Growing up in Chicago, the giant Christopher Columbus statue was a well-known feature in Grant Park. It is now gone. Mayor Lori Lightfoot moved to end the violent protests through an act of surrender. She unilaterally ordered the removal of statue. Problem solved? No, the problem was mob action to remove the statue and Mayor Lightfoot just yielded to violence which left many police officers injured in its wake as well as a number of protesters. Indeed, before the removal, Lightfoot’s own home was targeted after she spoke with President Donald Trump about the use of federal officers to deal with the crime surge in the city. The protesters were demanding the defunding of the Chicago Police Department. My concern is that this was an act that confirmed that rioting and violence can prevail. In the end, it was not the statue but the rule of law that was at issue in Grant Park. Both were lost in the dead of night.
As on so many other unilateral decisions by mayors, the action was taken without pre-warning and in the middle of the night. The concealment of the operation befitted the character of the decision.
Many will applaud this action. Some do not like Columbus or just like Lightfoot. Many in my large Chicago family are Lightfoot fans. Others agree with the criticism of Columbus as a historical figure, criticisms raised particularly by the Native American community that he is a genocidal figure. However, this is not about the merits of the removal decision. Most of us would welcome a debate over the removal of such statues and would seriously consider the merits of removal. I have been participating in such discussions for years.
My objection is how this was done. This will not be seen as an act of principle as much as an act of surrender by the most extreme groups seeking to destroy public art and memorials. It is yielding to mob action and comes dangerously close of mob rule over such questions.
This is why an Antifa leader recently declared “we are winning.” It is because politicians like Speaker Nancy Pelosi have shrugged off the destruction of statues in declaring “people will do what they do.” Now, Mayor Lightfoot is saving them the trouble of toppling statues. She will do it for them in a plea for peace.
I do not believe that most of those who oppose the statue support violent action, but the protests were violent. People were injured. Efforts to pull down the statue were stopped by the Chicago Police Department. They did not, as was the case in Washington, D.C., make the “tactical decision” to stand by and watch a mob destroy a statue. They held the line between collective active and mob action in such controversies.
As I have previously written, there are statues that should be removed but it is important that such decisions are made collectively and with circumspection:
Two decades ago, I wrote a column calling for the Georgia legislature to take down its statue of Tom Watson, a white supremacist publisher and politician who fueled racist and antisemitic movements. Watson was best known for his hateful writings, including his opposition to save Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager accused of raping and murdering a girl. Frank was taken from a jail and lynched by a mob enraged by such writings, including the declaration of Watson that “Frank belongs to the Jewish aristocracy, and it was determined by the rich Jews that no aristocrat of their race should die for the death of a working class Gentile.”
Yet today there is no room or time for such reasoned discourse, just destruction that often transcends any rationalization of history.
Jon, you just don’t get it – we are in a Marxist revolution and Chicago is one of the main battlefields. Lightfoot is on their side. She’s an incompetent who was elected, like Obama, because of the color of her skin. Columbus was not responsible for genocide. He merely discovered lands previously unknown to Europeans. It was the United States government that attempted genocide, after smallpox had wiped out most of the native population in the West.
Semc, Lightfoot is a corporate hack lawyer who was elevated into this position by the “new” Democrat party that actually serves global capital. They are “marxist” only when it serves to rile up the foot soldiers and attack law abiding America and intimidate people who might vote for Donald Trump who is tapping the breaks on free trade in favor of free trade, and trying to save America from the schemes of globalism.
That is not to say the protesters, who many of them really are communist types, do not see themselves as willing allies of global capital. They, like global capital, dream of a world free of borders. The capitalists will get more cheap labor, but on the street level protester’s end of the stick, they want more teeming hordes of third world people to come here and swell the ranks of the unemployed and thus to make the ranks of the “lumpenproletariat” grow
This dynamic can only be stopped by a strong middle and working class law abiding American push back against the insane BLM rhetoric that is blatantly racist against white people — and by demaning that all elected officials of either party stand up to riot and crime in the streets immediately.
Guys like Geo Soros a billionaire, have security teams. They do not fear riot nor crime, nor care about us. Lori Lightfoot has a security team. She does not fear rioters nor crime nor care about us. We can’t afford security teams, we need police and law and order. For our very existence!
it is horrible shame that law abiding Democrat voters are so taken in by the BLM rhetoric that they are not demanding the streets be restored to order.
Of course many are but the newspapers and politicians ignore them. As murders and street crime in Chicago, set new records, entirely apart from the chaos being caused by riots!
it is critical that Republican voters understand that the big global corporations are against us. They too are throwing money at BLM riot squads, not just Geo Soros
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/companies-donating-black-lives-matter/
Target, Walmart, Home Depot!!!!
It’s amazing that the corporations which get fat on law abiding citizens grocery money, actually want to encourage BLM! This is insanity. Feel free to complain at Walmart, Target, and Home Depot in person!
Some counter demonstrations would actually be a good idea. I wont hold my breath, however
Republican party officials need to get some bllz and spine or this is their last go round. We will never support them again, and they will never win again, because it will be a Democrat one party state if they all cave in now.
Kurtz. Soros is just a bag man. Likewise with Gates, etc. They’re just following orders.
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
― Woodrow Wilson, “The New Freedom”
Useful idiots like Natacha and her ilk, can’t even begin to understand that reality.
Rhodes, Wilson was talking about monopolies. Context:
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it. They know that America is not a place of which it can be said, as it used to be, that a man may choose his own calling and pursue it just as far as his abilities enable him to pursue it; because to-day, if he enters certain fields, there are organizations which will use means against him that will prevent his building up a business which they do not want to have built up; organizations that will see to it that the ground is cut from under him and the markets shut against him. For if he begins to sell to certain retail dealers, to any retail dealers, the monopoly will refuse to sell to those dealers, and those dealers, afraid, will not buy the new man’s wares”
mespo727272 — I wrote my first computer code in 1954.
Go crawl back under your rock.
Benson:
And never progressed. Oh and still making the same reply mistake. You are a loon.
“I wrote my first computer code in 1954”, doesn’t even get you a free and crappy cup of coffee at Starbuck’s, David.
But it’s no surprise that you’re very impressed with yourself.
I agree with JT on this one. What public statues and other memorials to individuals and principles are displayed is open to debate at anytime, and “history” by itself does not seem qualifying. But that is rightly the decision of each community through elected officials – hopefully deliberative legislating officers – with public comment, not pressure from peaceful protesters, mobs, or rioters. Lightfoot previously said she would not remove the statue and it will be interesting to see if she even has the authority to do it. Bowing to pressure also probably means promoting safety, but at what cost.
There is simply not room in St Elizabeth’s for all of you.
Benson:
Maybe not but I did get you a spot at Computer Coding School. LOL – again.
The mob has taken over and the policicians have deserted the scene. We are headed in the direction of a Chinese type of dictatorship where the leadership leads through fear and violence. Its major ceoncern is protecting its power in any fashion desired. The Chinese treat the Uygurs as slaves and organ donors. Are our people heading in the same direction?
Allan:
The Uygurs weren’t armed. We are and we’d better damn well defend that to the last man.
” “At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang,” Bolton writes in his upcoming book, per the WSJ.
