my own theories are correct or not.

    4. It may not be correct as in “the only solution” but it is straightforward, effective, and could satisfying.

  3. It boils down to “become hillbillies like us here in Tennessee,” Sarah. We’re about as close to ungovernable as it gets, and we’re proud of it.

        1. Yep.

          Story from you’re neighborhood: More than 60 years ago, in the Carolina hills, Bubba telling me what they’d do for fun in an evening. Buy, or “borrow” from an uncle, a gallon or so of shine, drive up the side of a mountain, sit sipping shine & listening to gospel music on the car radio.

          One evening they ran low on whisky, drove down to Tennessee looking for more. Couldn’t find any shine or even bonded that late in the night, early in the morning, so bought Listerine mouthwash at an all night Rexall.

          Back up the mountain, finished off the mouthwash. At this point in the story, Bubba slapped his thigh, guffawed, and told how his cousin woke up blind the next morning.

          OK, he did allow how his cousin did get his sight back in a day or so.

          2. Reminds me of a roommate I had in school who drank aftershave when he was desperate. Wound up working for the warden in a prison.

          3. the downtown convenience stores here quit selling lysol and bread together because it became a favorite sandwich of the homeless.

      2. When I see the rivers in AK, and the fish that come from them, I’m almost ready to pretend I could withstand the lack of light and the frozen tundra. My Dad climbed Denali so the mountain has always been a fascination.

        I feel lame for not being able to make the move, really. As far as temperament goes, AK is mine. I get scared away by the weather and the deep gloom.

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  5. I am a firm believer that undue courtesy to idiots is rudeness to the polite and sensible. The “you don’t know America, having not been raised here” argument is fallacious, anyway, as one could as justifiably argue that being raised in America leaves one too close to the culture and blind to essential elements.

    Americans by choice instead of by birth bring welcome insights and only the churlish dismiss them because they cannot support their positions with valid arguments and evidence.
    ~

    1. “Americans by choice instead of by birth bring welcome insights and only the churlish dismiss them because they cannot support their positions with valid arguments and evidence.”

      You’re not wrong about this, but the problem is how many are instead doing what Sarah stated, “They usually come here to better their families and, heck, intend to go back “home.”” The ones who come here, who go through the rigmarole of immigration, but DON’T make the effort to become “Americans” with everything that implies.

      I think I’ve commented this before, it seems now the goal in immigrating to America is not to become an “American,” but instead to become a {nationality or race} hyphen American (and note the order this is always put in.) To do little more than take advantage of the opportunities available while doing their level best to bring the mindset and policies of wherever they came from and trying to make those policies exist here.

      Some still want to be American (our hostess certainly seems to fall into that pile,) but some…

      (Note: Born here, raised here, and I’ll be honest, the most foreign cultures I’ve direct experience with is… Canadian. So take my comments’ worth as what you paid for it)

      1. On the flip side, being born and raised here most assuredly does not make the person an American.

        See, um, most of the arguments I get into here…..

        1. Dang.. I should have read your remark before saying mine. Anyway, I was born in Canada, but my roots are in America (through my parents). I have been on an interesting border my entire life–

          1. Our hostess was an american born elsewhere. I was a foreigner born here.

            Years later it finally clicked that despite this country seeming ultra-authoritarian and oppressive (not entirly crazy: there was blatant persecution against anyone doing what we were doing), any other country in all of history would have just up and did what was feared here.

        3. This is the principal problem with the idea of a credal nation with birth citizenship: it will award citizenship even to those who reject the creed if they meet the birth requirements.

          As long as we have birth citizenship we are a blood and soil nation regardless of any desire or intent otherwise.

          A credal nation would require a confession of faith to be a citizen and a mechanism for those who are apostate to lose said citizenship.

            2. This. Because blood would be really hard to define. And Herb, I DO agree with you and think everyone born here should have to take their citizenship oath or remain permanent citizens at 18.
              BUT the founders didn’t see this coming.

          2. This is probably best handled by having at least two tiers of citizenship: a basic version that entitles you to be here, work here and be protected by the government, and an advanced version that lets you vote and hold public office. The former you could get just by being born here but the latter would require you to take a voluntary oath to uphold the constitution.

      2. I fear I made my point insufficiently clear. Being born here or abroad is irrelevant to the validity of observations expressed.

        As Speaker Gingrich argued, America is a creedal nation. One is not American by blood & soil, one is American by heart & mind. We are a large nation and few indeed can fully comprehend it, but as in the fable of the blind sages, it is important to know not just your own limitations but also just which part of the elephant you’re groping. The observations of others are welcome but not to be taken as gospel nor automatically discarded.
        ~

        1. Without soil, there is no nation, creedal or no.
          Controlling territory is a fundamental requirement for self-determination.

          1. Huge difference between “this is the territory I’ve staked out as my property” and “my bloodline has a permanent claim on this land for all eternity”.

            1. There is no difference
              Property that you cannot pass down to your descendants, was never truly yours.

              The founders of this creedal nation were very explicit that they were risking their lives, wealth, and sacred honor more for their progeny than themselves.
              And the Constitution they established clearly states that it’s purpose is to secure the blessings of liberty for them and their posterity. (AKA, their descendants.)

              1. Who said anything about passing it down?

                Some people recognize that if they sell a piece of land they no longer own it, they have no claim on it, and by extension non of their relatives have a claim on it.

                Others think that because 700 years ago someone with their family name owned a plot of land it doesn’t matter it is was stolen, everyone died leaving it unclaimed, or it was sold; they still are the true owners.

        2. America *tried* to be a creedal nation. It had a halfway decent shot at it too, until some bright boys decided they could ditch the core credal element of Protestant and Lutheran Christianity. Opiate of the masses, whot?

          And once you get the bright lads pulling out one bit – because their tribe and their blood don’t fit into it very well, what’s to stop another brighter lass from ripping another bit off? Or replacing part of it with something more to her liking like Marxism?

          By the time we got to poor Mr. Gingrich we were (and are) a nation of duelling creeds, competing with each other and the blood-and-soil tribal types. Only our U.S.A.ian creed which shone like a lantern was now three glow sticks and a hand crank pocket flashlight. Theirs burns like a flame. Albeit in a dumpster. Full of poo.

          If we want to win the war with us the credal left we need to a common moral ground to stand on. I think we have it. It’s in the founding documents and the spirit in which our nation was born.

          1. Um… First off, the Anglicans, Puritans, Quakers, separatists, and dissenters that made up most of the original English settlers disagreed on a lot of things, but they mostly didn’t like Luther, per se. You could argue Calvin or Knox more, at least with the Scots.

            Lutherans got to America later than John Wesley and the Catholics did, about the same time as Anabaptists and Moravians of various kinds. Most of the Anglicans would have differed as to whether they were in fact Protestants, and they would have not seen themselves as at all like Baptists or Anabaptists. (That is why most Germans ended up in Pennsylvania, because the Quakers did not persecute non-Anglican or non-Puritan German religious groups.)

            Of course, after the drafts in many German states and particularly Prussia and Hesse, and after Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, lots of religious German people, including Lutherans, fled to the US, just as lots of famines in Scandinavia brought lots of Scandinavian Lutherans. But that was mostly in the later 1700’s and throughout the 1800’s.

            The Dutch in New Amsterdam had state-supported Calvinism, but tolerated settlers who were Catholics, Puritans (English), Lutherans, Mennonites, etc. Basically they needed settlers with skills and some land development, and the West India Company actually lent settlers equipment for a share of the proceeds after ten years. The upriver patroons ran their own lands their own way.

            1. The “problem” with America was always that there were simply *too* *many* different sects too interspersed to run a proper theocide. A “problem” that lead of some very good things.

              1. I think the best you could do is Nicean Christian…you might even get to Western Christian (i.e., the Roman Catholic Church and its renegade offspring) and exclude the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox as well as parts of the Church of the East in addition to those parts of the Church of the East and other Iranian and east Churches which are not Nicean (how many are left…honest question). Even then, I suspect any Christian or Christian descended sect, and most, probably all, of Judaism remain compatible once you get to that level.

                So, not enough for theocracy, but enough for a common religious-based culture.

        3. Can someone who never embraced the creed become a citizen by merely being born to US citizens or on US soil? Can such a citizen vote and carry a US passport?

          Then we are de facto a blood and soil nation, not a credal one. The principal criteria for citizenship is based on either blood or soil. Nominal adherence to the creed is a secondary route, but even it is not tested nor is the citizenship revokable.

          1. I don’t think they anticipated a time when young Americans were taught to hate and despise the nation into which they were born. They seemed to think that parents and communities would take steps to prevent such foolishness.

            I mean, who knew?
            ~

        2. They did get flooded with English speaking settlers who were refugees from the American Revolution (which produced more than the French).

          1. After the British booted the Arcadian out of Nova Scotia, they needed good English settlers to work the now vacant territory. Which is the reason my husband’s direct ancestor founded the Baptist church in Nova Scotia. (That, and he kept getting tossed in jail in the Colonies for refusing to pay the preaching tax and advocating temperance).

          2. “refugees from the American Revolution (which produced more than the French).”

            Unpossible. I was assured that the American Revolution didn’t involve a “Reign of Terror” against Loyalists by multiple experts here.

            1. It did not produce a Reign of Terror, that is organized imprisonment and execution of opponents of the Revolution by the victorious government. However, it should surprise no one that individuals who elected to actively oppose the Revolution would decide to relocate after its success.

              1. “It did not produce a Reign of Terror, that is organized imprisonment and execution of opponents of the Revolution by the victorious government.”

                So when BLM/Antifa burn your house down, they aren’t government agents because they don’t have badges, just enabled by the government at any level being unwilling to prosecute them?

                I think the term I want is de facto as opposed to de jure. There is no real difference.

                1. Would you call current BLM comparable to the Reign of Terror?

                  Was there score settling? Yes, although most was during the war, not after. You’ll also note score settling is one reason I routinely oppose civil war and say we should avoid it if we can. While that which went on during the American Revolution is a minor example it still is an example.

                  However to compare it to The Reign of Terror is comparing the Hollywood Blacklist to the Gulag. This is unwise in general and not the standard to set if you worrired about civil war in the near future.

