I did not want to write about Kevin Williamson … but
then I remembered “The Flight 93 Election”
I didn’t want to write about Kevin Williamson. I even emailed Kemberlee and Mary earlier this evening and told them I “don’t feel like writing about Kevin Williamson.”
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you must not be on Twitter. Consider yourself lucky. Twitter is a pus pocket.
The short version of the story is that The Atlantic hired Williamson away from National Review to provide diversity of opinion to The Atlantic’s liberal audience. The reaction was pretty much like the reaction to the NY Times hiring Bret Stephens — an avalanche of recriminations and threats to cancel subscriptions.
Williamson was a particularly sharp instrument pushing against the liberal bubble because he’s anti-abortion. Very anti-abortion. So anti-abortion that he considers it murder, and that the perpetrators should be treated as murderers are treated in the judicial system.
While he’s not a big capital punishment fan, in a Ricochet podcast dug up by Media Matters, he reiterated that the same punishments applicable to murderers should be applied to those who kill the unborn, including the death penalty. He half-joked that he’s a fan of hanging. (It’s worth noting that punishing a woman who has an abortion is NOT the view of the pro-life movement, which considers women who have abortions also to be victims.)
Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor in Chief of The Atlantic hired Williamson knowing, at least in a general way, of his views on abortion. But the outcry was so sustained, that Goldberg capitulated to the social media mob, and fired Williamson.
It’s absolutely true that the firing was, as David French writes at National Review, cowardly. It’s also true that Ta-Nehisi Coates And Jessica Valenti ProveThe Atlantic’sHypocrisy On Kevin Williamson, as Warren Henry writes at The Federalist. And there are many other good takes out there.
My feeling as I watched this unfold on Twitter was that while The Atlantic certainly has the right to hire and fire people based on their views, the people seeking to get Williamson fired are the type of people who cannot be reasoned with. They need to be defeated.
But still, I wasn’t going to write about Kevin Williamson. My take was just not hot enough.
Then I saw a tweet that changed my mind.
On the Williamson firing. Read this from 2016.
You remember The Flight 93 Election post at The Claremont Review of Books. It published on September 5, 2016, and seemed to be a call to action for the presidential election:
2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.
Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.
To ordinary conservative ears, this sounds histrionic. The stakes can’t be that high because they are never that high—except perhaps in the pages of Gibbon. Conservative intellectuals will insist that there has been no “end of history” and that all human outcomes are still possible. They will even—as Charles Kesler does—admit that America is in “crisis.” But how great is the crisis? Can things really be so bad if eight years of Obama can be followed by eight more of Hillary, and yet Constitutionalist conservatives can still reasonably hope for a restoration of our cherished ideals? Cruz in 2024! …
We’ve established that most “conservative” anti-Trumpites are in the Orwellian sense objectively pro-Hillary. What about the rest of you? If you recognize the threat she poses, but somehow can’t stomach him, have you thought about the longer term? The possibilities would seem to be: Caesarism, secession/crack-up, collapse, or managerial Davoisie liberalism as far as the eye can see … which, since nothing human lasts forever, at some point will give way to one of the other three. Oh, and, I suppose, for those who like to pour a tall one and dream big, a second American Revolution that restores Constitutionalism, limited government, and a 28% top marginal rate.
But for those of you who are sober: can you sketch a more plausible long-term future than the prior four following a Trump defeat? I can’t either.
The election of 2016 is a test—in my view, the final test—of whether there is any virtù left in what used to be the core of the American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests, and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it regardless.
Williamson was Never Trump. In his first and only column at The Atlantic, Williamson also was Never Trump.
Victor Davis Hanson at National Review took exception to a swipe at him by Williamson in that first and only column at The Atlantic. Hanson wrote (emphasis added):
In the past, I have often enjoyed Kevin Williamson’s essays. Even when I found them occasionally incoherent and cruel, I thought it hardly my business to object to a colleague’s writing. But I gather, under changed circumstances, such deference no longer applies, given that in Williamson’s very first column at The Atlantic he attacks both me, and in a backhanded way, his former employer National Review for publishing a recent article I wrote.
Certainly, Kevin has expressed himself freely both in print and in interviews in ways that many thought were antithetical to the values of many conservatives — whether his idea that failing communities of the white working class “deserved to die,” or that those having or facilitating abortions should face execution. I assume that the attitude of the editors of National Review was that in the many millions of words that Williamson has written and spoken, his sometime use of profanity or over the top sensationalism was atypical, although certainly controversial, as he has now discovered at The Atlantic in our age of selective pull quotes that are used to stigmatize a writer’s entire body of work.
Sadly, I think Kevin Williamson will soon find that National Review was far more tolerant of his controversial views than will be true at The Atlantic. As I noted in the essay in question concerning progressives’ situational regulation, so too the Left also embraces situational free speech. Indeed, well before Williamson had even written his inaugural column, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, had defended his hiring of Williamson on grounds that he preferred “all things being equal, to give people second chances and the opportunity to change,” and he further seemed delighted about Williamson’s promise to cease tweeting given that it would be interpreted as “a positive development and a sign of growth.”
That highlighted sentence was prophetic.
I take it that Williamson didn’t view the 2016 election as The Flight 93 Election. But it was.
So is the next one.
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Comments
Kurt Schlicter is right: The Left (and NeverTrumpers) hate us, they are not going to be happy until we are herded into the ghetto, and eventually the cattle cars WILL arrive. What the NeverTrumpers fail to realize is that the Left hates them, too, and once they’ve made use of their idiocy as cover, will have a cattle car just for them.
TOUCHE TOUCHE TOUCHE!
The “useful idiots” are always the first to literally the ax, or the bullet, or the hangman’s rope….
Oh, so true. When will we ever learn?
Arbeit macht frei.
What Kurt “Sonny” Schlichter and other political equivalents of an emoting tween girl fail to realize is that going out of one’s way to alienate potential allies against the Left out of some inexplicable emotional need for catharsis is a politically stupid idea.
After all, if you treat them as if they are the greatest enemy, beyond even the actual Left, you shouldn’t whine about them treating you in kind.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” — Cicero
The Political Hat refuses to learn from history; I hope he enjoys the repeat.
“…potential allies against the Left” I’ve got news for you guy, they don’t want allies. If you think they’re willing to compromise or have a good faith ‘conversation’, you’re sad mistaken. The left are all about blood, power and control. Period. No surrender. Forget courting them and the cocktail parties. Why would you want to align yourself with the likes of Coates and Valenti and their vapid and pathetic ideas/ideals? They’re not interested in you. This much I’ve come to learn from the left. Hogg refusing to accept an apology is PRECISELY who they are. Low character and of little intellectual worth. Remember this.
You just spun off into Never-never land. Hat was talking about potential allies on the right, not the Collective.
And you’re wrong about “aligning” with Coates or any of that ilk. Nobody here does. That doen’t mean that reading them is a bad thing. You have to know their thinking to defeat their thinking.
And that’s Williamson’s real “sin”. He thinks. Sometimes his thinking is simply wrong. So is VDH. I can’t think of an opinion writer who is NEVER wrong, and sometimes badly wrong. I recall a VDH piece considering T-rump as a modern Napoleon. I thought it quite perceptive, and you’d likely hate on him for it.
I’m not the enemy, and I’m damned sure not the “traitor” that SDN (nutter cultist) wants to brand anyone who disagrees with Duh Donald.
”
What Kurt “Sonny” Schlichter and other political equivalents of an emoting tween girl fail to realize is that going out of one’s way to alienate potential allies against the Left out of some inexplicable emotional need for catharsis is a politically stupid idea.”
Sure, but we can lob the same complaints at Kevin Williamson. Even moreso because unlike even Schlichter he did something that would be even more damaging to attempts to gain support against the LEft. Going to work at one of their publications while insulting people on the Right as following an “authoritarian demogauge” if they did not match up to his exact level of NeverTrumpism.
“After all, if you treat them as if they are the greatest enemy, beyond even the actual Left, you shouldn’t whine about them treating you in kind.”
The same can be said of the NEverTrumpism. Especially among those who happily supported the disaster of putting Hillary Clinton into the Presidency, apparently indifferent to the damage WE KNEW it would cause. (And that in my mind is what separates a lot of it.
Things like the Trumpitler stuff, they were always Conjectural and Projective. Finding a template for Trump and then projecting off of it.
With Hillary we already knew of cases like Whitewater, wiping things “like with a cloth”, and violating secrets. We didn’t have to project nearly as much to get a near dystopian view).
There are two meanings for “touch and go”… one in aviation when practicing landings and takeoffs… the other the adjective when things are very very “iffy”. 2016 was Flight 93 and we did get someone into the pilot’s seat but we haven’t pulled out of the dive. 2018 could be a secondary stall if we are not very careful.
The Progs have not forgotten and will do any and every thing to bring an end to this scenario. The Florida shooting shows a glimpse of how well coordinated their response can and will be. The GOPe will willingly forfeit control of Congress to weaken Trump. I don’t think there is enough “altitude” to recover if the Establishment “wins”.
Both meanings of “touch and go” mean “iffy and dangerous”, for a young pilot (or an old new pilot) those training landings are the most dicey part of the flight. And obviously Mr. Williamson’s tenure at the magazine named after the second largest ocean was also “touch and go”, as also would describe Joe Biden in the presence of pre-teen girls, especially with long hair.
Mr. Trump is not a touch and go person. More of touch, slip under, foist high and take down hard person. Wrestling terminology.
Follow up FYI. AOPA considers Touch and Go risky. Advises alternative training in most cases. “In my opinion, touch and goes are an unacceptable risk in retractable gear airplanes, and I don’t routinely teach them except as an emergency go-around exercise as described above.”
Definitely an “iffy” practice.
Please note…. “Retractable landing gear” aircraft. Complex aircraft come later in training and the repetitive raising and lowering the landing gear will generate issues…but not for fixed gear and early flight training where pattern time is dedicated to learning the land and take off. This can be the cleanest way to learn as the runway is all yours. Full stop landings with return taxi to runway puts one in ground traffic and if a mix of aircraft… Wake turbulence can be an issue. Having found myself dancing around on the active even before the priorjet’s point of rotation…I’ll choose touch and goes in those conditions.
You do not have to retract the gear while doing touch and go.
I’ve only flown fixed gear aircraft but my old instructor did not have students in retractable aircraft raise the gear. They did make note each and every time that they were not raising the gear.
I only fly sailplanes now, no opportunity for touch and go…
Victor David Hanson writing about the problems in the Central Valley under Obama has been far more in touch and far more grounded in reality. I enjoy him, literate and interesting and terrific on history and classics. His article comparing Trump to a very specific classical Roman empower was pure VDH. And never offbase or ungrounded.
Williamson represents someone who I enjoyed less often and who I lost all interest in after his “these communities deserve to die”. I grew up in one of them and disagree with him thoroughly. It also represented someone playing to an audience by using excess, and confusing the attention he got for it with talent. When you become unmoored – or moored to what you think is fashionable and not the hard work and principle that makes talent shine – this is what happens.
No tears here. When you drain a swamp, a lot of stinky stuff gets exposed (like phony NeverTrumpers)
Something that real country folk who don’t lose their roots never forget.
NRO was, for a few years, essentially my home page.
They lost me when they viciously attacked Newt Gingrich, with their slanderous editorial by most of their top staff, and that outrageous caricature on their cover.
I miss reading VDH, I miss Andrew McCarthy, and I miss Ed Whelan.
That’s it.
For years before Trump, Williamson and, worst of all, Ramesh Ponnuru made it clear that their brand of “Reform Conservatism” was simply Liberal propaganda directed at converting actual Conservatives to Liberalism.
Gradually, Williamson revealed his utter disdain for average working class Americans.
At the Atlantic, had he stayed, his writing would have been indistinguishable from that of their current Slate of Lefties.
I grew up in one of those communities too. I now live in a hermetically sealed, everything is perfect suburb with other high achievers and high earners. And honestly, I’d rather be raising my kids in the former rather than the latter: it’s more realistic and makes for tougher stock.
Progressive Stepford communities.
The Atlantic’s infantile antics involving Williamson demonstrate — not for the first time, unfortunately — that Leftists now resemble nothing quite so much as a bunch of absurdist, goose-stepping, totalitarian jackboots, who can countenance no dissent or deviance from Party orthodoxies.
Williamson represented a threat to those orthodoxies, and, therefore, he quite obviously had to be dismissed. What a shameful farce. And, sadly, the same attitude that is prevalent in the Atlantic’s management is now infecting academia, offices, corporate Boardrooms and local government.
A further irony that occurs to me regarding Williamson’s termination, is that self-congratulatory Leftists like to loudly crow about, put up yard and window signs in their dwellings, etc., stating that “Black Lives Matter.” Well, if one supports abortion and is flippant and/or totally indifferent about what abortion represents in our culture and society — including the abortions of approximately fifteen million black babies since the 1970’s — one cannot credibly claim that “Black Lives Matter.”
Williamson stands on the morally upright side of this issue. His critics do not.
Thanks, man. I’m beginning to understand why David Brooks is such a pu**y.
As I recall, Kevin Williamson was adopted, so I understand his position on women who have abortions. I might go so far as to agree. However, the “these communities deserve to die” illustrates what Ann Coulter wrote this week: That Americans used to care about each other.
Williamson basically said, if part of America is struggling, I’ll take the foreigners. That’s not right. We should find out why it’s struggling and correct it if at all able. We shouldn’t write off our fellow Americans.
That’s why immigration is so exasperating. Basically, the elites prefer foreigners over their fellow Americans. Tragic, utterly tragic.
And I’ll note this: the thing causing the fault line between the “elites” and normal Americans is that politicians buy American votes by adopting taxes, regulations, safety nets and government programs that disincentivize work. The illegal aliens come in, and most of those disincentives don’t apply to the aliens…. But instead of persuading congress to eliminate the disincentives Americans have to work, they just demand to keep the borders open so that they can keep getting more cheap labor. That approach is disloyal to fellow Americans.
Politicians buy the voters to stay in office, and the elites persuade politicians to give them slack on the side for contributions. Politicians need to man up and fall on their swords to save America.
The democrats discovered than there is one job, voting democrat, that foreigners will do better than Americans.
Williams became a negative asset, according to him he deserves what he’s gotten.
… then you must not be on Twitter. Consider yourself lucky. Twitter is a pus pocket.
It’s not luck. It’s perspicacity.
As for Williamson … He’s so turgid it’s hard to tell if there’s anything there. And probably not worth the effort of finding out. (There’s that “perspicacity” thing again).
Indeed, and for me Facebook too.
Those opposed, not just “not for Trump”, but truly opposed to him are going on a never ending hatred jag. When you maintain hate to the extent that these people do, you lose objectivity and sanity. The hate colors everything.
It is no different that what we see in the Middle East, where no possibility of compromise exists because one side in particular hates so much that there can be no agreement, no matter how rational or favorable.