“According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.”
https://www.axios.com/trump-uighur-muslim-bolton-73ebf1e2-9d34-4aaf-a9ba-17340d2847e4.html
Do you have the quote? Of course not. But suddenly who you formerly called dishonest is now honest.
That is hypocricy and ignorance blended together. There is only so much Trump can do without getting us into a war and the democrats saw to it that Trump’s abilities would be hindered by their actions so they could gain political control. Their candidate’s son like elsewhere was vehicle to enrich the Biden family. Biden has always worked with the Chinese and generally doesn’t consider them a threat.
Trump said no such thing and is on record for coments that completely conflict with the contrived comment you provide above. In fact you prostate yourself in front of Kaepernick who does his things and is paid by Nike. Nike sneakers depend to a large extent on slave labor in China performed by the Uygurs. Suddenlty your mind goes blank.
Allan:
Ignore the fool.
You are right he should be ignored and he is a fool. But ignoring him has to be universal and it won’t be. If he is ignored he will post under a different alias as is his habit. I don’t put too much thought into this blog except for the ideas you and a few put forth along with what the Professor has to say that starts the discussions..
Just like in your own home garbage piles up and you have to take it to the trash heap. So it is here on the blog.
Alan, about half the posts on this blog are coming from ‘one’ political goon. And he ain’t Book, that’s for sure.
Paing Chips, you belong with the group of idiots. Go back to the nail salon where you belong or did the girls throw you out?
Alan, you’re such an idiot, you can’t figure out how padded the comment threads are.
Paint Chips the largest pads are the ones that are in your diapers.
“how padded the comment threads are”.
Seth, do you always throw rocks from inside a glass house?
You’re the one here who cuts and pastes articles with no links or accreditation, as if they are your words.
Natacha does it on occasion. But you do it constantly, because you’re paid by the word.
That’s a potential problem for you, and JT. Apparently you know nothing about copyright law.
If Bolton is lying, the WH could release the redacted notes of the interpreter to disprove his claim. They have not.
“If Bolton is lying, the WH could release the redacted notes”
One has to be pretty dumb not to realize that is a bad idea. It makes any negotiations near impossible. We faced that once with regard to the Ukraine hoax which cost us dearly but even then stupid people like you continued to spout false claims. We have to let stupid people like you exist, but no one should listen to them. You have stated all sorts of lies disproven by the FBI reports released and the transcripts from Congress that were released. They don’t change your mind either. This type of stupidity attracts other stupid people so one knows who they are as well.
Continue onward. Most people recognize that nothing of value comes from your replies.
+10
wrong, your speculation is inaccurate.
there is a saying, “a liar can make up ten new lies in the time it takes to refute one”
this is a well known principle in evaluating defamation actions and also general PR
there is another maxim: do not stoop to conquer
hence smart political operations spend very little time on old lies by obviously disgruntled warmonger subversives like Boltons
“In an Oval Office interview on Friday afternoon, President Trump told me that he held off on imposing Treasury sanctions against Chinese officials involved with the Xinjiang mass detention camps because doing so would have interfered with his trade deal with Beijing.
Driving the news: Asked why he hadn’t yet enacted Treasury sanctions against Chinese Communist Party officials or entities tied to the camps where the Chinese government detains Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, Trump replied, “Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal.”
“And I made a great deal, $250 billion potentially worth of purchases. And by the way, they’re buying a lot, you probably have seen.”
Trump continued: “And when you’re in the middle of a negotiation and then all of a sudden you start throwing additional sanctions on — we’ve done a lot. I put tariffs on China, which are far worse than any sanction you can think of.”…”
https://www.axios.com/trump-uighur-muslims-sanctions-d4dc86fc-17f4-42bd-bdbd-c30f4d2ffa21.html
The largest single mistake Trump has made was hiring Bolton. Pompeo being number 2.
But lifer Dem liberals suddenly loving a neocon warmonger like Bolton, is just amazing. TDS/PTS is a hell of a condition.
“The Left is Now the Right”
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-left-is-now-the-right
They have not.
And they should not. No reasonable, rational person would believe President Trump, or any sane person in the 21st century would recommend building concentration camps. If the same allegation had been made about Obama or Biden, my first thought would be that it is absolute nonsense and a partisan hit to damage the administration.
LOL Trump contradicts himself regularly (something I’ve never witnessed Bolton do). That he would say one thing to Xi and something else to his cultists is absolutely in character for him.
Reminds me of when he tried to sell out the American taxpayer over his vanity wall within his first few weeks in office. Can you imagine this call and response at a Trump rally:
Trump- “Who’s going to pay for the wall?”
Cultists- “It will work out in the formula somehow!”
“LOL ”
Brad, hyenas laugh as well but they have better skills than you and know how to use them.
Allan,
“dictatorship where the leadership leads through fear and violence”
That tends to be the nature of dictatorships, Chinese or not.
Yes, all dictators depend on force, fear and violence. I focus on the Chinese because there are links to parts of our present unrest and the Chinese. Money paid to BLM comes from many corporations relying on slave labor, Uyghurs. That is only the tip of the iceberg.
Allan,
I, too, am (and have been for many years) worried about the Chinese government. It has been annoying the extreme focus on the Ruskies as a convenient boogeyman when another has been rising for three decades, with our help no less.
However, we can have our own personal, unique hell of a dictatorship if we are not careful.
Whether it be Maoist, Stalinist or Hitlerite the common feature is massive killing and destruction of what we consider normal society and individualism. At the present time the Chinese are our biggest enemy. The Russians and the Democrats have dealt with one another in what probably was collusive activity but their activities remain secondary to the Chinese.. The Chinese have corrupted a lot of our companies and academia along with the media. That is where I am concentrating on in the present.
Allan,
It has been bipartisan with what has happened with China. They knew what the rattlesnake was when they picked it up in the 1990s, early 2000s.
“The Chinese have corrupted a lot of our companies and academia along with the media.”
I don’t think that can be entirely pinned on the Chinese. Academia was corrupted by French ‘intellectuals’. Companies probably wouldn’t be in China if China hadn’t been welcomed into the WTO by the likes of Clinton and Gingrich.
Xi Jinping is qualitatively different than his predecessor Hu Jintao and the two before him.
Far more oppressive to Chinese and far more belligerent to others.
But Xi is acting on the logic of Mao more than they.
I think it was a mistake getting so cozy for sure, and it is fair to call it a bipartisan mistake
Mr. Kurtz,
“I think it was a mistake getting so cozy for sure, and it is fair to call it a bipartisan mistake”
Agreed. However, it wasn’t a mistake coming from naivety or ignorance. There is an element of dishonesty lurking in their reasons.
It was bipartisan but the democrat leadership I believe are far more involved with known corruption especially Biden and the Clintons. The companies most involved with China are supportes of the democrats and BLM. Academia has always been on the left with or without the French.
Trump has been warning us of many of the problems we are facing with China today.
“Trump has been warning us of many of the problems we are facing with China today.”
Why do we need Trump to warn us, as if we are oblivious children? It is one of several elephants in the room. Maybe he is finally discussing the problem in a public, leadership position, unlike the last two presidents. Maybe he has good ideas to how to wisely disentangle us, but that kind of language shifts him into savior territory. That’s unfair to him and us.
“Why do we need Trump to warn us, as if we are oblivious children?”