                  1. Ask the people in Portland that question. How about the owner of Uncle Hugo’s?

                    2. Someone’s being deliberately obtuse. I don’t think it’s me.

                      You are saying that unless the Reign of Terror is conducted by government agents, it isn’t a Reign of Terror. Don’t feel bad, lots of other people here have tried to claim the same thing.

                      It makes NO difference to the victims whether the agents of the Terror have badges, or whether they are simply ignored by those who do. The Terror, and the bodies, are still there.

                    5. Pretty sure she still thinks that for things like your demand to execute folks who don’t obey a doctor’s orders.

                      Talk about demands that aged poorly.

                    6. Pretty sure you have me confused with another cardboard cutout in your head. Whatever……

                    9. Well, I appreciate being your obsession; saved me the trouble.

                      Paying attention to what you say is “obsession.”

                      Especially when you attempted to use it to hijack “hey, don’t kill people” to support your demand to execute someone for not following doctor’s orders.

                      Super sekret hint: Linking a demand to slaughter a woman for not following doctor’s advice really doesn’t help in the whole “aged poorly” thing.

                      But hey! Are you now recognizing that no, it’s not a figment of my imagination that you LITERALLY DEMANDED TO EXECUTE A WOMAN FOR NOT FOLLOWING A DOCTOR’S ADVICE?!

                      And that that demand AGED POORLY?

                    10. Newsflash, Nelson, when someone demands that I be killed for not listening to an employee, I freaking remember it.

                      Especially when they are lax about finding out the facts on the ground before making that demand.

                    12. It is not just a matter of the agents, but of extent and what happened.

                      Using your logic the murder of is as horrific as the Rosewood Massacre (choosing a non-governmental example). After all, it makes no difference to Sunny von Bülow that her death was likely from a greedy husband than it does to the eight individuals killed in Rosewood that they were killed by racially motivated individuals.

                      Therefore, we should condemn Klaus von Bülow to the same degree as every individual who helped destroy Rosewood, Florida.

                      And, by the same logic, we should treat guards from the Gulag the same as rioters in Rosewood, because after all the dead are dead.

                      There is no difference in the motivation of the action or the damage to the larger social fabric that is created by the extent or coordination of action. At least, there is none you will allow for.

                      Had you compared the dispossession of Tory’s after the war, both violent and non-violent to something like the the dispossession of East Prussians or German residences of Alsace and Lorraine in the last century, or even the partitioning of India I wouldn’t have raised complaint. The partitioning was worse, but that was a matter of scale and available tech less than organization.

                      But, in using the old “the dead are dead so there is no difference” saw you are simply trying to make something you dislike worse than it was to sooth some need. You need to claim the American Revolution was equivalent to the French one I’d recommend you ask what personal demon you are exercising.

                      But while you do, reflect deeper on who is being obtuse.

                    13. So the penalty for arson should be the same for mass murder as they are the same crime?

                      –
                      Well, yeah, in the sense that you can only apply the death penalty once. Definitely for burning a building with people inside, like the worthless turd that burned 33 people to death in Kyoto Anime Studio in Japan.

                      Even if everybody manages to escape the burning building. They didn’t survive through any lack of effort by the arsonists.

        3. Canada is the ur anti-American nation. They are the British citizens who rejected the Revolution and the United States. The Articles of Confederation include the assignment of reps to Canada should it decide to become a state. The chair was pulled out and they have rejected it from the first.

      4. Do not forget that many of folks who just showed up to colonise or exploit the local resources were brought in as cheap labor, scabs to break the economic power of the native born and assimilated/nissei Americans. And probably to stop certain kinds of intermarriage that threatened political alliances. Look up Caesar Chavez and where the slur “wetback” came from.

      5. I’ve said before that Sarah has done more to turn me off to immigration than anyone. It is not what she has done per se, but she has shown me by what she has done to acculturate how few do and how hard it is. On top of that, the major organs of our culture actively discourage what she did instead of encouraging it.

        That lack of institutional support combined with the natural laziness to not do it is a time bomb, especially based on what we see with the children of immigrants being more and more radically “where mom and day came from” in their choices.

      2. Or almost worse, to me, is they seem indifferent about it. Don’t care to make the effort to preserve it against all enemies…

        2. On the rightish side it is easy to think that either it was good in the past, and has now decayed to nothing, or taken a step further that the stories of past good were all golden-age-ism.

          The left of course has their own reasons when everything is terrible all the time.

        3. I’d argue indifference to politics is a core American cultural attribute. Yes, it has been exploited by America’s enemies, but in a perfect state, Americans could be apolitical, especially at the Federal level, and be fine. The Constitution is even designed for that. The fact the President’s identity is really more important than your local mayor’s identity because the former’s administration will lead to tons of rules constraining the latter’s administration is a sign of how far astray we’ve gone.

          We no longer can govern via Dr. Pournelle’s buggy whip rule.

              1. ‘Lone Star Planet’ by Piper. Shooting the bastards was a legitimate form of political protest.

                Of course, if you shoot somebody popular, you’re likely to get shot in response…

                1. Well, you could also be jailed (or executed) if the Judge (or Jury) decided that the Politician didn’t deserve killing. 😉

                3. I love that story.

                  Any place where “they was practicing politics” is an affirmative defense in a murder trial is a place I’d be happy to live.

  6. One of the most tiresome things I deal with as a first generation American is listening to the average American talk about the country my parents fled to as a bastion of freedom. Most of the people born here are utterly blind to the virtues of this country, and take for granted things I have been taught to hold sacred all my life as the only thing that allowed my family to survive.

    It is incredibly upsetting. :,

    1. I don’t know, I kinda wish I was as free to torture and imprison and murder communists as the Cuban security services are.

      On the other hand, I am objectively a would be authoritarian tyrant, and a sensible free country would not give the powers a part of me wants.

      Possibly we may well /need/ to permit people to murder communists, but such policy would be costly no matter how much the communists personally deserve it.

    2. I love meeting you in public – you don’t let the ignorance stand without comment.

      People who have never lived elsewhere mostly do not understand the rest of the world is barbaric.

    4. Yeah, my kids don’t so much love America as they keep sending her love letters, making poems, singing her praises and are at risk of a restraining order. I think you’d like them.

    5. Our problem is that, as President Reagan reminded, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

      ~

  7. In Colorado, our tubby fascist governor has declared March 20th “Meat out” day, as a day to celebrate the vegan lifestyle. Instead, the day is turning into a “Meat In” celebration all over Colorado. It’s a big collective finger to the so-called ruler, and it’s wonderful to see it taking shape. I’m smoking pork ribs.

    3. Unfortunately, Earth Hour is on one of the holiday nights of Passover, so I have to rely on leaving some lights on for the whole weekend, rather than turning on every light in the house for that hour.

      1. “8:30 p.m., your local time on Saturday, March 27, 2021.”

        Every light in the house, the barn lights, and the yard light. And a steak.

        You’ll know when this nonsense has become a real problem when come the hour, the power company turns your lights off for you.

        2. If that happens, I’ll be outside in the back yard with a frickin’ battery powered spotlight! And put flashlights in every single window!

            1. Nuclear sized! 😀

              Probably want to light that sucker off in somebody else’s back yard though…

    5. Unfortunately for those of us who are Orthodox Christians, Great Lent just started today and we’re fasting from meat, eggs, dairy products, and even oil most days, for 40 days. So the best we could do is a lot of shellfish (which are allowed for a reason I’m not clear on), if I lived in Colorado. Which ain’t gonna happen…

      1. As I understand it, shellfish are bloodless, and considered in a similar category as insects.

        They are extremely distant from vertebrates, to the point that we are anatomically upside down from them.

      2. In Orthodox Judaism fish are considered pareve. Neither Dairy nor Meat. Shellfish are of course treif.

        1. I’ve heard jokes revolving about Catholics who hate shellfish and Jews who love them. . . .

        2. Obviously one of the points of difference between Christianity and Judaism is that Christians believe they are not bound by kosher laws. In the East and Constantinople, there was a lot more competition for converts between Jews and Christians (ie, a lot of Christians became Jews at certain points).

          So some Eastern practices tend to involve things like being pointed about the use of shellfish and shrimp, as well as using leavening in the bread used for consecration at Mass/Liturgy. (Or so I understand. There are probably many reasons.)

      3. 40 days! Even in sin you folks are still paying retail. Yom Kippur, 25 hours! BIG GRIN

      4. I will own my fasting has fallen off the past couple of years. Prayer hasn’t, but fasting is rough when your spouse isn’t Orthodox to begin with and having been abandoned by my perish this past year hasn’t helped.

      1. I confess that I have never been much of a fan of steak. OTOH, I really like sautéed onions and peppers, and steak is a terrific flavoring agent for that!
        ~

        1. The uber burger. Roasted garlic aoli. Deep fried thin slices of onion. The good bacon and a splash of hot sauce. Pan fried in the skillet.

          Happy Stick it to Pinhead Tyrants with tastY tasty Meat Day!

          1. Yes, or a proper Philly cheese steak. I like an broiled Italian sausage on a roll, smothered in sautéed onions and peppers with a bit of sauce … an all beef dog with chili, onions, slaw and some diced jalapeno. Sloppy joe or pulled barbecue on toasted bun with slaw …

            Excuse me – need to break for a bite.
            ~

    7. “No meat day? Hey, Joe, you still got all that steak and chicken that you meant to BBQ? We’ve got the PERFECT day! Break out ALL the grills. Yes, even crazy Uncle Herberts.”

      1. I’m sure most Texans will be celebrating BBQ Beef day on Saturday March 20th. More than the usual Saturday of course! In solidarity with our Coloradan brethren.

    10. I only eat beef from vegetarian beef cattle (or bison). If they want to change the cows over to vegan grass I’m okay with that.

      1. I used to have a shirt that said, “Get high on milk…our cows are on grass.”

        Farmer/4-H humor…scandalous in the rural South in the mid-seventies!

    11. The gob-smacking thing is that the idiot set it up on a Saturday, during Lent– and picked the day after a Solemnity.

      AKA, dude LITERALLY chose the day after THAT ONE DAY you can have a meat-Friday in Lent.

      This is stupid on par with the “meatless monday” junk– where if they really wanted to get folks on board, they’d just hijack Fridays to make it easier for folks to abstain on Friday.

      But the Making A STatement is more important.

        1. That’s likely. But I also won’t discount that he did it intentionally just to try and spite certain people. For some reason I’m reminded of when Obama announced that he had decided to cancel the planned deployment of anti-missile systems in Polish territory (as the Russians were demanding), and made the announcement on the anniversary of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland.

