473 thoughts on “Principles Are A Grand Thing – A Guest Post – by John Ringo”

1. Oderint dum metuant. “Let them hate, as long as they fear.”

   1. Hear!!! Hear!!!

   2. Exactly, but make sure they fear.

   3. Make them fear the night… and use every bloody tool in the toolkit to lay waste their stolen high ground in media, academics and Congress.. Being “nice” is a suckers bet..

      1. entertainment, literature, the arts also. Give no quarter.

   4. Machiavelli agreed: “It is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved? It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”

      Like Sun Tzu and vo Clausewitz, Nicki’s ideas are hard to refute, and valuable in practice.

      1. clears throat

         “A prince ought, notwithstanding, to make himself dreaded only in such a way, that if he cannot be loved he should at least not be hated, because he can easilý confine himself within these limits. “

         1. Point taken, but the point that for a ruler, fear outweighs love, is still valid if he wants to remain a ruler. He need not be hated (in fact, he shouldn’t; hatred implies a reason he’s hated), but fear implies respect. One can both love and fear God, but lesser beings? Not usually.

            1. Different considerations apply to a ruler vs. a leader. Leaders, who know the name and face of everyone in their team, get their best results when they are loved rather than feared. Rulers, on the other hand, cannot know the names of any more than a tiny fraction of the people they are responsible for. Which means there’s no way they can possibly be inspiring that kind of personal loyalty from any more than a small fraction of the population.

               But if the population as a whole knows that the laws will be enforced, fairly but firmly, and that you don’t get to wriggle out of your speeding ticket by uttering the magic incantation “Do You Know Who I Am?”… well, then you’ll be “feared” but not hated.

               So yeah, in the end I think I agree. There’s a wide swathe of things that can be meant by “feared”, some of which indicate a pretty poor ruler. But with a proper understanding of what it should mean, then yes.

2. Well said!

   1. Seconded. This is something I have been screaming about for years (including many posts here) and it is wonderful to read such a concise statement of what is wrong with the gutless so-called conservatives who would rather walk meekly to their deaths because “principles” than fight back.

      1. Aye.

         Akin to ‘Reach across the aisle.’ advanced by McConnell and the RINOs.

         Question. How would a Jew at Auschwitz ‘reach across the aisle’…to an SS camp guard?

         I’m trying to picture in my mind someone crawling halfway inside the oven.

         1. Nothing wrong with reaching across the aisle; I recomment a katana. Or, if they’re further away, a glaive. Whatever works to get the point across. 😉

            1. A pike. When you’re done ‘reaching across the aisle’ it can then serve a second purpose.
               ———————————
               The Democrats trust violent criminals and terrorists with guns more than they trust you.

               1. Excellent point! I had thought of adding “or for really long distances, an 18-ft Swiss pike” but I figured someone else should have a chance to embellish… 🙂

                  But I’m really surprised my final sentence didn’t yield at least a small carp.

            2. Naginata, my favorite pole-arm. Or, for those more demanding social situations, .338 Lapua. It’ll reach a mile or more across the aisle.

3. Principles are important but we should NOT let our principles hamper us when we’re fight people who Lack Any Principles. 😡

   1. The trick is to understand which principles are the core beliefs, and which principles are just being polite to people who treat you the same. We need to prioritize the former over the latter. The PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! crowd has instead prioritized the latter over the former.

      1. THIS!

      2. Being polite isn’t a principle, it’s a courtesy. One that does not need to be extended to those who won’t return it or will exploit it.

         1. Treating others with respect is a principle, and politeness and courtesy are outgrowths of that principle.

      3. I suspect it’s more like they screech about “Principles” but don’t really have any.

      4. So much this. We should call them groomers when they oppose Florida’s parental rights bill, because it’s the truth. We should call out their desire to cheat on elections when they oppose common-sense bills like photo ID for voting, because it’s the truth. We should not cheat on elections ourselves, or lie about our opponents’ positions. Those are principles. Being polite to the people who cheer the murder of babies in the womb is not a principle, it’s a custom. And it’s not wrong to adapt your customs to the situation. It’s wrong to abandon your principles, but our principles are honesty, giving everyone an equal opportunity and a level playing field, and supporting the family. None of which are abandoned by, say, pointing out what the Democrats are saying. We don’t need to lie about our opponents’ positions. What Libs Of Tiktok was doing was discrediting Democrats by quoting them accurately. That’s how you fight back.

         1. Yes, and you can tell because of how hard they went after her.

            Politeness is the social grease that lets us all get through the day without mayhem. It is an excellent technology, thousands of years in the making. It reaches the limits of effectiveness when one side of the conversation casts aside the constraints of polite society and employs all those other social technologies, like lying, cheating, stealing, and bearing false witness.

   2. I’ve been closed enough to politics to see efforts to primary a few of the PRINCIPLES GOPe cohort.
      Their only principles are Will to Power, and protecting each other..
      They lie.
      They cheat.
      They steal.
      They shake down companies with threats of federal retribution if they don’t endorse.
      They perform backroom deals with the Teacher’s Union to jettison hard-won reforms just to spite those who tried to unseat them.
      Then they turn around and dare lecture us about propriety.
      They are loathsome parasites, worse than overt enemies. They are destined for the frozen lake, and deserve every moment of their coming eternity.

   3. What is needed is an ordinate frame of mind. Some principles are minor and should be sacrificed for greater matters. Some, major, and only for very great things. Some are central and should be sacrificed for nothing.

   4. I would add to this excellent screed the point that if you are concerned or even pay attention to these criminals calling you names like “racist”, you have already lost…Your response, if one is even warranted, should always be some version of Go f**k yourself, idiot…

      1. No, your response should be some version of “How so?” and demand that they specifically lay out how you’re being racist. Keep pressing them on it and they’ll have to eventually admit to their own racism – “You can’t expect Black kids to perform as well on tests” – or admit that their accusation is a meaningless reflex thrown against anyone they don’t like. Though they’ll likely rage-quit the conversation long before they get to either end state, which is almost as well. Remember that the goal isn’t to change the minds of the Progressives, if they were given to any kind of honest self-reflection they wouldn’t be Progressives in the first place, it’s to convince the unaligned middle that Progressives are stupid and hateful people. Having a Progressive flounce off when pressed to explain how it’s racist to ask a Black nominee (but not all Black nominees) questions during a confirmation hearing accomplishes that goal nearly as well as the Progressive admitting that they’re a racist.

         1. Like when I wrote about homeless in Denver, and idiots in my field on the left howled “racism.”
            I THINK I saw one black woman homeless in Denver in my entire time there. EVERYONE ELSE was lighter than my son. Often, significantly so. Lighter than I if I’ve been in the sun. I can’t even understand why they think the homeless are black. OR if they think “homeless” is a race?

            1. Probably both.

4. The way I have put it in the past: It’s one thing to follow the Marquis of Queensbury rules in a ring with a referee and judges to ensure that both sides follow the rules. In a knife fight in an alley, it’s a good way to end up pureed.

   1. Agree.

   2. The Marquis of Queensbury rules are designed for polite fights. They are not intended for nor applicable to anything else. It is not abandoning the rules to fight the fight you are in rather than the fight you want to be in.

      1. These individuals only want to use Marquis of Queensbury rules when fighting Democrats.
         When attacking the base, they feel no such restraint.
         They declare us their true enemies by their words and actions.
         We must accept this and respond appropriately.

         1. They despise their own base and can’t wait to sell us out….Illegal immigration, amnesty and H1Bs are a good example….

      2. Yes, absolutely. The Marquis of Queensbury rules were meant for a sporting event between -sportsmen- to make everything even between competitors and reduce crippling injuries. Its supposed to be a fair contest.

         I’d be pretty happy to engage in a fair contest with Liberals on a level playing field, because without the endless lying and cheating they don’t have a friggin’ prayer.

         1. The Left’s goal is the utter destruction and domination of everyone else. For that, the conservative right must be obliterated. The only reasonable, courteous response to that is to go all out and kill the bastards before they kill you. And yes, killing us is their goal. Slow, and painfully.

            1. Absolutely. A fair contest with those ‘individuals’ includes anything I can think up to get at them. Kind of like how Ukraine is going for the Russians. They’re not going to like it.

      3. The Marquis of Queensbury rules are for BOXING. Boxing is a SPORT, i.e. a RECREATIONAL / ENTERTAINMENT activity.

         This conflict with the Left is not a sport, it’s not recreational, and it isn’t very entertaining.

         1. That was entirely my point

            1. And it was my point when I made the metaphor. Thus the reference to “ring”, “referee”, and “judges”.

               Ideally, politics should be mostly a sport/recreation with as little effect on our daily lives. Unfortunately, as has been said since the time of ancient Athens: You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.

         2. I have to drop this here…..

   3. Principles and rules of engagement work fine when the other side is also following them. When the other side has left all pretense of following the rules behind 50 years ago (and has been performing a maskirova for the better part of 100) you don’t want People Like Mr French and Mr Buckley. on your side You want a nice mix of Dorsai, Mobile Infantry, Valerian brawlers and Cimmerian barbarians at your back and on your side. The other side has decided to make this a fight to the death without rules. So be it…

      1. When the fight comes to you, the other side sets the rules. You need to be at least as good at whatever set of rules obtains. Learn tactical flexibility.

      2. While I don’t think Buckley’s intent was negative, the movement he fashioned has been a resounding failure. Of note, Buckley worked closely with a number of people who turned out to have been government agents/intelligence operatives in the early days of NR. It’s worth considering that a lot of the maneuvering about who was “acceptable” at the time of Buckley may have had to do more with the interests of the government eliminating actual grassroots challenges to the post-war managerial elite that infiltrated American institutions than on what was popular & successful.

   4. Yep.
      I get annoyed every time I see, “We’re better than that!” or, “That would be stooping to their level.”
      Praying for them is good, but so is standing up to them.

      1. Stooping to their level gives you a better angle to hit them. 😀

         Lowering your center of gravity helps in other ways, too.

      2. Pray for them over their graves.

         1. Praying for the dead is a corporal work of mercy.

            I hope praying that some people spend eternity minus one day in purgatory counts.

      3. Being Christ-like includes cursing unproductive fruit trees to wither, and flipping over tables and whipping people.

         1. Yep. It never includes lying, but we don’t need to lie to fight back effectively. The liberals are all up in arms about Libs Of Tiktok because she (IIRC) was telling the truth about them, exposing what they preferred to keep in the dark.

         2. One of the many rhetorical tricks used against us is, “Jesus said not to judge, so if you judge me I guess Jesus isn’t very important to you.”
            So many people who play games like that don’t seem to have actually read the Gospel. Someone on Twitter a week or so ago tried the, “What would Jesus say about pedophiles?” rather obviously going for His being “non-judgmental. ” I cited Matthew 18:6 and replied, “He’d suggest tying a millstone around their neck and throwing them in the ocean.” Ended the discussion.

            1. And if you tell them it’s an admonition against hypocrisy, not only would it sail right over their heads, but they’d then pretend that that’s what they meant all along.

            2. Anytime a Lefty brings Jesus into a conversation it’s time to go full-ham. Of late I’m just answering “Okay groomer” to any religious reference.

               Time for defending my beliefs, morals and standards is over. Let them defend theirs. If they can.

               1. I’ve gotten mileage with “and the opinion of an oddball heretic from 2000 years ago concerns me because…..”

                  Cuts the legs right out from under them. Also useful when dealing with certain, highly annoying, brands of evangilizers

                  Jewish privilege, gotta love it 🙂

                  ________________________________

      4. Stooping reduces your profile.

   5. My Grandfather, who was a gentleman by any definition, told me that when push comes to shove a gentleman fights with whatever weapons are available. The one advantage of the lockdowns has been to remove my filter. I used to mumble and sidle away when faced with leftist lunatics, now I tell them to go f-ck themselves. The first time I told some double masked idiot to go f-ck himself, I got a rush I haven’t had since I was playing Rugby.

      Non placet cum iratus est

   6. Amen

5. Principles are a good thing. Morals are better. If your principles contradict your morals, change your principles.

   No matter what principles or morals are professed, look to the results. By their fruit you shall know them – and if they do not produce good fruit, then any farmer can tell you it’s time to cut ’em down and cast them in the fire, that they don’t rob the land of resources.

6. Agree. Take no prisoners, allow no detractors.

7. The principled MUH PRINCIPLES cons are not conservative. When your every conservative agenda is the conservative case for “insert leftist talking point here,” you are not a conservative. When you vote to impeach the most openly conservative non-politician that actually got elected, you are not a conservative.

   When you backstab the voters, the base, and the actual conservatives by caving to the left at literally EVERY turn that actually matters, you are not a conservative. The times where a show vote that is meaningless is held, those don’t count. Nor does election year lies.

   All their friends are leftists. When they finally get unmasked, they run to leftist causes and companies for shelter. These are not conservatives, no matter what they tell you.

   The long march? The hollowing out of institutions, prancing around in the skin suit demanding respect? Has already happened to Republicans. Does Mitch McConnell actually represent you? Or does someone like President Trump? Or MTG? Or DeSantis?

   Which one is attacked by members of their own party?

   These are not conservatives. Not Republicans. These are not our friends. If they won’t stand up and represent actual conservatives on actual conservative issues, isn’t it more likely that they’re really not conservatives at all, no matter what they tell you during campaign season?

   1. I’m sorry to say it, but it looks like a class thing. They go to the same schools and move in he same social circles. They have more in common with progressives than with the common man.
      Then add in the pride of social status and the desire to belong to the in-group, and you get, “The Conservative Case For…”

      1. There are two classes, the Productive Class and the Parasite Class. Most Leftroids are…not in the Productive Class.
         ———————————
         Not everybody should go to college. Some folks, you send ’em to college and you just wind up with an educated idiot.

      2. Thank you. You said exactly what I was thinking.

      3. Its more like the French and English Barons and lords during the 100 years war, and other such conflicts; no matter how hard they fight each other, they view each other with a “you’re one of us” perspective, unlike the peasants and serfs who must be reminded to “know their place”.

         This is why so much of what they are pushing looks so much like the old feudal system; it effectively is.

         1. This, indeed. They’re all of the same international prog class, so their sympathies are with each other.

            One of the reasons that I first took to Trump was that he fought back, instead of folding up like a mealy-mouthed, sniveling simp, as GWB did too often. GDubya lost so much by letting the calumnies stand. It was as if he expected everyone else to fight for him, but he didn’t have to sully his principles or dirty his hands.

            1. I think W was truly trying to model, “turning the other cheek,” and blessing those who cursed him.
               I wish he hadn’t then felt free to criticize the people who had supported him.

               1. He has since come out as a Christian socialist, so we might have been very wrong.

                  1. How does that work? Neither religion permits worship of false gods.

                     1. Who the heck knows, but there’s a lot of them who act that way.

                        1. They understand neither Christianity nor socialism, but have created false images of both, and those erroneous concepts do not contradict each other.

               2. Dennis Prager quotes the Talmud, “if you are good to the evil, you will eventually be evil to the good.” So how do you love the sinner? You wait for their repentance of the sin, while still encouraging the wrongdoer to repent. When did the Prodigal Son get his feast. He asked to come back to the house as a slave.

                  1. You love the sinner, and hate the sin. Intercessory prayer, ministry, witnessing through your own experiences. If that doesn’t work, as my son says, smite them.

         2. Part of why the American “civil” war was so harrowing–in most wars previously the officers had their parties across the lines, knew each other and it was a big game. Except for the peasants who got killed, but all part of the game, right?

            The civil war was the first war fought to WIN rather than to make fortunes and contacts for the aristocracy.

            1. Perhaps among wars fought among Europeans and their former North American colonies. There were quite a few wars fought to win in Europe, when the Europeans were finding invasions from the Middle-East and Asia; for instance during the effort by the various Muslim states and factions to conquer Europe, the war against the Mongols, etc.

            2. Umm…not quite. The Thirty Years War was a nasty, nasty affair. The American Civil War was bloody because neither side had enough cavalry to turn a battlefield victory into a rout that would crush enemy morale.

               1. That, and they were using outdated Napoleonic linear tactics against increasing amounts and accuracy of artillery and repeating weapons, plus the ability to field and support armies larger than previously imagined. It was a small foretaste of the industrial war 50 years later that turned half of Europe into a charnel house.

                  1. One of the biggest changes was transporting troops and supplies by rail. Troop movement went from 20 miles per day and worn the F out, to 400 miles and fully rested. You could SLEEP on the train!