Obviously the nation has acted in that fashion so it needs to be warned. Many people devote their time to their families and their jobs. They don’t realize how politicians, the news media and the large corporations can and have sold us down the drain to China.
I agree with a lot of what you say allan but individualism is also precisely what stops Americans from sufficiently organizing against this present tyranny of the mob. if we only think of me me me then we never think of we. WE are what is needed to push back this chaos and crime.
All organized force depends on the shared altruism of the comrades in arms. We lack that right now. The police may have it but their political bosses are cheating them and telling them to stand down when they should be advancing.
When our time comes to stand in the firing line and it will, we had better not think like individuals but come together as many fingers do, into a fist
I agree with a lot of what you say allan but individualism is also precisely what stops Americans from sufficiently organizing against this present tyranny of the mob.
I agree with your assertion that we need to organize against this tyranny, but I don’t agree that individualism stops that effort. Individualism was a key motivator for our founding generation to organize a resistance to the tyranny of King George III and parliament. It takes individuals to first recognize they have rights that don’t come from man. Then they must organize with others with the same understanding. There is a synergy in this process that far exceeds anything that would come from a collective that believes their power is derived by numbers and not individual rights. The latter group can be defeated by divide and conquer. The latter will fight all the way to the last individual.
The latter will fight all the way to the last individual.
Correction: The former will fight all the way to the last individual.
Well said, Olly.
I’m going to show you how individualism easily fails
It fails because it is outnumbered and violence of the pack crushes the individual
exhibit a
a white girl is alone., a pack of black people attack her and beat her and film it and laugh
they are a pack; she is an individual
https://twitter.com/BaronStrucker/status/1286817208501403648?s=20
exhibit b
people are arguing in a street. this is “public discourse”
the white man is alone. he thinks he has “rights”
he speaks back to a BLM “peaceful protester”
suddenly the protester is one of many black thugs all beating the one “individual”
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1286901736150413312?s=20
now do you understand why I reject individualism?
forget about the Founders. They are not here to help us now. We live or die on our own.
there is only one adage from the old days of America I have to quote
“hang together or surely we shall hang, apart”
the rest of my quotes are coming from a lot farther back like this one
EIS ANER, OUDEIS ANER
Individualism does not necessarially equal isolationism. Come on Kurtz, you’re beginning to lose reason. I can be an individualist and have the sense to not confront anarchists about my rights? I would argue those in your collective that are not individualists will be those duped into putting themselves at risk for the collective.
Olly, what evidence do you have for your assertion that rights don’t come from man? Elsewhere you criticized other posters for failing to provide or recognize evidence.
You know, every time you ask that question, I picture you cowered in an unlocked cell, waiting for anyone to provide you evidence that you are a free man. 😰
I’m not here to convince the willfully ignorant they are not slaves to man. If you don’t want your natural rights, then you get none of them. You don’t even have the right to participate in our free society. You are for now granted the privilege of participation and according to you, whoever has the power, can revoke that privilege.
You’re a disgrace and you’ve got 4 years of the Turley blog archive to prove why. Nice legacy. 😄
Olly, I don’t see any evidence for your claim that rights do not come from man, and previously you touted your adherence to strict standards on facts and evidence in contrast to those on the left. Do you have it or not?
Irrelevant insulting of me doesn’t further your viewpoint, but suggests it’s weakness..
Prove they do come from man. If you unwind this republic, how far back do you have to go before you get to the point where we have no rights at all? Standing alone, in nature, no one around to give you the right live, to hunt for food, to build a shelter? Damn!
Olly, perhaps you missed Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Mao’s China, all places with very few to zero rights for many citizens. Look them up.
As to evidence of humans creating and defending rights:
https://constitutionus.com/
Now, where’s your evidence that they came from someone other than humans?
.
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
I could go deeper, but why bother. My document begot yours.
But by all means, if you want to argue you have no natural rights, I will not stop you. If you believe your life, liberty and property can legitimately be taken away for no reason at all, then you should get what you deserve.
Olly, btb’s ideas come from his slave mentality. He believes that as uneducated slave whatever rights he has is given to him by the slave owner. That is basically his argument. An educated slave learns that the norm is not slavery but freedom and that no man gives him his rights. Those rights come from elsewhere.
Allan,
Book isn’t even aware that’s where his argument leads. In his mind, inalienable rights don’t exist because they are alienated, often under the color of law. It’s quite pathetic that he insists he has no such rights. That might partially explain why he fears his party losing control of government.
Olly, the Declaration was written by humans and is not a legal document conferring rights on anyone. If it did it would still have been by humans.
The Constitution did that.
As I said before, I could take it back further, but why bother. I’m not here to convince the willfully ignorant they are not slaves to man. I do agree our rights, whether we assert they are manmade or natural, are only as secure as the people’s willingness to defend them.
Rights do not come from man. They come from his Creator:
“What are those rights, and how man came by them originally? The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity. They do not go the whole way. They stop in some of the intermediate stages of an hundred or a thousand years, and produce what was then done, as a rule for the present day. This is no authority at all. If we travel still farther into antiquity, we shall find a direct contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and if antiquity is to be authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced, successively contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we shall at last come out right; we shall come to the time when man came from the hand of his Maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his high and only title, and a higher cannot be given him. But of titles I shall speak hereafter.
We are now got at the origin of man, and at the origin of his rights. As to the manner in which the world has been governed from that day to this, it is no farther any concern of ours than to make a proper use of the errors or the improvements which the history of it presents. Those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago, were then moderns, as we are now. They had their ancients, and those ancients had others, and we also shall be ancients in our turn. If the mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people who are to live an hundred or a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing. It is authority against authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation. Here our enquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a home. If a dispute about the
rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred years from the creation, it is to this source of authority they must have referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must now refer.
Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion, yet it may be worth observing, that the genealogy of Christ is traced to Adam. Why then not trace the rights of man to the creation of man? I will answer the question. Because there have been upstart governments, thrusting themselves between, and presumptuously working to un-make man. If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up. The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights of man (for it has its origin from the Maker of man) relates, not only to the living individuals, but to generations of men succeeding each other. Every generation is equal in rights to generations which preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in rights with his contemporary.
Every history of the creation, and every traditionary account, whether from the lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary in their opinion or belief of certain particulars, all agree in establishing one point, the unity of man; by which I mean that men are all of one degree, and consequently that all men are born equal, and with equal natural right, in the same manner as if posterity had been continued by creation instead of generation, the latter being the only mode by which the former is carried forward; and consequently every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.”
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man. http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/right.pdf
“Olly, perhaps you missed Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Mao’s China, all places with very few to zero rights for many citizens.”
The have rights and they are being violated.
“Olly, the Declaration was written by humans and is not a legal document conferring rights on anyone. If it did it would still have been by humans.
The Constitution did that.”
Neither confers them. They recognize them.
Failing to provide any evidence for your assertion about the source of our rights, I accept your surrender Olly and suggest you retract your other statement regarding your strict adherence to evidence as opposed to those on the left. It is clearly “inoperative” at this point.
On the other hand we agree that only through the defense of humans can we maintain those rights.
Nope. Source and security, two completely different issues, if you believe you’re not a slave to the will of man. Now if you recognize infringement of all rights as justified by the force of law, then you are the demoralized slave, the institutionalized prison lifer, begging to remain a servant to your master.