          Funny coincidence, that…

          1. *nod*

            There’s not bright, and there’s “failure to recognize hitching your wagon to massive cultural movement.”

            Look, Biden doing the “light a light in your window for me” shtick was evil, but smart– it was a month after the light a light for showing they’re cheating thing.

            The meat stuff is anti-religious.

            They choose the dumbest day possible, rather than the easy way.

          2. I recall the 1939 German invasion of Poland. Never heard about a Russian invasion that year.

            1. At that point, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR had signed a non-aggression pact. So when Germany moved in, so did the USSR on September 17, 1939. Germany and the USSR divvied up Poland between them, and the USSR proceeded to kill a ton of Polish officers for having thwarted the USSR’s invasion back in 1920. (And claim the Nazis did it, later. Not that the Nazis weren’t killing people, too.) Katyn Forest. Also many Poles were shipped to Siberia, executed in show trials, etc.

              1. Quite possibly the single most stupid move Hitler made during his rein in power. Not the most evil, that would be his “final solution” to the Jewish and other undesirables problem.
                Operation Barbarossa was the code name for the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and some of its Axis allies, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II.
                This betrayal by Germany of its treaties caused Russia to join the allies and opened the infamous Eastern front that bled the German war machine of soldiers and material for the entire course of the war. This quite possibly shortened the war by several years and ultimately resulted in the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe for decades after the war.
                A somewhat amusing aspect of this was the 180 degree pivot American communists had to make over their official position on Germany, from active support to instant hate.

                1. He may not have had any choice. Two things are known about his attack:

                  1. Before it, the Soviets were building up forces on the border.
                  2. It came as a surprise to the Soviets.

                  Now, why do you build up forces on a border where you are not expecting an attack?

              2. Yup. The Poles had hoped that they could hold off the Germans long enough for France and Great Britain to come to their aid. It was pretty much the only chance they had. And then a couple of weeks after the Germans attacked from the West, the Soviets attacked from the East. At that point, the focus shifted to getting as many troops as possible interned in neighboring Romania (which was a military ally; Poland intentionally chose not to invoke the treaty with them for strategic reasons).

                The Soviet invasion of Poland is generally ignored when the history of WW2 is recounted. It messes up the narrative about the Allies fighting Axis aggression. But it’s worth remembering that the Soviets were initially just as greedy toward their neighbors as the Germans.

    12. Governor Pole-smoker isn’t about to give up his favorite kind of meat, so he can choke on mine. And that’s one of the *polite* names I have for that tubby bastard. The letter my son read at a city council meeting was rather more pointed.

  8. The biggest Americanest mistake that I made between when the wall fell and when the towers fell was not realizing that of course they would destroy us if they could and whether it was hate, indifference or just the long plan didn’t matter. Any nation should always have defenses ready against every other. And I should have realized that of course they would hate that we are not them, and that I’m not in a burqa. And anything that I do won’t change that.

  9. As the descendant of revolutionaries, this whole post brought a big old smile to my face. ‘Murica.

        1. There was a gentleman who ran a TV/electronics repair shop in the seventies, in one of the nearby small towns. He had EE/ME degrees. Showed me a small transceiver he had made for…someone back in his previous country. I discovered him in my teens and spent a lot of time in his shop…he graced me with lots of spare electronic components, budding EE that I was.

          He and his pregnant wife walked out of Hungary, in winter, ahead of the tanks. Made an impression in my formative years.

  10. “… convinced that because their friends are spread out all over the world (my office-mates I keep in regular touch with …. well, some are on the other side of the world, so I get it) and they agree on many things, they should be able to form their own nation”

    I daresay many here recognize that as an accurate depiction of our little on-line community, and I wish to go on record here and now as saying, to any who want to declare us a nation, not just “No!” but “Hell no!” I tolerate visitation in a benevolent despotism but will not be governed beyond the strictures of politeness.

    Any effort to impose greater political conformity will initiate a Wallaby Webellion, with immediate deployment of carp stockpiled against just such tyranny.
    ~

    1. We’re already that nation, here in east Tennessee. Y’all are welcome to come here and be Americans like us, but we’re not leaving. And if the feds try to make us no-longer-Americans, why, they’ll be leaving. Condition not guaranteed…

        1. A vagrant crawled in the window, demanded the keyboard, typed, and left.

          I was helpless.

      2. Wallabies never suwwender.

        But we do occasionally give up, especially when we’ve failed to fill a straight.
        ~

      3. >> “Eventually, you must surrender and sue for Wepawayshuns.”

        You’re assuming he’ll lose the wevolutionary war.

  11. “America … goes around in the amiable belief everyone is like us.”

    I do not now nor have I ever held such an absurd belief. I would not wish to live in a world in which everyone is like me.

    Nor would I fancy a world in which every nation was like America, although a number of nations could do with enhancing their similarity scores.
    ~

  12. This post almost, ALMOST, makes me want to go back and teach Intro American Politics. Almost. I’d use it to raise the question of what is an American.

    One of my beefs is with people who have lived elsewhere, return to the US, and then start talking about how great wherever was. When asked why they didn’t stay, or go back, it’s almost always, well…jobs, healthcare, rude people (but the architecture!), or something along those lines. My response is well, yeah. You’re not one of them no matter what you do. A few years ago a college friend, with great fanfare, moved to Costa Rica to live in a “sustainable” community. He was going to build a house, it was going to have solar, etc., it was a community of like-minded people, yadda yadda. He was back within a year for health reasons. For some reason he just couldn’t get things taken care of as well as he would have liked in Costa Rica. Huh. Fancy that.

    1. Wife and I always comment on how people in one of those house hunting shows, where they’re moving abroad for whatever reason (and almost ALWAYS moving from either the USA or Canada,) grouse about how they can’t find the equivalent of what they had (home-wise) in their home country.

      Well duh, you ain’t moving there, you’re looking in places that have the population of a small to medium US state jammed into a city the size of a small town in the US, so of COURSE you won’t find a 200sqft, single-family home with a basement!

      We like to think that, if for whatever reason, we were to move abroad (most likely for my work, but even that’s such a low probability I’d have better odds on the lottery) we’d not make such inane comments…

      And, going back to beckyj46s’ comment about her friend and Costa Rica, it’s always fun to hear about how the “they do everything better over there, they’ve got universal healthcare” people deflect and dodge when asked why so many who can afford it instead take “medical vacations” to come to the US for what are often relatively common and simple procedures (here, good luck getting some of them in a nationalized / universal healthcare country.)

      1. It says something that some countries with royalty… well, you might see some of those royals in Rochester (to the point the local find it No Big Deal, which I think is a Very Good Thing – “royalty” is just people and Twain had it right – get rid of the trapping and how could you tell, short of painting them blue?). Seems Mayo clinic has something of a reputation.

        1. Royalty watching in Roch… ‘who’s plane is parked at RST?, who’s rented the top floor(s) of the Kahler?’

      2. I’ve always wanted to do that. Get a job, find a small flat (preferably with en suite, since housecleaning other folks muck is no joy if you’re not family / getting paid) and live someplace curious for two years. Singapore. Finland. Tuscany. That bit in France near Germany….

        Long enough to get to know the place, short enough to enjoy the difference. Ah well.

      3. People’s ideas of “universal healthcare” is “same quality and availability of care I have now, but free.” With no conception of how impossible that is. Or what the trade offs are for even a fraction of it.

        1. If the congresscritters believed in ‘universal health care’ they wouldn’t have exempted themselves.

        2. Courtesy of Power Line’s “Geek in Pictures” feature we have this handy chart depicting what universal healthcare actually increases:

          ~

          1. All the government money going for student loans/grants likely has the same kind of growth chart.

      1. It’s pretty common for rabid Japanophiles to give up on Japan, because it’s not fun to be a gaijin. Being a gaijin who has Japanese heritage is even worse. Some people manage to fit in by creating a foreigner persona, and by having a fairly hard shell until people get to know them.

      2. One of my cousin’s kids just moved there for work just before the CCPox hit. I need to check in on him again…

        My mom and dad have visited often. They really enjoyed it. But you couldn’t pay them to stay. Mom would go back to Brazil first.

        Speaking of which… What loon thinks that Brazil is a place for expat Americans to flee to from American corruption, mismanagement and tribal hatreds? I’m tickled Bolsonaro won and that [redacted] Dilma is in jail but even best case, the country starts to find its feet again… Five minutes later they’ll get another Lulu promising rainbows and unicorn farts, and it will all be to do.all over again.

    3. Kurt Weill, who with wife Lotte Lenya fled Germany ahead of the Nazification, pondered the same question after his arrival here.

      Working with Maxwell Anderson and flipping a bird to FDR he came up with an answer.
      ~

  13. …no, being rude to a stranger without due cause is pretty far up there on the Bad Manners scale, as is playing devil’s advocate against one’s self on if the cause was sufficient and viewing doing it anyways as a personal flaw.

    Rudeness is to be reserved for those you love!

    … which sounds funny, but there’s both an element of trust and of presumption in being rude. You’re both trusting that they are not insane and will take offense as a reason to do dire physical harm, and that they are not on the edge so your responding in kind will push them off the edge.

    Now, the longer the conversation goes, the lower that bar becomes, and there are other considerations.

    But! You’re not a non-American for that. 😀

  14. “We don’t recognize the right of ‘our betters’ to tell us what to do.”

    Well, first there would have to be somebody I recognized as my better, and as the satin’ goes, that sumbitch ain’t been borned yet.

    Hell, I don’t allus listen to me, much less anyone else.
    ~

  15. People don’t like too much crowding. Cities are behavior sinks according to Thomas Jefferson- when we get as crowded as Europe we will be as depraved – approximately. Thus the world wide population decline. The frontier is gone.

      1. I forgot to add, the Brit interviewer tries to paint this notional American (he’s German, at a guess, but a European citizen of one country or another for sure) as dangerous and endangering those around him, which is probably how most Europeans see us Americans. And you know, they’re right about us being dangerous. Leave us alone!