               2. “the officers had their parties across the lines, knew each other ”

                  Mike, I wonder if this git realizes that at least 80% of the generals in the ACW graduated from West Point within a few years of each other, fought together in the Mexican War, and this was in an army that was the size of maybe a WWII division. Knew each other? a fair chunk had ties of marraige if not blood. Jeebus.

      4. It isn’t strictly class.

         But you can do some interesting guesses by looking at their tertiary education, and thinking about how the content might shape them.

         Forex, some interesting figures had BAs and JDs.

         Raffensperger had an engineering degree, a BS in Civil, but he also had a MBA.

         There are several flavors of concerning.

         a) Got where they are in life by chasing things that make them emotionally invested in intellectualism, or pseudo-intellectualism.
         b) beholden to a professional organization like the ABA, or had it responsible for most of their training.
         c) Had only enough exposure to go for a real field, for sake of mercenary interest (good), but then found they did not want to make it on technical ability, but instead got deep into politics and personal connections.
         d) makes their money from politics, and doesn’t have options for shifting their career and emotional investment into other places.

         The big issue, that brought them all together, is the influence of presidental elections on party politics. A winning presidential candidate has a lot of opportunity to pack the national party with allies and members of their personal organization. Once you set up a party faction that has a monopoly, the logic of the presidential election changes. If someone from outside your faction is a candidate, them winning the general is a loss for you. If both parties have a monopoly faction, it makes sense to cooperate, sabotaging outside faction candidates, and only bothering to try to win when you have a faction insider candidate.

         The Bushes were the Republican faction, and the Clintons have long hollowed out the Democrat Party. This situation has been screwed up for thirty years.

         The only reason it became unstable enough to be a serious problem for those bastards, is that the Democrats are absolutely unhinged in their dumbass will to power, and the Bushes want the left to win on policy.

         They tipped us off, and now we Americans are not following their script.

         1. I think the Clintons’ grip on power in the 90s was hated even then by the left wing, which despised even a shell of “centrist,” or “third way,” camouflage. And were even more infuriated by needing the camouflage to have a shot at winning. Now that wing believes it’s in the ascendant and, as you say, has gone unhinged.
            For the Rs, I remember a truly depressing article from a few years ago that said Republicans believe they’ve already lost, and that their job is to hold the costs of socialism down as much as possible in the name of fiscal accountability. In other words, they see themselves as the Democrats’ accountants. 🙄

            1. That Republican view is due to the media branding anyone who wanted to roll back the advances of the Left as a murderous fascist who wanted to force-feed granny cat food made from Black babies. They would tolerate objections over cost, as long as the compromise was still in their favor. Keep that up for decades and you get…Mitch McConnell.

            2. The Republicans lost a long time ago. We conservatives still have a chance.

   2. Correct …. exactly …. well stated. People like MTG, Chip Roy, and Thomas Massie represent me.

8. Principles are good. The first principle is “Win.”

9. Whenever I hear bleating about “My Principles” I remember this from Groucho Marx:

   Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.

10. DRIVE YOUR ENEMIES BEFORE YOU! TAKE THE TALLY OF THEIR SLAIN AND THE LAMENTATION OF THEIR WOMEN!

    –
    [Raises hand] “Uh… How do you tell which ones are their women?” 😛
    ———————————
    ‘Progressives’ suppress free speech because they don’t have the means to suppress free thought.

    Yet.

    1. Clearly find a biologist. Certainly do not ask the most recent Supreme Court nominee It (I shall not say she as damnit Jim I’m a Software Engineer not a Biologist!) can’t tell. Nor will it deign to pronounce on what Principles it will use to determine the validity of a law. And the usual Gang of 3 rinos voted for. So much for THEIR principles.

       1. Virtue signaling. They are the clear-sighted, forward thinking Republicans who truly represent the values of the Party and the importance of reaching across the aisle.

          1. Madame if it were reciprocated it might be fair. In this case it is less reaching across and more of a reach around…

             1. Agreed. That’s what makes it virtue signaling.

       2. Senator Blackburn missed a golden opportunity there:

          “Then you do stipulate that the word ‘woman’ is defined by biology.”

          1. As I think I said earlier….

             “Did you graduate high school?”

          2. That is a common problem. There are times where if they just ask the natural follow-up question, they can pretty much destroy the person testifying by exposing that person’s perfidy.

       3. Ugh, and Mittens voted for her. I can’t wait to support his primary challenger.

          1. Thank you please do. Living here in Bluest Massachusetts I wish to apologize for sending him on to you. As for my Senators Lieawatha (Warren) and Dewey (Markey, of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe). I constantly vote against them, but the large blue cities (Boston, Worcester, Salem, Lowell, Lawrence etc ad nauseam) override even the vaguely moderate candidates of either party let alone conservative firebrands (we do have a couple in the Mass House and Senate (pardon me General Court) ) who can’t even get nominations from the MA Republican party who are primarily from the Surrender Monkey portion of the GOP.

             1. Like the old joke about why they had a Republican in Congress — there was one Republican in Massachusetts and they had to get him out of the state somehow.
                ———————————
                “Ehh, on second thought let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.”

    2. Their women-identifying things.

       1. Clearly John Ringo identifies as Mongol.

          1. I think he might more identify as a relative of Conan the King. 🙂

             1. With this axe I rule !

                1. Trouble with modern times. Can’t get close enough to use the axe without being shot first. Unless you’re REALLY sneaky. People reading or watching Howard’s Conan usually just see the flash and bang of sorcery, and the hack and slash of melee; they often miss the parts where Conan spent the day crawling up on the enemy position just to get within attack range.

             2. Yeah I was thinking Cimmerian definitely…

       2. But only if we can also do a DNA test to be sure.

          1. DNA doesn’t count, hadn’t you heard? You need a PhD in Biology to figure out what a woman is. Let’s Go Brandon’s Supreme Court nominee said that.

             This is the hill they’ve chosen to die on, and I’m happy to help them do it.

             1. blink
                Functionally, they’re a woman if they can get pregnant and bear a child; or at least had that capability at one point in their lives.

                1. Mr. Houst you do realize that the SJW/Tranzi would consider a male pig a woman if you put lipstick on it and it wanted to identify as female? Heck look at our current Surgeon General, there you have it. I imagine C. Everrett Koop is spinning in his grave so fast it could probably power all of NH and much of VT bordering Hanover, NH

                2. Bringing functionality into the conversation is a big no-no, Mike. Shame shame, dude. ~:D Gender is a social construction, you’re not allowed to mention function.

                   Example, the swimmer winning all the races on the girl’s team lately is ‘female’ by declaration alone. As in, could father a whole baseball team and has shoulders an axe-handle wide, but wears a dress “BECAUSE MY PRONOUNS!!!!” and is therefore a ‘woman’. That’s the whole argument.

                   This is why you see circumlocutions like “birthing people” cropping up in medical circles to avoid the offense of using the words ‘mother’, ‘lady’, ‘woman’ and etc. because some of these ‘birthing people’ might be ‘men’.

                   On a serious note, this is THE LAW in Canada, as in no-shit-that’s-what-it-says The Law, and there is a lawyer in BC being investigated by the Law Society on that basis. https://tnc.news/2022/04/26/bc-law-society-investigating-free-speech-lawyer-over-misgendering/

                   I’m really starting to like “Okay groomer” as a reply to these and other Lefties. Drives them insane because deep down they know it’s the truth.

                   1. Isn’t it remarkable that to the Left, everyone else’s culture is relevant and valid, except mine?

    3. Ok I gotta ask- BOC fan??

       1. Oh yeah. And Imaginos was a great album, except for the remake of Astronomy. They got Astronomy perfect on Secret Treaties, and you shouldn’t F with perfect.

          1. Saw them on the Fire of Unknown Origin Tour on one of the nights they did 7-Screamin Diz-Busters. Awesome stuff. Have some really good live recordings of them from the 1970s and early 80s.

       2. Don’t Fear the Reaper?

          or

          Veteran of the Psychic Wars?

          or even

          Godzilla!

          1. Oh, no! There goes Tokyo! Godzilla!
             Don’t Fear the Reaper is a beautiful song with a horrible theme.

          2. Plus a whole lot of great songs that never made it to the radio, or barely did:

             Workshop Of The Telescopes
             Before The Kiss, A Redcap
             Hot Rails To Hell
             Subhuman
             Flaming Telepaths
             Astronomy
             E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)
             The Revenge Of Vera Gemini
             I Love The Night
             Nosferatu
             The Great Sun Jester
             The Vigil
             Monsters
             The Marshall Plan
             Perfect Water
             In The Presence Of Another World

             “Well I’m no poet
             But I can’t be fooled
             The lies don’t count
             The whispers do
             I hear the whispers on the wind
             They say the Earth has fallen due.”

             1. Cities on Flame is yet another one.

                1. And has gotten extensive radio play. I concentrated on songs that weren’t played on the radio, or only rarely. Songs most people never heard of, unless they bought the albums.

                   Tonight!
                   I’m gonna see some Rock And Roll!

                2. I think we lived through a bit too much of that in 2020.

    4. If you cannot crush your enemies, drive them before you, and hear the lamentation of their women, a close second is pissing off the people who wish you were dead.

       1. I am so stealing that!

          1. Feel free…

    5. Simple. If they lament, they’re women, no matter what their biology is.

11. Standing up for principles can be important. It can be a way to fight back instead of surrendering.
    Governor Desantis has just signed a law standing up for the principle of treating people as individuals. It prohibits (for corporations & schools) required CRT training and/or discriminating against any (race, sex, color, national origin) group to accomplish DEI goals.
    https://www.disneyfanatic.com/desantis-strikes-twice-signed-bill-could-prohibit-reimagine-tomorrow-at-disney-world-tb1/

    1. This is what fighting for your principles looks like.

       It didn’t target any corporation or school district. It is in accordance with all civil rights legislation. And it practically dares the left to throw us into that briar patch of lawsuits where they have to defend their belief that “Yes, some people are morally superior because of their skin color.”

       I sympathize with a lot of the criticisms of Trump, because he reminded me of the stories my dad would tell about the police dog he worked with back in the seventies — it was only kept around because it bit suspects slightly more often than officers. But DeSantis? He not only fights, but he also has better target selection, understands his weapons, and brings them to bear on his enemies’ weaknesses while attacking from a position of strength.

       1. I always sort of wondered if Trump’s tendency to attack in all directions comes from spending so much time in an environment where he was dealing with probably crooked [municipal governments], crooked and known [Mafia and other organized crime groups], and crooked but faking honesty.

          1. So then, exactly the same types as those he attacked while in office? 😉

             (Although I’d argue that the Mafia were/are the most honest of the lot…)

12. Ah yes… “principles” such a fine thing. I’m at the point where it does not matter. From the historical and mostly true accounts of the Crusade era: “Kill them all, and let God sort them out”.
    (the exact sentence is : “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius” a better translation would be : “Massacre Them, ’cause God knows his”)

    I’ve come to believe that is truly the only way to stop ‘them’ and to turn back to sanity.

    1. According to RAH, the only good principles are those that promote survival. If playing nice, or according to the rules gets you dead or gone; it’s time to ditch those principles for ones that work.

       1. Like everything RAH said, way more complex than that. Remember the mother cat and the hobo?

13. The Buckley/EGop crowd remind me of nothing so much as the “Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang.” For those not familiar, the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang is the second-largest political party in China. It was started by Kuomintang members who didn’t like Chiang Kai-shek and didn’t flee to Taiwan in 1949. Today, it’s a political party for those who can’t get into the Communist party (mainly descendants of “landlords,” “bad elements,” and Kuomintang officials). It holds offices, and has seats in the national assembly…and never, never, never opposes anything serious the Communist Party wants. Their motto could be “Us too…pretty please?”

    IMNSHO, the mainstream GOP was traumatized beyond recovery, first by being blamed for the Great Depression (that lasted a long time. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, I knew old people who wouldn’t vote Republican because they still had bitter memories of the 1930s) and then by the mostly-blown-up-out-of-nothing-much Watergate scandals. Being seen as the “establishment” party also didn’t help with younger voters. When the Democrat candidate cough Jimmy Carter in 1980 cough cough was clearly hopeless, someone else, not-GOP, would come forward, which explains John Anderson’s candidacy.

    Non-Woke voters would do well to abandon the corpse of the GOP and do something like, say, colonize the remnants of Perot’s Reform Party. AIUI, they’re still on the ballot in a lot of states, which helps a lot—the Libertarians were badly hurt by having to repeatedly fight and fight and fight to get on the ballot, against laws designed to benefit only the GOP and Democrats.

    1. The Libertarian Party (capital Libertarians) are “Lefty Light” not conservatives (especially small government types).

       IMO That and their “Legalize Drugs Right Now” position have hurt them more than those laws.

       1. When one of their candidates for the highest office of the land says that we need to seriously consider carbon taxes, sides with the “bake the cake” crowd (yes, BTC is a misrepresentation of the actual case, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to him), and takes on an openly anti-gun VP candidate, calling them “libertarian” for any reason other than that it’s in the party name isn’t necessarily the smart way to go.

          His successor for that candidacy wasn’t much better, buying into the BLM, Inc talking point about “actively anti-racist” (basically, “honkeys bow down to The Brothers and Sisters”), whether out of ignorance of what “actively anti-racist” really means or trying to pander to the BLM, Inc crowd.

          1. (And in regards to gun control, no Trump wasn’t much better. He was, however, disuadable with a solid enough argument, judging by his backing away from gun control after that stupid bump stock ban. Weld is chained to gun control by chains of his own forging.)

    2. Won’t work. We’ll colonize the GOP instead.

       1. And we have to keep our eyes on our final goal, the retaking and protection of our freedoms. Not the destruction of liberals, not the takeover of the Republican party. Those are necessary steps, but not our goals.

          And because our goal is freedom, we should be ruthless in directing our energies toward that goal. This is where the “Principles” crowd have at least a fraction of a point — DeSantis isn’t kicking Disney’s ass with insulting tweets. He’s doing it with legislative action that’s extremely resistant to lawsuits.

          To reverse Hamlet, we should use daggers but speak none. Much more effective.

          1. All true. However, it is not always enough to tell them, “No!” Sometimes you must also offer to assist in their suicide.

       2. Vichy Mitchy would like a word…….
          https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/19/mcconnell-backs-murkowskis-reelection-bucking-pro-/

          1. Although I know nothing about her, Mitchy’s quote from that article makes me a bit concerned: “It’s important for Lisa to be reelected. She’s one of the few … moderates in the middle of the Senate”. Apparently the idea that moderation is a suicide game in US politics hasn’t yet gotten through to him…

             Barry Goldwater had it right: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

             1. She’s a RINO

                1. I suspected as much. Too many of those around these days…

                   1. Time to do some big-game hunting. 😛

                   2. Damn shame I lost my elephant gun in a boating accident…

                      1. Me, too. I’m getting the impression that quite a few waterways could be named Iron (Polymer? Aluminum? Scandium?) Bottom Sound (Creek? River? Lake?). Maybe it’s time to take up SCUBA diving for fun and profit… 🙂

       3. The Reader’s history is rusty here. Is it possible to reanimate a corpse of a political party? Maybe that is what the Republicans did to the Whigs in the 1850’s. The Reader will have to go back and study up.

14. Oh by the way don’t salt the earth, just take it. We might want to raise cattle or drill for oil or Launch Orions (Bomb pumped kind not NASA’s silly boondoggle), or use it as an open latrine to show our respect for our defeated foes.

    1. The grass is always greener over the old outhouse pit… 😀

       1. The use of the conquered space as a latrine is from ancient history, I think its the destruction of the second temple in Jerusalem by the Romans but it might have been the fall of the first temple. I was judst trying to come up with ways to show our “appreciation” for the Tranzi/SJWs 🙂 .

15. Hear Hear! The howitzers need to be loaded with canister! Let’s go! God do I miss the Trumpster! Love ya Sarah!

    1. M1028 120mm canister munition for the M-1 Abrams main gun. Endorsed by Shewolf! 😀

       1. “What the ever loving—?”

          “Self-propelled pump-action shotgun, sir.”

          1. Snerk.

       2. I used to live in Jacksonville. I need to tell John that and then add, “And I really enjoyed Shewolf’s visit downtown.”
          Don’t wish ill to the residents, but downtown Jax has a very unsettling feel now.

       3. A perfect comment WRT a post by Ringo! And dammit, you beat me to it! 🙂

16. Very easy to live by your principles and be ruthless regarding the opposition.
    Stand up straight and give no quarter.

17. Pretty much. Only pain teaches. Only fear rules….
    Principles are for those secure in power and for disagreements where there is common ground.