There are plenty of things I dislike, many that disgust me, but I’m not sure I have ever hated a person. I’ve hated some of the things they have done, which is far different from bringing that hatred to the person themselves. I would have hated the policies and criminal behavior of a Hillary Presidency, but for as much as she disgusts me as a person, by her actions and deeds and words, it isn’t hate toward her as a person, as I don’t know her personally, and given the soul destroying that hatred brings, I would not want to emulate her and many of her followers in that manner.
Hatred is an active emotion, and renders a person to being incapable of reason. It is why Maxine Waters is as she is. It is why we see many of the actions of the Democrats in this country today which make so little sense. Hate is destructive. It can be nothing but destructive, and ultimately it is self destructive as it tears down your principles for the sake of sustaining the hatred.
You cannot have a rational dialog with those who hate because they cannot hear a word you say without it being changed into their own meanings. That is if they even allow you to talk. They usually won’t. You see it in David Hogg, as his campaign, which is far more than gun control, is based on hate. And his reaction to any who dare disagree is to actively move against those people, and look to destroy them.
I have found myself no longer reading or listening to many who claim to be conservative because of their hatred toward Trump, to where they have become irrational in almost everything they say.
OldGoat writes:
“It is no different that what we see in the Middle East, where no possibility of compromise exists because one side in particular hates so much that there can be no agreement, no matter how rational or favorable.”
Pretty much sums up the eastern Mediterranean. Look, Trump is possible the only human being on the face of the earth who has a chance to force the Palestinians into peace. (By taking away their money and moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.) Sad that our tax dollars are given to a murderous political group sworn to kill every Jew in Israel.
“That highlighted sentence was prophetic.”
Only if you’re surprised to find out that most of the media are leftists and leftists are totalitarians. Hanson is good but he’s no prophet. Just observant.
Williamson struck me as a cross between Ebenezer Scrooge and a random Republican, a sort of Social Darwinism, 2.0.
Polemical writing is a talent, but alas, too often practiced by those whose easily overcome by their own zeal. Forgive a corruption of an old rabbinical line, but all that can be thought should not be spoken, and all that can be spoken should not be written. Non-Jewish version: Discretion is the better part of valor.
Creepy media narcissism. Reading and writing and talking about itself as if it’s the end-all, be-all.
The media must dominate all, like a giant earthworm, consuming everything around it, excreting it, and consuming it again in an endless cycle.
Somehow it seems just.
A literate and smooth writer is a relatively poor sign of intelligence.
That being said, these publications are dying. It is not just on-line news and reads, it is the inability of people to finish a 4,000 word article, have the vocabulary or attention span to do so, and a generation now 25 years in that cannot even comprehend cursive script or read a difficult book.
Something I don’t get. For the sake of argument, let’s grant that concerns over civility, decorum and tone really are valid. For all intents and purposes most of us are abiding by your rules (except for Fen, we had to put him down).
Now from my perspective, the Atlantic tries to be a highbrow operation like NRO. But they were just busted shoplifting golf balls from the pro shop. Any consequences?
I mean, we keep hearing how tone in class are vital elements of the culture War. I no longer agree but if they really are as important as you believe, one of your own tribe just violated those standards and you seem hesitant to punish your ownn
“For the sake of argument, let’s grant that concerns over civility, decorum and tone really are valid.” That’s just code for ‘stop disagreeing with us’. Do you even prog jargon? /wink.
Am I alone in thinking that the Atlantic hired Williamson not to provide diversity of thought, but as a conservative minstrel show, to be pointed and laughed at? It backfired only in that their readers hate conservatives so much, that they could not even bear to have one of his kind in the room, even if the sole purpose of him being there was to be the stereotype they could all have a good laugh at.
a wise observation!
Everyone knows The Atlantic staff hates Trump since it’s nothing but a gaggle of leftists, so what’s better than hiring someone who’s supposed to be a conservative who hates Trump to lend credibility to your hatred. He was really nothing more than a token: a useful idiot.
Years of reading the comments in places like The Atlantic, NYT, WaPo, Huffington, reminds me of the student in university who used to hog and waste time in class engaging in open mental masturbation using all sorts of trivial tropes and jargon with little merit or point. They’re the people the real smart people rolled their eyes at behind their backs. I suspect Obama was the sort of student who would love to listen to himself speak bull shit.
Its funny because pretty much EVERYTHING the Never Trumpers where bitching about HASNT come true. The economy is sky rocketing, the stock market is sky rocketing, black unemployment is plummeting, female unemployment is plummeting, general unemployment is plummeting, North Korea is talking to South Korea, China has (supposedly) gotten them to stop developing Nukes or commit to stop developing Nukes, illegal immigration is falling (and lives are being saved as people aren’t dying in texas deserts chasing fairy’s and unicorns…the list is endless…and yet there is no reasoning with these unhinged and deranged fools.
Just goes to show that liberalism really is a mental health issue.
Just goes to show that NrvrtTrumpism really is a mental health issue.
Know how I know that Trump is #Winning!? Gas here locally has gone from $2.37 to $2.55 in a matter of weeks. (Yes, the health of the US economy can be pegged to the cost of energy, especially the retail cost of gasoline.)
Well written indeed Professor, and I cannot see this as anything but karma. Kevie was a pitiless turncoat who apparently was happy to sell all of us and the Republic out over his urges. So I find it only just that he get skewered by those he sold us out to. And once again, VDH was on the money. Another reason why I kept reading to him even during the doldrums of the Presidential Campaign.
But on another note- and for something that I have wanted to get off of my chest for a long while- I have NEVER Cared for the Flight 193 Election or its author. In spite of agreeing with the basic course of actions. Largely due to my view of the current situation and my classicism and history nerdism. I did indeed agree that it was a case of “Charge the Cockpit or Die.”
But I could not agree on all of the Whys.
For starters, it struck me as the worst kind of “Only-Trump”ism. And while I happily supported him in the General I do not think he was the only man who could have averted it. Cruz also comes to mind. I also think it was not formulated anywhere near as well as it is often lauded as. Neo-Neocon sort of covers those caveats well in my opinion.
http://www.neoneocon.com/2016/09/17/on-the-flight-93-election-article/
http://www.neoneocon.com/2016/09/22/more-publius-more-flight-93-election/
But my real distaste for it came from a couple key points. Starting with.
“it’s as sophists who help the Davoisie oligarchy rationalize open borders, lower wages, outsourcing, de-industrialization, trade giveaways, and ENDLESS, POINTLESS, WINLESS WAR.”
This emphasized point is what really made me break with the author, because it struck me as nothing less than a SLAP to the face of all our veterans trying to fight the good fight to keep these beasta away from our door, and those who supported him. It struck me as the worst kind of Elite Scapegoating, and while the Davoisie Oligarchy can be blamed for MANY things they cannot be blamed for the great war we find ourselves in.
I have come to believe- not long after 9/11- that we are in an epochal struggle of civilizations. One that will likely last far longer than my own life (and I was QUITE young when 9/11 hit). One that is a world war, but with some of the interminable qualities of the Cold War and a conventional war. In short, very much like the “Tepid War” a wise Castillian talked about centuries ago. I think this conflict will end either when our Jihadist enemies and their ideology are destroyed, or we are. And the latter will involve nothing less than the complete ruin of our civilization.
All else comes second to the defense of our civilization and its heritage in my eyes. So if Publius Decius Mus is calling this war “pointless” he has instantly disqualified himself from any grounds to take himself seriously in my eyes, because if he really thinks it is pointless he has missed perhaps the single biggest reason why the 2018 election was so crucial.
And if he calls it “winless” than HE MIGHT AS WELL THROW UP THE WHITE FLAG AND INVITE THE JIHADIST GROUP OF HIS CHOICE TO THE WHITE HOUSE BECAUSE *THEN THERE IS NO REASON TO CONTINUE THE STRUGGLE BEYOND SHEER PRIDE AND SPITE.* I personally disagree with that.
And as for the author having the sheer GALL to call himself “Publius Decius Mus”, I have to ask: how many people here know the story of the original Publius Decius Mus or the times he lived in? Apparently not. To avoid having me ramble for longer than I already have on obscure early Roman military history, let me just link you to this series of articles on the Samnite Wars and the general era, which do a SPECTACULAR job putting it all together.
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/ancient/articles/firstsamnitewar.aspx
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/ancient/articles/savageinterlude.aspx
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/ancient/articles/secondsamnitewar.aspx
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/ancient/articles/thirdromanosamnitewar.aspx
You want to talk about war? Costly war, when we have lost 10-20,000 or so combatants max between the campaigning fields and the spy wars in the past two decades?
This is an era where the Roman nation lost DOZENS OF THOUSANDS of lives in a dozen or so wars, with a population of only a few hundred thousand. And the author hasn’t even talked about the True Third Samnite War yet. Where not only did armies need to be mustered every single year, but all too often NEW ones had to be raised to compliment ones already in the field. Where enemy armies and scouts routinely slaughtered their way across Roman frontier territory, often fighting far from home for reasons that didn’t seem immediately relevant to the main goals of the nation. Where Roman troops suffered defeats on a magnitude UNTHINKABLE to any modern Western military, and there seemed to be no end in sight.
This is the world Publius Decius Mus was born in and grew up in. It’s also the Rome he DIED for.
By the time he gave his life well into this bloody strand of conflicts, he had to have been a veteran of years upon years. Attending levy after levy and campaigning year after year after year. Only to sacrifice his life- possibly in a way more literal than we can understand- to try and save his comrades and nation. He fought, led, killed, and laid down his life for his country to live and one DISTANT day know peace, and what is more it’s likely large chunks of his family did as well.
And in conflicts that certainly seem a lot more “Endless, pointless, winless” than any of ours.
So with this in mind, who is this SCOUNDREL to call himself a Claccisist, let alone Publius Decius Mus, if he cannot understand this?
I supported Trump for a couple big reasons. Starting with the fact that if he lost the General, the unbroken line of legitimatly elected US Presidents would end and that kind of purity could never be fully regained. I believed he was the better of the two options by far. I would not concede to allowing a backbiting traitor and a crook who could not even manage herself into office. And I believed his policies would be much better for the defining crisis of our age.
I am fortunate that apparently Trump has a better knack for what is at stake than the flattering Pseudo-PDM.
“unbroken line of legitimately elected presidents would end”. Need more depth of American History. I might mark out Obama as not eligible, one. But there have been others who won by tricks, rather than electoral assembly election.
““unbroken line of legitimately elected presidents would end”. Need more depth of American History.”
Everybody does. But I think I have a better grasp on it than most.
“I might mark out Obama as not eligible, one.”
Might.
Well, we have innocent until proven guilty for a reason. As much as I utterly despise Barack Obama, we haven’t DEFINITIVELY proven that he was ineligible to hold the office. Though the birth certificate chancery certainly is not the action of someone with nothing to hide.
That said, I honestly think that if he were not a natural born citizen, it would be the LEAST of his flaws.
” But there have been others who won by tricks, rather than electoral assembly election.”
Depends on the tricks. The Constitution does not say “Thou Shalt Not Win the election through tricks” and it’s hard to point to a single election except the very first two where there was no dodgy business.
though in this case I think it might be because I FUBAR’d up in how I expressed myself, especially in light of how we have had a few elections like JFK’s that were almost certainly obtained.
What I meant to get at was that Hilllary Clinton would be the first President to have been KNOWINGLY been elected to office when she was legally unable to hold any Government office, and thus was illegitimate from the start. JFK won through the crooked mechanisms of the Chicago Machine (though to his credit he didn’t have much love for them) but he was eligible. And even if Obama is ineligible it wasn’t known at the time.
In contrast, Hillary being elected would’ve marked a new low in the limits of American laws.
Is it just me or is every election, for the foreseeable future, a “flight 93” election? Either side can still win but, when the left wins, they take collective advantage and move their agenda in sync. We on the other hand, have to fight the rinos to move the needle any measurable distance…
Going out of one’s way to alienate potential allies because they don’t support a particular political candidates isn’t exactly the best way to defeat the Left.
With Williamson, it goes far beyond not supporting Trump. He is a big business globalist as most of the National Review staff is these days.
Here’s a piece by Ace of Spades yesterday that pretty clearly illustrates how rank-and-file conservatives feel about “cucks”:
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/374670.php
I know it is popular in some circles to think that the Left doesn’t play by any rules and are completely unrestrained but wins because they dare, with the “cucks” (or RINOs, or “squishes”) either pearl clutching afraid of “fighting dirty” or are actively plotting to help the Left in order to be invited to cocktail parties, leaving only brave MAGA warriors to fight dirty and, ironically enough, far too honestly by being bold.
This, of course, is hogwash. The truth of the matter is that there still are restraints and limitations. Yet those limitations apply to us, but it also limits what the Left can do in immediacy by requiring them to hew and haw in order to justify any advance they make. If they really were fighting without any restraint, everyone here would be in a re-education camp now.
I don’t always agree with Williamson, but acting like he’s the enemy only distracts from the actual prime movers of the Left. People like him and many of the “cucks” could very well be allies. But is seems that some people would rather have a civil war rather than fight the barbarians at the gate. Oh, there are indeed some squishes who pretend to be conservatives, and there are actual moderates as well who will often disagree with conservatives.
But wanting civility does not make one a “cuck”. The Left already control the institutions of power. We need civility in order to protect ourselves by insisting that it ought to apply to everyone, and while much of the civility we get is superficial or simply de jure, it does constrain the Left. By dropping civility and acting, frankly, like ragings a**holes, we give the Left the leave to act unbound and overtly hostile in a way they haven’t been. And they are in the position to use that against us by better being able to mobilize the indifferent majority against us.
Remember, the Left doesn’t win because it acts boldly. It boldly celebrates because they have already won on this issue or that. The groundwork was laid decades, if not over a century, ago. They’ve been good little Fabians on their Gramscian march. The sissy slap fighting proposals of the MAGA/Let’s Fight brigade are laughable.
“Cuck” seems to mean now-a-days “anyone who doesn’t blindly support Trump/MAGA”. Plenty of actual and good conservatives are being called “cucks” because they are willing to criticize the President and the way he acts.
In reality, it is people like Sean Hannity, Mike Huckabee , and their ilk that are the real “cucks” who act and talk they way they do for approval in order to be invited to their little cocktail parties.
It also goes to show that Trump’s and the Rights biggest hindrance are those who push out possible allies to the point where many of them wouldn’t lift a finger to protect Trump, or even say a kind word when he does something good.
“Going out of one’s way to alienate potential allies because they don’t support a particular political candidates isn’t exactly the best way to defeat the Left.”
Perhaps, but judging former political allies who have become alienated to the point where they will rather side with the Left (tacitly and indirectly if not actually directly) and an actual, criminal POTUS candidate rather than swallow their pride and build bridges? That strikes me as sober enough.
It also describes Williamson quite handily.
“I know it is popular in some circles to think that the Left doesn’t play by any rules and are completely unrestrained but wins because they dare, with the “cucks” (or RINOs, or “squishes”) either pearl clutching afraid of “fighting dirty” or are actively plotting to help the Left in order to be invited to cocktail parties, leaving only brave MAGA warriors to fight dirty and, ironically enough, far too honestly by being bold.