    1. I’ve begun advising anyone with a large number of videos on YouTube to set up an account or accounts on at least one other video hosting system, Bitchute, Rumble, Odysee, one of the others, just in case they get cancelled by YouTube. I’ve noticed some already doing that…

      1. Googles monopoly over online ads and video allows it basically to destroy any business which it doesn’t like, and it is using that power to systematically destroy all who challenge leftist orthodoxy. Online news media, like The Federalist and Breitbart, likely could not survive without the ad revenue, and Google, because of its market dominance (80-90-% of the online ad market) is the sole arbiter of who can and cannot run online ads.

          1. Hosting everything o his subscription site — many of the videos remain available on Youtube for non-subscribers.

            Which does not mean your advice is not well-founded. Being dependent o a single choke-point invites disaster.
            ~

          2. That works for videos, but not for actual websites that rely on revenue from embedded ads in order to pay their bills. Google has a monopoly and controls almost 90 percent of the market for those on-line ads. That is where demonitization can destroy a news site like The Federalist. They could probaly take down Insty if they did it to them.

        2. Nothing says it will be easy, but having a second account off-YouTube at least keeps an organization from instantly disappearing entirely.

          1. The people who were scoffing a few years ago are now figuring out that “build your own lolbertardism” was based, not in optimism, but ocean trench deep cynicism.

            1. It may depend on what skills you were trained in. The term “single point of failure” comes immediately to mind…

  19. American-born people assume, in their “never really understood how the rest of the world lives” little heads that the rest of the world is just like America.
    Heh! I resemble that remark – or at least I did. It took me a long time to figure out otherwise. Some of it was travelling, but mostly just two things: America currently has the oldest continuous government on the planet, which flabbergasts me since it’s not that old, and all the constitutions written during my lifetime – why didn’t they just use ours? Oh. Lightbulb!

    1. and all the constitutions written during my lifetime – why didn’t they just use ours?

      An interesting tell is how any time our elites have the chance to give some other country a constitution they specifically *do not* use ours, or anything like it.

      The noggin’ be a-joggin’.

      1. Some years ago I did a comparative study of constitutions. The US, the Soviet, the French, and (I think, I’m not sure anymore) the German. It was amazing how different the assumptions were. The US constitution was by far the shortest, and deals almost entirely on how the federal government is to be organized and what it has authority over. The others were like books, and went on and on and on about rights and responsibilities of citizens, where ours basically said the feds can’t tell you what to do or railroad you legally or forcefully. Of course, that’s mostly honored in the breach by our present-day administrative state, but it’s still what the Constitution actually says.

        1. The Soviet constitution cribbed extensively from ours….except every single “right,” they mentioned could be suspended “for the good of the state.”

            1. The correct answer is: “Fuck the good of the state; it can burn to the ground and all its officers die in excruciating pain for all anyone should care”.

              It is like the hysteria over the last year in Britain to “save the NHS”. NO. The entire justification for the NHS was to save the people you dumbasses.

              1. You forgot something:
                The correct answer is: “Fuck the good of the state; it can burn to the ground and all its officers die in excruciating pain for all anyone should care. I’ll be over here, roasting marshmallows and giggling so hard I might swallow my tongue.”

                  1. And … in practice, how much of the list do they really have?

                    If the “somebodies” get their way, how much of the list will we all have?

                    The answer is: NONE

                    1. Exactly. Remember that all of the “rights” that were, ahem, “guaranteed” by the Soviet constitution were all subject to the provision “subject to the needs of the state”, so in effect, nothing was actually guaranteed by the Constitution. Democrats act as of the US Constitution has a similar provision when they declare that the guaranteed rights are subject to the limits needed for the “public good”, as they did in asserting that they could take away those rights in order to “protect public health” and thus close businesses and ban protests and all the other unconstitutional deprivation of rights they imposed with the lockdowns.

        2. Well, there’s all those penumbras and emanations pointing in the direction of the inevitable arrow, vs. the plain text of enumerated “shall make no law” stuff being really just suggestions, and mostly misunderstood due to inadequate grounding in legal interpretation.

          It is quite obvious that the wannabe overclass really wishes the constitution were not in the current commonly taught language (“E Plebneesta…”) which would make it oh so much easier for the anointed Lawgiver elites to emerge wearing their judicial robes when the urge strikes them so they can tell us what The Law says we are now required to do.

        3. I actually blocked someone who argued the Canadian constitution was better, because it was revised every 5 years or so.
          I couldn’t argue with stupidity of that order.

        4. John Adams – “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

          Apparently the elites believe there to be an insufficiency of moral and religious* people.

          *Arguably they do now consider moral and religious mutually exclusive.
          ~

          1. Anybody can design a government that will govern well when run by the best of men. Our founders set out to limit the damage it could do when run by the worst.

            They just weren’t expecting the worst to be so FUCKING PERSISTENT!!

          2. Yeah. The withering away of Christianity is certainly one of the reasons for the current unpleasantness. The left doesn’t see the problem with lying and cheating if it benefits them or their side.

    2. I have for decades told people that we have the oldest continuous constitution/government in the world.
      Lots of people don’t believe me, but so far none have been able to really find an older one.

        1. The British have a Constitution that is divided by the square root of -1.

          Brits all pretend their “unwritten” Constitution actually does anything. Given what’s going on over there in recent years, it’s obviously some form of shared delusion.

          1. Well….. yes….

            Their Constitution isn’t. That was something they badly grafted onto an existing system. But the English government still exists.

        2. If you want to argue that the English (British) government of today is the same government that existed when the Glorious Revolution threw out the Stuart king James VII, explain to me how Elizabeth II has the same powers as did William & Mary.
          I don’t think that Elizabeth could get a Campbell to slaughter a lot of McDonalds.

            1. Deflecting a bit?

              Not trying to show that the British government is the same as it was after the Glorious Revolution?

              That our Constitution is often honored more in the breach than we might like, we still have the same Constitution that was ratified 232 years ago.

              1. I don’t know any British history, so I can’t say if it is the same or not.

                I’m making the comparison because 99.99999% of what America is now is in almost direct violation of what it was then. If your distinction divides England because it has evolved all the power away from the monarch, then America breaks as well.

                1. If you don’t know English history, why are we having this discussion?

                  I made a comment, as did someone else upthread, about the US having the oldest continuous government/constitution in the world.

                  You made a comment based on the English history that you admit that you don’t know.

                  I asked you to support your assertion, specifically asking you to show that the government of England (as they do not have a written constitution) which includes the inherent power of the monarch, is the same as it was after the Glorious Revolution.

                  You bailed on that, and decided to comment on the US government. While one can argue that the government, particularly with administrative agencies, etc, isn’t the same as it was in the late 1780s, we still have the same Constitution, and government continuity has been maintained.

                2. Evolving power away from the monarch has been the foundation of England’s development:

                  https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/old_issue.html

                  “All we have of freedom, all we use or know–
                  This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.

                  Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw–
                  Leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law.

                  Lance and torch and tumult, steel and grey-goose wing
                  Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the king.

                  Till our fathers ‘stablished,, after bloody years,
                  How our King is one with us, first among his peers.

                  So they bought us freedom-not at little cost–
                  Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost.

                  Over all things certain, this is sure indeed,
                  Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed.”

                  1. The Glorious Revolution wasn’t. Our founding fathers seem to have run the American Revolution on the grounds of Not Being Like The Glorious Revolution – ie, do things openly and let the people vote. The Glorious Revolution was done by cabal.

                    And having invited a Dutch king to rule them, the English NeverJamesers proceeded to get butthurt that William brought over his Dutch military, gave them lands and titles, and listened to his faithful Dutch instead of a bunch of cabalists who had just betrayed their king. They were just lucky that William didn’t live longer.

                    1. Sigh. IF ONLY the Anglo-Saxons had some experience with inviting in foreigners to help protect them and run things.
                      ~

    4. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
      — John Adams

      That’s why. Note our hostess’ occasional reminder that in America, you can leave stuff sit unguarded in your unfenced front yard, while the rest of the world regards that as a gift to passersby.

  20. I’ve believed and still contend the best, perhaps the only, way to get a good feel for what Americas is, is to visit other countries. So much around us here, we don’t see, notice or comprehend. It’s just there, so much a part of our lives we’re not even aware of it.

    I’ve spent a lot of time running around The Ring Of Fire, the Pacific Rim countries and a wee bit of time in Europe.

    Every time I return home, I find I’ve a better handle of who we are and why that’s so.

  21. Rudeness is relative.
    While it is a deep-seated taboo to refuse hospitality to strangers, there’s a good bit of variability in what hospitality requires.
    Not to mention how enthusiastic one must be about performing the duty.

    The “fit in, or $_&+ off” speech is a good example.
    It’s good advice.
    Many believe not giving it is setting the stranger up for harm.
    But many consider it unspeakably rude.

    1. As a certain SF universe notes: the intersection of hospitality rules, the hazards of space, and particularly obnoxious people may mean tossing an oxygen tank out the airlock.

      But the tank does still get tossed out.

      The “fit in, or $_&+ off” speech is a good example.

      Is this a particular speech you are referencing, or the general concept?

      1. One example I can think of is Dave Freer.

        Dave was born in South Africa, and was originally optimistic after the end of Apartheid, but eventually he could tell things were declining, and wanted his sons to finish growing up in a better situation. Immigrated to Australia, specifically to Flinder’s Island off the coast of Tasmania.

        Dave deliberately chose to be Australian.

        He did not want to be the sort of immigrant who is always talking up the old country, and never really settling down in the new.

        From pretty much the first blog post after getting internet again from Australia, he has been talking from time to time about ‘fit in, or fuck off’, and how he meant to be Australian as hard as possible.

        He’s been participating in the community, and has settled in. Forex, he is involved with an Australian veteran’s organization, and volunteers with the island ambulance service.

        Recently, he dismantled, moved, and assembled a house that he planned to live in, and local bureaucrat is giving trouble about it not fitting their @$#^ building code.

        Anyway, a couple years ago he was bitching about Australian leftists condemning Australia Day as being anti-immigrant. He was very pleased with a visitor to the blog commented on some documents about the original intent of the first celebration.

        I do meet people who are considering permanent relocation to the United States, I think they might not entirely understand what they are getting into, and at times are tempted to try to advise them on how to fit in.

        1. From pretty much the first blog post after getting internet again from Australia, he has been talking from time to time about ‘fit in, or fuck off’, and how he meant to be Australian as hard as possible.

          Ah!

          My deep-programmed instincts put “fitting in” as only slightly less evil than murder.