Prairie, you have stated your opinion without any evidence for it. We can argue about whether a creator exists or not, but it is obvious that if one exists we have no clue as to he/she/it’s intentions or wishes, if indeed those characteristics apply, and while there is clearly an existing physical world that one could argue that such a creator is responsible for, that physical world includes humans with 2 hands, 2 feet, etc, but rights are not similarly universal traits. In fact, some of us – like slaves, people living in Nazi occupied territory, Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China appeared to have no rights at all. It the creator is responsible for rights, wouldn’t they be universally possessed by humans?
I know some would view the fact that humans only possess rights where guaranteed by other humans, and usually in the form of governments, as disquieting and even a reason for despair, I think it’s a matter of pride for humans in our later existence here and an important point in establishing our responsibility to maintain those rights. Given that at present there is a world civilization which is highly communicative – we are not at remote locations without contact – and also a world where democracies abound and have been the favored path for emerging nations since WWII, there is reason for optimism that a belief in universal human rights is not only a majority viewpoint already, but that it can be spread further. We are for practical purposes alone and have only ourselves to rely on. Given our progress and the fact that this has always been the case, despair is the wrong attitude. We are capable of much more.
PS to Prairie – Our closet ancestors are chimpanzees. That’s where we came from. It is estimated that as many as 1/3 of baby chimps who die in their 1st year are murdered by male chimps seeking dominance in the pack. If our ancestors came from a Golden Age as Paine suggests, it must not have been then. While humans are still capable of outrageously horrible behavior, we are also capable of better behavior and in fact have done so. There are no societies practicing what the male chimps do as SOP. Human cooperation has gotten where we are and we can certainly improve on that still. We have to figure it out, not a “creator” who only checks in every couple of thousand years. We made up the high principles he/she/it supposedly stands for anyway. Cut out the middle man and take ownership.
I am fully on board with the postmodernist perspective on this.
rights come from laws. laws may be inspired by God but they are written by men.,
not one man but a gang of men.
and “law” is simply the rules by which the strongest gang applies its organized violence
the strongest gang is the government
if you keep this logic foremost in mind, then many illusions vanish
we need our illusions to vanish. BLM is doing us a service.
When our illusions are gone, we will fully understand what must be done
I am fully on board with the postmodernist perspective on this.
Lol, of course you are. Given the direction your posts have been going, I’m not surprised. You’re working on getting yourself held in the opposite wing of the same facility as Natacha. 🤪
Kurtz, the government in a democracy is the people. Thank your ass for ours, without which there is no Bill of Rights.
“come together ”
At the present, love him or hate him, the only binding significant force is Trump. When you close your fingers don’t do it by making a fist to strike. Do it to hold a sign, Trump 2020, and then if needed be prepared to defend your person with a fist or whatever.
Kurtz, individualism doesn’t stop people from joining together for safety, protection of rights or other things.
Look at the American Revolution.
Washington judged the militias a hinderance to the war effort. So much for the “individuals”.
“I am wearied to death all day with a variety of perplexing circumstances, disturbed at the conduct of the militia, whose behavior and want of discipline has done great injury to the other troops, who never had officers, except in a few instances, worth the bread they eat.” Washington added, “In confidence I tell you that I never was in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born.”
So?
Washington was concerned with the “want of discipline”
What does that have to do with the spirit of the discussion?
Lol! Lack of good order and discipline is always a concern for military leaders. It’s also a concern for civilian leaders. No leader worth a damn would ever allow it to fester, as it will metastasize.
Washington was used to British military discipline. Those who joined him had no background in the military. They were farmers and shopkeepers.
Prairie, after reading another of your comments below, “This is a Maoist Cultural Revolution in motion. You cannot reason with ideologues. Not at least while they wear their blinders.” I wondered where your comment came from? You obviously understand the threat that we are presently facing and stated what it was very nicely.
Thank you, Allan, for your kind words.
It’s complicated. A few days ago, Mespo alluded to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s examination of the struggles of Communists that were sucked into the gulags, which I agreed with (and still do). Others have brought up the Stasi. Bret Weinstein noted that this ‘revolution’ doesn’t quite fit Lenin’s or what was going on in the USSR. He said it was Maoist and it does seem like a better fit. The Maoist take over was cultural, and what is going on here is not just about class, as it primarily was in Russia. The Cultural Revolution attacked the very culture to overthrow whatever wasn’t purely Maoist/Chinese enough. In The Red Violin there is a sad scene toward the end of the movie of a music teacher brought before a crowd for the heresy of playing and teaching Prokofiev. He was saved by a friend who emphasized his teaching of Chinese folk songs. He had to hide western instruments and western music for years and years. He survived a purity test. I do not know enough about the Cultural Revolution. I am better versed in what happened in Europe.
Totalitarianism and authoritarianism have purity tests of their own sort. In Germany they did not dismantle or attack the culture entirely. Same for Russia.
I am synthesizing what I have read and listened to over many years–about history, certain works of fiction and movies, psychology, Founding principles, propaganda and persuasion, Christianity, Jordan Peterson’s lectures (almost all of them) and other podcasts, my own experiences in college and life, what I see and have seen in the news.
There is a reason zombies and unicorns and gray and exorcisms are all the rage right now.
Please note:
“This is a Maoist Cultural Revolution in motion.”
Even though there are Maoist-like elements to the protests, riots, and monument destruction, that does not mean I think China necessarily has anything to do with this. Lots of misinformation coming from multiple directions.
You might not believe China has anything to do with the protests but you do know they are the enemy. That is enough to know that we need to guard ourselves in all fashions as to what the Chinese are doing. Far more important are the entanglements of our leaders, our corporations and our academics.
Allan,
I’m still thinking about the protests, so I’m not sure at this point what’s up with the protests.
China has been the enemy since the 90s at least. If we were in a Cold War with Russia and wouldn’t trade with Cuba over the issue of communism, what the heck were we doing cozying up with China? Our leaders threw our values under the bus when we ushered them into the WTO. They proved they were anti-democracy with Tiannamen Square–how in heaven’s name were they seriously going to start celebrating civil liberties just because they were going to be economically stronger?
I haven’t read the whole thing, but “Regimenting the Public Mind: The Modernization of Propaganda in the PRC” has been an interesting read. From the paper:
“17In an anonymous 1995 public opinion poll conducted by foreign and Chinese researchers, the majority of respondents preferred social order and stability to freedom. See Yang Zhong, Jie Chen, and John M. Scheb II, “Political Views from Below: A Survey of Beijing Residents,” PS: Political Science and Politics, September 1997. The results of the survey also indicated that popular support for the government is stronger than it was in the mid-1980s. See Jie Chen, Yang Zhong, and Jan William Hilliard, “The Level and Sources of Popular Support for China’s Current Political Regime”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 30, 1 1997.”
No. They are not behind the riots
but CCP provides the SLAVE LABOR in PRC that these big global companies use for their windfall profits, in their factories which make things once made in America by free labor
and the big global companies are funding BLM too. why?
they want to get rid of Trump. He is taking away their opportunties for more slave labor and trade with PRC
so the PRC and CCP are part of the geopolitical puzzle. they are rivals, they are adversaries.
but our true enemies are actually– AMERICANS
most of all billionaire treasonous pigs like George Soros. Oh, there are many others. They are trying to physically terrorize us with BLM. That is obvious now.