18. What can I say but, “Oh, John Ringo, Yes!”

    1. Indeed.

19. “DRIVE YOUR ENEMIES BEFORE YOU! TAKE THE TALLY OF THEIR SLAIN AND THE LAMENTATION OF THEIR WOMEN!”

    Women-identifying people, if you please. 😉

    1. Alas, someone already made this joke.

20. “If you take the high road, you’re silhouetting yourself and you’re just going to get shot.“

    Quote of the year so far.

21. Scott Adams called what DeSantis did in revoking Disney’s privileges “retaliation,” and said DeSantis should be impeached for retaliating.

    I disagree. I agree that what DeSantis did was retaliation. But I also believe that in this case it was merited. The left and right have been playing a game of Prisoners’ Dilemma for years. In Prisoners’ Dilemma everyone gains if both cooperate, but one player gains more and the other player loses a lot when one player refuses to cooperate. (The player that refuses to cooperate gains big,) If both refuse to cooperate, they each lose a little.

    The optimum strategy of the game is to cooperate on the first round, and then do what your opponent did on the previous round for all subsequent rounds. You cooperate. If he does not cooperate on that round you do not cooperate in the next round. If he cooperates in the first round, you cooperate in the next. And yes, not cooperating in the next round is retaliation. That is the point.

    Similarly, Disney played a red card in a previous round, so DeSantis played a red card in this one. If DeSantis continues playing red cards gratuitously after Disney starts cooperating again, then Adams might have a point. But right now?

    The flag we conservative like has a snake with the words “Don’t Tread on Me.” If someone treads on you while you are flying that flag, they deserve to get bit. They have to get bit, or your words are hollow. If they don’t tread on you again, you leave them alone. That is what this is about. Disney tread on Florida.

    1. The correct term is ‘retribution’ — imposing consequences for a transgression.

       1. Scott Adams is OCCASIONALLY an arrant idiot. Not always, but occasionally

          1. I’m pushing 70, but when he makes comments like that, my thought runs to “OK, Boomer”. SMH

          2. I’ve given up watching him because when he’s wrong, he’s REALLY wrong, and it’s hard to predict on which issue he will be completely out in left field.

    2. There is a reason many of us point, laugh, and spit at Scott Adams these days.
       Despite writing a couple of great, helpful books, he’s a weak sister communist-leaning weenie.

    3. I had no idea Adams was an idiot. It isn’t “retaliation” to remove a corporation’s special exemptions because they attempted to undermine legislation passed by a duly elected government that, not coincidentally, enjoyed broad support from Republican and Democrat voters.

       Disney’s actions might be somewhat defensible if the legislation affected their business operations or profitability, but this law had nothing to do with Disney. So Disney decided to assume a political risk by playing partisan politics, and the risk was realized. Play stupid games…

       Corporation decides it wants to undermine policy? Corporation gets to play by the rules everyone else does. This is called accountability, not retaliation.

       1. +1

          Re Adams, I can’t listen to him any more. He was great to listen to about Trump, because evidently he does know a lot about persuasion, etc.(which I absolutely do not), and he had some really interesting slants on those topics. However, now he drones on and on about the war in Europe, about which he knows absolutely zilch. Gimme a break.

    4. It’s also perfectly legal. Disney has not right to have its special district and tax breaks in perpetuity, and they were granted it with an understanding of how they company would behave. Disney broke that understanding quite blatantly with its partisan leftist activism.

       The legislature was well within its rights to revoke DIsney’s status and DeSantis within his rights to sign the legislation. While I generally like Adams, his claim is patently absurd. What he asserts is no different than when one of the Democratic Party hacks who was a prosecutor in AG charged the Texas Governor with breaking the law for vetoing legislation the Democrats liked.

       1. Now they need to do copyright. Mickey Mouse should have been public domain years ago.

          1. Mackey mouse himself is trade mark. Steam boat Willie on the otherhand… 😉

             1. Mickey… I apparently have fat fingers.

                1. Fair enough. Still, anyone should be able to use a mouse in red trousers or a beanie with two bits of plastic staples to the top. It’s only fair.

                2. Mackey Chandler is NOT a mouse. I’ve met him.

                   1. Apparently my fingers were less convinced of this than my brain.

                      1. You know what, if I have time to hang out on MeWe later, I shall tease the heck out of him with this. I miss Mackey.

    5. Well said!

    6. And- the special district designation was pulled from a few other spots also. Apparently when reviewing Disney they discovered some others that need to go. And it seems there was a law required those special districts to be reviewed- that had been ignored since passage…

    7. … and said DeSantis should be impeached for retaliating.

       “Impeached” by the same legislature that passed the bill DeSantis signed?

       Mr Adams, “truly, you have a dizzying intellect.”

22. “ If you take the high road, you’re silhouetting yourself and you’re just going to get shot.”

    Quote of the year so far.

23. I have principles. I’m willing to fight to defend them. In fact, one of my principles is being willing to fight for what I believe. Might not involve weapons, I’m more likely to use words and persuasion, but they’re not out of the question.

    And you defend the innocent. Always. Being willing to cede the high ground means you’re leaving the innocents who depend on you vulnerable.

24. Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”

25. Great post. Yep principals get in the way, also there’s the problem that most on the right want to be left alone and be allowed to just mind their own business. Problem is taking that approach one finds someone else minding their business for them.

    Not sure about the high ground analogy. The media, academia, etc., are now the deep in low ground, the pig wallow, the swamp. Not heavy artillery but gnats, rats gnawing us. Hum, I take that back, they are bombarding us from the high ground but they’re also swamp creatures nipping our ankles, creating festering sores.

    OK, sitting up here atop the world, standing on my principals, head held high, my eye on the ground, the weight of the mulitverse on my shoulders, sailing through the taiga, marching down the river, I just want to be left alone and be allowed to mind my own business. Yep, I’m part of the problem that I can’t clearly articulate, but so are we all.

26. I disagree slightly, but I think the difference is important.

    We want to come out of this with a Republic not Yugoslavia or Ethiopia.

    Furthermore, because of the Left’s command of the culture, a lot of people who might be natural allies fly the flag of the Left. We don’t want to drive them further in to the arms of the fanatical opposition.

    But constantly yielding ground leads only to defeat — you are dead right about that.

    So the way I put it is that in game theory, the successful strategy is “modified tit for tat”. It beats “tit for tat” and it also beats “always cooperate” (which is very much the strategy of the Republican establishment).

    Modified tit for tat is “you hit me, I hit you back … but every so often, we give you the chance to cooperate. Take it, and we can work together. Hit us while our hand is being offered, and we just hit you back again — and we remember that and it is going to be a while before you get offered the chance again”

    But that strategy only works if most of the time, attacks are retaliated against. It’s the unpredictable character of offers to cooperate that differentiates between adversaries playing “always retaliate” from those who might be open to cooperation.

    This is somewhat analogous to a “no first use” doctrine. You play nice. We play nice. We should never be the first to go low. But you go low, we go low HARD, and no whining about it; you don’t like it? You show your willingness to step back from the cycle of retaliation by taking one on the chin occasionally, and saying, in essence “one is all you get”

    1. That ship has sailed. We are like the girl that has been raped and the rapist is pissed that we are gunning for them.

       They are murdering babies and have been for 50 years.
       Now they are castrating little boys and cutting the tits off little girls.
       If that does not inspire a fighting response from you, go crawl into a hole and pull the dirt over you, you are already dead.

       1. “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.” — Ronald Reagan

          1. I don’t agree with that statement anymore.

             1. Given how far off the deep end so many in power have gone, I suspect it actually might be more true than it used to be. If that weren’t the case, TPTB wouldn’t feel the need to suspend and dox LibsofTikTok.

             2. Given that I don’t agree with me 100% of the time, how can I expect anyone else to?

          2. There’s a lot of folks on the left like that. 20% can cover many crimes and perversions.

          3. That statement has been proven false.

          4. Like I said, Ronaldus Magnus never had to deal with Vichy Mitchy. And the 80 percent agreement has to be in deeds, not words.

             https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/19/mcconnell-backs-murkowskis-reelection-bucking-pro-/

          5. Which is how we got Mitch Romney, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, the whole Bush family, Arlen Specter, John McCain, McCain’s South Carolina Mini-Me, Susan Collins, the entire Bulwark staff, the entire Weekly Standard staff, Tom DeLay’s K Street Project, John Bohner repeatedly excusing his surrenders but still keeping his job, Mayor Bloomberg of NYC, Ted Cruz trying to split the party in 2016 (which would have handed the Presidency to Hillary) …
             Thanks buddy, but no thanks. A “friend” who betrays you one out of every five trys isn’t a friend, they’re an enemy that expects you to support them.
             If you have a Big Tent, eventually it fills up with clowns and monkeys.

             1. Assumes facts not in evidence. I’d like to see the analysis that shows that Romney, McConnell, Murkowski, et all are in 80% agreement with, oh, let’s call it Small Govenrment Conservatism or Libertarian Minarchism.

                Since people are different. No two people will always agree all the time. Hell, no one but a robot will always agree with himself all the time. The “all or nothing” approach is a good way to get “nothing.”

                1. Heck Romney’s rarely in agreement with himself 80% of the time. His flag clearly sails with the wind, or what he perceives of it.

          6. Depends on the 80 and the 20.

             1. Indeed.

          7. A possible gestalt of the ensuing conversation yields “The person who agrees with you [only in the] 80 percent of the time [that it doesn’t really matter] is [not] a friend and an ally ” — I would rather work with the person who differs with me on the inessentials and agrees on the 20 percent that counts.

             Or, as Mary said much more succinctly, “Depends on the 80 and the 20.”

             1. There’s a false maxim related to this: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Nope. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy; no more, no less. If you disagree, think of WWII, Germany and the Soviet Union. Neither was our friend, even insofar as nations have “friends” (which they don’t; they have interests). Disclaimer: None of this ir original with me; I simply agree with it.

                1. Can he shoot? And will he aim at my enemy?

                   1. Yes, and yes. And since both Germans and Soviets did so… 😉

    2. “Modified tit for tat is “you hit me, I hit you back … but every so often, we give you the chance to cooperate.”

       So long as the ‘chance to cooperate’ part comes after they’ve been driven into bankruptcy and they’re selling pencils on the street corner. Because what goes around, comes around.

       Example, I’ll be willing to extend the olive branch of peace to WorldCon when the Hugo Awards are being held at a Denny’s in Rio Linda. Not before.

    3. Sixty years ago, this might have worked. I don’t disagree with the idea, just that it’s time has long past.
       If we do not “destroy” every man, woman, and child on the other side, we will lose the Republic. And we have to love the Republic enough to fight ugly.

       1. As long as “destroy” is about political power and/or any sort of influence, I agree. Mass graves aren’t my “thing”…

          1. Mass graves are their thing. I’d rather they be in them, than us.

             1. The Scouring of the Shire.

          2. Until it can’t be helped, yes, destroy means “remove from any source of power to force other people to do things.”

             1. As I thought, but it was the addition of “woman, and child” that prompted my reply.

                1. I cringed as I wrote it, for the same reason. I wanted to communicate how thorough we need to be. I don’t want another Haman (Book of Esther) wandering around with ill intent.

    4. Jeff Greason, this is actually correct per Game Theory.

       First read about this in the late 90s in Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue (rise of cooperation and ‘altruism’ from a bio/evolutionary perspective).

       Game Theory says in the simple one-off prisoners Dilemma, always betray, don’t cooperate is optimum.

       In the the iterated Prisoners Dilemma, the math shows that ‘tit for tat’ works best over multiple runs: start off cooperating but stop if burned, IOW do what the other guy did last time. Problem is the system gets locked into the overall sub optimum state if both sides do this.

       With more modeling, it was shown that ‘tit for tat but occasionally forgive’ is the true best global strategy, as it allow the system to flip back into the most productive state for both parties.

       Who knew, math and evolutionary theory back up Christianity.

       1. Yep, that’s where I got it from.

          “Tit for Tat” with occasional chances given to forgive is the only strategy that beats “Tit for Tat”

          But “Always Cooperate” (i.e., “Be a doormat”) is a straight-up loser.

          It does disturb me a bit to see in the comments the degree of disdain for our fellow Americans.

          Remember that the “hard left” is no greater a fraction of the population than the “hard right”. The majority of their troops come from folks who have been told they have more to fear from us than from their masters.

          I absolutely agree with Ringo’s central point — we have to win, and you don’t win by repeatedly surrendering.

          But we have to win Lincoln’s way. “With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right”.

          If that makes me a believer in ‘principles’ so be it. We need to fight. We need to win. We also need to not become that against which we fight.

          1. Some of their ‘troops’ seem to be simple habitual felons.

             It is not clear that there are very many left at all, fraud, organizational manipulation, and social engineering (in the IT sense) may be doing all of their heavy lifting.

             I think ‘becoming that which we fight’ is not a serious danger. If we are very careful in knowing our own personal objectives, selecting tactics that match the objectives keeps us from becoming the left.

             The only real danger where that is concerned is the people who have only partly transitioned from being left. At that point, it is very tempting to look at the left’s tactical successes, and conclude that what we need to fix is the asymmetry of the tactics. Problem, the asymmetry of tactics maps to the asymmetry in goals. When you look at things, left tactical successes result from left tactics when the left’s goals are stuff like ‘destroy families’, etc. If you don’t want to destroy families, duplicating their method does you no good.

             Most of the handwringing about ‘becoming like them’ would, if boiled down and applied to historical situations, predict that Americans would become exactly the same as the Imperial Japanese, Comanche, etc. Don’t get me wrong, their behavior did have an influence on our behavior. It was not purely a change for the better. But we beat them, and held to our own values, goals, and methods for the most part.

             One challenging issue, the left seems to have played a very long game meddling with the formal legal system. That will be difficult to navigate.

             The basic challenge still seems to me to be what I have been saying about the 2nd ACW. First goal, a coalition capable of not only winning, but actually securing peace. We probably already have a coalition capable of winning, even if perhaps still only at cost. We build towards the peace securing coalition by playing the slow game, and flipping the sane people who in excitement might otherwise support the opposition. Democrat nutjobbery serves us in this.

          2. But that was after the Southrons had had their *sses overrun by Northern manufacturing.

          3. The Civil War is regarded as a “total war.”

             While Lincoln spoke of malice towards none in his second inaugural, he actually practiced total war on the Confederacy. Winning the war gave him the power to extend an olive branch.

             We need to vote. We need to sue. We need to stand up against woke tyranny.

             1. We have to beat them. Absolutely. We have to use any tools consistent with our objectives to do so. Without shame. “War is the remedy they have chosen and I say let them have a bellyful”.

                We don’t have to hate them.

                1. THIS

                2. Yes, I personally need to be better about following Matthew 5:44. And by doing so, I acknowledge the left as my enemy.

             2. #1 Personal Lesson Learned in Politics this year.

                “You can afford to get along with the other guys, AFTER you’ve won.”

    5. That’s one reason why Trump resonates with so many people. He wasn’t afraid to strike back at those who attacked him.

27. I managed to keep my mouth closed and head down while in grad school. It wasn’t easy, and I made agreeable noises to ideas I intensely disagreed with. It helped that the senior professors in the department were Old Left working class, not New Left trust-funders. I’d worked blue collar. That made me acceptable.

    1. School, yeah. I was an -asshole- in my Masters program in the 1990s. I called them out on everything. They hated my guts.

       It was awesome! ~:D I want to go again!

    2. I made it through my undergrad because most of my professors found me amusing and charming. There is a very definite reason I said “thanks but no” to the offers of going to grad school. Not just because I couldn’t afford the time and/or money but I couldn’t afford the damage it would do to my soul. Of course, I would have been getting an MFA or MA-English Literature rather than a hard science so I knew what kind of cesspool I’d have to wade through to get to the other side and I was tired.

28. My, “principles,” as it were are that of what John mentions there. I’m all Conan in that scene…and like John said…salt the damned earth they stood on. Nothing left standing. You get peace only out of a true willingness to wage war. You get left alone if you’re clearly willing to fight and get dirty doing it. That’s WHY they’re doing what they’ve been doing- and DeSantis is, as Trump was, willing to get down and dirty over what is a real problem.

29. I trend ‘libertarian’ and Constitutionally/fiscally conservative. Moreover, I have no use for do-gooders and other busy-bodies, please just leave me alone. The Left and the cultural Marxists, emboldened, have make it their life’s work to bring us all to heel. They are cruel, annoying people who have a perpetual case of the asss. Civility, not principles, is the only thing that moderates my restraint. However, as the collectivist mobs become more and more uncivil, they deserve all the ridicule and abuse we can summon. They need and deserve a good asss-kicking!

    1. Yep. A perpetual case of ass, and it’s our responsibility to make them feel better.

       I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.