          No, seriously; I don’t even have any clue if I’m an intro- or extro- vert. There are hints towards extroversion, but I spent too much time under the idea of introversion as inherently holy in contrast to the inherently evil extroversion.

  22. I think many Americans think of Star Trek as being what a world government will be like. And it’s a nice fiction as long as you don’t think about how the Federation government works.

    1. Well…. For all we really saw of the innerworkings of The Federation, IMO you can imagine almost anything you want about it. 😀

      I suspect the writers of the Original Series had the US in the back of their minds when it came to the Federation.

      1. That seemed to be the case, with a fair amount of liberal thought, but by TNG, it was pretty much Utopia (in the original meening: “No Place”). See the old ST posts on ATH for more details.

        1. I’ve come to think that yearning after utopia on earth is pretty close to a mortal sin.

              1. Nah, it’s the problem, it doesn’t just hide it. (Besides, that’s a snake, not a worm, offering it. 0:)

        2. There’s a reason that I said “Original Series”. 😀

          But yes, after the Original Series ended, Roddenberry pushed this idea that the Federation was an Utopian Society without thinking about what was actually possible.

          I heard that one major problem with the scripts of the first season of STNG was Roddenberry’s insistence that there could be No Personal Conflicts between members of the Enterprise Crew.

          IE Roddenberry “imagined” that the Crew were perfect people.

          While Roddenberry had no official position in the production of STNG, the producers didn’t want Roddenberry making a big fuss about “They Are Destroying My Show”.

          After his death, things got a bit more realistic involving the Enterprise crew but there were still plenty of stupidity in NG that were hold-overs of Roddenberry’s idiocies.

          On the other hand, after the Original Series, Roddenberry had plenty of failed attempts in creating new series. He was basically out of work and most of his income came from appearances at Star Trek conventions. So in many ways, he was somebody to be pitied not condemned. 😦

          1. Roddenberry pushed this idea that the Federation was an Utopian Society without thinking about what was actually possible…Roddenberry’s insistence that there could be No Personal Conflicts between members of the Enterprise Crew.

            And there I think we have the explanation for how the Federation could work: all the problems with it were simply deemed out of bounds. So, for example, what happens if someone else wants the Picard family vineyards? Well, if they did, that would be a conflict, and there are no conflicts between humans, so therefore it would never happen and it’s a meaningless question.

            In other words, the Federation words perfectly as long as there’s a heavy-handed producer in charge of the writer’s room.

            1. Going along with the “Heavy-Handed Producer” idea, some “criticism of society/religion” in fictional books have more to do with “Heavy-Handed Writers”.

              Some idiot (years ago) on the Bar who was criticizing religion used an “example” from a time-travel story.

              Of course, an intelligent person would have realized that fictional religious people would “say” whatever the Author wanted them to say. 😦

                1. They apparently never read the Lathe of Heaven though as they demand absolute conformity and equality of results.

          2. Roddenberry came to speak at my university just before the release of the Motionless Fixture.

            Came away with the strong impression that he’s fundamentally a control freak, and noted that his utopia is basically a 100% controlled society.

        1. Yes, those are the ones, but I’m not set up to try to find those just now. Using a laptop while on my back makes for labored keyboard work, and lots of typos.

          Mini update: Post surgery stitches come out tomorrow and then I should find out how soon (and how to be implemented) physical therapy will happen. Web searches show a wide range of options, though I figure it’s going to have to be tailored case by case.

  23. Okay, since Meghan Sparkle was mentioned: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/mar/14/meghan-markle-eyeing-run-us-president-report/
    Gag.

    I wish we knew who the maybe famous, common named, arrogant e-mailer was.

    Yeah, Americans don’t appreciate what we have. Got to pay attention and put the phones down. Plenty of warnings given as to what could bring the country down, like statements from Founding Fathers, and Ronnie Raygun telling us to watch out because we could lose freedom in the space of a generation. We even had Michael Savage warning us about the importance of language, culture, and borders. Let them slip away and so goes the country. I’m amazed that the US has never officially made English our language.

    Who was it that started the, “diversity is our strength” propaganda?

    The Pope is talking again about how we need to have a one world government. Come on, man!
    I think he should look into Project Blue Beam and the possibility it could be used to fool people to think they are witnessing Christ coming again on the clouds. It would be a better use of his time.

    1. The popes, since JP II, have somehow become more and more idiotic. JP II was a high point for the Church in many ways. Ever since, it’s been a downward slide with an ever faster fall.

    2. Markle apparently went and shot herself in the foot with the Oprah appearence. Insty had a link up noting that her popularity in the US went *down* after that interview.

        1. There are still a lot of people that like her. But polls taken shortly before and shortly after the interview apparently saw her popularity drop by either 15 or 25% (I can’t remember which off the top of my head) following the interview. That’s not “everyone hates her!” levels. But it’s still a pretty noteworthy drop.

          1. Here’s my biggest problem with that Woman!

            She had to know before marrying Harry about all the restrictions placed on members of the British Royal Family (which she was marrying into) but kept talking (before the marriage) about all the changes in her role that she would be making.

            No wonder that she’s “unhappy”, she was so “entitled” that she believed that the Royal Family Would Change Because She Wanted It To Change.

            Idiot. 😡

                    1. After all the Meghan and Harry stuff about a “secret marriage” in their backyard, Justin Welby the archbishop denied it and said he just did their wedding rehearsal and blessed them a normal.blessing at the end, the special license he signed only counted at St. George’s at Windsor; and no UK wedding currently counts without having two witnesses, as well as the officiant and two participants. (And that it helps if you tell the clergyman that he is supposed to be doing a marriage.)

                      So that is some hardcore delusional, beyond the attempt to commit some kind of treason or lese majeste by getting married in a non-approved way.

                    2. Oh, and Fr. Hunwicke (ex-Anglican, current Catholic in the Anglican Ordinariate) says the dealie was that M&H brought out vows they had written, which goes against UK Anglican canon law of form, and was therefore not allowed at the chapel. So at the wedding rehearsal, they asked Welby if they could also read their non-allowed vows, and he said basically that they could larp all they wanted at a wedding rehearsal. They took this as permission for a secret marriage.

                      Apparently Meghan calligraphed their illegal vows and framed them and hung them on their wall, too.

                      And apparently this was all based on a UK romance novel that a lot of Royal watchers have also read, and which was not intended to be a princess operating manual or a guide to Anglican canon law.

              2. Maybe she didn’t, maybe she did …

                Meghan Markle’s 2014 blog post seemingly debunks claim she knew nothing of royal life
                Meghan Markle — who claimed to Oprah Winfrey last week that she never thought what it would be like to marry a prince — blogged about dreaming of becoming a princess seven years ago, a new report says.

                “Little girls dream of being princesses. I, for one, was all about She-Ra, Princess of Power,’’ wrote the now-Duchess of Sussex in 2014, while commenting on the “pomp” surrounding Britain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding three years earlier, according to the Sun on Sunday.

                “For those of you unfamiliar with the ‘80s cartoon reference, She-Ra is the twin sister of He-Man and a sword-wielding royal rebel known for her strength,” Markle said in her since-nixed blog.

                “We’re definitely not talking about Cinderella here,” said Markle, who married Prince Harry, William’s brother, in May 2018.

                “Grown women seem to retain this childhood fantasy. Just look at the pomp and circumstance surrounding the royal wedding and endless conversation about Princess Kate,” Markle mused.

                [SNIP]

                A former longtime friend of Markle’s has said her alleged social-climbing buddy always wanted to be “Princess Diana 2.0,” while royal biographer Andrew Morton has written that the duchess cried watching the funeral of her husband’s mother on TV in 1997.
                ~

                1. Of course, her idea about “What It Is Like To Be A Princess” was very likely at odds with what the Royals expected a Princess to be.

          2. I just saw a poll that reported a 58% approval rating for Cuomo.

            Either the pollers, or the pollees, must have been smoking something they shouldn’t.

            2. Most likely it is that Cuomo is the sanest Democrat in New York.

              Yes, the state is that bad. Look at the alternatives …
              ~

              1. The open commies control the NY state legislature and the state’s biggest city. A lot of the “positive” rating is due to people knowing that as awful as he is, if Cuomo goes, the commies get unfettered control without even the threat of a Cuomo veto of their more radical agenda items.

                1. Submitted into evidence:

                  $100B from feds only inspires NY’s Legislature to spend, tax even more
                  As we predicted the other day, the Legislature is looking to take advantage of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s weakness to push tax hikes that New York can’t afford.

                  Three days after OKing a full impeachment inquiry, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced a mind-numbing $208.3 billion spending plan, which includes a whopping 22.6 percent jump in general-fund outlays over last year, plus nearly $7 billion in tax hikes.

                  This comes as New York’s getting a huge $100 billion federal bailout, including $12.7 billion straight to state government. Indeed, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer crowed last week that the new law just erased the state’s budget deficit and negated any need to raise taxes.

                  But the Legislature’s addiction to spending is strong; the bailout just gives it reason to get greedier. Heastie’s plan adds all manner of gifts for the Democratic majority’s allies, donors and special interests. No matter that dropping more cash into bloated social services and education budgets won’t put hurting New Yorkers back to work.
                  [END EXCERPT]
                  ~

      1. Sundance over at CTH thinks it was to start the return of the Obama years, with raaaaacism as the hook. Big Mike as VP for Commie Harris? Where’s that emesis bag?

    4. Brits probably can’t make her entirely secure here, and it is much too early for her to have top tier security from US sources.

      In a rational world, she might be on a targeting list wrt the boog for that.

      1. On the other hand, this sort of bizarre kinda calls out for a murder mystery, and at the same time is the sort of thing that nobody would believe in fiction.

      1. My curiosity wonders how the family rules work with the great-grands … Could Meghan irritate the currently exceedingly restrained Queen into a reaction, that the great-grand Archie, and not-yet-existing ones, end up with a, extended vacation with cousins George and siblings? Or get the family to visit, then have Meghan declared person non-gratis, Harry gets to choose between her and their children? Would never be that blatant. But end result would be the same. Or is the Queen willing to say “whatever” not near the succession line, drop out of site, out of mind. Harder on William, Kate, and Charles, than anyone else. Rest of the royals have to be saying, in private, “good riddance” especially related to the slice of the royal royalties and paycheck.