This, of course, is hogwash. The truth of the matter is that there still are restraints and limitations. Yet those limitations apply to us, but it also limits what the Left can do in immediacy by requiring them to hew and haw in order to justify any advance they make. If they really were fighting without any restraint, everyone here would be in a re-education camp now.”
A: Everyone here that they could actually detain alive. Which given the number of gun owners here strikes me as an issue.
and
B: I agree, it’s too easy to believe the world is falling apart into an impending civil war (and in that case someone’s shootdown of Schlichter as being too eager for it was hilarious).
But let’s not ignore the tea leaves, ok?
The fact is, there are still restraints. But the left is shucking or discarding more and more of them. From the drama over the Nuclear Option, to the far more serious “Hate Speech” codification and talks about prison sentences for “Climate Deniers”, to outright forming a terrorist gang that uses the inconography of the Stalinist front group Antifascist Action.
I don’t know about you, but all of these things send MESSAGES to me. Messages that bode Nothing Good for the future. That doesn’t mean we are in civil war or that the Left has abandoned all attempts to engage with polite society. But it does mean that the general trend is going in a bad way.
“I don’t always agree with Williamson, but acting like he’s the enemy only distracts from the actual prime movers of the Left.”
I disagree.
I act like Williamson is the enemy because he acted like people such as I are the enemy. When he rants and raves about people on the right following an “authoritarian demogauge” he is doing FAR more to distract from the prime movers of the Left- who are far more authoritarian or totalitarian than we can imagine, as the resurrection of Antifascist Action in all its Stalinist iconogrpahic glory shows- than that of even most of the fervent MAGA crowd.
I am at the point where I no longer consider Williamson an ally. I no longer even consider him a potential ally. I never abandoned the NRO even during the 2016 election and I never was a Trump cultist. But what I am is acutely aware of threats. And the fact that Williamson apparently views the Left and the Demorats as the lesser threat in spute of waging a literal Kulturkampf in the Bismarckian meaning of the term makes me believe his views are fundamentally incompatible.
“People like him and many of the “cucks” could very well be allies.”
I agree about “many of the “cucks.”” But him and people like him?
Sorry, but no. I don’t see it.
Williamson could have been an ally and indeed was. But he let his condescension, hostility, and hubris get the better of him to the point where he lost sight of what authoritarianism even is.
“But is seems that some people would rather have a civil war rather than fight the barbarians at the gate.”
It’s hard to fight the barbarians at the gate if musters to fight them are distrubted by an armed gang wearing partisan colors and advocating for the overthrow of a government they don’t agree with.
“Oh, there are indeed some squishes who pretend to be conservatives, and there are actual moderates as well who will often disagree with conservatives.”
Indeed. And frankly I think Williamson has passed into the category beyond those, of being craven.
“But wanting civility does not make one a “cuck”.”
I absolutely agree. Civility is an ideal and I wish it were more respected.
But our love for an desire to have civility should not blind us to events that are happening.
The dream of perfection is the enemy of The Good.
” The Left already control the institutions of power.”
The military beg to differ.
“We need civility in order to protect ourselves by insisting that it ought to apply to everyone, ”
Sorry, but while I agree with the sentiment that we should PROMOTE civility, I cannot agree with the need. I am reminded of Darkest Hour’s version of Winston Churchill. “WHEN WILL THE LESSON BE LEARNED? You cannot reason with a Tiger WHEN YOUR HEAD IS IN ITS MOUTH!”
Please, point me to someone who was more civil than Ben Shapiro or Milo on College Campuses. Show me how that civility stopped the outright mob violence of goons like Antifa and the backstabbery of generally leftist Education institutions.
Has it worked on a few occasions? I’d be willing to bet yes.
But ultimately, we need to advocate civility from a position of Strength. Because trying to insist on it while blackshirted goons are beating people up is only going to project weakness these political gangsters prey on. We need to neuter them and Then advocate for civility and peace. If need be while he blood is still drying on our bat.
“and while much of the civility we get is superficial or simply de jure, it does constrain the Left.”
It doesn’t constrian all the left, or very important parts of it. See: Antifa.
” By dropping civility and acting, frankly, like ragings a**holes, we give the Left the leave to act unbound and overtly hostile in a way they haven’t been. ”
This strikes me as blaming the victim.
Since when have violent anti-government, anti-capitalist, anti-state Domestic Terrorists like Antifa or Dohrn NEEDED leave to behave in the monstrous way they did? When did enablers like Barack Obama need LEAVE to make excuses for them?
These things were already problems well before Williamson split from the right. Or even before Trump emerged as a major candidate in the Republican party. That doesn’t mean that lowering ourselves to their level will not make things Worse,but it does mean that we would be lowering ourselves to The level They Set, not somehow giving them “leave” to do it.
A correct treatment of a problem is dependent on a correct diagnosis.
“And they are in the position to use that against us by better being able to mobilize the indifferent majority against us.”
Again, they’ve been doing this for a long while now.
“Remember, the Left doesn’t win because it acts boldly. It boldly celebrates because they have already won on this issue or that.”
They certainly haven’t won on gun rights, but they are willing to act boldly. Even when it oftne backfires.
“The groundwork was laid decades, if not over a century, ago. They’ve been good little Fabians on their Gramscian march.”
Agreed.
” The sissy slap fighting proposals of the MAGA/Let’s Fight brigade are laughable.”
Sure, but so is the idea that we can get our way out of things like Antifa attacks purely through Civility.
““Cuck” seems to mean now-a-days “anyone who doesn’t blindly support Trump/MAGA”. Plenty of actual and good conservatives are being called “cucks” because they are willing to criticize the President and the way he acts.”
Agreed, and I’ve never liked the term and I certainly do not use it often. I would not call Ben Shapiro or Steve Green it.
But I also don’t lump them in with Williamson, because they’ve shown far more common sense, strategic thought, and basic empathy than Williamson.
“In reality, it is people like Sean Hannity, Mike Huckabee , and their ilk that are the real “cucks” who act and talk they way they do for approval in order to be invited to their little cocktail parties.”
Indeed there.
“It also goes to show that Trump’s and the Rights biggest hindrance are those who push out possible allies to the point where many of them wouldn’t lift a finger to protect Trump, or even say a kind word when he does something good.”
Sure, but these “possible allies’ also have agency. This isn’t invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Williamson made his choice. He decided to grossly abuse the terms of political science by calling Trump an “authoritarian demogauge” and smearing the Christian right for supposedly selling out to Trump too quickly while at the same time going over to the Atlantic for a mouthpiece of people waging an actual Kulturkampf.
I do not view such a person as a possible ally, because of his own choices. If he is willing to make amends, then I for one am willing to consider. But until then I am not going to pearl clutch over his decision.
I can’t think of the last feed-lot that I visited that produced greater volumes of bullshit than you do.
Amazing…
“Perhaps, but judging former political allies who have become alienated to the point where they will rather side with the Left (tacitly and indirectly if not actually directly) and an actual, criminal POTUS candidate rather than swallow their pride and build bridges? That strikes me as sober enough.
It also describes Williamson quite handily.”
No, it does not. And certainly not in the instance of his identifying the VDH call for BIG GOVERNMENT to screw with tech companies as being a strange departure from conservative/libertarian principles. It was that.
The slur that anyone who did not vote FOR the other lying, corrupt, pathologically narcissistic, Collectivist fraud in this election is “indirectly” supporting the OTHER lying, corrupt, pathologically narcissistic, Collectivist fraud is too intellectually bankrupt to credit. It’s simply a lie, and a stupid lie in the bargain.
But it’s what you’re selling.
“No, it does not.”
Asserting something does not make it so.
Especially not after Williamson gives the left kissy faces such as
“The Democrats are, incredibly enough, for a moment the relatively free-trade party and the party more closely aligned with the interests of the country’s most dynamic business concerns and cultural institutions. ”
Followed afterwards by a halfhearted and johnny come lately mention of the hard left’s campaigning for the repression of free speech regarding climate change (in part using private businesses to encourage that, as Google’s downbumping large skeptic blows like Watts Up With That? shows). But apparently not enough to make him stop claiming the Christian Right is obsessed with a Kulturkampf while ignoring the ACTUAL SIDE OF THE FENCE waging an HONEST TO GOODNESS KULTURKAMPF in a way Bismarck would’ve appreciated.
“And certainly not in the instance of his identifying the VDH call for BIG GOVERNMENT to screw with tech companies as being a strange departure from conservative/libertarian principles.”
Except the idea that businesses should dominate politics and be able to defacto censor the public has never been a conservative principle. And it’s only been one among extremely fringe libertarians. The fact is, the Founders recognized the possible abuse of corporate power- either when it grows too powerful without checks or when it becomes incestuously embedded in government (or both. They had to deal with it in the years leading up to revolution from the East India Trading Company and Hudson’s Bay Co.
“The slur that anyone who did not vote FOR the other-”
You mean a slur like this, chowderhead?
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” – Edmund Burke.
Sometimes, you literally do have to pick the lesser evil or at least something to deal with the more pressing, imminent threat.
And I hate to tell you this, but neither you nor Williamson are smarter, more moral, more ethical, or truer to Conservative principles than Edmund Burke.
“It’s simply a lie, and a stupid lie in the bargain.”
No, the attempt to weasel your way out of it is the lie.
“But it’s what you’re selling.”
What you’re selling is the idea that Burke is wrong. Trump is too wrong to ever be right. And the guy who can’t understand that “half-less” is “not less” while misusing the term Kulturkampf in a way that insults the victims of the original is right.
Grow the heck up, Rags. Because you’re being incredibly petty and incredibly stupid.
“I can’t think of the last feed-lot that I visited that produced greater volumes of bullshit than you do.”
Considering you seem to have trouble thinking in general, I’m not surprised.
“And I hate to tell you this, but neither you nor Williamson are smarter, more moral, more ethical, or truer to Conservative principles than Edmund Burke.”
ANOTHER great big, GIANT straw man, solely of your own devising.
I just burned it down by exposing it to sunlight, you pathetic, prevaricating lil’ prig.
BTW, asshole, at the close of the markets Friday, what was the position of The East India Company? How ’bout The Hudson Bay Company?
Hmmm….???
Do YOU have a Twitter account you use? Do YOU have a Facebook account you use?
I’m on record here WAY back as eschewing them both, and asserting that “social media” is a net toxic influence.
Markets work, asshole. Try using them, instead of BIG GOVERNMENT.
“ANOTHER great big, GIANT straw man, solely of your own devising.”
Sorry, but no. I’m literally centuries to late to have devised ii.
And that is why I point it out. It is not a strawman. It is a rebuttal to the holier-than-thou, devil-take-the-consequences aloofness and indifference you and Williamson like to flout.
“I just burned it down by exposing it to sunlight, you pathetic, prevaricating lil’ prig.”
No, you did not.
You asserted.
And to paraphrase Hitchens, that which is asserted without proof CAN BE DISSMISSED WITHOUT
“BTW, asshole, at the close of the markets Friday, what was the position of The East India Company? How ’bout The Hudson Bay Company?
Hmmm….???”
A lot worse off than it was when it was a monopoly with deep seated ties to the British Empire like it was in the 17th and 19th centuries, idjiot.
You might as well ask what the current stock price is of the East India Company and then retroactively argue that the state linked imperial monopoly that conquered the Indian Subcontinent and could push through bailouts like the Tea Act was not a threat.
Hudson’s Bay Co is a shadow of its former, nightmarish self after two centuries of losing power. First to American independence, and then due to painstaking and long reform in Canada.
“Do YOU have a Twitter account you use? “
Nope. Why I would I?
“Do YOU have a Facebook account you use?”
Nope.
Have a Facebook account but I do not use it.
“I’m on record here WAY back as eschewing them both, and asserting that “social media” is a net toxic influence.”
Good for you.
Even an egotistical broken clock can be right sometimes.
“Markets work, asshole. “
Yeah, they do asshole.
The problem is that companies that get too powerful can TRY to evade their working by trampling on human rights and embedding themselves with the state. These attempts will ultimately FAIL but they can do a FARQING TON OF DAMAGE before then.
“Try using them, instead of BIG GOVERNMENT.”
I am happy to.
The problem is that much of the problem that stemmed from these entities using Big Government to try and defer the consequences of their policies, devil damn the consequences to anybody else. Just waiting around or trying to compete with them is rarely sufficient if you have family, loved ones, or economic independence.
Try researching the final Abolition (by Parliament) of the EITC’s monopoly on trade with China and see the grief that went into it.
MORE complete and utter bullshit by a complete bullshiter.
On the subject of bullshit, why the use of “factories” as relates to the Hudson Bay Company (with intended dark forebodings)?
Why not explicate the use of the term in its original meaning, liar?
It had nothing to do with “plants”, as in the modern terminology.
“Just waiting around or trying to compete with them is rarely sufficient if you have family, loved ones, or economic independence.”
Well, there’s the nut-cutting justification of all BIG GOVERNMENT advocates.
I have all those. I’ll trust to market economics, where you default to the evil of BIG GOVERNMENT.
I’m not afraid of any misuse of my data, because I haven’t put out any data on these platforms.
I ALSO find the loopy attacks on Amazon, based on T-rumpian lies, to be dangerous. They are clearly business disparagement, and Amazon should sue the bastard.
All this was the thrust of the Williamson piece. It was about how the T-rumpian corruption of the conservative movement has taken even people like HanSON away from where they WERE to the advocacy of what was once the province of the Collective.
I’m going to cut this short here, because it Shows how irrational, ignorant, and unreasoning Ragspiere is.
“MORE complete and utter bullshit by a complete ”
Ladies and gentlemen, keep that one mind for what is going to come next. Because the irony is telling.
“On the subject of bullshit, why the use of “factories” as relates to the Hudson Bay Company (with intended dark forebodings)?””
Because of the little, oh so insignificant fact that THAT WAS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE CALLED!
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/m/article/hudsons-bay-company/
“In Rupert’s Land, each factory (trading post) was commanded by a chief factor (trader) and his council of officers. (See also Fur Trade Routes.)”
Believe it or not, stupid, I am not an opponent of industrialization. Far from it. And frankly for all the overwrought emotional appeal by greenies like Tolkien (still a great thinker) and Leftists like Marx (not so much) Hudson’s Bay Co would have done less damage to American freedom if its factories had used dark satanic mills rather than the autonomy of a trading post.
But you are so desperate and intellectually dishonest you are trying to use THE USE OF A HISTORICALLY ACCURATE TERM as a lie.
“Why not explicate the use of the term in its original meaning, liar?“
Because
A: I am typing on the phone and it is easier to type out “factories” than it is to type “trading posts” and no less accurate.
And
B: If someone is so ignorant they do not understand the references to factories when it comes to 17th century national companies, it is not my job to educate them on the matter.