Look past the street thugs. they are organized. by paid and trained professional organizers. of BLM and other outfits
who have paymasters and financiers. Geo Soros is one, but he is only one.
these corporations like Walmart, Home Depot, are giving to BLM too
And NIKE has been spitting on the flag we love for years.
These corporations must be punished too.
Republican votes and grass roots people must demand that the Republican hotshots begin to think more like American people and less like American corporate steppinfetchits.
We must not allow the Trump era to end without sending this message to these dogs.
They will never have a lick of support from us again if they keep on the spineless act, and continue to betray the people in favor of global finance.
Their support of Trump is weak as 3.2 beer right now. I am very angry with Republicans too.
I mean we knew Democrats were the party of looters already. That is no surprise. But these dogs have been pretending to support Trump for 3 years now.
Lamely, weakly. And now Trump is slow to act, obviously feeling like the “lone warrior” — this is pathetic.
Oh, and the generals that have mutinied against Trump? Or threatened to? Seditionists and malingerers. They will be remembered.
“but CCP provides the SLAVE LABOR in PRC that these big global companies use for their windfall profits, in their factories which make things once made in America by free labor and the big global companies are funding BLM too. why?
they want to get rid of Trump. He is taking away their opportunties for more slave labor and trade with PRC”
You got it Kurtz. Those that want to get rid of Trump are enriching themselves at the same time they support slave labor. That means:
Btb supports slave labor.
Paint Chips supports slave labor
CTHD supports slave labor.
The Bug supports slave labor.
I can go on with the small fries such as Molly G and others but the point is made. They support slave labor.
I also thought the characterization of what’s going on as Maoist was apt because of the apparent impulse to destroy ‘outmoded’ everything–like eliminating the Four Olds during the Cultural Revolution.
Cultural revolution was fake too. Mao was using the radical students to attack bureaucrats and forces inside the PRC state which were getting sick of his leadership
He unleashed the craziness not because he really care about the “four olds” one way or another.
it was just harnessing the radical impulses of youth, with cunning, to create enough chaos to throw his rivals into disarray
That is all it was from his level; but understand, he green lighted and encouraged it
His last wife actually organized a lot of it
As soon as he died, they got rid of her fast, and the next leadership were people that had been locked up and shamed by the Red Guards, like Deng Xioaping.
So our situation is similar in that the top– our top is plutocrats like Soros– the top is greenighting chaos and destruction, to harry their foes
their foes are who? Trump and those who support him. that’s who. advocates of American nationalism
“it was just harnessing the radical impulses of youth, with cunning, to create enough chaos to throw his rivals into disarray”
It ain’t just Soros. Their foes are not just Trump supporters. The plebians need to be kept in line. This is bipartisan. I wonder who all is in “Bernays'” club…
Allan,
I’ve been chewing on your inquiry “I wondered where your comment came from?”
I’ve been wondering about the layers surrounding it, too.
Prairie Rose: “This is a Maoist Cultural Revolution in motion. You cannot reason with ideologues. Not at least while they wear their blinders.There is no obvious leader. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one. We’ve been pitted against each other by master-wielders of legerdemain and persuasion. It’s as if Bernays has melded with reality tv. How do authoritarians rise to power?”
I see archetypes. I see symbolism. I sense narratives. I see the psychology of identity politics playing out (it slides easily into mob mentality). Maoists were far more collectivistic, culturally already, than the Russians, so their drive to achieve the most refined sort of collectivism was/is very strong. Identity politics puts whole groups into collective buckets; critical theory deconstructs everything into meaninglessness or some pigeon-holed perspective–the two combined are a horrid combination. Divide everyone into groups to pit against each other and break the whole thing down.
Some blinders are easier to remove than others. I think the blinders can be removed and the needle nudged, not by attempting to reason with ideologues, but through inquiry, Socratic-style.
It isn’t just a Maoist Cultural Revolution, though. There are other forces at work propagating destabilization. Or, maybe, optimistically, disturbing complacency sparks widespread inquiry–the asking of questions, the looking for reasons, searching for answers and ‘solutions’. It’s not a bad thing to try to understand what’s up with the reality of the world and the why of things we do and believe and experience. Some things should not be forgotten and more things need to be understood.
https://www.unz.com/mmalkin/one-nation-under-anarcho-tyranny/ mob rule!
>> Many in my large Chicago family are Lightfoot fans. <<
Why? I can think of four possible explanations:
1) She has demonstrated leadership skills. Leadership, to me, is an ability to clearly articulate a vision for a future path and then get people to act in a way to achieve that vision. That requires tact. It requires an ability to form a consensus among very divergent interest groups and inspire them to act toward a common goal. Most humans are natural followers, not leaders. True leadership is rare. If Lightfoot is a true leader, then Chicago is lucky to have her and I can understand why your family are fans of hers.
2) She has a record of accomplishment. For example, perhaps she has implemented policies that resulted in lower crime rates and thus improved people's lives. Or she implemented education polices that caused children enrolled in the public education system to become more proficient in math and reading. Or maybe she's improved the roads or reduced traffic congestion to improve the quality of life for Chicagoans. That sort of thing. Concrete, real accomplishments that your family can point to to rationalize their "fandom."
3) Your family are blind partisans. They only care about the party.
4) Similar to #3, your family values things like Lightfoot's skin color. Or they value her homosexuality. Or they think having a "D" on their jersey makes them morally superior to everybody without the "D." The magical "D" entitles them to a sense of unearned self-righteousness and smugness.
I know you will not respond. But I'm genuinely curious why "many" in your family are "Lightfoot fans".
“Many in my large Chicago family are Lightfoot fans.”
************************
I missed this in the essay by JT. Sounds like the opening sentence of an indictment.
Fans? They must be big comedy-horror movie fans since no one could possibly like a Marxist coward like her:
Don’t insult me by asserting that I (or others who find this mayor wanting) that her skin color or being a lesbian has anything to do with disappointment that she is what the voters – like your family members – of Chicago chose. Just listen to the “news” and see what a terrible mayor she is proving to be.
It is a mental disease. It used to be: anything Republican = bad. After Trump, it is: anything Republican = racist. I know, I have some friends that have lost their minds too. None of them dare try to have a debate with me because they know that their number one strategy: personal attack as opposed to debate on facts, does not fly with me. As we have seen with the numerous attacks on our Professor Turley, they cannot argue facts without looking stupid.
She is a corporate hack from BIGLAW mayer brown and platt firm. Many foolish Chicago Democrats believed that she would keep order instead of kowtowing to the BLM faction
Well I guess one might say maybe her being black does matter, huh. I doubt Rahm Emmanuel would have put up with this, Or any other. oh except Harold Washington. He might have liked it!
This is not very Republican of me but guess what. The BLM faction is attacking “white privilege” which means: WHITES
dont be fooled by all the self hating white skinned losers out there chucking cherry bombs at cops alongside them. these are weasels.
this mob obviously doesn’t believe in this “color blind” stuff.
We want to survive, we better wise up fast, throw these Enlightenment bromides in the garbage and revive the ancient law. The law that works.
“Now, Mayor Lightfoot is saving them the trouble of toppling statutes. She will do it for them in a plea for peace.