  24. I remember my father telling me when I was fairly young, “Remember, other people don’t think like we do.” I suspect it came from spending time in Britain during WWII ( he also told me whale meat tastes awful, without even thinking about all the blubber), but it might also have come from rubbing shoulders with Hispanic shipbuilders while he was bumming around the country after the War.
    Listening to our students in Romania being astonished we had Church of Christ, Methodists, Baptists, I think a Catholic and a Mormon happily chatting about religion at the dinner table was a definite teaching moment. So was listening to what they said about the Rom, right up until we encountered our first Rom.

  25. China’s economy seems to have cribbed, really hard, on Mussolini’s ideas. They’re one of the world’s two largest economies, but are still a third world country. Yeah, from what I’ve seen on TV and Youtube our homeless generally live as good or even better lives than much of their “middle class.” While they may have ‘liberalized’ their economy, almost everything still goes to the state.

    Same with much of Asia. I saw a program about a family in Singapore(not sure atm) that had moved into the city from the country into a roughly 500 sq ft one room apartment in a high rise. They considered it an upgrade from where they came from.

    1. The similarity to Mussolini is probably accidental in nature. Mussolini wanted communism, but realized the Italian people wouldn’t go for it. So he came up with a sister solution that would attract enough followers. China started with Mao, who was apparently a fan of “permanent revolution”. But Mao was followed by Deng, who (imo – and I freely admit I’ve only read a limited amount on the topic) appears to have been more focused on trying to figure out how to build a more stable communist country than Mao ever was.

      That might have had something to do with how he kept being sent into political exile when Mao was running things…

      In short, the starting place of the evolution of the two systems is completely opposite of each other.

        1. Based on what I’ve read, that seems accurate. It’s probably worth noting that much of what Xi had to do away with to make himself President for Life were changes instituted by Deng. Deng was clearly wary of the damage that a geriatric absolute ruler could do to China.

    2. I’ve been describing China as a fascist country for a years now. Okay, yes, often in response to accusations of fascism in the US from lefties, but it fits pretty well. “Everything inside the state, nothing outside the state.” Corporate “partnerships” with high-ranking officials. Ethnic nationalism and promotion of the glorious past and how it was “stolen” by external (and internal) enemies.

  26. And I probably should lay in a couple more bags of pet for for the common year or so.

    I do remember seeing the dairy farmers dumping milk because they couldn’t ship it, and I suspect that’s part of why my preferred type of soap vanished for the last year or so.

    What struck me about the way the Trump administration handled it was the way they focused on removing regulations that were bottlenecking the supply chain. It shouldn’t have surprised me so much; he was a businessman after all.

    But, I expect the current administration is going to go all in on making new regulations to “ensure that products are being allocated in the most intelligent manner possible.”

    Fun times…

    1. The current administration probably already specifically added back all of the roadblocks that Trump removed out of pure spite.

      2. Remember the Trumpian deregulations left “insufficient opportunities for graft”, to quite Insty. Gotta fix that, think TPTB.

    2. Not “intelligent.” “Equitable.” That’s the latest progressive buzzword.

      2. If something is equitable, someone is being robbed behind and held back to boot. Pardon me, ma’am, I know you’re older than I, and I hate to swear in front of my elders, but F*ck equity with a chainsaw dipped in ghost pepper juice.

        1. Agree totally. I think “equity,” is a dirty word, too. It’s a euphemism for, “we’re gonna rob you blind.”

          1. >> “…a rusty one. Sideways. And twice on Sundays.”

            Whenever people mention the idea of fucking someone with a chainsaw these days, my first thought is always of you saying that. I’ll let you decide whether that’s an association to be flattered by or not.

                1. Orvan’s way of putting it just strikes me as being almost poetical. But if it’s any comfort, you’re the one I think of whenever shocked faces or dual upraised middle fingers come up.

                  So don’t be jealous. 😛

                2. I suspect it’s a couple things. One, I’ve been using that line for Some Time Now. And two, it has this build.
                  The standard is the “**** with a chainsaw.”
                  Then add a level with a rusty one,
                  Then another level with sideways.
                  And then yet another level, the twice on Sundays (which has wrongness for many religions, besides) which also implies this is not to be a one-time even, but a daily occurrence.

                  I will admit it is fun seeing the increasing brainlock as someone first encounters this escalation and might be visualizing it.

                  Or… sometimes it’s fun being a monster. As long as I don’t have to run that chainsaw myself. Eww.

                  1. Don’t forget the “aye” right before the “and twice on Sundays.” I like that part too.

                    1. But which works best?

                      “…a rusty one. Sideways, aye. And twice on Sundays.”
                      “…a rusty one. Sideways. Aye. And twice on Sundays.”
                      “…a rusty one. Sideways. Aye, and twice on Sundays.”

                      And I found once instance where I used

                      “…a rusty one. Sideways. And twice on Sundays, aye.”

                    2. It’s almost scary how much thought you’ve put into the matter of ramming chainsaws into people’s nether regions.

                      Regardless, the third one is the one I’m used to and the one I like most. No particular reason I could name, though.

      3. The ultimate end of equity is not earthly paradise, but death for everyone and everything. Complete and total annihilation right down to the atomic level. Life itself is inherently inimical to the concept of “equal” as understood by the left. Death is the ultimate equalizer.

        1. “There is nothing as stable as a dead man.” — from Leo Frankowski’s Cross-Time Engineer books

          “they will attain the stability they strive for, in the only form it is granted — a place among the fossils.” — The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham

  27. Heinlien’s assumption that in a world government Earth=America carried on to Star Trek. The Federation is basically a socialist’s vision of a future perfect America.

    To the point where an alien invader would immediately hit on destroying America as the first step to conquering the planet.

        1. Our hostess’ examples of other countries – China Portugul, Europe – compared to America.

              1. BUT you should note ours are the most recent.

                That one is easily dissmissable for the same reason we only remember the good writings of yesteryear….

                1. No, look, Ian: obviously not in China, but in Europe? Patriotism has been beaten out of them since the commies blamed “nationalism” for the two world wars. (Closer would be to blame it on internationalism, led by royal families, but never mind.)
                  Do you know what most Europeans I know were shocked by the most when coming to America?
                  We fly the flag. Without anyone making us.
                  Their tales of great heroes are old, because they stopped believing in national heroes.
                  Kind of like our left here.

                  2. Pratchett riffed on this in Nightwatch. Toward the end of the book, a couple of military officers were shocked and disturbed to hear that the people on the barricade were singing the national anthem, and waving the national flag. After all, such things just aren’t done!

                    IIRC, I heard it later noted elsewhere that Pratchett belatedly realized after publication that his American readers were puzzled by the attitude of the army officers since such behavior is largely considered “normal” on this side of the pond. It’s not considered normal in much of Europe.

                  3. “We fly the flag. Without anyone making us.”

                    One of the things that I noticed when stationed in Germany in the ’70s was that flags were only on government buildings, same when I’d go on leave to other countries.

                    Being used to flags everywhere, homes, businesses, etc. it really jumped out at me.

                    1. That reminds me… over the last few days I’ve noticed what appear to be 48-star American flags here and there, online. Definitely not the official 50-star or any of the proposed 51-star flags; all the rows line up evenly.

                      Next time I see one I’ll look to see if it’s hotlinked some somewhere; maybe some ur-source screwed up… unless it’s another one of those “sekrit signal” things again.

                    2. Official flag pattern is a twenty pattern inside of a thirty pattern. But you have to pay attention to notice that, and replicate it properly.

                      If you try to use a single rectangular pattern, doing it by eye, a 6 by 8 pattern of 48 may be the one that looks most correct.

                    3. TRX: so I looked for “48 star flag” and found tons of “historical U.S. flags” for sale, with 48 stars. Apparently it’s a Thing, only reason I can guess is for veterans from before states 49 and 50??

                    4. The only time I’ve seen people flying the German flag, in Germany, was the first round of the World Cup. Alas, Germany got clobbered, by Mexico, and all the German flags vanished.

                  4. I had a question about the cultural issues around flags a few months ago, but waited until the pre-election stress was gone. Well that didn’t work out too well. And now I don’t remember what the question was.

                    Do you know what most Europeans I know were shocked by the most when coming to America?
                    We fly the flag. Without anyone making us.

                    Personally I wouldn’t count any of the ones in front of large businesses (smaller ones is a grey area). Corporate virtue signalling does not become any less disgusting because it is something you like.

          2. And this also calls back to my very first comment on this post: these assertions if true aren’t making the case that Americans are special. They are making the case that everywhere else is populated by subhumans.

            This is not a path I wish to go down.

            1. Are we “special?” Eh …

              But we are Blessed!! And thus should feel obligated to express appropriate gratitude … that we are American. 😉

            2. It isn’t that they are subhuman. It is that their societies are unfit for human habitation, and bringing them up to code would be too expensive. 🙂

              More seriously, most groups of humans in history and prehistory are screwed up. Total Depravity, Original Sin, however you want to think about it, human nature does not inevitably run to only pleasant behavior.

              US, historically, has been much less screwed up. God, fortune, or sound design might be the cause, it is hard to tell. If you accurately summarize the behavior, and the differences, less screwed up. If for no other reason that the population’s oral history is a result of a bunch of individual migrations, we’ve lost the source populations’ hundreds or thousands of years of grudges against neighboring populations, and have not replaced it by anything near as strong.

              (My opposition to Canada was arrived at intellectually. And what the Southwest thinks of Mexican illegals is massively dwarfed by what Koreans and Japanese think of each other. We Americans does have any memory of Mexico being an existential threat.)

              Sarah may be slightly over simplifying in her explanation of differences, but it is really hard for Americans to grasp that there are real differences, so slightly simple and slightly exaggerated is a little appropriate. If you have a substantial difference in degree, talking about 10 in 10,000 versus 1,000 in 10,000 may be better described as an in kind difference.

              Forex, Japan and the Japanese flag. Both the American demilitarization and the attempts of communist subversives to undermine the Japanese government have certain parts of the population ashamed of nationalism. But you still have current and WWII Japanese national flags used on those headbands as a personal choice.

              Also, the behavioral differences between populations are not entirely a choice, something that carries a moral weight. The relative historical dysfunction is not caused by a simple relationship between a type of personal choice, and a collective behavior. If you formed an infantry unit from Frenchmen and Germans, or Koreans and Japanese, they couldn’t just all choose to speak the same language, trust each other, and support each other.