“It had nothing to do with “plants”, as in the modern terminology.”
Which is completely irrelevant to what I wrote, as an honest reading of my post would show.
The fact is, Factory is an accurate term. Not a lie.
But you are apparently so desperate and intellectually dishonest you are trying to ignore that to score points.
You wanna talk about loopy attacks? Hard to get loopier than that.
“A: I am typing on the phone and it is easier to type out “factories” than it is to type “trading posts” and no less accurate.
And
B: If someone is so ignorant they do not understand the references to factories when it comes to 17th century national companies, it is not my job to educate them on the matter.”
BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA…gasp…HAHAHAHAHA
Yes, indeed. Let’s leave it there. Liar.
“BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA…gasp…HAHAHAHAHA”
Yeah, that’s totally not farqing deranged. Make an accusation saying that calling Hudson Bay Factories *factories* is “bullshit.” And then laugh like a maniac after being called out for it.
“Yes, indeed. Let’s leave it there.”
We could, but I won’t.
“Liar.”
The only thing you could put forth was the idea that this was somehow improper because use of the word had shifted over the past 200 years. But that doesn’t change the fact that using it is not a lie.
“Well, there’s the nut-cutting justification of all BIG GOVERNMENT advocates.”
A: Not for Stalin it wasn’t.
and
B: There’s the deeper problem with that. It’s used and abused as a justification because it is CONVINCING. In part because sometimes it is right.
That’s the unsung corollary to William Pitt’s
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. ”
That necessity is the creed of slaves and argument of tyrants because it CONVINCES at least a large chunk of people. And it’s also the creed that justifies many of the worst abusesof both Big Government and corrupt corporations ever remember “Fake News”?
“I have all those. I’ll trust to market economics, where you default to the evil of BIG GOVERNMENT.”
No, I don’t default to it. There’s a reason why I have no problem with Amazon doing what it does. Because it’s a for profit retailer with the right to determine what it holds and what it doesn’t.
The issue I have is with entities trafficking information and ABETTING CENSORSHIP, like with Google and Facebook. Because you don’t have a human right to have your goods be carried by a certain company.
You do however have a human right to not be ratted out to the PRC or Merkel for wrongthink.
“I’m not afraid of any misuse of my data, because I haven’t put out any data on these platforms.”
Good for you. And I mean that honestly.
However, that’s like saying that you aren’t afraid of any scam artists because you don’t respond to Nigerian prince emails or to town square hawkers offering street insurance. Ergo it isn’t a problem.
The fact is, there should be more protection under the law against criminal predation on the citizenry than simply Not Being Gullible. Yeah, it’d be nice if we didn’t NEED anything more. But unfortunately that does not always work.
“I ALSO find the loopy attacks on Amazon, based on T-rumpian lies, to be dangerous. ”
AS DO I. That is why I don’t attack Amazon.
Again, their business is not my problem. Stupid.
My problem are data peddlers cavorting with the state or other censors. And for that matter VIOLATING THEIR OWN TOS to do so.
“They are clearly business disparagement, and Amazon should sue the bastard.”
You’d have to do a lot more than that in order to make it works.
“All this was the thrust of the Williamson piece.”
Yeah,along with stupid claims that Trump is authoritarian (you keep using that word, it obviously isn’t what it means), that the christian Right is wrong for being obsessed with kulturkamps but Williamson isn’t for being linked to an organ that promotes the original meaning of the term, and so forth.
Williamson does make a HANDFUL of good points.
But they can and are made better elsewhere, by people who do not leaden their arguments down with historical and economic fallacies or the sting of hypocrisy.
” It was about how the T-rumpian corruption of the conservative movement has taken even people like HanSON away from where they WERE to the advocacy of what was once the province of the Collective.””
Again, the maintenence of legal protections for rights has always been the realm of the collective. Don’t believe me, chowderhead?
The preamble to the Constitution outright says.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,….. and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The Founders were not collectivists, and they RIGHTFULLY recognized that if a state infringed too far on the inherent rights of its citizens it deserved to be destroyed. But they DID however recognize that humans live in a partially collective manner and OFTEN BENEFITTED FROM some form of collective governance.
In part because Joe Fur Trapper was unlikely to be able to stand up to the bullying of the local Hudson’s Bay factor with the support of the local British Army officer, while a government would not be so easy.
You might not like the fact that the Founders could recognize the existence of collective human groups and the desire to govern them without being Communist or Fascist nuts. But the fact is QUITE LITERALLY SPELLED OUT IN THE GOD DAMNED CONSTITUTION. Recognizing that fact does not make one a worshipper of the collective.
It’s so cute that you disingenuously use the term “collective” in dispute of my use of the term Collective, while pretending to be a “historian”.
My use of the term, as explained many, many times here, is identical to the use by Nock and Hayek. Your use of the term is simple, stupid, and without context. It’s another implicit lie.
Of course, the Founders established the Federal government as an act of collective motive; a voluntary union of sovereign states replacing a confederacy of the same. They were the last thing form “Collectivists”, you lying sack of shit.
“In part because Joe Fur Trapper was unlikely to be able to stand up to the bullying of the local Hudson’s Bay factor with the support of the local British Army officer, while a government would not be so easy.”
Yeh. This is another lie. Joe Fur Trapper was able to trade his furs in various places. Nobody could stop Joe.
You’re a liar.
“It’s so cute that you disingenuously use the term “collective” in dispute of my use of the term Collective, while pretending to be a “historian”.”
There’s nothing disingenuous with using a common definition of the term IN LIEU OF MORE SPECIFIC CLARIFICATION.
It IS, however, disingenuous to accuse someone of being disingenuous because they’re supposed to be either psychic or an expert researcher on the subject of Whatever Ragspierre Wrote.
“My use of the term, as explained many, many times here,-”
No, many many times on this blog. But not here.
But apparently I’m supposed to have psychically known that.
” is identical to the use by Nock and Hayek.”
fair enough, thank you for the clarification. That changes things.
However, it does NOT make my prior analysis disingenious.
“Your use of the term is simple, stupid, and without context. It’s another implicit lie.”
No, it isn’t.
What is without context is claiming that everyone should understand one term in the same way.
But then you also tried to claim it’s a lie to use a HISTORICAL FREAKING TERM because foreshadowing. or something.
“Of course, the Founders established the Federal government as an act of collective motive; a voluntary union of sovereign states replacing a confederacy of the same.”
Indeed.
” They were the last thing form “Collectivists”, you lying sack of shit.”
Indeed, AS I POINTED OUT you SIMPERING CHOWDERHEAD.
That is disingenious.
“Yeh. This is another lie. Joe Fur Trapper was able to trade his furs in various places. Nobody could stop Joe.”
Translation:
You don’t know jack about the history of Joe Fur Trapper or the laws put in place regarding him. You don’t understand how the Proclamation Line was pushed through IN PART due to Hudson Bay lobbying to try and crush private competition from Atlantic Coast colonials.
And you certainly didn’t have a set of professors and friends from decades ago who made their living doing primary source research on the matter and enjoyed reenacting as a side bit.
“You’re a liar.”
No, you are.
But then a liar can’t trust anyone else.
“Translation:
You don’t know jack about the history of Joe Fur Trapper or the laws put in place regarding him. You don’t understand how the Proclamation Line was pushed through IN PART due to Hudson Bay lobbying to try and crush private competition from Atlantic Coast colonials.”
Well, sure I do. I know that they were NOTHING if not fiercely independent and dauntless men who were highly MOBILE. I ALSO know that the HBC had competitors who were successful in trading in places despite the HBC monopoly.
One of the things the HBC did very well was establish a system of “factories” which made it attractive for trappers to bring in their goods. That didn’t mean they HAD to bring them in.
“And you certainly didn’t have a set of professors and friends from decades ago who made their living doing primary source research on the matter and enjoyed reenacting as a side bit.”
This is a rank use of the fallacy of an appeal to authority. It didn’t work.
“Yeah,along with stupid claims that Trump is authoritarian (you keep using that word…)”
No. Actually I don’t think I’ve used it here on thread once.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and chalk that bullshit to your delusional nature, instead of just calling you out for another lie.
But what do you call T-rump’s unilateral imposition of tariffs if not “authoritarian”?
Hmmm…??? I think it’s a very apt description.
Congress has given over much of its power to the Executive, Rags, including that on setting tariffs. Your problem is not with Trump but with Congress. They’ve been handing their power over the Executive (and to the Judicial) for over fifty years (okay, maybe over a hundred). You know this.
“No. Actually I don’t think I’ve used it here on thread once.”
Yes.
Because I was referring to *WILLIAMSON’S ARTICLE* and the claims made therein, you incompetent boob.
Sorry for not specifying more, but it isn’t surprising that this pops up in a thead about Williamson and his brief, unlamented tenure at The Atlantic.
“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and chalk that bullshit to your delusional nature, instead of just calling you out for another lie.”
My deluded nature?
I had the audacity to read and summarize Williamson’s article accurately. In which he repeatedly refers to Trump as Authoritarian and the Republican party as a whole as having an authoritarian shift.
What is deluded about that, numbnuts? DO I HAVE TO BLOCKQUOTE HIS ARTICLE ON THE MATTER?
Because I will.
Are you so incompetent and egotistical you think that everything I talk about it is about the claims you specifically make?
Because I hate to tell you this, but you really don’t make enough of them to warrant such replies.
“But what do you call T-rump’s unilateral imposition of tariffs if not “authoritarian”?”
Firstly, I call it economically stupid. Highly so.
But in terms of authoritarianism, it is no more so than the Presidency already has been in the 1960’s. When Johnson created another stink by abusing GATT to get the Chicken Tax through.
The fact that Trump is using this is bad, but t also points to a deeper rooted problem with the Imperial Presidency than just Him.
But on the plus side it also isn’t indication that the US is sliding towrads President as Imperator like Obama’s new and novel executive abuse.
“Hmmm…???”
See above.
“I think it’s a very apt description.”
Considering how you are dumb enough to think using a historically accurate term is some kind of dishonest foreshadowing, it is safe to say that what you think does not carry great weight.
“No shit, Crazy Sloppers…???”
Indeed.
“Part of acting in the role of an authoritarian is having AUTHORITY.
Duh.”
This isn’t even the valley girls level of political science. This is incompetent wordplay.
No, authoritarian is an ideology. One that is usually played out by one who holds it if and when they have authority, but which they often don’t.
And furthermore, while part of an authoritarian regime or ruler is having an authority, so is part of acting the role of a *republican or democratic* leader.
The problem you face is that Trump is not more authoritarian than LBJ’s. And significantly less than Obama.
The fact that we’re comparing him to two Prog Dems is bad, and goes back to Trump’s roots as a carpetbagging Liberal New York Dem.
But it doesn’t make him Putin.
“Does that change the nature of T-rump’s conduct? No. It does NOT.”
No, it does not.
However ,it safely excludes the idea that he or the Republican party are having an authoritarian shift.
But then what do I know? I’ve only been to Russia and Mozambique, where they have ACTUAL authoritarian, despotic governments and rulers.
“Well, sure I do. I know that they were NOTHING if not fiercely independent and dauntless men who were highly MOBILE. I ALSO know that the HBC had competitors who were successful in trading in places despite the HBC monopoly.”
This is true, however that is also a red herring.
The fact that they were dauntless, independent, and mobile merely explains how they were able to SURVIVE and challenge the Monopoly and its corporate AND GOVERNMENT enforcers.
It in no way DOES NOT mean there was not a problem with the monopoly existing in the first place.
It in no way DOES NOT mean that these people were not liable for imprisonment, fines, or DEATH if captured by either.
It does not mean there was not a gross problem as a result of this undue private entity mingling with the state.
And it does not mean that the Invisible Hand and Free Market’s ultimate victory over that corporate behemoth made the human losses caused by it A-Ok.
“One of the things the HBC did very well was establish a system of “factories” which made it attractive for trappers to bring in their goods. That didn’t mean they HAD to bring them in.”
Correct. *THAT* didn’t.
The way they interpreted and enforced the old charter King Charles gave them (back in 1670) after the French-Indian War did. And people were still getting killed for it by assassination or starvation decades later.
Lord Selkirk was lucky because his close political allies saved his health and possibly life during trial. Other people like Nougat? Not so much.
And while for America’s founders it was a secondary concern in light of Admiralty courts, military occupation, and the systematic destruction of colonial self-rule, it WAS still a concern.
“This is a rank use of the fallacy of an appeal to authority. It didn’t work.”
It is only a fallacy if my argument relied on it. It does not.
It just goes back to the point. That I am the one who has studied the history and knows others who have, and I can back that up.
You just assert.
Ah, so a president’s use of his lawful power is authoritarian? That word doesn’t mean what you apparently think it means. Do you need me to send you a dictionary, Rags?
Ryan and McConnell and many others don’t do anything between electin and then can run on the terrifying thought of Pelosi and Company being in control. This scenario let’s them deleiver nothing to voters and everything to their donors. They prosper off the the threat of radical leftism and have no desire to keep it anything but red hot for ervy election. I for one am tired of having a knife to my thoat that McConnell and his leadership refuse to remove no matter ow we beg them to.
The Atlantic knew who they hired. They knew all the writing the tweets everything. They simply enjoyed hiring him do they could fire him.
He’s as useless as teats on a boar. At least those lost jobs can be brought back, those towns revitalized, but he’s proven he was simply the soft left. The GOPe are just taking us to Hell slower.
Williamson is one of America’s most important thinkers and an elegant writer.
He was exactly right about people needing to get up off their dead asses and going where there was work for them.
The ghost towns of farm states will never return. The mill towns in the dark folds of the Rust Belt will never be “revitalized”, and for good and obvious reasons.
People who have the guts to tell us hard things are worth their weight in gold.
The choir isn’t helped by preachers who only preach to it, to it and nowhere else.
But it’s obvious that Williamson reach far, far beyond the “choir”.
“Williamson is one of America’s most important thinkers and an elegant writer.”
I’ll give you the latter because of benefit of the doubt, since I haven’t read him much.
As for the former, somehow I doubt it.
“He was exactly right about people needing to get up off their dead asses and going where there was work for them.”
Sure, but not everybody can manage to do that.
“The ghost towns of farm states will never return. The mill towns in the dark folds of the Rust Belt will never be “revitalized”, and for good and obvious reasons.”
Uh, seriously Rags?
I’m a historian and “NEVER” Is a very, VERY long damn time.
It’s hard to underestimate just how many towns, cities, and other things have been raised up, been all but wiped off the map, and then come back. In fact it’s really hard to cite any that aren’t in Australia, New Zealand, or the Americas that haven’t.
People wrote off the likes of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, countless small Japanese and German suburbs burned during the war by bombs from above, and smaller things like Oberammergau, the New Town of Hong Kong, and thousands of small settlements that got leeched of life by economic shifts in the industrial revolution or times of plague if they were not simply destroyed. And yet they are there.