    2. IMO Civility is a Major Principle to hold. However, as I said earlier, Principles (including civility) should not hamper us when dealing with our enemies who lack Principles especially Civility.

       1. Yes, I agree, we should not allow them to ‘cow’ us! The Left uses intimidation and threats of violence to keep its philosophical opponents in check. However, their goon squads are more ‘bully’ than ‘buff’ and they really need to feel the pain of having to lick their wounds.

30. Disney’s problem was they had never come across a politician who could not be bought off. And, frankly, I didn’t know any existed either. They figured they could rely on their bought and paid for politicians to save the day. The inhuman screeching during the vote where they lost was quite something.

    As far as retribution or retaliation goes, if you can’t retaliate against people who target 5 year olds, then who can you go after?

    They went after the CHILDREN! That should be a fatal mistake for any company.

    1. I’m not under any illusions that DeSantis and company are in any way uncorruptible. Frankly, that would be stupid.

       But.

       The problem Mouse House has is that they’re pushing a platform so appalling that no sane politician, not even the corrupt ones, will take their money. Grooming is not a career-enhancing thing even on the Left. You get hung for stuff like that.

       Previously they’ve gotten away with this stuff by doing it in the dark and after a long propaganda campaign. But now, filled with hubris, the cockroaches are walking around in the kitchen when the light is on. Oops.

       1. Disney used to just give money to everybody. Stay in office, run for office, everybody.

    2. “The inhuman screeching during the vote where they lost was quite something.”

       Demons are real. Get used to it.

       1. This has occurred to me.

       2. Demons are real get used to it.

          My exact thought when I heard the tape if the screeching and howling at Trump’s inauguration and Justice Kavanaughs’s vote.

          The howling, the scratching and pounding on the doors. It was horrifying.

          This seems to be De rigure for their various losses though.

          1. They are human, just humans who never grew past the age of 2 in emotional maturity.

             1. They may be, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t demons involved.

                1. Does anyone have a link to this?

             2. I’ve heard plenty of 2 year olds throwing fits.

                I’ve even seen teenagers in full tantrum mode.

                It’s usually very unpleasant, (occasionally humorous) but they sound human.

                The shrieking from the left has an inhuman sound to it. Scary if you ask me.

       3. Yes, and some people are inviting them in.

31. Principles. Yes indeed. As it happens, the Left offends essentially -all- of my principles, and they do it every day.

    Little things like involuntary human experimentation such as we’ve had with the WuFlu Mad Science Genetic Modification Experiment. Lockdowns where they fine you for running alone in the park. (Remember that one? March/April 2020 was fun.) Rigging elections and them arresting people for protesting. That’s some offensive stuff right there.

    So I don’t hesitate to mock and gloat when one of their assholes puts a foot wrong. Let’s Go Brandon being herded by the Easter Bunny? That’s comedy gold, baby. Using a demented senior citizen as meme-fodder is unseemly, but when it’s one of THEIR senior citizens? All hands to the guns!

    By the way John, I’m patiently waiting for another book. Not to jog your elbow while you’re working, just so you know. I’ll throw money when you’re ready. ~:D

    1. Regarding the penultimate paragraph, were it just some random elderly schmuck who wound up in the spotlight by accident that’s one thing. Brandon was deliberately pushed by a bunch of people, his wife included, where there is no way you could wind up there by accident or happenstance.

       In short: meme away, and don’t feel a damn bit of remorse about it.

       1. I find it difficult watching the Elder Abuse. See Something, Say Something, sure isn’t helping any; and plenty are saying.

          Agree. “In short: Meme away, and don’t feel a damn bit of remorse about it.”

          1. You know what, d? That guy skated on every single evil thing he did over a long, long career of doing any evil thing that came into his tiny mind. Just being where he is now is part of it, and by no means the worst of it.

             Seeing that guy getting herded by the Easter Bunny because his brain no longer functions? That’s a thing of beauty. I hope he lives to be 120 years old.

    2. A book he’s got co-writer credit on was just released.

       1. ‘Into The Real’ is part of this month’s Baen Bundle. Next on my list after I finish ‘Aurora Borealis Bridge’.

          Already finished ‘Harbinger’ by Wen Spencer. It’s great, but…ended in a cliffhanger the size of Mount Lookitthat. I sure hope we don’t have to wait 14 more years to find out What Happens Next!
          ———————————
          “Don’t open that!! It’s the original can of worms!”

          1. Elfhome was ten years ago, Wood Sprites eight, and Project Elfhome six.

             Rumint is that the wait for Harbinger is partly a matter of her plot exploding on her, turning into three books, and getting untangled first. So two and three might be out pretty quickly.

             Assuming Baen’s management doesn’t go entirely nuts, and whatever war doesn’t kill everyone and their dog.

32. I am reminded of the article where the woman writes about how Trumpers shoveled the snow for her without being asked — and how creepy and Klanish it apparently was.

    You shovel their driveway, they write hit-pieces about you.

    A security guard helps AOC — at the risk of his life for all he knows at the time — she smears him as a potential assailant.

    And that is why you lose.

    Maybe it’s time, if you see a house with a Biden sign or an “in this house we believe” sign snowed in, you leave it.

    If you see an EV broke down on the road and a guy with a man bun standing helpless over it, you drive on by.

    If you see a woman getting hassled on the subway at night, you mind your own business: statistically it’s likely she’s a lefty, and being unarmed and the lack of situational awareness that put her there in the first place makes it more likely. Help her and as soon as she’s safe she’ll just side with the poor oppressed assailants anyway for the dopamine hit of a social media like.

    1. This. Absolutely this.
       Christians are shaming each other to help everyone no matter what. I think that’s an outdated idea.

       1. But teaching people the consequences of their actions IS helping. No contradiction.

          1. On that subject:

             “I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” Benjamin Franklin.

    2. I’m gonna have to at least partially disagree. Somewhere, sometime there may have to be a limit, but we do need to offer help even when it might get thrown back in our faces.

       1. @ Dorothy >
          I’m inclined to your view of offering help even if it’s spurned, but I’m very much afraid that the Left is pushing many kind and generous people in the other direction because of the continual abuse of their good-will.

          I think Andrea Widburg aka Bookworm has reached her limit.
          https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/the_tragic_irony_of_a_national_guardsmans_death_in_the_rio_grande.html
          “In this case, it turns out that this young American man sacrificed his life for…wait for it…people importing deadly, illegal drugs into America….So, how many people did Fentanyl kill between 2020 and 2021?….nearly 79,000 people between 18 and 45 years old — 37,208 in 2020 and 41,587 in 2021 …
          What this means is that this unnamed but incredibly brave National Guardsman sacrificed his life for two people complicit in murder—and that’s true whether they’ve already caused American deaths in the past or will cause American deaths in the future. That’s appalling, disgusting…and all the fault of the Democrats. …
          The fact that illegal aliens receive so many benefits means they have incentives to brave a potentially dangerous journey. This is especially true because they know that Americans will die to save them.
          I’m going to say something very cruel but, I believe, necessary: It’s time for Americans to stop saving illegal aliens. No more Rio Grande rescues. No more searching through the border desert to find stragglers. No more American lives lost aiding criminal activity that hurts America and Americans.
          The burdens need to shift to the wannabe illegal aliens to create a disincentive for their criminal conduct.”

          I would rather stop the Democrats than stop the rescues, because doing the former means the latter is no longer necessary, but I’m not sure doing the latter will accomplish the former.

          1. Why can’t Mexico do the migrant rescues? Or how about half the rescues? Why can’t they do even half the job?

             They’re a whole country, they should be able to swing some river safety patrols. Canada does. Niagara river patrol, Great Lakes, Canadian crews and American crews are out there saving errant boaters.

             Mexico? Nope. They don’t do it. Wonder why not?

33. I think people forgot, more than anything else, that Buckley was looking at a GOP that had fragmented (at the time) worse than the Democrats now between the “Country Club” set and the “John Birch” people. The concept of principals was based upon de-fanging the Birchers, and having something to run on besides a lot of vague economic concepts and “the Democrats are bad people”.

    Now, I still see Ron DeSantos running under “principals” for the simplest of concepts. Florida pretty much kept Disney afloat during the Crow Flu, WDW was in better shape than Disneyland and how they handled things in California. Disney started to move their business to Florida because California and Hollywood have been terrible and are getting worse from their perspective. And, DeSantos and company wanted Disney there. Why? The tax money from all of these people doing all of these things would be amazing.

    The problem is…they don’t like the activist class and have been for years trying to keep them out and try and roll back the worse of their stupid. The Family Choice Act was one of these dial-backs, and one that was popular because it was so very clear. Teaching Grade K-3 kids sexuality? It wasn’t that long ago that kind of behavior would be called “grooming” and rightfully so.

    Here’s where it gets complicated. Bob Iger, the former CEO of Disney, had a dream of becoming President of the United States one day and wanted to build up his political base. So, he let the activist class into Disney and turned the company into a platform for activism. How badly infested is Disney with activists? Despite the fact that people like Kathleen Kennedy and her “Lucasfilm Story Group” probably destroyed Star Wars as a viable franchise, they will probably only lose their jobs just before Disney files for bankruptcy.

    …and then Iger left, just before everything went to Hell with the Crow Flu, and Bob Chapek is back in charge. And, he wants to have a profitable company. Political Barbara Streisand does not make for a profitable company and he’s been trying to purge the activist class out of the company as quickly as he can. This is why a number of things have been changed on how Disney manages things. But, to get rid of a lot of the things being produced is going to take time. Anything you see now was probably green-lit and authorized by the Bob Iger regime and Disney is stuck with the issue of either releasing it and making some money, or not releasing it and making no money.

    At this point is where the big, institutional investors are coming in. A number of which have their portfolios structured so that they can “do good” by supporting the activist class while “doing well” in other places. Disney is one of the places where they “do good” and they’re one of the reasons why it’s so hard to get rid of the activists.

    And, this is where the perfect storm hits. Disney throws their weight around, but DeSantos has the backing of enough people to tell Disney that “there will be consequences” and oh boy were there consequences. What happened with the Reedy Creek district and how it’s structured is a one-in-a-billion longshot and probably can’t be repeated anywhere else again in the world. It’s a money-printing machine. And, I bet someone told Disney to stop messing with a good thing. The activists dragged Chapek in, and I suspect that the leaks of internal Disney video meetings was Chapek trying to say “this is what I have to deal with, cut me some slack.”

    Instead, it just pissed people off. And rightfully so. Chapek’s now stuck between the big institutional investors that want Disney to keep “doing good”-despite the fact that their efforts to “do good” are hated by everyone with a half-functioning brain stem-and the politicians that see beating up on a Disney that is so far outside of Florida (and most national) norms that they can’t help but be the heroes.

    Here comes the $64 question-what happens next? I suspect that people are going to try and find a way to let everybody off and save face somehow, because nobody want to wreck the good thing that Disney tax money is going to provide in Florida. The problem is, the activist class knows-deep in their guts-that if they don’t keep up what little forward momentum they have, they’ll die on the vine. Just look at what happened with only four years of Donald Trump.

    It’s going to be a wild ride, in an era of many other wild and terrible rides.

    1. Universal does okay without the special bennies. Same with the others.

       1. Universal, even now, is barely a tenth or so the size of the whole WDW complex. It’s about the size of San Francisco. Think about it, a whole city’s worth of just an entertainment complex. They can’t just move it anywhere else, not without spending trillions and years at minimum to reproduce it somewhere else.

          This is when the activists are lead into a nice little room without windows and made entirely of concrete, the exit door is welded shut behind them, and they ignore the screaming as the door is bricked over.

          1. With a cask of Amontillado for refreshments? 😮

             1. Considering how many people are going to be in there, I’ll even throw in two casks.

          2. Now. Now. Polis is saying “Come to Colorado. We’ll take care of you!”

             (Do not yell at the messenger.)

             1. …and, was this before or after Polis took his meds and was informed that there was no way any part of the state of Colorado could handle a whole second and third state dropping in yearly?

                1. no way any part of the state of Colorado could handle a whole second and third state dropping in yearly?

                   –
                   Don’t know about the meds. But since the usual suspects haven’t been pointing and laughing at Polis, and Polis hasn’t repeated the offer, pretty sure someone with a clue took the clue 2×4 and smacked Polis; verbally naturally.

                   1. I don’t know if verbal would stop that reticulated asshole.

                   2. I would much rather the 2×4 be firmly inserted in Polis’ fifth point of contact, but we can only dream.

                      1. I find it highly ironic that leftist back such things as ACAB, while at the same time promoting things such as, oh, say, sexual perversion of children and pedophilia.

                         I realize that this may appear to be a non sequitur.

                         The reason being, that cops are the manifestation of delegation of force. Delegation from the force that is the natural right of men (and by that I mean humans, should any liberal nutjobs be reading this far). Natural right of men? Don’t we have a Constitution?

                         We’ve got a 9th amendment. That is where in the Constitution itself you find the power of policing implied. And, I cannot stress this enough, if the States are not doing the policing, then the people are.

                         Nobody wants this situation to occur. ESPECIALLY CRIMINALS.

                         Why?

                         Because ALL felonies would then immediately carry the death penalty.

                         Do you honestly think that a man who loves his mother, his sister if he has one, his wife, his daughters, is going to take the time to consider the nuances when one of his beloved comes to him with a story of rape? Or even one of his neighbors?

                         Let me put it plain to all an sundry: The rapist will die. Maybe quickly, maybe painfully and slow. But he WILL die.

                         Men whose business is anything but policing do not have the time nor the inclination to consider those nuances and legal niceties. When you have “community policing,” you don’t have jails. You have gibbets. You have guillotines. You have guns. And you have graves.

                         Without the protections of rule of law and policing, the chances that Polis really would have a sharpened stake introduced to his fundament increase sharply.

                         In a way, this explains why the libs are anti gun, as well. They want to have a monopoly on the use of force. Viz the “fiery but peaceful protests” vs the “worst insurrection since the Civil War.” But it is a thin tightrope they walk.

                         If they get rid of police before they have the monopoly on force, well… A lot of democrats will die.

                         To be clear, a lot of republicans and innocents will die, too. That sort of situation is a nasty one, and not something I’d like to see in these United States. And I very much agree with the rule of law, police, and those nuances that protect suspected criminals (who must be presumed innocent until proven guilty). Those are very good things.

                         I believe that there are a lot of people yet, both on the left and the right that underestimate the very protection they enjoy, all unknowing, not being subject to the vagaries that come when the last scraps of rule of law and monopoly of force fall to nothing.

                         1. The police, courts, and all the rest are there to protect the criminals from the people. What we used to do with blood feud, we now do with lawyers. It’s been less messy. Still, should the police, courts, and all the rest cease functioning, well, things might get messy.

                            The thing the vast majority of leftists lack more than anything else is imagination. They believe that things will go on more or less as they have no matter what they do. It comes down to narcissism and solipsism. Only their desires are real.

                            1. Yep, they seem completely unable to see the contradiction inherent in “We’re going to change everything, and everything will remain the same”. I sometimes wonder if they can actually think at all.

                         2. I think I recognize a recent Nick Rekieta rant here?

                            1. snaps That’s who I heard it from! For the life of me I couldn’t recall. I remembered listening to something like that, something about the Punisher? And some other youtuber? Anyway, epic rant that dovetailed with some other stuff I was thinking on.

                               dig dig dig Got it! at 2:46:00 here

                               Nick says it better than I did. Watch him instead of reading me. Much thanks for the reminder.

                      2. Honey, no. He’d enjoy it.

                         1. Even if we were to keep shoving until it came out of his mouth?

                            I know, I know, a man can dream.

                2. He never takes his meds.

                   1. Figures.

             2. Lol. Yes, please put Disneyland somewhere with potential altitude sickness and snow. That’ll be a great combo for a theme park.

                1. please put Disneyland somewhere with potential altitude sickness and snow.

                   –
                   I know! Right!

          3. Not only could it not be easily or cheaply moved somewhere else, where ELSE would it go? You’d need somewhere with similar weather as Orlando to keep the cash registers ringing year-round, so that pretty much limits them to the southern tier states.

             Can you IMAGINE trying to put a Disney-style complex in, say, Houghton, Michigan?

             Which brings up the next sticking point to trying to replicate / move WDW out of FL.
             It’d probably take DECADES to finally get past / around / block all the enviro-nuts / SJWs and the lawfare they’d bring to the table. Of course, it’d be entertaining to watch the left eating their own, because at the same time you’d have lefty pols pushing for the approvals to get Disney…

             1. before settling on Orlando, New Orleans East was considered for WDW, and as far as I recall, that was it. There really wasn’t anything suitable for the needs. Now NO East is proven to be not suitable (Katrina) even if TPTB at DisBiz are as corrupt and leftoid as much of the Lousyana and NOLA politicians that made Walt put the location as a far, far, far, second choice but the area really can’t handle the place.