Let me correct that for you, JT.
She will do it for them in “an act of submission”.
What is truly amazing is that the DNC seems to have no idea that the primary group of people who are most adamantly against defunding the police, are poor black people living in crime ridden areas in major cities.
Guess who they are going to vote for in November? They are going to vote for self-preservation.
The other thing the DNC appears to be blithely unaware of, is that the majority of the alleged “BLM protests”, are populated by white kids with trust funds, and there is a large segment of African-Americans who are not happy about that reality. Especially since the white kids with trust funds (aka/Antifa) are the ones who instigate all of the lawlessness and violence, in what would otherwise be a peaceful protest.
Then there are the police of all racial backgrounds, who are totally pissed off. Police and their family members are allowed to vote.
Guess who they are going to vote for in November?
In short, the DNC has gone completely insane.
It is not submission. She is with the mob. Simple as that. She thinks she is winning. She is feeling the pull of her ancestry.
she also has orders from the big money guys like Soros that she is to let the riot run its course. This is an awful situation but let’s get realistic fast.
In a riot you get your back up against the wall and look for allies. In a prison riot you can see who is your ally very fast.
this might as well be a prison riot, where the cops barely do anything to stop it besides protect themselves.
If i see her, I know in a heartbeat she is not on the team which will save my life, she is on the team that wants to take it.
I grew up in Chicago and that statue has been a part of my life. This is another example the election and why it is not about Trump or even Biden. Biden is saying things that are totally goofy and its totallly overlooked. Aers an example he calls the virus Covid 9 or yesterday when he said yesterday when I was at Walter Reed a nurse blew air up my nostrils. What. This election is about America and saving it from those who are out to destroy it now. .If the Democrats suceed in the Fall we wont know America in another year.
You’re exactly right.
Lightfoot, if she were honest in her intents, would also take down the American Flag (in the middle of the night of course).
Andrew Breitbart was right.
War
We’re in one.
Eventually, it’s going to get kinetic.
I moved out of Chicago last July.
With Daley’s closing Meigs Field (also in the dead of night), Rahm Emanuel’s coddling of the gripe team, and with Lightfoot’s election, I said, that’s it I’m gone. I took a hit on the value of my Condo doing so.
I sensed she was going to be a DISASTER.
I am not raaaaacist. I have worked beside “people of color” in minimum wage jobs that many people of color or other wise would never think of doing,
Ha, “people of color”, as Lightfoot-likes like to so often say.
What does that mean?
Raaaacism.
We all bleed red and we all put our pants on the same way.
There is no reasoning with these leftists.
I am sure that all of the murders in Chicago will stop now that the statue has been removed, just as happened when Baltimore statues were taken down.
Columbus’s real crime was being white.
None of us would exist if it were not for Columbus. Europe was full up of poor people and hungry in 1492. There was a surplus population. It expanded into the Americas where our ancestors multiplied, And the ones left in Europe had more room to breath and greater economic resources to grow, too
Even black Americans would not exist. Africa was at its carrying capacity., The population which was sold into slavery by other Africans by the way, or Africans and Arabs from Africa in some cases, but, they had room to grow and multiply in America too. And the slave population did grow far faster than the African one.
So none of us would be here today were it not for Columbus. This is why we celebrate him., I mean we all know Lief Ericson planted a colony here in “Vinland” but it did not stick. The Spanish Crown opened the Americas. We owe Isabella the Catholic Queen a big thanks too.
Otherwise the natives would have just kept at it, slaughtering each other like the Aztecs did their neighbors, with precious little advance in technology at all. A wild and unused continent.
Of course environmentalists who hate humankind probably wish that they never existed in the first place so that’s another reason they hate Columbus.
they actually hate humanity deep down
They are mortal foes. We need to understand this in our bones and resolve to correct the stupid level of tolerance we have shown to all these errors. ideas have consequences and bad people spread bad ideas like viruses.
The age of tolerance and all that is over. Free speech was always illusory to a degree, and the balloon of fantasy is being popped right now.
let me ask Christians who believe the religion emerged from Judaism: what if the ancient Israelites had “tolerated” Baal worshippers?
What if they had “Tolerated” Jerhico and Amalek instead of slaying them?
Then, no Jesus.
what if the Greeks had “tolerated” Persia?
Then, no democracy. We never would have existed but people in Europe might all be speaking Farsi
What if Europe had “tolerated” Islam in the days of Charles Martel? Then no France, we might speak Arabic
Same, Sobieski, hero of the Siege of Vienna. dont know who he was, look it up.
See how simple things can be? Stop folks now for a moment as I utter the gravest heresy: perhaps tolerance was really a dumb idea? and time to end it.
Fre speech. A fine republican and democratic idea. but it is for an ordered society. in chaos there is only survival.
Free speech is being taken from the likes of us first, in bits and pieces, and mostly now by private corporate actors like twitter who think they are not restrained by first amendment. that’s fine. let it die. Because one day we are going to be taking it from the enemies of mankind, in turn. Lies will be silenced instead of “tolerated.”
This is not a threat this is a prediction. Organized force will win. It was always thus. we will see if we are among the living a decade from now and find out.
Kurtz you sound like Steve Bannon…
Steve Bannon put acid in a bathtub in a rental house once. Didn’t work out well.
Bannon may think alike, but he is about 90% more careful in how he says it.
I am finding myself less and less inclined to self censor. censors will be coming hard at us all, no matter what. the opening to speak closes before our eyes.
Yeah Kurtz, i think they’re right outside your door now!
Your more excitable than a teenage girl.
im jumpy for sure
fear helps keep ya alive
Just like Portland the fault for all of this lies with the citizens of Chicago who have put up with the Tammany hall politics of the Democratic Party. I too have Irish American family in Chicago who live far away from the troubles and still support the corrupt Democrats.
Voters in Chicago, such as your family members, who continue to elect Ds are also at fault. They just follow the D party’s instructions in thought and in deed. I recently saw the noun “lickspittle” in a book I was reading and added it to my vocabulary; just as “toady” and “sycophant” do, they describe the mindless followers.
What entity decided to put the statue there originally, or who determines that a statue is placed in a public place? Then perhaps that decision making body should be making the decision of whether or not it stays. The statue was placed there by some decision making body and if and when times change and society evolves, that body should be able to remove it. Removing it in the middle of the night doesn’t seem to be the proper procedure. The question is does it fall within the law. It is much different from a mob destroying a statue, which falls into the same category as mob violence, or outside the law.
Protesting and demonstrating are a necessary and integral part of effecting changes in our society. They are also deemed rights. Floyd’s killing sparked a demand for change that was supported by the majority of Americans but resisted by a status quo that was made up of elements, such as police unions, that had grown beyond their initial importance and were/are beyond the control of society. That public servants such as the police are capable of negotiating rights that are not allowed the average citizen is a development of legal maneuvering but beyond the law and justice.
Those actions that went beyond the right to protest and demonstrate: looting, burning, destroying, fall outside of any right to demonstrate or protest and should be handled by the law/police as the criminal acts they are.