That’s not to say that some places don’t stay dead. The city of Castro was never rebuilt after the Papacy razed it to the ground, and Oradour-sur-Glane remains a ghost town in ways most rust belt settlements cannot imagine.
But those are rare. And I would not be willing to bet that nobody in the history of ever will ever rebuild them.
Now that doesn’t mean we should shovel welfare money to try and keep settlements or economic protection rackets going in the boonies if the invisible hand is obviously pulling things away. But it does mean that we shouldn’t stomp on their throats or look at Flyover Country like Bombedover country. Much less deny the fact that small towns and agrarian counties are an important part of our republic.
“People who have the guts to tell us hard things are worth their weight in gold.”
There’s a difference between being Hard and being Sharp.
It is one thing to tell people hard, unfortunate truths. Like the fact that the Mullahcracy was never going to stop trying to destroy us, the Palestinian Arabs will never accept peace unless they’re changed utterly, and you can’t spend your way out of a deficit.
But then there’s being a cheap, petty edgelord for no good reason.
Most of what I’ve read of Williamson indicates he’s the latter.
And even as someone who despises abortion, it takes a REAL stretch of the imagination to call every single use of it murder. In many cases that is obviously true, I’ve studied the One Child Policy and forced abortion.
But in many other cases it is manslaughter.
But let’s for a second ignore that.
it takes a REAL “gem” of deep thinking to act as if Abortion is Murder, and then act as if the Death Penalty that is the natural remedy for murder and other measures is not only necessary, but is not important. You wanna hear a real hard truth? Part of the reason for our budget overruns includes a ballooning prison population and then eed to sink money into keeping them and establishing new settings.
A not so insignificant reason for that is because we don’t execute nearly as many people as we should, and certainly far less than most states throughout history have.
There is no good reason my parents’ tax money should have gone towards housing Charles Manson back in Cali for more time than was necessary to have him convicted, run through whatever appeals are necessary, and then have him justly executed. None whatsoever.
Is Williamson going to tell us that hard truth though?
Something tells me I doubt it.
It’s interesting that someone who admits to being ignorant of Williamson’s writing is so sanguine about sliming his work.
Williamson is often very optimistic in his pieces.
One thing he does NOT do, which you did there, is raise an army of straw men.
You’d do yourself a favor to read his pieces. They’re always something you can learn from, if you aren’t so hubristic you just can’t learn.
“You’d do yourself a favor to read his pieces.”
You would find he’s a nasty prog masquerading as a conservative, just like ragspeepee.
pea’s in a pod.
You’d do yourself a favor to read his pieces. They’re always something you can learn from, if you aren’t so hubristic you just can’t learn…
OR literally insane, and a lying craven coward like Butt-hurt Barri…
“Did your good buddy provide any “people” who said Hiroshima would not be rebuilt?
No.”
He didn’t have to, ya idiot. That was my own contribution, using my historical knowledge to tear into your claim that the old mill towns and so forth will NEVER (your word) be revitalized. Try and keep the arrgument straight, will you?
The truth is, it’s incredibly rare to see any settlement be completely abandoned. And most of those are in the Middle East due to the stuff that turned the Fertile Crescent into a dust bowl. It can take years, decades, or even centuries but smart money is not to bet on Never short of something like Port Royal sliding into the sea or a constant natural threat like Pompeii. A lot of people far smarter and more knowledgeable than you have predicted a given region or place being permanently depopulated, and most of them have been wrong.
“Did he provide anything “EEEEEEEVILE” that Williamson said of Hanson?
No.”
Yes, he did. He linked to Williamspn’s article. Which handily accuses Hanson of abandoning Libertarianism as one of the foundations of conservatism, and came up with This splendid farqing sentence.
“Self-described libertarians were not less likely to line up behind the authoritarian demagogue, but half-again as likely to do so. ”
Apparently, Deep Important Thinker Kevin Williamson didn’t bother to realize that being “half-again” as likely to do something is indeed being “less likely” to do something. But apparently we are supposed to gloss over Willoamson contradicting himself in the space of a single sentence.
“Your suckage is typical. And vacant.”
You claim that in an attempt to strike me, but you really wind up striking yourself.
How?
Because it invites comparison. And do you know what is really vacant?
Unsupported assertions.
And do you know what kind of sick age is atypical?
Vilifying the Christian Right as being obsessed with “Kulturkampf” while ignoring the lessons of the original Kulturkampf and the Left’s aping it to attack religious freedom.
That is a special carnival of bad taste and insensitivity, elevat e above usual anti-religious bigotry by having the linguistic awareness to know Culture War originated as a German term but NOT the moral the moral sense to avoid using it in an inappropriate place.
This is the tragedy of Kevin Williamson. Whatever good points he makes are suffocated under his hubris and illogical overstatements as attacks. If only you realized that:
“The truth is, it’s incredibly rare to see any settlement be completely abandoned.”
You made the claim, liar. I just rubbed your face in it.
I can point to many towns in middle America that are essentially ghost towns. You lie.
They are that for very sound economic reasons. There’s no need for a town to sustain agricultural workers when few are needed, for instance. Look up Malthus, you moron.
Your “never is a long time” bullshit is simply the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. You LOVES you some fallacies, but not more than your straw-men.
You can’t quote anything Williamson said of VDH that was really “an attack”. I quoted what Williamson said, and he’s correct. Apparently, it struck a nerve in Hansen, as it damn well should.
But the thing is that NR writers are often in disagreement, and often sharp disagreement. They are not homogeneous. And they THINK, unlike you.
“You made the claim, liar.”
I’m not the liar here, stupid.
I also backed it up by pointing to the example of Carthage.
The PROBLEM, stupid, is that you were too late on the uptack. You didn’t specifically ask for an example of someone who said Hiroshima could not be rebuilt. You only asked “Really? Which people?”
Then I called your bluff by pointing out one such example. Which is more than enough to prove the point.
I also pointed out that I’m not in the game of trying to be your history teacher free of charge.
So put simply, your timing and argumentation suck.
“I just rubbed your face in it.”
Ineffectively.
The problem is twofold.
For one, it would’ve been more effective if you challenged me for a specific example rather than asking (like a dumbarse) for a general verification.
And for two: just for the sheer dickens of it, let me give you one (extremely outdated even at the time) prediction by someone who INDEED PREDICTED that Hiroshima would not be rebuilt because it represented a completely different kind of event.
http://americainclass.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/mccarthy_onhiroshima.pdf
“The grandness of the disaster and hte smallness of the victims are ideally suited to the methods of journalism, which exaggerated and foreshortens simultaneously. The interview with the survivors… is the classic technique for reporting such events- it serves well enough to give some sense, slightly absurd but nonetheless correct, of the continuity of life. BUT WITH HIROSHIMA, WHERE THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE WAS, FOR THE FIRST TIME, PUT INTO QUESTIOn, NAD BY MAN, THE EXISTENCE OF ANY SURVIVORS IS AN IRRELEVANCY, and the interview with the survivors is an insipid falsification of the truth of atomic warfare.” – Mary McCarthy
Try reading some of her other writings, because she truly was one of the first who believed atomic war of any kind was irreparable.
“I can point to many towns in middle America that are essentially ghost towns.”
Yeah, and I never farqing denied that cities and towns can become Ghost Towns.
My POINT, you intellectual dwarf, is that towns and cities RARELY stay ghost towns- or are completely abandoned- permanenty. We can still point to most of the “Boom Towns” of the Gold Rush out in California that are still inhabited.
This is why you usually see urban and town development come in a cycle. People move in, population booms, they set up a town or city as population grows. Then that stagnates and eventually drops and people start moving out to greener pastures. Whether poverty comes before this movement or after depends, but in general the area becomes a ghost town.
THEN- SURPRISE SURPRISE- when the region gets neglected and underused enough people make the cost/benefit calculation that the very TRAITS fo a ghost town (low employment, poor economy, little in the way of power) make it an attractive place to capitalize on.
THIS is why Milford, Mass ended its early 20th century depression aand is still going strong.
” You lie.”
No, I simply have a better grasp on history than you or your genius friend Williamson.
Including the understanding that Never is a long time.
And that over the span of 700 years, only 42 cities were ever permanently abandoned.
https://books.google.com/books?id=vSU_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=Hiroshima+%22permanently+abandoned%22&source=bl&ots=tItRTTM5Bq&sig=HQb43PgLcezEy0kp_iwfcGqGtsk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiD2Kuc3anaAhUH9YMKHRi-BpgQ6AEIODAG#v=onepage&q=Hiroshima%20%22permanently%20abandoned%22&f=false
You see similar rates with towns.
“They are that for very sound economic reasons.”
Yes, they are stupid.
Here’s the thing you DON’T SEEM TO GET Though:
They’re that way for very sound economic reasons, and they probably REBOUND and be repopulated for very sound economic reasons once they hit rock bottom.
Namely a lot of space, incredibly cheap prices, and people desperate enough to do almost anything for a job.
We saw this cycle play out with the New England fishing towns, we saw it play out with the Gold Rush boom towns, and we saw it play out in hundreds of towns along the Rhine.
“Never” is a very long time. That is something you seem not to get.
“There’s no need for a town to sustain agricultural workers when few are needed, for instance.”
Yeah, but here’s the farqing thing. A town that doesn’t need to sustain many agri workers will usually try and find other work for them. Even if that means defacto exporting them to greener pastures (hence the infamous U-Haul remark from Williamson) while others will look for other jobs (legal or illegal, take a look at the Meth boom sometime). Until eventually the town reaches a kind of equilibrium.
Which can then be altered by further shifts in the economy. Including investment in a depressed region where labor and resources are cheap.
“Look up Malthus, you moron.”
I already have.
The problem is that Malthus was MOSTLY WRONG. From his belioef that food supply would grow much less than it did, to his belief that the economy would revert into a heavily subsistence form.
All of which have been proven WRONG not only in the long term- which I’m looking at- but also in the short and medium term you and Williamson looked at
“Your “never is a long time” bullshit is simply the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.”
Do you even know what the No True Scotsman Fallacy is? APPARENTLY NOT.
So, what is the “True Scotsman” I am claiming?
Go on. Tell me.
Again, humans RARELY abandon a region- or a settlement- permanently. Especially in the modern age. And just as economic pressures can spur the depopulation and deindustrialization of a region, they can ALSO rebuild it.
Try looking at Kyiv sometime.
The problem, stupid, is that you were dumb enough to claim that they would “NEVER” recover.
Historical knowledge and sheer freaking probability say otherwise.
“You LOVES you some fallacies,”
Not nearly as much as Williamson and you do.
” but not more than your straw-men.”
Again, compared to you and Williamson?
I’m the one actually quoting statistics.
I’m the one actually talking about long term city and town history, using the closest parallels we have on record in Europe and North America.
You are trying to defend your retrograde, incompetent, and Stupid overstatement using a grab bag of half-remembered sources and terms from logic classes.
But it’s not going to work.
“You can’t quote anything Williamson said of VDH that was really “an attack”.”
The only way THIS claim even works is under the extremely thin to the point of indefensibility technical claim that Williamson never attacked Hanson DIRECTLY.
But in context it’s pretty damn hard to argue otherwise.
“Libertarianism, with its emphasis on free trade, its deference to the market, and its hostility toward social-welfare programs, went quickly out of fashion. How quickly? Last week, my former National Review colleague Victor Davis Hanson published an essay calling for a stronger regulatory hand over high-tech companies, fondly recalling the “cultural revolution of muckraking and trust-busting” of the 19th century, and ending with a plea for “some sort of bipartisan national commission that might dispassionately and in disinterested fashion offer guidelines to legislators” about more tightly regulating these companies, perhaps on the public-utility model.”
(Hence, linking Hanson to Libertarianism, or at least pointing to him abandoning it, and later…)
“Self-described libertarians were not less likely to line up behind the authoritarian demagogue, but half-again as likely to do so. Self-professed libertarian voices such as Larry Elder have become abject Trumpists.”
And then we have bits like this…
“But “libertarian” often means little more than “a person with right-leaning sensibilities who is embarrassed to be associated with the Republican Party.” (Hardly, these days, an indefensible position.) ”
Hence implying not very subtly that it is embarassing to be associated with the Republican party (as Hanson is). And I could go on.
“I quoted what Williamson said,”
As have I.
“and he’s correct.””
Not nearly as much as you like to pretend.
But he is more correct than you are. So I will give it that.
“Apparently, it struck a nerve in Hansen, as it damn well should.”
Firstly, it’s HansOn. If you’re going to act like a condescending, smarter-than-thou git you need to be better at policing your own writing. Much like how I pointed out how Williamson contradicted himself in the span of a single sentence by not realizing “half-again as likely” is in fact “less likely” instead of “not less likely.”
And secondly: it didn’t strike nearly as much a nerve as Hanson pointing out the Atlantic’s tendency towards even greater authoritarianism and groupthink than Trump. Especially now that they fired Williamson.
That is one thing neither of you get to ignore.
“But the thing is that NR writers are often in disagreement, and often sharp disagreement. They are not homogeneous.”
Indeed.
THAT IS THE VERY POINT HANSON MADE, chowderhead. As he proved when he was one of the few NRO writers who was not NeverTrump.
He also pointed out that this was NOT the case at The Atlantic, which Williamson happily defected to.
Let’s quote what he wrote, shall we?
“Sadly, I think Kevin Williamson will soon find that National Review was far more tolerant of his controversial views than will be true at The Atlantic. As I noted in the essay in question concerning progressives’ situational regulation, so too the Left also embraces situational free speech.”
“And they THINK, unlike you.”
Obviously I think enough to rebutt your nonsense and to know what a No True Scotsman fallacy is.
The problem is, I was naive. I had the audacity to think that when you wrote “never”, there was a decent chance you actually meant “never.”
Silly me.
Also, The Atlantic’s writers think EVEN LESS than you do. They enforce much more ideological conformity and groupthink than NRO does. This is something Hanson and mot people familiar with the Left saw.
But not Williamson.
Well, we know how that turned out, don’t we?
You think that via sheer volume of bullshit you are going to “win” here.
You’re just another lying moron.
Your “quote” is only a comment by a reader, and only refers to Hiroshima. It doesn’t say what you lie about it saying.
“People” did not say what you claimed they said. There will be no “revitalization” of towns whose reason for existing in the first place has been obviated by the progress of market economics, you stupid, lying asshole.
Timing? Really? When you tell a lie, does it matter when it is exposed?
Based on your bullshit, you’ll assert it does.
You’ve been caught in several lies, and they were lies that need not have been told.
You’ve been caught using several fallacies. I haven’t even had the time to pick your crap apart, but I’ve identified your straw men and your no true Scotsman fallacies. A real forensic exam would be fun, but I don’t have the time.
You think in terms of some sort of game being played here. You lie, and you keep your score by how quickly someone responds to the lies according to some sick formula in your diseased mind.
Williamson was right in most of his thinking. VDH is wrong about invoking the evil hand of BIG GOVERNMENT, and it isn’t an “attack” to say he was wrong, and that it isn’t true to Hanson’s best self.