             2. That’s the big issue-you’d need somewhere that had good, year-round weather, a reasonably good infrastructure, a reasonably good supply of workers, and a reasonably good amount of transportation options.

                That pretty much limits you to California, Florida, and maybe Georgia. Anywhere else is going to have issues with weather, infrastructure, and transportation.

                1. Mexico.

                   Insert absolutely insane regime change plan for making that viable somehow.

                   1. Possibly too hot in the summer and you’d have to probably flush the entire “aristocracy” down the drain to do it, along the suppression of the drug cartels in the proper Roman manner (i.e. leaving only the widows and orphans with their eyes to cry for the dead).

          4. The Reader will happily support any effort to plow under all of Disney World and let it revert to the Everglades. We can start next Earth Day. Florida’s economy will adapt.

    2. Oh. I see. We can excuse the fact that they are targeting children because the CEO is dealing with difficult people. And mostly because they have a ton of money so it’s okay because getting tax receipts is a greater good.

       This, folks, is exactly why we are here.

       Blood money used to be looked upon with horror.

       1. No, not at all, but it’s never just one thing. And, enough money can cover a multitude of sins…for a while. “For a while” is all the activist class thinks of, because they think that “later,” they can rewrite all of the history books.

          1. True it is never one thing. And money talks with a very loud voice.

             One would like to think that those who go after kids would not be allowed to save face.
             They shouldn’t HAVE faces left to save IMHO.

             There is a reason they have worked so very hard to clamp down on the internet. Once decent people know who they really ARE, the children will be protected.

             At least that is my hope.

             We can will see how this all shakes out. But they shouldn’t have gone after the kids if they wanted to keep their cushy situation.

             1. Also, Disney’s market model is in theory based upon telling children stories (which could have changed to young millennials and such, as the parks reach capacity and if you can’t get more paying guests…get guests that can pay more).

             2. That’s like saying they shouldn’t have been drinking expensive French wine if they wanted to enjoy yheir dinners. For a large part of them (maybe a majority, maybe not) sexually abusing children is an integral part of that “cushy situation”.

             3. The Accuser always goes after children.

                1. Very true. Also, Jews. You can generally* tell which regimes are evil, because they usually go after the Jews for one pretext or another. So when you see a political or cultural movement that starts scapegoating Jews for whatever it is this decade, it’s safe to say that the right side is the one that opposes that movement.

                   Some evil regimes in history haven’t gone after Jews, so it’s not a 100% reliable guide. But I can’t think of a single regime that went after the Jews that didn’t turn out to be evil, so there are only false negatives with this test, but no false positives.

                   1. Grr, WordPress messed up my formatting now with their pseudo-Markdown. There was supposed to be an asterisk before “Some evil regimes”, to mark that that was the footnote to “generally”.

       2. ……………did you read anything in that post?

    3. I want to see the Mouse fall like Goliath.

34. We need to leave the comfort of our well deserved lifestyle and confront the illness.
    Why would you apologize for an offense only exist in some inconsequential fool’s mind. Tell the “Good for you” and walk past.
    Stand up and say what the other decent folk are wishing they were brave enough to say.
    Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way!

35. Warrior John Ringo!
    THIS. This is the issue of our time. It’s also the question of our time: Do we have the will to fight and restore the Republic?

    One of my favorite scenes in My Fair Lady is when Eliza’s father comes to get his daughter from Henry Higgins’ house. Eventually, father tells Henry “I can’t afford your principles, Guv.” And makes a good case for having none of the genteel principles Henry lives by.
    Hilarious and true at the same time. Sterling Holloway was magnificent.

    1. The Al Bundy give them a tour of the house and then show them the door worked rather well too,.

36. Neca Eos omnes Deus suos agnoset.

37. I don’t take kindly to having my principles used against me by those who have none of their own. Murderers don’t get to lecture me on respect for life.Thugs don’t get to preach pacifism. Perverts don’t get to lecture me on sexual morality. Con men don’t get to preach integrity. The guy who yells at me at doesn’t get to preach temperance. Those who have no self-awareness don’t get any traction speaking of my insensitivity. They can talk all they want, but I’m not obliged to pay them any heed.

    “if you are stronger, then you refrain from beating me up, because that’s according to your principles. If I am stronger, then I beat you up because that’s according to mine.” No, thank you. Being principled does not mean consenting to abuse.

38. A tactic used is a usable tactic. This is the only way battlefield combatants have policed the behavior of their opponents over the last ten thousand years.The Principles! crowd need it fucking tattooed onto their fucking foreheads.

    Forcibly.

    Still waiting on sequels, John. 🙂

    1. TBF I’d pester him and Weber about Prince Roger, but I like my face intact.

    2. Do not poke the author.

39. I try to not underestimate the Left. They are scoundrels in the most classical sense. Unprincipled, dishonorable, and highly skilled sociopaths unencumbered by anything resembling a conscience. There are no useful principles that require I let a bunch of body-pierced, tattooed, pink-haired, gender confused, unprincipled twatwaffles run roughshod over me and mine.

40. Sadly, too many people are buying the leftist media lies. (I got this from a friend’s fb post)

    https://www.wftv.com/news/local/end-reedy-creek-disney-wont-pay-more-taxes-you-will/3TK6ASNJT5EXHICW3DQ3ZHEZYA/?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2kUG6mg8nRLOQF__zBvQjDNrXPBkpmOKQ5j25dlckU6zGsgza9SVS4ktk

    Instead of seeing that Disney should have stayed out of the whole mess, they blame the state government who are trying to protect the children.

41. Seems to me that principles are not too useful as a guide to behavior. Their best use is as a guide for deciding preferred outcomes.
    From there — depending on the battlefield — behavior should be guided by the best strategy for getting there. Sometimes a sweet smile, sometimes a club to the noggin.

42. “You will be made to care” is the new line. Frankly – No, I won’t be. No one can force me to care about their issues and regulations not only don’t create responsibility the response is a silent seething wrath. The bill always comes due and “we” are tired of paying it.

    Someone needs to tell the idiots to get over themselves.

    1. It’s the basic socialist mindset, which seems to correspnd to the mindset of a spoiled child:
       “This is good! Everybody ought to want to do this!”
       Some people disagree, and not only don’t do “this,” they make it clear they never will.
       “Then they ought to be MADE to do it!”
       If all they did was stamp their feet and cry, it would be one thing. But if they get power, they use it.

       1. Their idea of helping others is framed by their ideology of “all within the state, nothing outside, nothing against the state.: To them, it is only “help” if provided by the state and everyone supports the state in providing it. Of course since the state says what is being done is “good” everyone must be enthusiastic about it, and those who are not sufficiently enthusiastic are clearly “enemies of the state”.

          Never forget that the highest ranking Democrats in office have declared their political opponents and indeed all who disagree with them to be “enemies of the state”, Pelosi and others have used that specific phrase. THIS is their mindset.

    2. “You will be made to care”

       They don’t seem to realize that if I am “made to care” (as opposed to my preference of living my life as I see fit and allowing others to do the same) that my response is unlikely to be one that will make them happy.

       1. Amazing how “you will be made to care” translates, to them, as “you will be made to behave according to what I desire” rather than a simple “you will be forced to take note”. Because what they believe is just common sense, and if only you were educated, you’d believe the same.

43. Ringo only wrote three (admittedly fantastic) novels based on maple syrup and hollowed out asteroids, so I won’t quit my job and man the barricade just yet. Also no firearms, old, fat, and lazy; but if it does go sideways, I can cook and do first aid. Insert smile here.

    1. I know he wrote many more novels; but only three around maple syrup and hollowed out asteroids.

       1. I’ve been wanting more hollowed out asteroids and syrup…

          1. Me roo..

    2. The asteroids weren’t hollowed out so much as blown up like billion-ton nickel-iron balloons after being partially melted by a small-scale Sunbeam* apparatus.

       *Doc Smith’s original Sunbeam collected all of a star’s energy output and concentrated it into a directed energy weapon. John Ringo ‘only’ collected a fraction of a percent of the Sun’s energy, then used it for space industry and to incinerate enemy spaceships.

44. The John Birch Society (which I do love and revere because of their unshakeable belief in and advocacy for our Constitution AS WRITTEN as the only legitimate government, and their stalwart anti-communism) was purged because their leader, Robert Welch, called Eisenhower a communist in 1960.
    They weren’t purged because they were “icky”, they were purged because they had gone crazy. Comparing Buckley to NeverTrumps and the “muh princupuls” crowd is not a good comparison, because Ike wasn’t a communist. He fought the communist menace as President, and he did well.
    I agree with Ringo’s major point, that not fighting back using the same weapons your opponent does is unilateral surrender. The left will never accept objective standards of behavior and language until their failure to do so costs them votes, money, and power. Because they were the ones who rejected those first, they are going to have to embrace them publicly before we should consider doing so.
    I’m not going to hold my breath.

    1. Fighting back using the same weapons your opponent does may be a guaranteed path to defeat. If your opponent is clever he’ll know the vulnerabilities of those weapons and exploit them. Or your opponent may have weapons that simply aren’t available to you. If the enemy has air superiority then he gets to form up his tanks into large units; your large tank units just become bombing practice.

       One thing that’s often missing from an analysis of the “surrender caucus” is that this ideology on the Right developed in an environment where the Left had pretty much taken over the communications systems of the culture, and had completely taken over the serious communications of the culture. The Leftist media could and did destroy politicians that strayed too far from their political desires. The only exception was Reagan who used his media experience to out-communicate the Left. To use my analogy above, Reagan was able to set up a localized air defense system. Most politicians can’t spend decades making movies (especially conservatives in today’s Hollywood) so they had to adapt to the realities of the political world they found themselves in, and one of those realities is that you could only go so far right before you became unelectable.
       THAT is what motivates at least some of the never-Trump wing of the GOP. They’re absolutely certain that fighting out in the open like Trump and DeSantis are doing will get everyone bombed and make the Left stronger. They haven’t figured out yet (or refuse to believe) that the Left’s aircraft aren’t alone in the skies anymore, that the Right is contesting the narrative and we can occasionally create a space where we can muster enough force to fight back.

    2. Isn’t it better to seek more effective weapons than the ones your enemy is using? Particularly when your enemy is using lies.

45. “We’re Mariupol.”

    No. We aren’t Mariupol. We aren’t Asov using human shields. Neither are we Russians.

    We are the trapped among complacent sheep that are targeted for slaughter by TPTB to fulfill some stupid Satanic Lunatic Utopian Technocratic dream inscribed on the Georgia Guidestones.

    What is coming might be worse than the destruction in Mariupol. That city was built from brick, stone and steel, plus has Cold War bomb shelters and basements. Most of the US is built with sticks and the population was never supposed to survive any conflict, only the privileged few in their bunkers. We have always been the sacrifice.

    The dominoes have been set, the bonfire is doused with fuel, the food supply crippled, the economy ruined and the TPTB have aircraft awaiting to whisk them away from the masses, along with enough children to serve their “needs” to even more docile New Zealand.

    1. Speaking of traitors……

    2. I give you an 8/10 for being able to string sentences together without sounding like a computer. A 4/10 for metaphor, and a 2/10 for any understanding of reality. For a combined score of 4.7/10. I’ll round up this time just to be generous.

       1. What’s your reality?

          (The numeric score rebuttal? Please… that odorous schtick got real old back in the USENET days before the Green Card Spam. At least you didn’t REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE at me while sticking your fingers in your ears.)

          The current state of the world isn’t sunshine and butterfly kisses. I don’t like it. Way too dark and bitter.

          1. There’s a long distance between sunshine and butterfly kisses and the black pill doom you’re preaching. Things are bad. Yup. They’ve been bad before and we’re still here. Bless your heart. I’d almost feel sorry for you for having swallowed the despair hook line and sinker if you weren’t trying to spread that poison.

             Things are bad. But the options are fight and build or curl up and die. Things aren’t ‘curl up and die’ bad. So quit talking like they are.

             1. Thanks for using your words! So much better than a throwaway piece of snark. Let’s address the issues and black pills.

                Ringo stated “We are Mariupol”.

                We are nowhere the Mariupol state of destruction. I’ve been in multiple cities that have been hit by large tornadoes that look better than Mariupol. (Considering Mariupol isn’t made of sticks like most US housing.)

                Also the Ukraine conflict isn’t black and white on the large scale. It’s a fight funded by two sets of mobsters, US and Russian, with millions and possibly billions of lives at stake. You can’t look at two demons fighting and pick one of them to idolize. You just hope they don’t burn the house down.

                A questioning of the media and a deep critical dive into the history of the last 20 or 30 years of the history of the region might help the discussion. A more realistic version of the truth is available than the MSM and the current US military “leadership” pitch, but it requires effort and you will have more questions than when you started.

                And the continued belief in the media by the masses, even though the media has been proven wrong about all big issues in the last 40 years has lead to this wonderful world. The masses don’t vote, don’t fight, and will not act until they are near starving.

                As for the possible overall outlook, it is grim. Think Greater Depression grim. If people don’t understand the possibilities, they can’t prep for them. Without preparation, especially mentally and spiritually, they will die or worse.

                I’m prepared to fight. I’m prepared to die. I’ve spread the Word. I’ve helped people. I’ve fought a corrupt City Hall and won a few times.

                What tears at my soul is the higher probability that I will probably have to kill in the near future just to survive and protect my family. I hate TPTB and despise the apathetic sheep for creating this situation.

                We are not Mariupol. We are USA, 1860. May God have mercy on our souls.

                1. I gave your initial post exactly the respect it deserved. None.

                   Your position in your first post was that we were doomed. Full stop. Caught up with lambs to the slaughter. Such a position is only worthy of being mocked and derided for the suicidal idiocy it is.

                   Now that you have been mocked and mocked in return you move the goal posts, saying you totally didn’t mean what you said.

                   Ukraine: this goes back at least 1000 years to when there were 100 or so ‘Rus’ and Kiev was Tsar. Putin is starting with old soviet territories, but he’ll keep going until stopped. Just because a big gang takes over the territory of an annoying small gang doesn’t mean you ignore the fight. (No, I don’t think we should intervene, but we should just be paying attention. ) but what do I know? Russia was just my specialty when I was in the army.

                   You dispise the sheep and the powers that be. Yet you pedal the same black pill bullshit that the powers that be are using to keep the sheep from realizing they’re wolves.

                   You don’t see reactions. I do. People are putting up less and less with the bull. Ammo sales are up across the board. The people who are doing just aren’t talking about it. They’re doing, which is far more powerful. This isn’t 1860. There are echoes from history, but it isn’t the same.

                   1. Wow! An appeal to authority and a lecture. Did you think you were telling something I already didn’t know about European history?

                      Would you like a detailed review on US government corruption over the last 100 years especially the last 3 decades involving Ukraine including coups and massacres? Let’s start the discussion with Major General Smedley Darlington Butler’s book. We can talk about how the Roosevelt administration gave most of the materials and information to the Soviets to build the A-bomb. How LBJ won by election fraud just like Brandon did. I’ll exclude how the Great Pyramid was built, that’s too far back in time and not fully explainable by authorities, but we could include additional examples of human nature.

                      Who is the “we” that should intervene in Ukraine? We the People? Maybe “we” is the powerful elite in control of the government that is making the world wide situation worse? Why do you still identify with that “we” and still defend the actions of that “we”? Why do you have any loyalty to or trust in any branch of government after the events of the last 2 years? You may have sworn an oath like myself, but in case of fraud, all agreements are invalid.

                      Reactions? I see some reactions in a small minority. A few more scared people bought some guns. Wiser people are prepping more. More gardening. Some involvement by pissed off parents. Truck parades. Voter participation is still low. I’m one of those analyst that audits voter registrations and election results so I can tell you with accuracy how apathetic the masses are. It’s single or low double digit percentages in most non-presidential elections. And the election fraud on the blue team was above 20% in 2020 thanks to “we” the elite.

                      It’s not a black pill if SHTF is actually in progress. Let’s look at inflation and the crash of the petrol dollar. Or energy. Or the food supply. Or the invasion on the southern border. Or the medical tyranny that still threatens us. Or the potential of nuclear war between the gangsters. Oops, there goes the savings and 401k!

                      The food shortage is going to be bad very soon due to fuel prices, lack of fertilizer and other interference by governments. So unless you can convince more of the masses to wake up in the next 3 months or so, We the People are going to have a very bad time at the hands of “we” the elite.