What is missing here is open public debate regarding the statue and its removal or any changes to it. Columbus was a great figure in the development of the New World. That development included horrific actions against the indigenous peoples, as well as peoples brought from other countries to work as slaves and/or cheap labor. What is missing here is education. American hubris does not allow complete and accurate education regarding the people and events that formed this country. This has resulted in the population growing up believing untruths and/or partial truths. The statue of Columbus would serve the public better if it had attached to it the rest of the story regarding his actions: killing, racism, religious intolerance, profiteering, etc. This is the case with all statues and memorials of the past: Washington, Jefferson, etc.
The main effect of all this upheaval should be to change the education system to include the truth. Then through the proper and accepted methods decisions can be made as to who and what America reveres and how it is done.
Great idea about cataloguing Columbus’s misdeeds to put the statue in context. Of course we should also note that the indigenous peoples were not pure according to today’s standards. They also practiced slavery and the Incas and Aztecs practiced human sacrifice–sometimes on an industrial scale. What’s needed is honest, intelligent and objective historical commentary that recognizes that where you have human beings you will find human failures. We can celebrate the achievements without ignoring the failures–unless one is a zealot and a true believer who only recognizes one “reality”.
“They also practiced slavery and the Incas and Aztecs practiced human sacrifice–sometimes on an industrial scale.”
************************
Read about the Plains Indians who — aside from being the largest slaveholders in the country — dismembering white babies, roasted captives on open fires and buried settlers up to the necks in fire ant nests — and that was the women who did most of the torture. The Comanches would travel 1000 miles to exact a revenge massacre and they paled in ferocity to the Lakota Sioux. Emphasis on “savage” in Noble Savage.
Mespo,
My husband is reading a book on the Comanche. Nobody liked the Comanche. You had to admire their fighting skills on horseback, though.
PR:
“You had to admire their fighting skills on horseback, though.”
***********************
PR, yep, better riders than the Mongol horde.
Columbus was a great man and Cortez was greater still. Personally I admire the hell out of them
how utterly pathetic are Americans who live high on the hog because of them and those who came after them to tame this wild land, and yet spit on their memory.
We never would have even existed had European peoples been confined to the Continent. The Americas? They would have been what they were. Wide and wild with a few empires of natives going around slaughtering all the other natives.
And do you think that slavery was unknown to Indians before the white man came? Ha, raise your hand if you are that naive.
Guess what, there would also be a lot less black people in the world too, if Americas had not been conquered by European peoples who brought them to this huge and abundant land where their ancestors had the food and order which allowed their numbers to multiply. Even if it was in the condition of slavery. Just as a lot of whites came here as indentured servants and their ancestors multiplied. This was the simple economics of the preindustrial era. But since education is so weak now, few people understand, and to say it is immediately discounted as “racist”
because I am a white man, i am already under less than equal protection of law. because my opinions are immediately discounted as “racist” just because my white fingers are typing them. America’s promise of equal protection of law is now being denied to a class of people alright– whites!
I think Livio’s comment is fair. But fairness is not the forte of the mob.
The mob must be treated unfairly. It is not a collection of individuals with rights. It is a mob. They forfeit their socalled rights by endangering law and order as such.
Maybe not in the first day or even the first week. but we are 2 months into this.
These anarchist mobs must be crushed in order to save the state, law and order, as such.
and those who financed them must be arrested and charged with racketeering, if not sedition, and other crimes, and punished according to law
Little will change unless billionaire paymasters get their due
they got no accountability for the mortgage bust because Obama’s man Hlder protected them. charged 300 small fry and let the titans walk.
we are gonna find out if Barr is going to attack these foes of America or not.
It is much different from a mob destroying a statue, which falls into the same category as mob violence, or outside the law.
Is it? Much different? Bastiat has a term for this: Legal plunder. If a mob of citizens threatens an entire community’s security of life, liberty and property, we naturally consider that unjust. But when citizens vote for people that enact policies that produce the same insecurity, well that’s called democracy. Lightfoot has just demonstrated herself to be the servant at the table of two wolves and a sheep. Guess what’s on the menu?
Future book:
How I Destroyed A City that Was Already Down by Mayor Lightfoot.
Subtitle: I’m Proud to Have Denied My Constituents Local and Federal Police Protection.
Cover photo: Children killed by bullets; burned-out buildings in background.
Res Ipsa Loquitor
On what basis is the mayor authorized to unilaterally order the removal of the statue? If someone wanted to develop on city land they would presumably need approval by government agencies/legislators. If someone wants to renovate a property covered by historic preservatioin designation they would need approval just to do those needed repairs. Am I missing something?
“We are losing the ability to speak to one another; to have a conversation on such issues. There is only the simple physics of the age of rage: force and motion.”
***********************
Why is anyone surprised? It’s perfectly Hobbesian, JT, right down to “force and motion.” Dims are divided between cowering cowards or hardcore anarchists. True American patriots, on the other hand, are not so schizoid and will hopefully do to this blight on our country “what people are going to do.” There are times when the civil law yields to the more ancient and fundamental laws of our nature like self-preservation and abolishment of anarchy. It’s all in Hobbes’ classic psychological study of political man, “Leviathan”:
“And because the condition of man . . . is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another’s body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason: that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature, which is: to seek peace and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature, which is: by all means we can to defend ourselves.”
Now is looking like one of those times. So be it.
Somebody tell mespo about the last 75 years. He wants to wallow in his phony macho daydreams out there in the comfortable suburbs, but he would benefit from learning that human cooperation has prevailed now since WWII and with a little effort from more mature people than him, will. continue to do so.
but he would benefit from learning that human cooperation has prevailed now since WWII
I’m certain it’s not lost on Mark that our current state of affairs has been the result of human cooperation. A result by the way that reflects not an intellectual maturity, but rather an adolescent compliance of the likes Kant describes as self-imposed nonage.
This is a Maoist Cultural Revolution in motion. You cannot reason with ideologues. Not at least while they wear their blinders.
There is no obvious leader. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
We’ve been pitted against each other by master-wielders of legerdemain and persuasion. It’s as if Bernays has melded with reality tv.
How do authoritarians rise to power?
When people become complacent, prideful, slothful, anyone can enter and commandeer their environment.
America lost its soul decades ago for the price of holding a mirror to be enamored with ourselves. We are only now realizing our trajectory but reversing it is impossible. The only way to halt it is through bloodshed and it has only started. Blood will be flowing from CA to NY, from WA to FL. Like the US Civil War, it will take years for people to become weary and admit defeat. History repeats itself. This was all predictable and preventable.
spete17:
It is true that when you lose your principles, you’ve lost your way but that’s only for some urban hipsters sipping latte and spouting Mao. Most of us are grounded, committed and armed. That’s a potent trinity.
We should be studying Mao too on how to organize a civil war from the rural and exurban areas and win it by any means necessary, against the American comprador party, the Democrats, who sell us out to global financialists like Geo Soros and the C suite tyrants, who are throwing tons of money at BLM
Here’s a lesson. The grandparents of the current government in the PRC were not just talkers. They were willing to kill to win and not just talk. That lesson is being shoved in our faces now by BLM which will certainly seek to kill us too if they get the chance. We need to internalize this fully. This is way past “protest” and fully into violent insurrection. It is a threat to civilized society and law and order and regular people. We need to understand Mao– “all power comes from the barrel of a gun” and that his people were organized, using guns, and making it happen, The “peaceful protesters” have had this in mind from day one! When do the rest of Americans wake up>?