And you just lie, like a lot of people who support T-rump. You’ll do it at all costs.
And you’ll expand an amazing amount of time and trouble to support your lies with more of them. Just another sick phuc. Just what we need here…
“Firstly, it’s HansOn. If you’re going to act like a condescending, smarter-than-thou git you need to be better at policing your own writing. Much like how I pointed out how Williamson contradicted himself in the span of a single sentence by not realizing “half-again as likely” is in fact “less likely” instead of “not less likely.”’
You priggish lil’ dick, you…!!!
You’re WRONG about “half-again-as…”. It means 1.5 times more likely, you poor, self-aggrandizing little asshole.
“You think that via sheer volume of bullshit you are going to “win” here.”
No, I think historical knowlede plus economy analysis will win over your wild overstatements, ad hominems, and lack of due diligence to so much as *respond* to most of what I write. Let alone debunk.
So far that thought has proven right.
Especially when you were dumb enough to say it was “bullshit” to refer to trading posts as factories…. in spite of that being LITERALLY what they were called at the time. Because historical terminology is nothing before the might of Ragspierre’s ego.
“You’re just another lying moron.”
Says the person who quite literally depended on moving the goal posts.
“Your “quote” is only a comment by a reader, and only refers to Hiroshima.”
So what?
Let’s go back to what your challenge, shall we?
“Did your good buddy provide any “people” who said Hiroshima would not be rebuilt?
No.”
Note that you only referred to Hiroshima in this post. And you only asked about “people”, not “people other than a reader.”
And you ALSO did that after writing “Really? Which people?” Which is even more vague because in addition to not putting any claim on what kind of person could be used, it also made no specific on what city or town would be referenced. So I pointed to Cato the Elder and Carthage.
(Oh and by the way: she wasn’t just a reader, she was an opinion columnist. She was just responding as a reader in this case. But DETAILS).
I called your bluff.
And upon being refuted, you decided to SHIFT THE GOAL POSTS. An ACTUAL logical fallacy.
Too bad it won’t work.
“It doesn’t say what you lie about it saying.”
Yeah, it does. It just doesn’t go into as much detail.
““People” did not say what you claimed they said.”
yeah, they did.
I already pointed to two, chowderhead.
I’m not going to dig up every single person in the history of ever that made a wrong prediction on a given settlement being finished for good just because you were dumb and illogical enough to claim a negative. Because that would be the work of
a lifetime and frankly you’re not wroth it.
“There will be no “revitalization” of towns whose reason for existing in the first place has been obviated by the progress of market economics, you stupid, lying asshole.”
Yeah, that’s totally why Cologne never recovered after its status as a Roman fortress-city on the Rhine Frontier was rendered obsolete.
It’s also why MOSCOW never moved beyond being a trading post and Eastern fort for the wayward heirs of Boyar Families.
And why towns like Viane in Belgium and Milford in Massachusetts never recovered.
Newsflash, you IGNORANT MORON: Towns and cities CAN AND DO find other other economic niches to fill after the original reason is rendered null. NOT all of them. And not always immediately. But they can.
“Timing? Really?”
Yes, really.
You were dumb enough to put a specific demand for information after you made several general and easy to answer demands.
” When you tell a lie, does it matter when it is exposed?”
Except it’s not a lie.
It is you MOVING THE GOAL POSTS in an act of dishonesty, and then accusing me of lying. For not being psychic enough to predict your next inspid demand.
“Based on your bullshit, you’ll assert it does.”
That which is asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.
And if your assertions are one thing, it’s lacking in proof. Even when you make a correct claim (As I will point out later).
“You’ve been caught in several lies, and they were lies that need not have been told.”
No, I haven’t.
You have merely claimed I have.
But considering you were stupid enough to claim that using the term “Factory” to refer to…Hudson Bay Company Factories (in the old sense of the word) is a lie, YOU CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO DEFINE WHAT A LIE IS!!!!
“You’ve been caught using several fallacies.”
Says the person who was caught moving the goal post.
“I haven’t even had the time to pick your crap apart, but I’ve identified your straw men and your no true Scotsman fallacies.”
Yeah, you say you’ve identified.
And as a close analysis of your writing shows, your identification skills Suck.
And you are a hypocrite for using many other fallacies.
” A real forensic exam would be fun, but I don’t have the time.”
You also lack the intellectual honesty, intellectual rigor, and basic knowledge.
“You think in terms of some sort of game being played here. You lie, and you keep your score by how quickly someone responds to the lies according to some sick formula in your diseased mind.”
Stop projecting.
You’re so desperate to try and defend each little brain fart you’ve typed that you have doubled down to defend the idea that towns can NEVER be revitalized after the initial economic impetus is lost (because apparently you don’t think the invisible hand can grasp the concept of “Buy Low” to tap into poor regions).
By which logic three quarters of towns in the Low Countries and everything along the River Rhine would Flat Out Not exist.
“Williamson was right in most of his thinking.”
It’d have to be an awful lot of thinking in order to make up for illogical nonsense like the article we’re talking about.
And I haven’t seen much evidence of that, given lunacy like accusing the Christian Right of being obsessed with a kulturkampf while unblinkingly signing on with an entity (the Atlantic) supporting a Kulturkampf against them and other religious people in the Original Sense of The Term.
” VDH is wrong about invoking the evil hand of BIG GOVERNMENT,
and it isn’t an “attack” to say he was wrong, and that it isn’t true to Hanson’s best self.”
Yeah, it is an attack.
You are WELCOME to make the point that it was a Justified and Correct attack. But that is what it is.
“And you just lie,”
Says the person who had to resort to Moving the Goal Posts.
” like a lot of people who support T-rump. You’ll do it at all costs.”
No, I won’t.
I didn’t support Trump at all costs (or at all) during the Primaries. I didn’t support him at all costs during the General, and I don’t support him at all costs during his Presidency.
Unlike you and Williamson, who apparently do.
“And you’ll expand an amazing amount of time and trouble to support your”
I guess I’ll thank you for that.
” lies with more of them. Just another sick phuc. Just what we need here…”
Nowhere near as sick a phuc as someone who tries to claim referring to Hudson Bay Co trading posts as “factories” is a lie.
“You priggish lil’ dick, you…!!!”
Touched a nerve there, didn’t I?
Let’s assume for a second I am.
So what?
That merely makes me the same thing as you and Williamson.
The DIFFERENCE, chowderhead, is that I have enough of a historical view to recognize that Never is a Long Time, enough economic knowledge to realize towns and cities can be revitalized by changing economic circumstances, and enough moral and ethical sense to realize how IMMENSELY TONE DEAF it is to smear the Christian Right as being sellouts obsessed with Kulturkampf when the Left is aping Bismarck’s campaign against the Catholic Church and its practitioners on a wider scale.
“You’re WRONG about “half-again-as…”. It means 1.5 times more likely, you poor, self-aggrandizing little asshole.”
Touche. On THIS one case, you are right. I was indeed wrong to say that on Williamson. Mea Culpa. I rescind it.
However, my points about the hypocrisy and tone deafness of Williamson in being an apologist for the Left by villifying the Christian right with the term “Kulturkampf” stands.
As does my point about assuming any given town has suffered an irrevocable and permanent decline is silly.
As does my point about throwing the term “authoritarian” around being stupid.
You’re a lying sack of shit.
YES. You are.
You also have an astoundingly overblown opinion of your lying self. Which is pretty common among your ilk.
Kulturkampf in American
(kʊlˈtuʀˌkɑmpf; koolto̅orˈkämpfˌ)
German
noun
1.
the struggle between the Roman Catholic Church and the German government from 1872 to 1887, over control of education, civil marriage, etc.
2. [also k-] [usually not in italics]
any serious conflict over values, beliefs, etc. between sizable factions within a nation, community, or other group
Williamson…and MANY other conservatives…are right in their use of the term. They’re ALSO right to find the surrender of values on the Christian Right disgusting and grossly hypocritical.
“Williamson…and MANY other conservatives…are right in their use of the term.”
Which is where the generic English translation of “Culture War” or “Cultural Struggle” can come in
“They’re ALSO right to find the surrender of values on the Christian Right disgusting and grossly hypocritical.”
Sure, but then other conservatives have an even greater point in finding Williamson’s condescending lectures about them trying to find the lesser of both evils by ranting about Kulturkampf obsessions and Pieces of Silver EVEN MORe disgusting and grossly hypocritical when he was happy to sign on to The Atlantic.
An entity that supports not just normal Culture Warring, but Kulturkampf as the Prussian dictatorship would’ve recognized it.
But hey, apparently we’re not supposed to find anything odd or hypocritical about Williamson’s conduct in that way.
“It’s interesting that someone who admits to being ignorant of Williamson’s writing is so sanguine about sliming his work.”
You don’t need to know many points in order to make at least a rudimentary judgement.
First and foremost, not all abortion is equivalent to murder. Full stop. If you doubt that, try and examine the legal elements of murder and see how many abortions fit under them.
I would know. I’ve been involved in helping chinese and North Korean refugees for years, so I had to do plenty of research on the One child Policy and the utterly democidal way it was enforced. And it’s remarkable that NOT EVEN THEN, when many abortions were preformed involuntarily by the regime’s henchmen, do all of them qualify as murder under US legla definition.
This tells me that Williamson doesn’t think very rigorously about the meaning of murder in a legal or ethical sense.
Secondly, the idea that “mill towns” and other rust belt settlements will “never” be revitalized or “deserve” to die is – in addition to being incredibly callous- REALLY farqing stupid and displays a manifest ignorance of not just urban and communal history in General, but also US urban and communal history in Particular. Especially on the East Coast where you don’t just have dilapitaded former mill towns, farming centers, and industrial ones, but also BOOMING former ones like the aptly named Millford, Mass (Which is ESPECIALLY remarkable whne you remember it is in Taxachussets).
And thirdly, the way he smeared VDH in some of the most inspid, bone headed, and logically incoherent fashions imaginable said plenty about his morality (or lack thereof), as well as the major flaws with his ability to make an argument.
So much of what I have seen has been impressive for all the wrong reasons.
So forgive me, but I don’t need a photographic, perfect understanding of his corpus to see the problems with what i have read. Or with your attempt at a deflection.
“Williamson is often very optimistic in his pieces.”
Yeah, and so is Xinhua and Russia Today.
Optimism or cynicism alone is of little value compared to the reasons for them. And much of what Williamson’s been shooting have been blanks.
“One thing he does NOT do, which you did there, is raise an army of straw men.”
Wrong on two counts, chowderhead:
Firstly: point to and EXPLAIN what my strawmen were, and how they are strawman. I double dog dare you.
Because I doubt you can, and I further doubt you will even make the attempt.
The fact is, you made the mistake of wording your argument poorly.
And secondly: the truth is, Williamson is more than happy to create strawmans when he thinks he can get away with it. For starters, the valid points he makes about Trump and the problems with Conservativism are undermined by his using “Authoritarian” like it’s in the middle of a goddamn fire sale. Which is nothing short of stupid and insulting to those of us who actually know what the heck it is. One that becomes even stupider in the absence of proposing any better alternative (because apparently if we go with the assumption that Trump is “authoritarian” because he’s a defected New Yawk Liberal Democrat- and remind me again, did he ever call Guliani that-, how does supporting the faction of an even MORE authoritarian Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders help?
Oh wait. Williamson doesn’t Answer That).
In addition, there’s This Stupidity.
“The Christian right was able to make its peace with Trump with relative ease, because it is moved almost exclusively by reactionary kulturkampf considerations. ”
The irony to anyone who understands the original Kulturkampf worth a damn is ironic.
The original Kulturkampf was a wholesale element by an Actual Authoritarian- Otto von Bismarck- to persecute the Catholic Church in the German Empire into servility towards the imperial state. Not unlike little things like the Democrat Party’s shanghaiing Christian bakers in their own business, or the overturning of restrictions on gay marriage. So ironically, the Christian right has mostly been focused on trying to live and let live (not entirely, but mostly). It hasn’t been the one waging a kulturkampf.
And while Williamson is happy to castigate Falwell etc. al. for uncriticlaly jumping behind Trump “BECAUSE HILLARY!”, he IRONICALLY ALL TOO HAPPY TO JUMP BEHIND THE SIDE OF THE PEOPLE ACTUALLY WAGING AN HONEST TO GOODNESS KULTURKAMPF. For Reasons. This is apparently what principled conservativism amounts to in your book.
And finally, the little, itsy bitsy fact that while it really took off (and in a mostly bad way) during the 19th and 20th centuries, US suspicion about the corrupt and authoritarian potential for business goes back to the founding. Why? Because the Founders didn’t just contend with an egotistical and far reaching Crown Household under George III, overreaching Parliamentarians, or the localized military dictatorship of Army officials like General Gage.
They also had to contend with nominally private monopolistic entities like the East India Company and Hudson’s Bay. Who- among other things- used their heft to strangle the domestic American tea market by passing the Tea Act and pass through limits on migration. And who were so incestuously linked to government in spite of their normally private nature that they could be counted upon to act as defacto auxiliaries of the state. Or even to act independently of it, as Hudson Bay Comp’s abetting of an oligarchic dictatorship in Canada (the “Family Compact”) and abetting censorship in colonial posts would later ratify.
So for all of Willaimson’s pot shots, there always has been a valid interest in a democratic-republican state limiting the power of corporations. Because they can go despotic as well. Hanson gets this. You and Williamson don’t seem to.
This is apparently the person we’re supposed to regard as one of the most important of American thinkers.
“You’d do yourself a favor to read his pieces. ”
The pieces of his that I HAVE read indicate otherwise.
And your opinion does not do it.
“They’re always something you can learn from, if you aren’t so hubristic you just can’t learn.”
Sorry, but no.
I learned literally nothing from “The Passing of the Libertarian Moment.” And it’s not because I’m so hubristic I cannot learn (I freaking forced myself to read through “Dreams of My Father” to try and understand Obama better) or because I’m some kind of Trump cultist like you often like accusing those you disagree with of.
It’s because I already have learned a fair bit, Williamson doesn’t put anything to learn for me (of the MAN things I can still learn from), and he and you are Nowhere Near As Smart as you seem to think.
“And thirdly, the way he smeared VDH in some of the most inspid, bone headed, and logically incoherent fashions imaginable said plenty about his morality (or lack thereof), as well as the major flaws with his ability to make an argument.”
I can’t possibly make the time to fisk all your bullshit as it deserves, but let’s look at what Williamson said, as opposed to your lies…
“Ancient prejudices, including the prejudices against social relations with foreigners, began to reassert themselves, as did the expectation that government should take a paternal interest in the people rather than a merely administrative one. Libertarianism, with its emphasis on free trade, its deference to the market, and its hostility toward social-welfare programs, went quickly out of fashion. How quickly? Last week, my former National Review colleague Victor Davis Hanson published an essay calling for a stronger regulatory hand over high-tech companies, fondly recalling the “cultural revolution of muckraking and trust-busting” of the 19th century, and ending with a plea for “some sort of bipartisan national commission that might dispassionately and in disinterested fashion offer guidelines to legislators” about more tightly regulating these companies, perhaps on the public-utility model.