              If a specific person is too ill to feed them-self, keep themselves clean, and dressed in laundered clothes, that does not mean that they are not human, it means only that they are ill.

              Americans may be the least ill nation, but how much that matters now remains to be seen.

              At one point, the Romans were less ‘ill’ than their neighbors, and now we can understand how badly screwed up the Romans were compared to certain later societies. The Spanish were less bad than the Aztec Triple Alliance, and the Spanish were not the nicest people in the world to the other folks in their empire.

  28. I asked this elsewhere, but don’t expect any sort of remotely coherent response there, so I’ll ask it here as well (plus I haven’t started an argument in *far* too long):

    Watching the (admittedly expected) responses in the jury duty thread a few weeks ago got me thinking about a gap in explanations for Why One Ought To Do Things. Note: to head off the cheap shots; when I registered to vote in the recent alleged election I did so with the understanding that I was also volunteering for the Jury. So anyone coming in with a “hurr durr you just trying to avoid yurr duty” can coc right the hell off.

    I know the technical explanations for why someone should want to “participate in society”. Everything from that you probably want it to keep functioning for your kids (“planting trees you will never sit under”), to humans simply being wired to not really be happy if they have no connection to a culture (see, oh I don’t know… all of Europe and our coastal cities right now).

    From that I can even extrapolate some versions of “there might be something wrong with you if you don’t want to do this”, in the same way that there is something wrong with someone who doesn’t want to have kids.

    What I don’t see is how you can get from there to the moral condemnation of “Man up and do your duty”. I can claim anything is your duty, that doesn’t make it so. In case you hadn’t noticed our enemies like to make a lot of claims about what “duties” we have to a lot of bullshit.

    Telling someone to sit down and shut up isn’t an argument. Worse, it is evidence that there is no argument.

    1. I recommend CS Lewis’s Abolition of Man. He deals with a lot of that. Though not jury duty specifically. He covers what things are first principles (many of the duties fall there).

      1. I’m pretty sure I’ve said before in this blog; Jordan Peterson was the very first person I ever heard give a coherent defense of “society”.

        Everything else before that was either obvious manipulation, or so vague and handwavy that it made a fairy tale look like a Tolkien grade exercise in worldbuilding.

    2. There are a couple modes for sense of duty/responsibility to trigger.

      One is irrational, in childhood our learning from mimicry or parroting is very powerful. Stuff we see our parents doing, especially sacrificing to do, can have a strong influence on what we come to value.

      Second is the stuff we take on voluntarily. Like when I ask my boss to help me do something, I am supported, and I want to follow through and accomplish it.

      When I was a kid, I was told to clean my room, and was kinda too disorganized to manage. Organization and keeping things trimmed down and vacuumed was maybe not role modeled perfectly either. I’ve been doing better recently, a relocation cut me down to the essentials, I understand reasons to clean now, but it still takes effort. I sometimes benefit from encouragement or even help.

      Kids need to practice a lot of tasks to become functional adults. One tactic is explaining why they should do it, and another is demanding without providing an explanation. There is a young age where a kid can physically do dangerous things, but can’t simply be reasoned into behaving safely. That age range is why a parent cannot simply rely on explaining things properly in every case.

      When you are dealing with someone else’s young adult, there is more than one reason they might be badly behaving in a certain way. a) They don’t understand (for a rational reason) or feel (for an irrational reason) why they should behave that way. b) They have a character weakness that means that they are lazy about applying the self discipline to control behavior. c) They have some sort of mental illness that relates to impaired decision making or self control.

      Historically, people with serious mental illness eventually became obvious, and sensitive attentive people might adjust their expectations. But serious extremes of illness are relatively rare, or else we would all be dead. So this possibility is easy to overlook.

      The possibility of not knowing about a duty or responsibility is rare in a relatively homogeneous society. Folks get raised with a lot of the same values, and even if they do not personally feel strongly about them, they get that others may or do. Lucky us, raised in generations that are heavily a conflict between the socialist and communist faiths, whose values are not exactly identical.

      Thing is, it is a little expected that there are people who are fixed on possibility b. There are more than a few people who are raised a little bit spoiled, but otherwise have a sound enough foundation in their upbringing. They can sometimes be adjusted to acceptable standards of behavior by specifically encouraging them with a little unpleasantness. So, it is not surprising for imperfect people to make a diagnosis that is a false positive for this situation, and apply the wrong ‘medicine’.

      If society is not uniform, or if a cohort was raised fragile wrt mental health, it’d be smarter to realize that the reasons might need to be explained. Both of those apply right now.

      OTOH, explaining can also backfire. Hypothetical example, if I’m compulsively spending all my time tracing wood grains on the floor, explaining to me why I should make better use of my time is just a frustrating experience. There would be limits to what I could do with willpower about an uncontrollable compulsion.

    3. We should all be able to decide what we feel is our duty and act accordingly. Criticisms will come and should be managed in the light of our being confident we are doing the right thing. We all have to live with our decisions.
      It’s nice to have these flexible opportunities, wherever we are. I’m just coming off reading The Gulag Archipelago, so I’m in a fairly appreciative mood. Missed the jury duty thread, so this simple approach may be way off base

      1. Missed the jury duty thread, so this simple approach may be way off base

        No, the thread was over on ar15.com. Which is why I didn’t expect much useful response: the only thing most conservatives know how to do when confronted with a moral-adjacent question is to reeee in the asker’s face and tell them they are a piece of shit for not already understanding.

        I can’t *imagine* how they managed to lose to marxists…..

        1. Yeah, I’ve seen that type of thing before. Some sites and their readers have a certain culture that makes them treat you like a moron if you honestly question or outright disagree with some point. I’m gone in that situation, fulfilling their wish!

    5. Yeah, Mr. Raised-By-Wolves, ok, here goes. (I have teens, so I’m used to this sort of explaination.)

      Duty: that which you must do simply because it is the right thing to do. If you hadn’t been raised-by-wolves, you’d have some internal compass that says it’s right to stop people who cannot judge for themselves from sticking forks into electrical outlets, stop them from running behind backing-up SUVs, feed and clothe people who physically can’t work, keep your bull out of your neighbor’s garden, etc, oh, and keep innocent men from being wrongly punished and also keep guilty men from going free to commit violence again.

      We can make all sorts of rational arguments about how the guilty, if let free, might target you, or you may someday be the wrongfully accused innocent as well.

      But duty comes down to what you must do to live with yourself, simply because it is the right thing to do. Appeals to Duty rely on the assumption that you share another’s ideas of right and wrong. Your idea of Duty may well be in conflict with someone else’s, but if a society has no general sense of what Duty is, there is no society there and chaos of conflicting duties follows. See Islamic Honor Killings in the USA for an example of such conflicts.

      Like anything, folks who want to manipulate others will use it if they get half a chance. Evaluate Appeals to Duty against your own moral code and as a form of psychological manipulation. Please note that psycological manipulation is not necessarily evil: a certain amount is necessary for humans to live together. Psycological manipulation includes “Good people serve on juries”, “Only nasty people don’t wash their hands after using the toilet”, and “Only evil racists support Trump”. The middle one is pretty darn necessary to avoid disease, isn’t it? But the level of disgust we Americans are conditioned to that way is, in fact, not inherent to humans: ask any parent about toddlers finger painting from their disper contents if you have doubts. Psycological manipulation can be a tool for good as well as evil.

      Does that help any?

      1. If you hadn’t been raised-by-wolves, you’d have some internal compass that says it’s right to stop people who cannot judge for themselves from sticking forks into electrical outlets, stop them from running behind backing-up SUVs, feed and clothe people who physically can’t work, keep your bull out of your neighbor’s garden, etc, oh,

        mmhmm

        All of that works between individuals. But there is nothing there above the individual level.

        and keep innocent men from being wrongly punished and also keep guilty men from going free to commit violence again

        Assumes there is no belief that selection is designed to weed out anyone with a chance of making the right choice. Or that if one slips through the other jurors will bully them until they render the “correct” verdict.

        Also that little problem that doing the job requires perjury…

        But duty comes down to what you must do to live with yourself, simply because it is the right thing to do. Appeals to Duty rely on the assumption that you share another’s ideas of right and wrong.

        Most definitely *not* shared.

        Even if the other issues hadn’t been there the forced nature of a jurist put the judge in the same category as a draft board, same as a slaver, therefore worthy of execution. Once that is in play no other questions *could* be relevant.

        (I have been in selection once; didn’t get on, the nature of the case saw to that even if I hadn’t been under orders to not get on the jury under any circumstances.)

        Does that help any?

        🤷

        1. It’s the attempt to apply the ideal to reality where it comes apart for you, I see.

          What is a society other than a bunch of individuals in proximety, Ian?

          Given that individuals will fail, inevitably, at living up to the ideal, that evil exists, that people will be motivated by all sorts of venial motives as well as idealistic: there can be no perfect system that never miscarries justice. Wrongs will be done. We have chosen a jury system for criminal matters in this society because we think it errs less than other systems. Can it err? Of course. What system do you prefer?

          Is it slavery? Hmm. Well, you get paid. (A trifle, by modern standards, but that’s inflation-caused.) You can get out of service for all sorts of hardship, as well as relationships to those in the case or their professions, or for simply saying you cannot be impartial. There is an end to the term of service. And it is part of citizenship–my husband was called for jury duty and could not serve because he was not yet a citizen–a person could emigrate if he found it an unbearable burden. An excellent question for consideration.

          1. What system do you prefer?

            The system I’m supposed to prefer has never existed and never can exist. Not least because it is piled high with mechanisms of people who are supposed to just do the right thing, with zero recourse if they refuse to.

            More practically I don’t know what the fix is, beyond chipping away at some of the ancillary problems.

            Is it slavery? Hmm. Well, you get paid.

            *Lots* of slaves throughout history have been paid, and even worked on their own property much of the time. It is the idea that one person owns another and can discharge their labor as they see fit that makes it slavery or not.

            What is a society other than a bunch of individuals in proximety, Ian?

            aaals;ifoj:OIsfBVrSBlKJ

            In more recent frames I can recognize something that kind of fits what would be called “Society” without being a ruse for authoritarianism. But I have no idea of its shape or boundaries.