                      1. Having produced a few, I’ve found that long rants and arguments in comments sections are a good sign that I’ve got it at least somewhat wrong. Things are seldom as good or bad as we make them out to be.

                      2. You know, it’s dangerous to do this kind of beatdown when you have no idea what the other person does for a living. For those who’ve been around for a while this just looks silly.

                   2. Sigh. Putin is ALREADY making noises towards FINLAND of all places. Seriously.

                      1. Because that worked so very well for them last time. sighs This history may echo more clearly than some history.

                         1. Right? Putin might be a moron. A moron with hubris.

                            1. The amazing stupidity of attacking Ukraine in the -spring- makes me wonder if Putin had to go NOW or he’d never be able to go at all. Him eyeing the Finns for conquest while mired (literally) in Ukraine makes me wonder the same thing.

                               Cancer? Liver failure? ALS? One wonders…

                      2. Agreed. Especially if the Finns have kept up with their marksmanship.

                         We would be better off sending anti-air and anti-tank missiles there, Finland would be less likely to steal them and sell them on the black market.

                         1. I wouldn’t actually bet on that. Remember they’re governed by socialists.

                            1. They aren’t as corrupt as Ukraine, nor are they as PC stupid as Sweden, aka “I wonder what’s causing the crime problem that’s so bad, that female Ukrainian refugees don’t want to come here…”

                            2. I don’t know. I have friends there. Imagine a mix.

                         2. The Reader suspects that the Finns have plenty of both. And the Swedes, who also have plenty of both would gladly ship them east at need.

                      3. His writing sounds in my head like David Hogg.

                      4. The Finns would just wun another century’s worth of biathlon medals

                         ________________________________

                2. Also the Ukraine conflict isn’t black and white on the large scale. It’s a fight funded by two sets of mobsters, US and Russian, with millions and possibly billions of lives at stake. You can’t look at two demons fighting and pick one of them to idolize. You just hope they don’t burn the house down.

                   Actually, the large scale is where it becomes black and white. Corruption is endemic in humanity, so pointing out that both governments are corrupt is not really new information. And even the corrupt have rights, so pointing out that both governments are corrupt is just an ad hominem.

                   What is black and white is the international norm that major nations don’t just invade other nations unprovoked. That norm was established after WWII because the whole bloody mess that was the first half of the 20th century started with reckless invasions. The whole point of the norm that Putin threw away was to keep the house from burning down. What’s happening to Muscovy should have happened after the invasion of Crimea, but the European Smart(just ask them) Set, which includes Barry the Simple, figured that the strongman would be nice once we had signed over Sudetenland Crimea.

    3. I’ve flushed better. Moo.

    4. I will note at this time that the usual camels and bot-farmers have noted Mr. Ringo has spoken. No surprise that the doom-sayers and concern trolls have popped up.

       Back under you bridge.

46. Amen, Mr Ringo. Amen.

47. utoh, someone riled John.

    1. That’s okay, he’s riled enough people.

48. To be fa-arh as they say on Letter Kenny, William Buckley went toe to toe with the liberals of his day and with a combination of dry wit and vastly superior debate skill and encyclopedic knowledge totally wiped the floor with them over and over. They went crazy later, but I do not see laying that at Buckley’s feet.

49. For the most part, SD governor Kristi Noem gets it:

    

    1. If I wasn’t currently banned on Twits and Farcebark, I’d respond with ” #LearnToCode and # LearnToMineCoal “.

       1. How about ‘Learn to bit twiddle’ and ‘Learn to dig proto diamonds’?

    2. Does she really? She refused to ban transgender activists in sports in SD.
       Going to be honest, I think the only reason this woman has a career at all is because she’s attractive. Easy to sell an attractive woman, but I don’t think she has any ideas and will do whatever her donors tell her.

       1. Agree. She’s where she is because she has big tatas, is pretty, and talks a good game. She’s been a disappointment, at least looking at thing from the outside.

50. Yes, John – hiding behind “principles” is a BAD THING (R); OTOH, most of the objectionable (aka evil) activity you cite is also a violation of principles: Honesty, civic duty, etc.
    Maybe the real solution is to correctly choose which principles you’re willing to fight for, rather than disparaging principles per se?
    I’ve often found you can’t get rid of a behavior that seemingly benefits people until you can propose a better behavior with a bigger payoff… e.g. honest self-respect is actually worth quite a lot.

    1. I don;t think he actually disparaged principles; he said to not let them keep you from fighting your blood enemies for your very survival, social, financial -or- physical.

    2. He’s speaking of principles used as excuses not to oppose leftists.

    3. Another idiot with poor reading skills arrives from the den of the camel.

       Okay groomer.

       1. Oh. Is it from the Camel?

          1. I have no proof, but the camel didst flop and they are stupid, so it seems a reasonable suspicion.

51. First principle: Do Not Lose the nation.

52. The only thing I disagree with in this article is the notion that the e-GOP has principles. As far as I can tell, the only thing the conservative establishment cares to “conserve” is their own seat at the hog trough. “Principles” as such went out the door a long time back. Which is why I’m nowadays reluctant to call myself a conservative.

    I used to flirt with Libertarianism, but the Libertarians have amply demonstrated that the only thing they seem to really care about is legal weed. Otherwise, too many of them side with the culture warriors of the Left.

    When your political opposition openly declares their hatred for you and their wish to see you dead, there’s not really any room for compromise, is there? Certainly not after they’ve seized control of every one of America’s institutions and turned them against the people, including big business. They are the fascists they repeatedly warned us about.

    So, Genghis Khan it is.

    I commented on Brad Torgersen’s FB page the other day that Disney needed to be (metaphorically, at least) burned to the ground, the ashes plowed into the dirt, the earth sown with salt and a pyramid of their skulls built in the middle of the empty lot as a warning to the next ten generations. Like Vir’s warning to Morden on Babylon 5, but with a pyramid of skulls instead of a simple head on a pike. If nothing else, it would be a clear warning to any other major media corporation – and big business in general – of the perils of allying themselves with Big Leftist Government to impose an ideology most Americans find abhorrent.

53. John Derbyshire calls it “Midwestern nice.” It will be the ruination of us all.

    1. Until you get to Midwestern Nasty. Then… Katie KNOWS what do with the door, she do.

54. The libsoftiktok lady needs to dox that reporter–put up that video of the reporter crying about how hard it is to be chased and hounded, right alongside the picture of the reporter at her aunt’s house.

    1. Aye. And when the tears start, have a mug ready!

    2. She put up the video from an interview a few weeks ago of person crying about online harassment and also a clip from a relative’s house… I think that counts.

55. One of the hardest problems in fighting a war is keeping the outside parties on your side, or at least not on your enemy’s side. This is something Americans are generally good at, look at Lafayette and keeping the British out of the Civil War, while the Germans and Russians are generally bad at it (the Germans disastrously so).

    In our current conflict between the Right and the Left those outside parties are the apolitical middle, the people who don’t pay any attention at all outside of election years, and only a little attention until around September of Presidential years. While it’s important that we do fight back, we need to do it in a way that doesn’t alienate that large bloc of potential voters. That was one of the biggest failings of Trump and why 2020 was close enough for them to steal. DeSantis seems to be much better at that, though he has the benefit of the Left doing everything they can to alienate normal people. You don’t have to work very hard to look better than people who want to talk to 8-year olds about sex.

    We need to fight back, but we need to be smart about it. Ted Cruz disappointed me recently when he was asked a question by a college student about his “racist” questioning of Judge Brown during her confirmation hearing. I don’t remember his response, but the correct one would have been “How was my questioning racist? Be specific.” and force her to either admit that any questioning of Black Democrat candidates is inherently racist or that she just called it racist because she didn’t like it.

    1. You always put these things better than I can.

56. When Trump won, I asked a ‘principled independent’ on one of the gun blogs what Trump could do to get him onside. When he returned a laundry list of 2A goals that he wanted Trump to do, I pointed out that every one was within Congress’s- not the President’s- power to grant. I then asked him exactly how much progress his chosen Congressmen had made on his list… even on only one item? Even though the supposedly “pro gun” party had held both houses of congress for a number of terms, and also had the White House at the same time for at least a few of them?
    He had no answer.
    Thus with health care, border security, justice, and et cetera ad nauseum.
    In practical terms, the only real principle that “principled” conservatives/ Republicans hold is that it’s okay for the caucus to fail its constituents and either acquiesce to their opponents or actively conspire against them.
    The thing that Trump did that got the establishment GOP to assist the Democrats in a coup against him (and how’s THAT for “principled behavior”) was that he showed the Republican voter base that they could- and should- expect more of a return on their votes than the principled failure they had been getting. He will never be forgiven for that.

    1. Note that the last time the Republicans controlled the Senate was 1923.

       1. Is that sarcasm, is that reference to the number of “principled “ Republicans who vote with the Democrats a la McCain, or are you confused? The Republicans were in the majority in the Senate for about half of the past 40 years, including 14 where they had both the House and Senate and 6 where the president was also a Republican.
          They also had a majority in both houses until ‘33, and in the senate for single cycles in the late ‘40s and mid ‘50s.

          1. You need more than a majority to control the Senate. Without 60 votes you can’t get anything passed unless members of the other party vote for it.

             1. And the dems stick together, like other criminal syndicates.

                1. And the right refuses to paint all dems with the same brush the way they paint the right.

                   Although I have enjoyed using the term “Ok Groomer” quite liberally recently.

                   It hits the target with the truth and is easier to say than Satanic Lunatic Utopian Technocratic or S.L.U.T. It reveals their true inner demons and verifies the slippery slope they were pushing starting with gay marriage.

                   1. I’ll be using on you presently.

57. Ceterum autem censeo Sinistrum esse delendam

58. When I run into a never-Trumper, I’m reminded of what Abraham Lincoln told some prisses who wanted him to get rid of General Grant for being uncouth. “I can’t spare this man. He fights.”

    As for Disney, I wonder what would happen if people who dislike this woke nonsense got together, bought up Disney stock…and sent their proxies to someone whom they could trust to fight the Woke at the next stockholders’ meeting? That tactic was originally proposed, if I’m not mistaken, by Saul Alinsky. While I dislike all that Saul Alinsky stood for, I’m not above stealing his ideas and using them.

    1. That’s what the Left has been doing with their ESG movement. It sounds like the Right is just starting to counter it.

59. Pingback: PRINCIPLES ARE A GRAND THING – Association for a Responsible Future
60. Pingback: PRINCIPLES ARE A GRAND THING on GOP strategy – Glendale Burbank/Crescenta Valley Republican Assembly

61. We all need to become Rooftop Koreans.

    1. At least in the culture wars, some of us already are 😉

62. Huzzah for John Ringo! I’ve been thinking I’ve needed a Ringo fix for a while. 😉

    Over at Instapundit, Sarah plugged a couple of your books (which I already have) and reminded us not to poke the writer. So, I’m not going to poke you, but I will say that I’m looking forward to anything you have in process, that I will wait patiently for it, and that I’ll send some encouraging and thankful prayers your way.

    Hope you and yours are well, John – you’ve got a lot of people (including myself) who really appreciate you. Blessings!

63. “So why doesn’t the Right (metaphorically) kill people who disrespect their leadership? Why do the bureaucrats and businesses think they can screw over the Right but not the Left?”

    Pretty simple, John, and you know why:

    At the end of the day, the Left will organize a mob to obstruct or burn down your business, beat you to a pulp, or even kill you. The Right will not. The examples are literally endless.

    And we now have several generations who have been indoctrinated with the belief that the ability to tan or mental illness justifies that behavior in the name of “social justice”.

    1. @ snelson > “At the end of the day, the Left will organize a mob to obstruct or burn down your business, beat you to a pulp, or even kill you. The Right will not.”

       Back a few years now, Hugh Hewitt was interviewing some pundit who cultivated a reputation as a hard-hitting iconoclast, and challenged him because he never said anything negative about Islam (post 9/11 of course), but was pretty brutal in dissing Christians in general and LDS in particular (back when we thought Romney was a conservative), and wasn’t that hypocritical?
       The man replied, “Well, when I say bad things about Mormons, they bring me cookies.”

       1. Penn and Teller admitted that Christians generally politely argued, offered to pray for them and were generally good to them. And that’s why they went after Christians more than Muslims – the Muslims would hurt them.

          1. I remember Penn responding to someone criticizing him for not stopping a Christian who was praying for him. Penn said something to the effect that the Christian believed that Penn not believing imperiled Penn’s immortal soul and how much would you have to hate a man to not pray for his conversion if that’s what you believed.

             I’m sure I have the details wrong, but the notion of how much would one have to hate has stuck with me.

    2. At the end of the day, the Left will organize a mob to obstruct or burn down your business, beat you to a pulp, or even kill you.

       –
       Which is one of the many reasons it should be legal to shoot the mob when they come for you. If the cops can stop the mob, great. If they can’t — or won’t — you have the right to do it yourself. A right the Democrats are determined to take from us.
       ———————————
       If you call 9-1-1 and tell them that somebody with a gun is breaking into your house, they will send two cops in 10 or 15 minutes. If you tell them that somebody is breaking into your house and YOU have a gun, they will send 10 or 15 cops in two minutes.

       1. “you have the right to do it yourself.”

          And in Blue jurisdictions, be arrested and expensively prosecuted. There’s a reason I referred to the Rittenhouse verdict as a minor miracle…. and most people don’t have voluntary legal talent.

          1. Of course. That is one of the ways they’re trying to take our Constitutional rights from us — by punishing us when we use those rights.
             ———————————
             When police arrest violent criminals to protect innocent people, they are Jackbooted Fascist Stormtroopers.

             When police arrest innocent people at the behest of corrupt politicians, they are National Heroes.

             1. I loved the calls for carrying a gun to mean you legally forfeit the right to self-defense. God forfend you should be able to exercise your right. . . .

    3. This doesn’t happen by accident. The Left has a wealthy donor class that enables this behavior. BLM & Antifa rioters get their bail paid by Soros et.al. If they ever actually go to trial, charges are dismessed or they get a slap on the wrist. This despite the fact that these are often repeat-offenders who everyone knows will go on to commit more crimes.

       In the end days of the Roman Republic, various different power groups used street gangs to vie for power since it was forbidden to bring the army into the city itself. One of these guys was actually infamous for pretending to be a woman in order to rape women in women-only spaces, too. History repeats itself. In modern-day America, only the bad guys are supporting street gangs. If you are a Kyle Rittenhouse, you have to go through hell just for defending your own life.

       This is because the “Republican” party & the PRINCIPLES crowd is fake opposition.

64. The John Birch Society was besmirched by the GOP because they were, and still today; are armed with the truth, lots of it, in print, to help you educate conservatives. Help them …. jbs.org. And/or …. check out G. Edward Griffin’s group …. freedomforceinternational.org.
    Jonathon Turley, another conservative pretender, wrote an article posted today criticizing the attempt to remove Marjorie Taylor Green from the Georgia ballot. Yet, he uses his platform to denounce MJT’s “inflammatory rhetoric and extreme views”. The woman only tells the truth, all of it. The RNC is wholly on board with the ultimate evil purposes of the left. I was told to my face by a leader in a rural county GOP group in Georgia…. “We have to follow the direction of the CFR”. MTG in Georgia, Chip Roy TX, Paul Gosar AZ, Thomas Massie KY and about 40 other Republicans in the House are targeted by the DNC and RNC for removal due to their unwillingness to go along with the Marxist takeover of planet earth. George Soros funds all of these efforts. Orwell was right …. “Truth is treason in an empire of lies”. Help these brave patriots.

    1. MTG is the Jewish space lasers lady, right? She is nutty, but endearingly so

       ________________________________

       1. Israel literally has long-distance laser weaponry, so not very far-fetched.

          Joking. I’m not sure the origin of the meme, but it really is not helpful in any way to repeat Leftist-originating smears against people who are definitely on our side. If you’re repeating pointless smears (as opposed to say, observing evidence-based reasons MTG might be compromised for XYZ reason) then you’re obviously not operating on the same team.

          1. Sure dude, let’s go with that ((yawn))

             ________________________________

65. Going forward, our first response should be our teeth in their throat. When the other side finally remembers civility, I’d be happy to return the favor.

66. Pingback: One year ago,,, | Dio's Workshop

67. AND?
    What’s next? How do we break out of our bunkers and drive the enemy from their commanding heights?
    Didn’t hear what the plan is. Sure didn’t hear who’s going to organize and lead it.

    How about this?
    RED. STATE. SECESSION.
    That’s a focused breakout from Dien Ben Phu. You pick your direction, concentrate, blast through and regroup on terrain more favorable to you.
    None of you have the nerve.
    That’s why we’re going to lose.