That from a magazine whose founders once dreamed of overturning the New Deal.”
His sin, I guess, was in quoting VDH.
Heres just ONE of your many straw men…
“People wrote off the likes of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, countless small Japanese and German suburbs burned during the war by bombs from above, and smaller things like Oberammergau, the New Town of Hong Kong, and thousands of small settlements that got leeched of life by economic shifts in the industrial revolution or times of plague if they were not simply destroyed. And yet they are there.”
Really? What “people”?
“I can’t possibly make the time to fisk all your bullshit as it deserves,”
Yeah, you can.
You can start by dropping over dramatic, self pitying proclamations.that you can possibly do X in favor of actually doing X. In this context, risking my writing and proving that it is in fact bullshit.
Not a good start to your rebuttal.
“ but let’s look at what Williamson said, as opposed to your lies…”
This ought to be a good one……
“His sin, I guess, was in quoting VDH.”
No, his sin was in attacking VDH and his call for anti-trust regulation on Twitter, YouTube, etc and acting as if it were somehow inherently contradictory to a repeal of the New Deal……
WITHOUT going through the hard thinkythibky work of actually demonstrating it.
The truth is, one can be in favor of opposing the welfare state and other leviathine monstrosities in the state while also believing the state has a legitimate role to play in preserving liberty. Including by clamping down on private entities that grow too powerful and abusive towards it like Hudson’s Bay factories (read: trading posts) in the Midwest.
The Founders certainly did.
Oh, and regarding the….
““Ancient prejudices, including the prejudices against social relations with foreigners, began to reassert themselves, ”
Firstly, This is a straw man in and of itself. Because the emphasis is not on foreigners in andnif themselves, but foreigners from Hispanic America and the Muslim world in the West illegally. For reasonsnwencannseenon any given day in the news.
You aren’t going to find too many people objecting to Brit comedians, Sikh barbers, Cuban and Venezuelan refugees, or Iraqi Kurds coming in by Green Card. Yes, I know there are a Handful, including Ann Coulter, who oppose even legal immigration. I am also aware that they are an extreme minority even in the Republican Party.
And that’s without getting into why distrust of foreigners is an ancient and well established prejudice. Because evolutionarily, humans lived in enough danger from one’s own kin and the environment to easily trust a group of people they did not know and who often had very different goals compared to them, That’s something Hanson gets- again- and you and Williamson do not. That does not mean that every foreigner is That does not mean every foreigner wants to kill you and one’s own countrymen can be trusted about everything, but it does mean you can’t even be sure of who wants to kill you or not.
“Heres just ONE of your many straw men…”
Firstly chowderhead, that is “Here’s”, not heres. Here Is.
And secondly: I also told you to PROVE IT IS A STRAWMAN. You did not.
“Really?”
Oh no not really, Ragspierre,I just like using words that do not mean anything like twitter hacks using Literally.
OF COURSE REALLY, you hack.
“What “people”?
I’m not interested in trying to tutor you on Western Cub or Urban history, so let us just limit ourselves to one of the most famous cases in Western History.
Carthage, we stayed by Roman people like Cato. “Carthage must be destroyed” anyone?
And it I as indeed destroyed, the people killed or enslaved, the buildings broken, and the fields ploughed to mark the idea that Carthage would never rise again.
The fact that we have several articles talking about “Roman Carthage” underlines how THAT did not work.
To cite just one.
https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-2718902631/cyprian-and-roman-carthage
Shall I go on and say other people who pronounced cities or towns dead only to have them return? Or can even you get the point?
More heaps of steaming bullshit, and another platoon of straw men.
“More heaps of steaming bullshit, and another platoon of straw men.”
This is the intellectual equivalent of I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?
It is pretty sad when someone is reduced to claiming one of the most proverbial destructions and rebirths of a city in ancient history is steaming bullshit. Never mind the primary sources.
Bottom line: of it’s steaming bullshit and straw men, stop asserting it and start proving it.
If not, you are overdue to apologize
Your move, chowderhead.
Deep on me. Should be if it’s, not of it’s.
Thank you, Sir, for taking the time to take Rags to the figurative woodshed. I enjoyed reading every. single. word.
Did your good buddy provide any “people” who said Hiroshima would not be rebuilt?
No.
Did he provide anything “EEEEEEEVILE” that Williamson said of Hanson?
No.
Your suckage is typical. And vacant.
I look forward to seeing Williams earning his bread by choke setting, or as a hammer operator, oh wait, those are negative assets dying industries. I guess he can get a nice position in the food services industry. Or maybe he’s too lazy to get off his dead ass.
Kevin should have never picked a fight with Dr. Hanson; it’s never smart to pick a rhetorical fight with someone who has 150 IQ points on you.
I’m sorry he was fired, because I think the Atlantic was a very good fit for him; ironically enough, he was fired because their style and his own are so similar.
Research until you find something that’s good enough to get what you want, and use it as a hammer until you either get it, or it breaks. Repeat as needed.
I am still infuriated at his totalitarian and painfully ignorant writing on water rights.
First, they came for that guy at Mozilla. Then, they came for the guy at The Atlantic. There were also the witch hunts targeting non-feminist, non-Democrat women. And the warlock trials (i.e. denial of due process) and press lynchings. A clear and progressive slope.
From what I hear, Media Matters was the prime mover in getting Williamson fired. They’re not interested in anything except destruction – like many Progressives. Like their attempts to get Laura Ingraham fired. And more than a few others, who either did get fired or were forced out of their jobs.
The underlying principle of Progressivism is “destroy unbelievers”.
In regards to the “Flight 93” analogy of the 2016 election, one must realize that the only reason that Trump won was because he was up against the paragon of pure distilled evil that we Hillary Clinton, and even then barely won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.
Many people voted for Trump, even though they despised him, because he wasn’t Hillary.
Trumpism is a minority view. Instead of doing the sane and rational thing and trying to build up a coalition, far too many are hell bent on alienating anyone and everyone who doesn’t blindly jump on the “Trump train”. Why? Perhaps the emotional catharsis is more important to them than actually defeating the Left. I’m convinced that there are plenty of die-hard Trump fans who would gladly hand absolute power over to the Democrats just as long as the “Never Trumpers” are taken down.
Political Hat, I largely agree with your points but I think the inverse is even truer. I was certainly one of the people who distrusts Trump- and distrusted and disliked him even more back then- but who voted for him anyway precisely to try and save the Republic. His trutherism regarding the Iraq War was very nearly a dealbreaker for me and would have been had it not been for the circumstances. I’ve never been a die hard Trump cultist or member of The Burn It Down caucus, and I certainly can appreciate the need to form alliances and work with people we do not completely agree with.
I certainly believe there are people who are too willing to let things go to Hell in a hand basket so long as Nevertrumpers get it.
But I think the bigger problem is the inverse. Nevertrumpers too willing to defect or leave for petty reasons. Even if it is counterproductive as Williamson found out and Hanson predicted.
I agree that too much scorched earth or embrace of dogmatism hurts us, but how do we differentiate between scapegoating anyone not on the Trump Train and demanding minimal standards? It is no secret that the GOP has often let its voters down (not as often as many cynics think, sure, but too often). And several Republican politicians in particular are hideous sellouts like McCain. And plenty of them were willing to backstab us and turncoat to try and join the winning side. Or what they thought was it.
How do we balance being an inclusive coalition with trying to keep our Pols honest?
Let me first say that I was a Cruz supporter who didn’t sign on to the “burn it down” tactics espoused by Trump’s supporters (See: Breitbart’s Steve Bannon) That being said, the daily and unrelenting, and easily disprovable, wholly false assertions of Trump’s criminality and ignorance made me wonder why they hated him so. I guess I became a defender of what I have seen as Trump’s conservative efforts regarding the judiciary and regulatory agencies, while battling Progressive Democrats and elitist Republicans.
“I’ve never been a die hard Trump cultist or member of The Burn It Down caucus, and I certainly can appreciate the need to form alliances and work with people we do not completely agree with.
“I certainly believe there are people who are too willing to let things go to Hell in a hand basket so long as Nevertrumpers get it.
“But I think the bigger problem is the inverse. Nevertrumpers too willing to defect or leave for petty reasons. Even if it is counterproductive as Williamson found out and Hanson predicted.”
The problem is the vocal MAGA purity supporting fanboys and fangirls. On the whole I can’t complain about much when it comes to what Trump has done in office. I think his trade war and squishiness on guns are problematic, but he at least had sensible people to counter his inexperience and amateurism. And yes, I do believe that a big problem is that Trump isn’t very good at actually making political deals. You have to work with people you disagree with to form coalitions to advance the good, while retarding or even reversing the bad. Insulting those people are counter-productive. It may feel good to shake one’s fist, but that is putting emotional catharsis over actually achieving anything.
“The problem is the vocal MAGA purity supporting fanboys and fangirls.”
With respect Hat, I have to disagree.
I think they are A problem. But I cannot be convinced that they are THE problem. Not with backbiters like John McCain hanging around waiting to stab us in the back. Or Arlen Specter, who famously defected outright.
That does not mean the overreaction to them is not a thing. It is. It does not mean it is not a problem. It is. But that does not make it the single great problem of conservatism as a whole. Not when we are engaged in a civilizational war against people who want to destroy us like the Jihadis, and see the Left slide further into ACTUAL totalitarianism while resurrecting iconography straight from the Stalin Era German Communist Party (the father of Antifascist Action, or Antifa, another one of the paramilitaries they founded to terrorize the German public and fight for control).
“On the whole I can’t complain about much when it comes to what Trump has done in office. I think his trade war and squishiness on guns are problematic, but he at least had sensible people to counter his inexperience and amateurism.”
Likewise.
Again, I’m not in favor of purging the party of anybody who does not acclaim Trump the God-Emperor (something that did give me pause, even if it is tongue and cheek). But I’m also opposed to not trying to clean house of people who seem to be incompatible with actually trying to get conservative politics through.
“And yes, I do believe that a big problem is that Trump isn’t very good at actually making political deals.”
I’ve seen a couple different indications. He certainly is not infallible or the World’s Biggest Winner in them, but some of the pushes like the Korean Agreement (even if it may be as toothless as the Assad Chem Weapons deal) give me pause.
” You have to work with people you disagree with to form coalitions to advance the good, while retarding or even reversing the bad.”
We have to work with some people who we disagree with to form coalitions to advance the good.
But what happens when other people are not willing to do so? People like Williamson and McCain?
A vote’s a vote, don’t get me wrong. But it’s only reasonable to calculate who the heck is going to vote in a given way and figure out if there is a possibility someone flat out WIll Not support the good.
That I think is one of the dividing lines for me. Whether they are willing to Tolerate or at least Analyze Trump. That is what separates the likes of critics like Ben Shapiro and Ted Cruz from the likes of adversaries like Kevin Williamson. The willingness to try and play the hand they were dealt as best as they could, even if it includes working with or putting support in someone they distrust (often for good reasons!).
What we have seen however is a large number of people who flat out would not do that. Who were flat out supporting the idea of an illegitimate-on-her-face President that would gut the traditions of American government just to get Trump. Forgive me if I do not think those people are good material for building the invesitable coalitions.
“Insulting those people are counter-productive.”
Depends on Those People.
Insulting plausible allies is indeed usually counter-productive. But again, how do we define probable allies from people who aren’t?
” It may feel good to shake one’s fist, but that is putting emotional catharsis over actually achieving anything.”
Defining the battle lines can be almost as important as anything. And frankly, that’s a choice Williamson was happy to make when he moved to The Atlantic firing Parthian Shots all the way.
The Political Hat rote:
I’m convinced that there are plenty of die-hard Trump fans who would gladly hand absolute power over to the Democrats just as long as the “Never Trumpers” are taken down.
I have proof that plenty of Never Trumpers were willing to hand absolute power over to the Democrats if it took Trump down. And many of them are still willing to make that bargain.
No, the vast majority of conservatives who oppose Trump do not want to hand absolute power over to the Democrats. While they disagree with Trump, they also disagree with the Democrats.
There is no manichean “GOPe” versus virtuous MAGA army.
The right is not monolithically of one mind, but a coalition of myriad interests. Some are quite moderate, and even liberal in some areas. Simply declaring anyone in that coalition to be a pro-Democrat “cuck” just because they aren’t blindly pro-Trump or fight for what *you* want to see happen is counter productive.
“the vast majority of conservatives who oppose Trump”
Meaningless blather since that is a very tiny minority.
“No, the vast majority of conservatives who oppose Trump do not want to hand absolute power over to the Democrats. While they disagree with Trump, they also disagree with the Democrats.”
Agreed there, and that is something to keep in mind.
However, it’s also an overstatement.
Firstly because there are some (probably very few, but some) who do.
And secondly, it is a wee bit of a strawman. I’m fairly sure that even people I feel comfortable calling Arch-RINOs like John McCain would take power like the Presidency if it were offered to them. Such an event is unlikely as heck, but I do think most people would probably take it because of how most humans deal with power.
But that does not mean that they are not willing to coalition with Democrats quite readily to advance it.
Not all Nevertrumpers are like that (Steve Green is a good example). I think most people aren’t. But there are those who did it.
“There is no manichean “GOPe” versus virtuous MAGA army.
The right is not monolithically of one mind, but a coalition of myriad interests. Some are quite moderate, and even liberal in some areas.”
Agreed.
But the question is this: what happens when the different interests start coming apart as some decide that they are better served coalitioning with the Left, especially when it is plunging further into the swamp of flirting with totalitarianism?
” Simply declaring anyone in that coalition to be a pro-Democrat “cuck” just because they aren’t blindly pro-Trump or fight for what *you* want to see happen is counter productive.”
Agreed.
But so is blindly giving a dispensation to anybody and everybody who breaks from that coalition to support the Left, even in cases (like the Clinton Election) where it would be catastrophic.
“… and even then barely won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.”
You lefty scum are such jokes. The count was 306 to 232.
The popular vote was not fought over, dumbass.
It’s just a variation of the fable of the scorpion and the frog, except in this version the frog climbs into bed with the scorpion. When he accepted the deal he should have known better. That said, I have little sympathy for the fortunes of supposed conservatives who are so conservative that they’d preferred to have had 12 straight years of hard left radical presidential administrations, or even risked it.
Hat: “the vast majority of conservatives who oppose Trump do not want to hand absolute power over to the Democrats. While they disagree with Trump, they also disagree with the Democrats.”
Vichy Republicans. I’ve never seen them fight Democrats as fiercely as they fight Trump.
You talk alot about alienation and party unity. But your assumptions and misrepresentation of Trump supporters tells me you really haven’t bothered to listen to them. It reminds me of the media on election night who just “can’t understand why Republicans are so stupid to vote against their best interests.
I had a long and thoughtful reply thought out, but I’m tired of explaining the same thing over and over again. I resent having to waste my time repeating myself.