            In the frame from which this question arises….. Yes. exactly. “Society” is a collection of individuals and nothing else. The moment you try to go above an individual relationship and the responsibilities thereof you have already failed. In this model “society” has two definitions: 1. collective noun for a bunch of people, and effectively meaningless, or 2. something to run away from as fast as you possibly can.

            1. >>The system I’m supposed to prefer has never existed and never can exist. Not least because it is piled high with mechanisms of people who are supposed to just do the right thing, with zero recourse if they refuse to.”

              Why would you, like the left, want a system that goes against human nature? Shouldn’t you prefer a system that can exist?

                1. You were asked “What system do you prefer?”

                  And you answered with “The system I’m supposed to prefer….”

                  Perhaps you could have answered the original question.

                  I’m also curious as to what system you’re supposed to prefer, and who tells you that you’re supposed to prefer it?

                  1. I’m also curious as to what system you’re supposed to prefer, and who tells you that you’re supposed to prefer it?

                    [thinks on descriptor……..]

                    Roughly strawman-theocratic-calvinist-strawman-libertarianism.

                    You were asked “What system do you prefer?” […] Perhaps you could have answered the original question.

                    [ERROR]

                2. What the hell bizarre cult were you raised in?
                  No. Christianity never expected that till after the second coming, when WE’ll be different in nature.

                  1. No. Christianity never expected that till after the second coming

                    Yes… but the impossibility of living up never changed the condemnation for not doing so, it just required the escape clause.

                    1. Okay. The only person I know who grew up in a halfway that crazy cult is an atheist and I don’t even blame him.
                      You have to get it through your head you were raised in an insane meme. This is not how any of that works.

  29. I kept thinking about world governments, and the only way I could think of having them work would be to have some very…interesting middle-management people in the loop. The whole “I can’t tell you to go to department G, and ask for Normal Wilcox. W-I-L-C-O-X…” thing, with the additional thing of “how did our plans get sent to the authorities? And, when did that get new guy get transferred in…oh…”

    (And, executions. Lots of executions. Electrified bleacher seats lots of executions. Mainland China was the worse, with most of Africa in second place in the “figuring out what pisses off the Empress Theodora the most, and the quickest” contest during the early days of the Empire. One particular orphanage was…messy.)

    But, I’ve gotten to realize how special America is, and I wish we could import it to the rest of the world. The whole freedom and respect and responsibility and “f(YAY!)k you!” to pompous authority figures thing. We can definitely use more of that.

    1. Basic problems are recruiting bureaucrats and enforcers. Where you get those, and how you deploy them are difficult considerations for running an empire.

      Scaling an empire up to a planet level is hard, especially when you have populations wildly different in the types of government they can natively support. This before languages, grievances, etc.

      1. I liked how David Weber (and Chris Kennedy) created a world government in “Into The Light”.

        They used the US Constitution (with some modifications) as a model for the world government.

        IE A basic union of the remaining countries similar to the basic union of the original thirteen American States.

        Of course, there was a very very good reason for a United Earth and plenty of countries needed to be restored before they could join the “United Earth”. 😀

        1. When I think of a human one-world government, I don’t see it as completely impossible. I will say I think it is only possible if the people of Earth have more in common with each other than they do with another political unit, human or alien. It could be a unity forged of alien invaders or something like the EU, where countries just get more and more intertwined and interdependent as all their Odds and explorers and people with gumption go out and settle new frontiers, leaving the unambitious to huddle together for perceived security.

          1. Yep.

            I’d say the “something strongly in common” is important and a strong reason to unite is also important.

            The “strong reason to unite” can lead to nations working on the “commonality”.

            Oh, in one unwritten story universe of mine, I “stacked the deck” for an Earth Alliance by making sure that the Soviet Union was never born. 😈

      2. I think it was a H. Beam Piper story, but might have been somebody else, wrote about a world in which leadership (and this could be applied to bureaucrat dept. heads) held the position for life or until voluntary retirement … with the proviso that an explosive device was implanted and every citizen could down-vote the person’s performance in office, and when enough such votes are accumulated the device explodes.
        ~

        1. Interesting idea, until you realize a hacker could potentially assassinate the entire government.

          …Of course, I’m fully aware some of you are thinking “Feature, not bug.”

      3. I know, which is why one of my big assumptions was the ability to import AI support that can handle the cross-cultural missteps, but also enforces a single set of unified rules. And back that AI up with the sort of law enforcement that Raylan Givens would feel comfortable with.

        (Okay, that, and the Empress has a fondness for watching certain people get perp-walked through the the justice system.)

  32. if you haven’t, please stock up on pet food. It’s having glitches in supply. And that means the human glitches are just down the road.

    –
    Yes. I’ve never stocked up on pet food. I am now. Especially cat food. One of the kittens has a sensitive tummy. Very limited on what food he can and will eat. Then too it is the type of prescription food that, for once, will not cause issues for the other two. So 3 cats, no flex on what food to get.

    The dog? While she too is on special food diet, she’ll eat almost anything, except naturally, sometimes, her special diet kibble. 🙂

    1. There are certain things on my list of “pick up something from this rotating list each time you go to the grocery store”. I don’t go through a bag of cat food or a package of TP each week (my normal shopping interval), but I can build the stock pile by grabbing something I’ll always, eventually, need, even if not right now. Other things include dish and laundry detergent, kitty litter, Lysol wipes, paper towels, etc. I should add insect repellent to my list, and look at first aid supplies as well.

  33. Good, insightful post Sarah.
    Made me recall this great quote by (real) Russian Svetlana talking to Tony:

    “That’s the whole purpose for people like me. To inspire people like you. So is the trouble with you Americans. You expect nothing bad ever to happen, when the rest of the World expects only bad to happen. And they’re not disappointed. You have everything! And still you complain. You lie in couches, and bitch to a psychiatrist. You’ve got too much time to think about yourselves.”

    -Svetlana Kirilenko
    The Sopranos, Season 4, Episode 12

  34. I’m just waiting to be American in a very foundational way.

    Until then, I’m working on a 1,000,000,000 vote turnout for the 2024 Presidental Election. Whoever they pick to be FICUS II needs to be the most voted for president evar.

    1. “FICUS II received 12 billion votes.”

      “Uh, the estimated *world* population is under 10 billion.”

      “RACE-SEX-ANDRO-MISOGYN-PHOBE!!!!!”

  35. Connoisseurs of newspeak and other BS will enjoy this. The CDC assures us that severe side effects from the WuFlu vaccine are “very rare.” Only about 0.5% of people who get the vaccine suffer them. At the same time, the best estimate of WuFlu death rates is 0.4%. This 40bp rate is considered high despite it being in the range of the death rate for seasonal influenza. Sigh.

    It turns out that the wife and I work in “essential” jobs and so were 1A. More BS, but we both got it since we can’t work without it and I have no intention of rending my garments and calling out unclean, unclean. She’s done and ran 103 for two days after. I’m half done and had the headache, muscle ache, etc. for two days after. Just about everyone I know has had side effects beyond just the injection site soreness BS they talk about.

    I did ask the guy doing the injections if i could just get the card signed, particularly as I had just held them harmless, but he said no.

    2. Do you have a link? My mother’s planning to get the vaccine and dismisses everything I say as right-wing conspiracy theories. If it comes from the CDC, maybe I can get her to listen.

  36. I have made the point before that Iran, a theocratic and theoretically creedal nation, calls the US the Great Satan specifically BECAUSE our creed is more attractive to its people than their creed is (Satan in this case being a huge temptor.) Part of that is because even in theoretically creedal states, blood STILL MATTERS. Tribe, lineage, clan. Those things matter even in places that profess equality because of religious sentiment or other reasons. So the creedal nations where blood *doesn’t* matter are more attractive (assuming one agrees with the creed in question, or can fake it convincingly) and drive blood-and-creed or blood-and-soil nations absolutely bugnuts.

  37. One of my readers today stated that I had entirely missed the point of Biden’s “message of hope” in which he said Americans may be able to celebrate the fourth of July with a few friends and family this coming Independence Day. Message of hope? If any American thinks that it is a message of hope that the government may allow you to be with your family or gather with friends then I submit that it is they that are missing the point of America.

    2. Because “meat is murder” and animal cattle & beef are harmful to the climate we will only permitted to celebrate the Fourth with tofudogs* instead of all-beef kosher franks (which are also a violation of the separation of Church and State.)

      Hope is in the air (soy being a known promoter of flatulence)!

      *lentil dogs will also be permitted.
      ~

  38. As I keep saying, I don
    t KNOW if the media is/are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Dem Party, or if it’s the other way round, but it’s OBVIOUS that they are in CAHOOTS.

  40. A credal nation would require a confession of faith to be a citizen and a mechanism for those who are apostate to lose said citizenship.

    And while this isn’t spelled out in the Constitution, it’s the logical case explaining why “birthplace citizenship” (anchor-babies, and other such citizenship-by-geographical-accident schemes) are philosophically unconstitutional.

    1. Actually, you’re going to find that the Supreme Court before having lost it’s ever-lovin’ mind, spelled it out no less than 5 times. It’s not just philisophically so. It’s explicitly so.

      http://earlconsult.com/index.php/11-article-ii-s-history-framing-and-the-meaning-of-natural-born-in-the-context-of-the-same

      While it’s talking to what the requirements of the President really are in the backdrop of everything said in Article II, it does talk to what “Natural Born” is. It’s a bit TL;DR, but you can’t avoid that class of dissertation when you’re talking about such discussions. Congress never made the class and people point to Wong Kim Ark v. US incorrectly and claim that “anchor babies” are covered by that- which was actually a questionable ruling (They made things up…) but was limited in Scope to children of Resident Aliens where the child basically grew up living within this nation. That doesn’t lead to the other and it’s iffy at best since there’s absolutely nothing other than their ruling in the history of things to lead one to believe that it’s valid otherwise. Not in the history…it’s made up as you go.

  41. Okay. Let’s assume that I agree you’re right about Americans (Of which, I do…) what does that make me to be? I largely GET the whole spiel there, Sarah… Been saying similar things for the last couple of decades and have been watching this coming for most of my adult life.

  42. On the subject of China’s shrinking population, it seems like they’ve started buying women from North Korea. Source is the YouTube channel Voice of North Korea (no link yet because I’m sleepy).

    It’s been interesting to get a take on victim culture and many of the far left stances from somebody who has come from a communist dictatorship. Just a warning that many of the topics she covers are heartbreaking, graphic and hard to watch.

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