    Prove me wrong.

    1. We’re already doing it. And your bullshit makes no sense.

    2. “you’re pussies unless you follow my super-secret plan” is not a new thing around here.
       We’ve answered it many times before.
       The main answer is “you first.”

    3. It looks like we’re establishing a sanctuary of sorts in Florida. Of course, the Leftroids are screeching hysterically about it, but sanity is making progress without any hint of secession.

       Of course such impertinence can’t be allowed. The federal government will try to beat Florida down but unlike the last dispute between state and federal authority, the states are not supporting a distasteful and evil practice like slavery. This time the federal government supports preaching racism and hate in the name of ‘tolerance’ and indoctrinating 6 year olds in sexual deviance. The enemy is being exposed for what they are.
       ———————————
       There is but one greater sin than to be right when those in power are wrong — proving it.

    4. Which three letter agency do you work for?

       1. The flavor of nitwittery kinda makes me suspect SVR.

          1. ?
             I assumed FBI. They glow in the dark, you know?

       2. You just took the words from my typing fingers.
          “FBI much, bro?”

    5. Easily.

       The reason why the Democrats lost their attempt at succession during the 1st ACW, was their utter strategic genius, sarcastically speaking.

       Sherman had the right analysis there.

       Suppose Lee somehow wins enough for Davis to compel Lincoln to terms. Then what?

       Harper’s Ferry and Bleeding Kansas had already occurred without substantial support or incitement by Lincoln or the Federals. Adding on a mobilization and fighting would not have calmed feelings, and in fact did not. Action continued for decades after the formal close of the ACW, but many folks were comfortable pretending it simple banditry.

       If succession had been formally recognized, those heated feelings would have continued in the form of further successions, to avoid the terms of the peace, and formal civil war would have become endemic.

       Add on to that strategic dipshittery that the Confederates had sold off a vast stock of Cotton to fund the war, and that this allowed the British Empire to replace Southern Cotton with Cotton grown in Egypt and India. The South would have been impoverished after the war, even supposing a Confederate ‘victory’. Which would have really screwed them over when it comes to rematches.

       This ‘strategy’ has very similar fundamental problems to what it had then.

       Democrats are fundamentally in an apparently weak position. THey seem to be wholly reliant on fraud in order to have any electoral success at all.

       Letting them have blue states a) leaves them a power base that they can otherwise be removed from b) is unjust to the people in blue states who have had their ability to select even Establishment/Vichy Republicans stolen from them, and who do not deserve what the Democrats do to them c) very much fails to secure any form of peace even for residents of Red states.

       If the Democrats have /any/ access to nukes or other bombs, they will use them on us. If we separate, the fighting will simply continue using the inventories that they have access to, even in blue states.

       If we can not live together, we also cannot live separately.

       1. No.
          The South lost the Civil War because of a lack of industrial capacity to supply a war machine and a lack of population to send into the meat grinder at the same or higher levels than the North did.
          Things have changed.
          A Red State Secession means all the nukes fall into our hands. So does at least 80% of the military – more if you count ex-military. It will turn into something quite similar to Kurt Schlichter’s treatment of the topic in his book series.
          The Wokeists/Progressives are the willing minions/cannon fodder/useful idiots/pawns of those who genuinely control all the levers of power – a cabal of Wall Street and Davos financiers who believe they can own and control Western Civilization and, by extension, the entire globe. This cabal already owns most of the conventional and digital media, completely owns the dhimmicrat party and its equivalents in Europe, and provides all the funding and support for ghazis/shock troops/irregulars/brownshirts/fascie nere etc such as BLM and Antifa, the latter of which is all across Europe.
          The next step they will take is to squeeze the US Military rank and file to force out all those who still think in old terms – loyalty to and love of country, subservience to civil authority, citizen-composed army, respect for individual rights, etc – and substitute them with illegal immigrants, with a special focus on 18-30 y.o. illegals that have criminal records. This will happen in Europe as well. Once this is done, the American armed forces will turn into a mercenary legion. They won’t have the same high training standards, but they’ll be an army nevertheless, with all the guns and cannons and tanks and aircraft, and they’ll be loyal EXCLUSIVELY to their paymasters, who will use them as a blunt instrument of genocide, intimidation, subjugation, oppression, security and control.
          If we don’t secede, that’s what’s coming over the next decade.
          Anyone who is such a blithering idiot as to think that we can just vote for our preferences and everything will work out is as delusional as the wokeists. You have to be willfully blind not to see the grotesque ballot box stuffing chicanery that happened in 2020, and it’s going to be much, much worse in 2022 and 2024 – in fact, it’ll be quite brazen and out in the open.
          You can’t depend on the GOP – they’re in on it. Just observe the Chicago model of politics, which extended itself across all of Illinois. The Daley political machine/apparatus took control of government thru patronage and graft, and the illinois republicans happily embraced it as junior partners who got to participate in the corruption without having to carry the burden of exercising and maintaining power. They were content to go along for the ride. THAT’S what the GOP is today on a nationwide basis.
          If, by some genuine, bona-fide, biblical, burning bush, voice from the sky accompanied by rolling thunder miracle the Left can’t even get its own minions to stuff the ballot boxes in 2022 to levels that will overcome the obvious tsunami that is headed their way and the GOP manages to win some sort of majority in one or both houses, you can rest assured that everything they do with that majority over the next two years will be empty gestures that do NOTHING to impair or reduce the Deep State or upset the cozy relationship they have with their colleagues/senior partners across the aisle. And if, by an even greater miracle, Trump was to win in 2024, he’ll get ZERO help from the GOP in doing exactly what he needs to do – namely, cut the federal budget and payroll by 90%.
          If we don’t secede, it’s over.

          1. Your view of history is specious Fed

          2. Dude, whatever you are on, I want some…

             ________________________________

             1. I do not.

                Perhaps I could have stood to spell out my argument more clearly.

                The fundamental, foreseeable mistake, from which all else flowed, was the Democrat decision to bet on succession and violence, instead of committing to a different decision (which commitment might have needed different information from what they had, in fairness).

                That feels pretty intuitively in line with what I said.

                Of course, I take that conclusion through a bunch of different steps wrt to the current probable conflict, to conclude that ‘succession’ is unnecessarily throwing away advantage to pick a harder, longer and more bloody fight. That may be a lot of hang on ‘straghtforwardly obvious’ when it comes to trying to persuade people.

                Still, whatever he did to make his mind that broken, I think I want no part of it.

                1. Bob, stop mocking the poor FBI dude with facts. You’re in a battle of wits with an unarmed man here. It’s like watching somebody shoot fish in a barrel. ~:D

    6. RED. STATE. SECESSION.

       That’s cute. Now suppose, just suppose (not claiming it, but stipulating for arguments sake) someone really were planning some kind of “direct action”. Does the word “opsec” have no meaning to you? Do you think it means nothing to the millions of military veterans on the “right” (folk like the author of the OP)? Do you think they’d tell you, on an open forum, what those plans are.

       Perhaps you’re just used to dealing with small groups of stupid pathetic losers like the Klan and various Neo-Nazi groups. (Old joke, I originally heard from a Korean-American commedienne: “People say it’s not the heat but the humidity, well with racism, it’s not the hate it’s the stupidity.”)

       So, go peddle your entrapment elsewhere, Fed.

       1. At least Fed the Fred used to be decent.

       2. Smell my bunghole.
          I meant every word I said.
          Cute of you to accuse me of being a ‘nazi kkk’ type. Nothing like a spurious slur/character assassination to neutralize a legitimate argument, right, son?
          If anyone here is a Fed/Deep Stater, it’s you, baby cakes.

          Guess it was pointless to post here.
          Arguing on the internet is a foolish thing to do – it only creates a record that a Secret Police can find and use against you later. Which is clearly what’s going to happen. The fight is already over.

          Goodbye.

          1. And to make sure it’s an absolute goodbye, this charming specimen of humanity is banned.

             1. Thank you.

             2. Russian IP?

                ________________________________

                1. I haven’t checked. weird day.

             3. Thanks. He went from “screeching” to “rabidly foaming and telegraphing” in about ten seconds there. That’s impressive.

                As in impressively stupid and incoherent.

                1. Yep. I think we didn’t react the way he expected us to.

                   1. “Arguing on the internet is stupid and makes a record for inevitable secret police” from the guy who said “who is leading it and what are they/you doing” is certainly an interesting way to show coherence, competence, and intelligence.

          2. Oh, incidentally, if he HAD a legitimate argument, he sure was hiding it behind his bluster

          3. If your reading comprehension is that weak, then, yeah, it is probably pointless for you to point here.

             You haven’t made an argument. Diatribes are not argument.

             As for arguing on the internet: Internet argument is a spectator sport. You can’t convince the true believer on the other side. They’re not the target. Instead, they provide an opportunity to lay out your arguments for others, who have not solidified irretrievably to one side or the other. Secondary effect is to demonstrate to those on your own side that they are not alone.

             it only creates a record that a Secret Police can find and use against you later

             And yet, you come here demanding people tell you what the plan is. Overplayed your hand a bit here, didn’t you, Fed?

             As a flounce, I give this about a 3.0 on a 6 point scale. Strictly average.

             1. As a flounce, I give this about a 3.0 on a 6 point scale. Strictly average.

                You’re being generous.

             2. Regarding Internet arguments, the classic comment in Usenet newsgroups was/is “It’s for the lurkers”. Essentially identical to what you noted, fewer words. 🙂

          4. I’m not sure why you think calling ugly names will cause us to change our minds.

    7. “Prove me wrong.”

       Uh, Civil War? Didn’t go well.

       Quebec separatism? Didn’t go well.

       Just sayin’.

       1. Also, you all realize the ACW is a discouraged topic, right? 😀

          1. I actually did not know that, it isn’t one of my hobby horses. File for future reference.

             The troll invasion is from the camel. John Ringo dared speak, and the camel’s sock-puppet herd is outraged. This is called “living rent-free in their heads forever more.”

             1. Interesting. I don’t care about the camel. His following is as minuscule as his penis. Which is why he must howl.

                1. I must say he certainly cares about you, Sarah. ~:D Most of his traffic comes from outrage-scrolling your blog and Larry’s. It was an outrage, simply an outrage I tell you, that John Ringo said… well I’m not sure there was a -specific- complaint really, more a general bleating and huffy ‘how dare you!’ sort of thing.

                   He’s also quite put out that no one has noticed/mentioned his writings on the puppy-pocalypse except other obsessed weenies like the Chinese bot farmer. They hate us a lot more for having moved on so easily than they did at the time for speaking up. I think the lack of respect for their skin-suit really pisses them off.

                   1. He really hasn’t got a lot going on in his life, does he?

                      ________________________________

                2. I will not ask how you know his penis size. I WILL, however, ask “Who’s the camel and what’s his deal?”

                   1. I’m assuming it’s small because he crows so very loudly. And that’s bad for a camel.
                      Oh, He’s an aussie who thinks SP stole his wife/husband/whatevs’s Hugo, which s/h/it would surely have won otherwise for…. being gender fluid and being able to write semi-coherent sentences. (But only semi.)

             2. Is this the camel with toes?

                1. No, it’s the camel flop.

                2. Yes, the flopping one. I check periodically to see who he’s lying about. He’s gotten quite pitiful lately. Plague, war and famine rage, and he’s still yammering about fan stuff that happened six years ago. Doing what it takes for clicks, I guess.

                   Funny that separatism sock-puppets seem to lurk his site. Not what I would have expected.

                   1. I see that his post about Ringo posting here got a huge number of comments. 66.

                      Our hostess gets more than that on a bad day.

68. Even this is too nice. Over on American Digest, the latest motto is “Para eliminar el rabia, hay que matar el perro.”

    1. Damn, but Gurgle Translate is getting a workout today! (Never took Latin; color me a barbarian.)

69. Anyway, some of the analyses of when and how the Republican party went wrong have maybe missed some context.

    Compared to the modern Vichy/Establishment Republicans, the Radical Republicans of immediately post war had the right idea. They understood more or less that the Democratic Party was something of a criminal conspiracy, and a threat to civil order.

    Does that mean I believe that the Radical Republicans ‘did nothing wrong?’ No.

    I have four narratives to tell about the end of Reconstruction, which serve points that I am arguing.

    One is that the Democrats sponsored political assassinations, then gave refuge to at least one of the murderers at a Democrat political event, portrayed the Republican/Federal raid as being directed at suppression of opposition political activity, and then rode that propaganda into a temporary political victory, which they thereafter secured with corruption, fraud, and political terrorism.

    Two, Mugwumps stabbed the Radical Republicans in the back.

    Three, Republicans foresaw that the advantage they possessed after ACW were dubiously compatible with good governance in the future, and for the good of the Republic restructured to something a bit more viable long term.

    Four, folks thought Reconstruction was a good idea at first, but then saw actual abuses, and lost their willingness to put as much support into it, so the coalition crumbled.

    Anyway, there was some sort of fundamental shift in the Republican Party in the late nineteenth century. Radical Republican policies were not long sustained, and the Republicans after were clearly more moderate, more willing to make concessions to the Democrats, because the Democrats were still willing to escalate to violence, and letting them pull off the frauds bought a measure of peace.

    Now, some of the moderns, a few black ‘scholars’ among, have concluded that that those concessions were wrong, ‘systemic racism’, etc. But, the Democrats then had enough fraud to almost cheat and finagle Tilden in, and could have caused a lot more trouble with the potential army that they did have. You can still say that it was morally the wrong decision, but those Moderate Republicans did perhaps have a philosophy to their decisions.

    Which brings us forward to Wilson and to FDR. Who were tyrants. You could quibble about the timing, but they tried to form a secret police, etc. Their personal efforts very likely had something to do with the transition from the Moderate Republicans to the Vichy Republicans. I tend to put the timing of this transition somewhere around WWII.

    From the thirties to the seventies, in line with the broader political fads, Republicans were much too fond of technocracy, strong central governments, and perhaps also totalitarianism. Calling Ike a communist was perhaps a defensible interpretation.

    Certainly, while wrong about the Communists, the John Birchers seem to have been least wrong of all such schools of thought at the time. “John Birchers had gone insane” feels to me like a narrative that would be used, if Buckley had in fact corruptly worked to discredit them. Buckley’s ‘conservative ideology’, in hindsight, seems far too technocratic, too intellectual, too ‘theory as seen by a theory obsessive’.

    1. Yes, but the after war republicans were “progressives” aka big state authoritarians. So, you know, yit’s nt that simple.

       1. And you have to toss in a Supreme Court that was, well, seemed intent on straining gnats while swallowing camels. Maybe. My Con-History grad class was more biased than I realized at the time. Very, very useful and taught by an amazingly good legal history prof, but biased.

    2. I’d go with four, plus people getting plain tired of Reconstruction. We’re just not good at long-term conquest. (And if you want evidence we did fairly well, I’m a native Southerner and I just said, “we.”).

       1. Yeah, I forgot about how little taste Americans have had for empire.

          Thing is, there is a bit of truth in all four of the narratives.

          It wasn’t a mutually exclusive set of descriptions, or an exhaustive set.

          It was one way of framing the Democratic party, and three ways to frame elements of Republican mindset.

          In particular, there is a shred of evidence that can be seen as supporting narrative one. But, there are assumptions in that interpretation, which may not actually be true.

          I later found a succinct way of expressing part of what I wanted to say, plus a new bit. Adding Trump and Lincoln, we have five periods or so of GOP history. Lincoln, and Pre-Lincoln, the bits that were actually decisive were Lincoln’s doing. The next three periods, were not really decisive action, for the most part, wrt to the Democrats. All three of them can be described as Republicans having several options not great, and choosing an option with serious drawbacks. Later within period three, with have an anomaly in Reagan, who was somewhat decisive, and used his temporary domestic advantage well, to end the USSR. Taking 2015 as a new era, Trump did try to execute a vision, and made some good choices. This is a ‘?’

          Unpacking everything: Issues with the GOP not fighting the Democrats ‘hard enough’ go back well before the Bush faction, or the mid/late twentieth century. Republican policy history includes some choices that were arguably not good. Republican policy history also includes some precedent worth considering. I found the exercise of thinking back on it all a little inspirational, even if I am far too confused* to condense any new actionable ideas from it.

          *I’m not sure that I’ve slept enough, and I’ve had some long days recently.

          1. I agree with the characterization offered by “Bob.” It’s rare to find a remotely accurate description of the Republican Party’s development, and I’m convinced that it’s an important thing to get right. The Republican Party’s trajectory is extremely suggestive, often in surprising ways, that are still relevant to the current situation.