Besides there’s only one key point I want to communicate – the NeverTrumper response to the election has shaped the battlefield in ways you have not considered – where once we forgave the Stupid Party for failing due to incompetence, we now see that the GOP is capable of fighting fiercely and effectively… when their own self-interests are threatened.
That game is over. We now view Never Trumpers as Collaborators. We are never going back to the days of Failure Theater and Not This Hill. It was a good con and we fell for it for a long time but we’re on to you now.
We are under under siege against what often feels like impossible odds. And your side is intent on handicapping us. If the gates break and the city falls, do you seriously believe we would reward such treachery by allowing NeverTrumpers to be appointed to a Vichy Government?
This is the outcry of a truly paranoid personality. And a person who’s surrendered to a cult of anger and hatred.
Good conservatives CAN and had BETTER retain the capacity to objectively view what EVERYBODY does and says, and critique it as warranted.
You’re neither good nor conservative. Juts a deranged Trump hater.
But I AM a good conservative, and you ARE a literally insane teller of obvious lies.
You are a deranged mental midget. And a prog.
Again, all you have is obvious lies. It’s who you’ve chosen to be. There is no lie you will not tell.
Coates and Valenti. Lol. On what planet could it be that these two consider themselves to be voices of reason? The Atlantic are indeed intellectual cowards. I don’t see how aforementioned posers are any better.
Gotta go do real things now. Turtles can play with himself while I’m gone!
“Gotta go do real things now. Turtles can play with himself while I’m gone!”
Oh dear. What will I ever do with my life?
Probably the exact same stuff I did before I ran across Williamson and a person so stupid they claim that using a historical term is a lie.
I’ll dash off another few comments but then back to bringing home the bacon.
I don’t think I called you a liar for using an archaic term like “factories”. I thihk you were being both intentionally deceptive and an insufferable prig, as elsewhere. Or pretty much everywhere.
“I don’t think I called you a liar for using an archaic term like “factories”.”
Except that is exactly what you did, insufferable idiot.
You even spelled it out, blathering something about “foreshadowing.” Because apparently you thought typing the shorter term was somehow a dog whistle to try and call forward to left wing demonization of corporations in the industrial revolution.
In spite of having absolutely no roof whatsoever.
“I thihk you were being both intentionally deceptive and an insufferable prig, as elsewhere.”
Translation: you had no proof.
You just assumed.
And in doing so proved to be something worse than an insufferable prig. An intellectually dishonest insufferable prig.
Much like Williamson.
“Or pretty much everywhere.”
You’ve been caught dead to rights shifting the goal posts on this very thread. In addition to engaging in the completely unsupported conspiracymongering nonsense about why I used a HISTORICALLY ACCURATE if somewhat archaic term.
You don’ thave much grounds to go about lecturing others on intellectual honesty or deceptiveness.
You’ve been caught outright lying. Several times.
Just another self-anointed “winner” who’s nothing but a lying sack of shit.
Your whole HBC and EIC bullshit was just a red herring.
Pathetic.
“You’ve been caught outright lying. Several times.”
No, you’ve merely alleged I’ve lied. Several times.
Without a scintilla of proof.
Even after you dishonestly Moved the Goal Posts and peddled other logical fallacies in an attempt to do it.
So who do you think you’re going to convince?
It is not me. It also is not anyone else reading through the track record here. They can see quite clearly.
And you certainly don’t need to convince yourself of your delusions.
So your protests do no good.
“Just another self-anointed “winner” who’s nothing but a lying sack of shit.”
Stop hitting yourself.
And honestly, I don’t anoint myself the winner. In this case you do. Your inability to counter my points shows that.
“Your whole HBC and EIC bullshit was just a red herring.
Pathetic.”
Even if they were pathetic, *they’re not more pathetic than your inability to counter them or back up your assertions.*
Once again, in trying to tear my claims down you wind up breaking yourself.
Well, MORE lies. This time about lying.
You started your attack on me with lies. You told more lies to TRY to save your original lies.
You’re simply another lying sack of shit.
Oh fgs, Rags. This is your standard reply, even “stock” reply. Do you just paste it in to replies and then hit send? You’re a broken record and are incredibly tiresome. Oh, sure, sometimes you call people who disagree with “evil” or “crazy” or some other such juvenile silliness, but your one-note “everyone who supports Trump is a lying, crazy, evil collectivist liar who tells crazy, evil collectivist lies” is so shallow and so thoughtless that it amazes me that you even bother. Feel free to copy and paste that and use it as your new troll spam. It’ll be just as interesting, just as effective, and ultimately, just as much a reflection of your inability to construct or support a lucid argument.
What? My pointing out that you have become a one-note troll shows that I lack integrity? *Yawn*
That’s non sequitur witless nonsense. Do you have any clue how you sound to normal people?
“See, this is what I mean, Crazy Sloppers.”
What you “mean” cannot be trusted. As your willingness to read any damn meaning you wish into the most indefensible positions (like the idea that calling trading posts “factories” is some attempt at foreshadowing and a lie) underlines that.
“Like the other day when I was defending Ingraham, I was sticking up for Williamson against the pukes who were doing a Snoopy dance over his being silenced (on The Atlantic) because he’s not a T-rump sucker.”
Firstly chowderhead: Williamson hasn’t been silenced on the Atlantic. He’s been FIRED from it. Or more likely “let go.” DIFFERENCE.
The Atlantic isn’t holding him in perpetuity in some kind of non disclosure agreement like some companies are wont to do.
He has been DEPLATFORMED. IE being silenced only by a single platform, in this case the Atlantic.
That is bad enough and goes back to the totalitarian, collectivist, and despotic nature of the Left. (Which Williamson was at least tacitly willing to go along with to the point he would lend credibility to an organ like The Atlantic need I remind you).
But Williamson can still get on a blog, bully pulpit, or what have you and screech away as much as he damn well WANTS. The Atlantic merely rejects the idea of paying for him to do so from its property.
And while I will be the first to say that The Atlantic is a puff powdered goon squad, *even puff powdered goon squads have proprietary rights* and the ability to exercise them.
The fact that you conflate these two VERY distinct categories in the attempt of heightening Williamson’s martyrdom underlines your dishonesty. It is a lie.
Secondly: I’m not going to be delivering a snoopy dance over Williamson’s firing, but I also am not going to do much to protest it compared to-say- Ingraham.
Why?
Because Ingraham and her advertisers are the gainful employers being intimidated by a flash mob.
In this case, the Atlantic is the gainful employer who decided to hang Williamson out to dry because of a flash mob and double dealing by its boss.
Is that bad?
Yes.
But it is still Fair.
Thirdly: If you lie down with dogs, you get up with Fleas. If Williamson did NOT know what kind of people drove the entity known as The Atlantic or how they are front and center involved in the Kulturkampf, he was stupid. If he did, he was a hypocrite for taking their pieces of silver while bloviating about libertarianism.
That does not mean that Williamson does not have a claim on my sympathy, even if I find him to be a distasteful, egotistical hypocrite.
However, someone who partners with collectivist hacksand gets targeted by them has lien on my sympathy than someone who HASN’T partnered with them but has.
“How’s that “trolling”, liar?”
This would be more convincing if you didn’t have such an grossly distorted view of what is and isn’t a lie and trolling.
“You’ve lost all creds you might have once had.”
Ok, I’ll bite:
What kinds of creds?
Creds with who?
Obviously not some people in here given the up votes coming to them.
So that’s one possibility ruled out.
Creds with you?
You’re an egotistical, stupid, dishonest hack.
I don’t think too many people are going to care much about creds with you.
“You allow Fen to publish murder fantasies, 4th Amour Div. and Gonzotx to make blatently racist comments, but you make a practice of dropping down on me with your bullshit.”
Well, if I see them do that- and NO chowderhead, I’m NOT going to take your word for it, because you have demonstrated your word is worth little- I will call them out.
“Disgusting.”
Perhaps, but so is trying to blather about “foreshadowing” while trying to claim it’s bullshit to call 18th century Hudson Bay Company factories… Factories. Without identifying how the language has shifted.
Because apparently the dumbarse who kvetched about my posts being too long and full of BS wants to say that unless they’re even LONGER I’m Bsing.
There is no winning with Ragspierre’s standards.
Which menas Ragspierre’s standards are not worth following.
Turtle publishes LOTS more complete bullshit to buttress his prior bullshit. He’s a remarkably prolific generator of bullshit.
“Turtle publishes LOTS more complete bullshit to buttress his prior bullshit.”
Sorry, but primary sources aren’t bullshit. And they do say what you say they don’t.
Asserting otherwise will not change otherwise.
The difference is that I actually provide more than just assertions.
“He’s a remarkably prolific generator of bullshit.”
Your use of the word loses ALL EFFECT after we see what you try and apply it to.
For instance…
“On the subject of bullshit, why the use of “factories” as relates to the Hudson Bay Company (with intended dark forebodings)?
Why not explicate the use of the term in its original meaning, liar?
It had nothing to do with “plants”, as in the modern terminology.”
The problem, stupid, is that that isn’t “bullshit.” It is an accurate, historical use of the terminology. And it was not meant to deal any “dark forboding” (if anything the old school trading posts were MUCH worse for human liberty than the “dark satanic mills” of 19th century Leftist Bleating).
But when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
And when someone is an irredeemable bullshitter, everything starts to look like bullshit.
Turtle is eating you for dinner, Rags. Everyone can see that (including, I suspect, you).
You’re not different than the slime that couldn’t tolerate Williamson on The Atlantic. You’ll lie just for effect.
Turtle has been demonstrated to lie here, serially.
Like Harry Reid, that must be your new standard for “winning”.
“You’re not different than the slime that couldn’t tolerate Williamson on The Atlantic.”
somehow, I doubt Fuzzy Slippers runs the Atlantic.
” You’ll lie just for effect.”
The problem is you’ve shown to have an utterly shallow and dishonest grasp on what a “lie” or “bullshit” is.
As such your accusations to that effect are forfeit.
“Turtle has been demonstrated to lie here, serially.”
No, you’ve merely ACCUSED me of doing so.
But YOU have been demonstrated to Lie about what is and is not “Bullshit” right on down to trying to villifying me for using the term “factories”….
…. accuse me of being “delusional” for summarizing Williamson’s statement that the Republican party is growing more authoritarian just because YOU didn’t write that in this thread up to that point (you just defended someone who had).
And moved the goal posts when caught.
There was ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHAT SO GOD DAMNED EVER for you to write this
“No. Actually I don’t think I’ve used it here on thread once.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and chalk that bullshit to your delusional nature, instead of just calling you out for another lie.”
On a thread THAT WAS ABOUT KEVIN WILLIAMSON’S WRITING FOR THE ATLANTIC AND HIS SUBSEQUENT FIRING…
EXCEPT for effect. Or rather the futile attempt to grasp at it.
You are a dishonest hypocrite grasping at straws.
“Like Harry Reid, that must be your new standard for “winning”.”
Again, Stop Projecting, ya dishonest loser.
You’ve already been defeated several times over. You just make it worse by being determined to lose in the worst spirit possible.
By lying.
Just more of your transparent and voluminous bullshit.
You are a veritable “factory” of bullshit.
“Just more of your transparent and voluminous bullshit.
You are a veritable “factory” of bullshit.”
You’ve already demonstrated that you do not know how to define bullshit.
That makes your throwing it around ineffective.
Granted, not nearly to the same degree as your admitted inability to “fisk”/completely address my points. But still.
It takes an awfully hateful, dumb mind to try and pull the stuff you have.
Just more of your transparent and voluminous bullshit.
You are a veritable “factory” of bullshit.
“You are a veritable “factory” of bullshit.”
No, YOU are. In the modern, non-18th century trading sense.
You’ve even begun to mimic an assembly line by spamming the same bullshit over and over again, copypasta style.
You really expect that to work?
Concisely identifying what you do works for me.
Spewing huge volumes of bullshit (evidence abounding above) seems to work for you, too. You’ve declared yourself the “winner” several times.
You are amazing, in no good way. You’re just another totally dishonest liar. We have a surfeit of those already.
Now you lie employing both “spam” and “bot”. I figure you’ll lie about anything, as here.
“Concisely identifying what you do works for me.”
Obviously not, because you’ve still lost.
And you’ve begun getting into spambot territory to boot.
“Spewing huge volumes of bullshit (evidence abounding above) seems to work for you, too.”
Evidence abounds that you have no accurate concept of what bullshit is.
You’re so desperate to try and get a point in edgewise that you’ve resorted to lying about the historical record. Up to and including saying that it’s “bullshit” to mention HBC had “factories” without providing a dictionary definition.
” You’ve declared yourself the “winner” several times.”
Once again, you don’t seem to get it.
YOU’RE the one who declares me the winner.
You do it when you do not refute my points, when you incompetently address the ones you try to, and when you get caught abusing the definition of “bullshit” beyond recognition.
Your decision to go full spambot is merely you raising the white flag.
“You are amazing, in no good way.”
Stop looking in the mirror.
” You’re just another totally dishonest liar.”
You wanna talk about being a totally dishonest liar, chowderhead?
Again, I need look no further than the nonsense you tried to peddle about the “factories”, or your damnable insistence that a town can NEVER (your word) recover or regrow after losing its original reason for existing.
The fact that this means that Milford, Cologne, Kyoto, and Santa Clara CA (along with God knows how many other towns and cities) should no longer exist went RIIIIIGHT over your conceited little head.
You were so desperate to support Williamson’s bully boy writing and your own transparent bullshit that you never even tried to redress these challenges. You just insulted.
“We have a surfeit of those already.”
Says Ragspierre, totally dishonest liar and spambot to boot.
“Now you lie employing both “spam” and “bot”.”
Projection at its most stupid.
Look dumb@$$, I didn’t MAKE you copy/paste an identical comment and post it twice. Which is very close to the methodology used by Spambots.
(Linked proof, because apparently, Ragspierre is stupid and dishonest enough to claim that if he doesn’t see it, it doesn’t exist.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269860/new-cold-war-heats-syria-joseph-klein#comment-3851448202
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269845/2020-vision-lloyd-billingsley#comment-3851448265 )
Hence my description of your last two posts as “getting into spambot territory” is NOT a falsehood, let alone a lie. IT IS A PERFECTLY ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF YOUR LAST TWO POSTS PRIOR TO THIS ONE!
You may not like the comparison, but you have ABSOLUTELY NOBODY to blame but yourself for it.
“I figure you’ll lie about anything, as here.”
The irony is stifling because this very comment of yours shows that YOU are the one who is willing to lie about anything. Right up to lying about what a lie is and what “bullshit” is.
The real kicker is that in spite of your pretenses to being a good conservative unlike “T-rump” supporters, this shows you’re not Good.
You’re not even Good at being bad. You’re not only dishonest, you’re INCREDIBLY STUPID about being dishonest.
Now tell me, why would people trust someone THIS stupid and dishonest about who is one of the most important thinkers?