             Few late-19th- or early-20th-century Republicans were big state authoritarians in the modern sense—as soon as people with those tendencies gained traction, the Republican Party began to devolve. This happened in stages–things would start falling apart, and they would course-correct for a while, but in a weaker, more fractious state, with progressivism gaining strength as modernity advanced. The first devolution was the fundamental shift Bob speaks about. In the end, this could only end with a victory for the Democrats–the Republican leadership class was not cut out for progressivism, and neither their party philosophy/long-term general strategy nor their coalition was compatible with it. Republican progressives generally did not understand what progressivism entailed—they wanted certain parts of it, but not others, and convinced themselves the two could be separated. Republicans were unable to produce a class of “policy wonks” or specialist intellectuals or mandarins to implement their vision–their vision of progressivism didn’t require that kind of technical organization, and they had a different understanding of what counted as prestigious. They understood political warfare and running institutions, but they had thrived in a different kind of political system with different institutional structures.

             They were in many ways a pre-modern party that could not handle big government in the sense of a welfare state and civil service bureaucracy and 20th century warfare/foreign policy/European-style nationalism (and the rise of expert/scientific authority, etc.). Originally, they were more than comfortable exercising power, and actually had principles and intelligent strategies. There was none of this cowardice and incompetence. They didn’t defer to progressives at all, but they didn’t really understand the nature of the threat, and, in fairness to them, modern progressivism was still hypothetical for the most part. No one was totally sure how it would play out, and there was a lot of change during this time. It’s possible that, given the developments of modernity, a temporary progressive victory was inevitable. Since the best of the party’s leaders didn’t fit into the new structure, their leadership was increasingly made up of opportunists or people who defined themselves in opposition to something. The positive vision and coherence was lost, and Democrats were good at the progressivism game.

          2. Forgot to add that the Republican Party was not designed to operate according to the norms of “southern-style conservatism,” in its various manifestations, which has further scrambled things.

             Also, I’m less knowledgeable about the mid-late 20th century Republican Party, but my initial impression is similar to Bob’s with regard to things like the John Birch Society. It was a reaction to a conspicuous devolution in party leadership—a total change in the character of the messaging and behavior of a party tends to give rise to accusations of conspiracies and misconduct. Anyone paying attention to the party leadership’s trajectory at that time would have perceived them lurching towards statism or right-progressivism. I can imagine how people who remembered Coolidge would be alarmed by Eisenhower.

             1. RINOs, not Democrats, killed the TEA Party. That’s all I need to know.

                1. Tea Party’s not dead. Its still the same as it’s always been, out getting stuff done.

                   Why do you think DeSantis is punching Disney in the face these days? Tea Party.

    3. ” Buckley’s ‘conservative ideology’, in hindsight, seems far too technocratic,”

       It’s likely that he was influenced by the technocrats, given that he came from the same class that the technocrats were (and are) largely aligned with. On the other hand, he pushed a brand of conservatism that was at odds with the Rockefeller wing of the Republican party. I also have a hard time seeing Buckley play the role of the modern eGOP, and acting go along to get along opposition to the Left. This is a man, after all, who lived in a US in which the inevitable triumph of socialism was seen as fact, and publicly shouted, “No, it’s NOT!” He’s also a man who ran for NYC mayor pretty much solely because he saw that the Republican in that race was going to try and use that office as a springboard to the presidency. And since the man was one of the most leftward Republicans in the House at the time, Buckley was going to do what he could to prevent it. Buckley failed to keep the Republican in question from winning that election. But a funny thing happened. It turned out that the votes he got didn’t come from the kinds of people he’d gone to school with. Instead, the positions that he espoused attracted mostly blue-collar voters. These were the same voters that Reagan would later peel away from the Democratic party in 1980 and 1984, and Trump would do likewise in 2016 and 2020. The modern equivalent to what Buckley did in the NYC Mayoral Race would be running as a spoiler in Liz Cheney’s reelection race, with the understanding that even if you weren’t likely to win the race, at least you’d keep her from being reelected. That’s the opposite of how the Republican Establishment has reacted to Cheney.

    4. Unfortunately the lens of “Republicans Good, Democrats Bad” is not sufficient to understand the Civil War.

       The South really was fighting for independence from the US. Was Slavery morally bad? Yes. Would Slavery have ended without the Civil War? Yes. Was Lincoln actually a tyrant? Yes.

       It’s hard for me to see the North as the good guys when they were literally sending their troops to rape, murder, pillage, and take over the governments of the South at gunpoint. A good fraction of the North’s armies were foreign mercenaries who they paid to come in and kill their former countrymen. Not to say the South was ideal, but if you believe in self-governance and respecting others’ voluntary choices I don’t see how the North’s aggression can be justified.

       1. It is “republicans good, democrats bad”, that is the more correct understanding. Lincoln had the literal technicalities correct, Southern Democrats had them very, very wrong.

          There was zero established formal mechanism for succession.

          Dems screwed up their nominating convention, then threw a hissy fit when they did not win anyway. And have whined ever since about the costs of the hissy fit.

          There was an alternate path for the Southern Democrats, in arguing peacefully about the technicalities. They instead picked ‘democracy’, figuring that they could win by raw force.

          Lincoln would not have had anywhere near the free hand he did if the Southern Democrats had not abandoned the field of congress to him. They outright abandoned their ability to try to litigate endlessly in congress, in service of fighting it out.

          If you can simply withdraw from being bound to the results of a negotiated political process, I can simply withdraw from being bound by the associated peace agreement.

          If the CSA could unilaterally withdraw from the USA, as a matter of principle, then there is also nothing formally binding the CSA and USA to peace. The only legal grounds on which to object to a Union extermination of the population of the Confederacy would be that said population was in fact still resident within the United States.

          1. IOW what you’re arguing is “Might makes right.”

             I agree that in reality, might makes right. I’m merely observing that the CSA was justified & within its rights to try to form its own nation. It was (before it was forcibly assimilated at gunpoint) a geographically contiguous, ethnically and culturally distinct region.

             From the natural-rights lens that is the foundation for America, there is no argument that the Confederates had every right & justification to secede. The Constitution guarantees the right to free association, and there is nothing more fundamental to freedom of association than choosing who you won’t associate with. The other legalistic barriers you’re trying to elect are not ultimately relevant to this point. To be frank, it’s insulting to use shortcomings of how politicians may have handled the secession as an excuse to justify the murder, rape, pillage, and oppression that ensued. None of that was ever justified.

             Cheers.

             1. One could point out that it was also within the rights of the USA as a sovereign nation to wage a war of conquest on the CSA. There are arguments it was obligated to, in that the FedGov is required to ensure that state governments are republican in form, and they can’t do that without effective control of the territory.

                ________________________________

                1. “One could point out that it was also within the rights of the USA as a sovereign nation to wage a war of conquest on the CSA.”

                   I agree, that’s the right of the nation. However, I don’t think the USA conceived of as a voluntary union of states comes out on the other side of that intact. And, historically, it didn’t.

                   1. Not saying it is consistent with the US’s founding philosophy. But if we are arguing in terms of the rights of nations, then the CSA had every right to secede, and the USA had every right to try and conquer.

                      ________________________________

                   2. And I think we should leave it there. Sarah is not a fan of ACW arguments in her living room.

                      ________________________________

                      1. What argument?

                         He is so obviously defending a deliberately wrong position, that even a Canadian can see it.

                         If succession was the will of the Southern people, then they repudiated peace with the Northern people. Because to continue in peace as separate nation, they would have needed a negotiated exit, working with the government of the USA, so that a peace treaty between the USA and CSA started at the same time as the existence of the CSA did. Peace is not the default position between nations, war is.

                         US, before and after the 1st ACW, was a bunch of little peaces layered into a peace consensus, with that peace consensus being implicitly and explicitly based on a bunch of agreements.

                         Modern historical narratives are full of ‘whites should have held to a fairly civilized standard of peace wrt behavior towards indian tribes, with out any regard to whether the indian tribe behavior actually allowed for a civilized standard of peace to hold’. Between populations, the holding of a peace agreement depends on the cultural behavior of the two parties.

                         Governments relate to a peace agreement within a population. The stable voluntary form is the republic;this is where more or less all parties hold themselves to the terms of the agreement, whatever the terms are. And, in a multicultural republic, the terms have to be formal, because there will not be enough agreement on everything else. The alternative for a voluntary agreement is democracy, and it is unstable. Because, the terms of the agreement change to follow momentary power, or the appearance of momentary power. Multicultural democracy is actually even less stable, because without a single culture, there is less consensus on who has momentary power. The shit of “Party A expects Party B to deliver on the terms, and Party A has zero intention of delivering on the terms”, is part of the very essence of democracy.

                         So, the behavior that AFPatriot is defending as licit, the demand that the North behave peacefully towards the South, when the politicians in the CSA had just profoundly violated the terms of the peace deal, is democratic. It was, and perhaps still is, Democrats being democratic. They definitely thought they had the momentary power to pull things off. They may well have planned for war, and expected to win it.

                         His argument that war between the North and South was wrong, basically requires that the CSA be a criminal conspiracy. And, if it was a criminal conspiracy, if serious enough, unusual violence might be justified in suppressing the conspiracy.

                         How well it worked out for Republicans behaving in a republican way was, as I originally said, relevant. AFPatriot’s ‘muh democratic principles’ dismissal was nonsense. Because democratic principles are themselves wrong.

                         Right now, we are again having Democrats pulling democratic nonsense. Very strict scrutiny is applied to Republicans, ala a star chamber or kangaroo court, while Democrats are very obviously engaged in criminal conspiracies, and the latter are completely ignored. Thus, one of the fundamental peace agreements underlying the formal criminal justice system has been violated.

                         Fundamentally, no man is ever so isolated that he is in complete control of who his neighbors can be. Whether he can live in peace, depends on the neighbors, and his agreements with them. If your neighbors will not willingly deliver, your options include kill them, compel them, leave, etc.

                         The Democrat perspective on peace, and agreements then, was democratic, and “Lincoln only got forty percent of the vote.” This was hardly the only way to consider things. Another viewpoint that people could have had, is that the Southern Democrats had proven that they would not live in peace, like civilized men, and that the only alternatives were killing them, or compelling them. This viewpoint was more extreme that than Republicans had, post Radical Republicans, and post Reconstruction; they had concluded that some Southern Democrats would deliver on a few terms of peace, and that this was good enough. But, during the 1st ACW, the more extreme view may have seemed quite reasonable.

                         These calculations are obviously pretty relevant for current considerations.

                         It was absurd for him to claim that my position was might makes right, when it is in fact democracy that is might makes right.

                         Talk about natural rights was specious, considering that his apparent assumption of default peace entirely screws up consideration of fundamental peace agreement.

                         1. I forgot to explicitly note that the peace agreements in the US were breaking down prior to the 1st ACW.

                            But, like much of what else I just said, that is a pretty obvious fact.

70. Relevant to the discussion … particularly the “final, quick little thought” at its end:

    https://pjmedia.com/ejectejecteject/2009/07/27/the-destruction-of-sarah-palin-n179580

    1. @ Jester > thanks for posting Whittle’s article.
       And it STILL took us 7 more years to get Donald Trump.
       PS – in re another point discussed today: John McCain was only a 20% ally of conservatives.
       If that.

71. There is one set of principles that always applies.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

    Those unalienable rights – even when it comes to our enemies as individuals – must always be respected, even as we work with vigor, resolve and incivility to crush their ability to oppress us.

    OTOH PRINCIPLES, as thought of by the Surrender Chorus, equate to the appearance of “civility”. But civility in response to intellectual dishonesty is counterproductive in the defense of liberty.

    They are willing to be oppressed, and see you oppressed, in order to be perceived as Nice People™.

    But is facilitating your oppression really Nice on their part? Sometimes the Nicest thing you can do for your neighbor is to NOT be Nice to those who would lord it over them.

    Let us be No Better Friend to those who may disagree, but do so with respect for the above set of principles.

    Let us be No Worse Enemy to those who believe they have the right to rule us.

    

72. Miranda Devine of the NY Post once again nailing the Democratic Party’s perfidy and why they are so casually dismissive of historically bad polls that ordinarily would warn of an upcoming electoral disaster. Democrats once again believe that “the fix is in”.

    https://nypost.com/2022/04/24/biden-is-up-to-old-election-tricks/

73. Y’know, possibly it’s my weekly glass of wine, but it occurred to me to wonder why we got “Larry is Right,” and, “Throwing the Gauntlet,” here for this column, today. Is John over the target, or what?
    (Of the two I prefer Larry. The other guy is just nasty),

74. Josh Hammer’s latest post should find some resonance here.
    https://www.newsweek.com/against-principled-loserdom-opinion-1699917

75. Guess what’s turned up in Beijing?

    There’s reportedly a run on food in the supermarkets in the Chinese capitol right now. Personally, I’m wondering just how draconian Xi dares to get in what’s supposed to be the most important city in China.

76. c4c

77. You are absolutely not wrong. What gets so tiresome is that I literally watched a twitter thread today of… well here see for yourself:

    No more of this when they go low, we go high.

    When they go low, I'm already going to be there waiting.

    — Don Winslow (@donwinslow) April 23, 2022

    No more of this when they go low, we go high.
    When they go low, I’m already going to be there waiting.

    (enjoy yourself among the replies)

    Again, I AGREE with: “We’re in the bunkers being bombarded. We’re Dien Bin Phu. We’re Mariupol. We’re overrun and bleeding to death.” But I also know as soon as there’s any attempt to discuss or make headway with this a reply is going to come back, “Well the left feels the same way.” Exhibit A: Watch the Stephen Marche episode of Timcast IRL if you can. Exhibit B: It’s been a favorite mantra of Jonah Goldberg recently.

    I’d love to have a real discussion and attempt to hash out whether either side is right or if both are wrong but the Internet is where discussions go to die. For me, I notice the Right’s complaints tend to involve things that have actually happened, while the Left’s tend to involve things that might possibly some day could happen.

    But it’s still annoying watching the assholes put on a big oppression show any time they get some pushback.

    1. Basing your opinions on twitter threads (as opposed to listening to one twitter thread from someone you trust) is a massive problem. One the left makes over and over and over again.

       1. Yeah. But even the aforementioned Stephen said he was conducting on the ground interviews and several polls seem to bear this out.

          Based upon my observations, I suspect that the Left’s true believers think that if they were in charge, then utopia would finally be here. Since things feel so miserable, that’s then proof they are not.

          You almost have to respect it for a brilliant bit of cultish programming. The more the Left is in charge, the worse things get – but since the members have been conditioned to interpret reality through their feelings, then their misery just means the Left isn’t in charge ENOUGH and needs even more power – which will lead to more misery which is proof they need even more power…

          It’s a wicked feedback loop system.

          1. Yeah. It’s a self-validating system, so long as you don’t look out.

    2. Oh, Leftroids are big on that. “Everybody’s rights must be trampled because somebody might do [Terrible Thing]!”

78. c4c

79. I just want to add a comment to this for anyone who might be still reading:

    One of the weird things about this article was that Ringo mentioned Mariupol. I have a great deal of sympathy for Ukraine (my wife is from there) but the US has no legitimate interests in this region. It is very telling that the same people who Ringo decries in this article as PRINCIPLES PRINCIPLES PRINCIPLES, use the same litany (“Defending sovereign nations is according to our principles!”) to argue for US involvement & funding of this forever-war.

    America First. No more forever wars to feed the military industrial complex’s greed & bloodlust.

    1. None of us is interested in a war.

80. A nit. John said, “Buckley set out to create a ‘new’ conservative movement after HUAC and McCarthy burned out. They would purge the icky John Birch, anti-communist, Goldwater wing of the party and campaign on PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES!”

    However, Buckley was a HUGE supporter of Goldwater.

    https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/william-f-buckley-jr-and-his-presidents/

    “Buckley was a strong and loyal supporter of Barry Goldwater’s doomed presidential campaign, but Felzenberg documents the reluctance of campaign staff to bring him into their inner circles. Still, the Goldwater campaign was an opportunity for Buckley and Ronald Reagan to become closer still.”

    1. I always have to laugh at what my dad told me about the 1964 election. “The Democrats kept yelling that if we voted for Goldwater we’d go to war in Southeast Asia. Sure enough, they were right. I voted for Goldwater, and we went to war in Southeast Asia.”

81. drawn and quartered (the old-fashioned way, btw) … burn the quarters … then bury the ashes in 4 different states with clear grave markers …
    alternate choice (barbeque the quarters, feed them to the relatives as their LAST MEAL before hanging them)

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