And they are well organized and well funded.
The National Lawyers Guild is a far left extremist outfit that has a BAIL FUND for criminals related to the protests. “Flush with money” — from who?
Listen to the ANTIFA criminal bragging about him and his buddies getting bailed out from multiple felony arrests
Mr. Kurtz,
“the Democrats, who sell us out to global financialists like Geo Soros and the C suite tyrants,”
Wasn’t just the Democrats. We got sold out by elites on both sides.
Of course Prarie the Republican party are awful too. but make no mistake, this is a planned destabilization campaign lead by geo Soros and others who are in a mind meld with Twitter Google apple etc. and they want Trump gone. and other corporations are piling on to it. They are cancelling the Donald’s election over his entire term, one continuous “resistance” ie a 4 year run of open sedition.
Soros is the number 2 donor to the Democrat party in 202. This is not a conspiracy this is a fact taken from FEC data. #2 was Tom steyer. one of the losers in the Dem primary field, another billionaire who hates us and wants American elections which don’t have foregone conclusions, to never happen again.
if Donald loses, you can be sure it is basically the last surprise result ever, Democrats will end the electoral college, flood the country with immigrants, and it will be a one party system thenceforth.
if he wins, they may continue this schtick, or may grow tired of it and give him the JFK treatment. Its clear however that their “resistance” has undermined the very system that gave America its legitimacy, wide and frequent elections. The Democrats, ironic name, are killing it, strangling it, out of pique and ambition.
Probably, whether it’s 2020 or 2024, without a massive push back against corporate globalist manipulation of ideas and politics, election validity is going away.
Sooner we stop thinking about putting all our hopes in elections the better off we may be. But one more go at it, this november.
“Donald” is an awful president, Kurtz.
First step in your war against elites has to be removal of him from office. Secondly, your flyover white people will never be able to take even one block of the Bronx. Stop the silliness.
bug, not sure how your comment replies to mine, but i will shoot out a reply for the sake of conversation
the bronx would starve very quickly without all us out here in the great agricultural midsection of america
and I know where Im welcome in NYC and it aint the bronx and it aint manhattan. when i go you can find me in Flushing. Thats in Queens
Flushing is a diamond in the dust there, visit sometime and you may understand. you would be safe their too, dont worry.
its not the people in Flushing we have to worry about.
Mr Kurtz – we just need to close off the freeways into the city and within a week they will surrender,
anyhow you are wrong. there has not been a president so disliked by billionaires as Trump in a long time. he endangers their rackets big time.
you guys say donald never really was a billionaire and i will just take your word for it
but i can think of only two other ones i like
elon musk, because he’s an engineer and a true industrialist
and also: ross perot. but he’s dead
now, i also liked the hunt brothers, but they went bust and are prolly dead too. and T Boone Pickens. he’s dead too.
the other billionaires are a really rotten group
American billionaires are the most dangerously anti-American element in our society at this time. they should be defanged.
they are overwhelmingly Democrats, too. Uniformly, they are globalists, however, they seek the free movement of labor, capital, and goods across national boundaries, and increasing power to the international alphabet soup agencies and NGOs
here’s a few names
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/02/18/here-are-the-billionaires-funding-the-democratic-presidential-candidates/#3c2704cd33f7
“The only way to halt it is through bloodshed and it has only started.”
I disagree.
Praire, without personal agreement or disagreement what is your solution?
Allan,
I do not want disagreements to go so far as bloodshed and war.
Prairie, it won’t. Civil wars flow from economic issues and serious divisions among citizens or groups within the population. Despite the “culture wars” hyped by cable news and certain politicians for their own reasons, Americans are pretty close on the basics of our beliefs, race relations have never been better – though still problematic – and we are all pretty well off, with some exceptions. The drama queens on this board love to play army in their minds and manage to hype up handfuls of 20 somethings having late night block parties downtown as a powerful revolution. They’re nothing of the kind and while a nuisance and threat to public property , few injuries or deaths have occurred and are not going to. Note that unlike the riots in the 60’s there is no racial component to these – they’re mostly college age whites playing revolutionary, kind of like the suburban lawyers playing revolutionaries on this board. No wonder, if the Portland mob is the opposition, it doesn’t get easier to imagine victory. On the other hand, if they pictured themselves wading into Compton or Detroit in 1968, the enthusiasm on this board would be dimmed.
Almost all of us do not believe in treating people, sexes, or races unequally, there are virtually no real communists or nazis here – there have been and are in European countries – in our personal lives we probably are open to friends from other races, and we mostly all have nice house, fast cars, steady income, and health care. From that group, revolutions and civil wars do not spring. Time to quit the pretend one. Portland kids need to go home or get arrested, the feds go home, Trump STFU, and the rest of us take perspective. We and the country is not in danger.
See how you feel when the “college age whites playing revolutionary” carrying Molotov cocktails, bricks, and flash bombs, come into your neighborhood in the middle of the night after the Mayor has ordered the police to stand down.
That’s when the rubber meets the road, and it’s time to lock and load, because you are left with no other choice.
It’s easy to sit behind your keyboard and wax philosophically about how “few injuries or deaths have occurred”, until it arrives at your door.
Then, what’s your plan?
Rhodes, let me know when that happens. It’s not happening anywhere in my entire large state.
Civil wars flow from economic issues
There isn’t one you could name for which economic questions were anything but issues on the margin.
every war has economic issues at stake. if only booty and plunder. the booty and plunder of modern wars are things like taxes.
what is at stake in our current insurrection, specificially? aside from the usual massive amount of taxes and opportunities the parties have when they can command the purse strings of congress?
well, as I have been saying, globalists want a. free movement of goods across borders (free trade) b. free movement of capital ie money across borders c. free movement of labor across borders, ie, migration. they want to employ that labor and move it north from the global south not only to depress wages in developed countries, but to shore up the pension systems of the north, which face demographic problems
secondly the payoff for BLM is “reparations” and “redirected funds” from police defunding
this means many many millions in contracts for “sensitivity training” in every major metro
the looters also get to plunder sneakers and free stuff at the parties that blm is throwing., that’s right. free food.
so they all get to dip their beaks
we always have to reckon the angles
———————————————————————-
the angle for Trump voters is, we keep more of our stuff, we have law and order (or not), and for the cops, they keep their jobs.
which side are you on, reader?
every war has economic issues at stake.
Nope. They are issues on the margin when they are not entirely absent.
I agree, TIA.
Ideologies at loggerheads are also a strong factor.
Prairie:
1. name some ideological differences which caused civil war absent unrest due to economic conditions or already occurring great upheaval from war.
2. what major ideological differences separate the GOP from the Democratic party, one of which most Americans belong to. No exaggerations please.
BTB, the right to own people was a root cause of the first civil war in the US. And that Civil War was fought to change that. But the Dem’s at the time preferred to succeed from the Union rather than agree to a change in the law. PROPERTY ownership of people was the cause. I hardly doubt this is an exaggeration, thank you.
Del, the economic interests of slave states in defending and advancing slavery was a major, if not the major, factor in secession.
Bythebook,
The belief that people can be chattel is an ideological difference. “the economic interests of slave states in defending and advancing slavery” reinforces that that was indeed the ideological difference.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ~Upton Sinclair
Prairie, I did not say ideological differences are not part of some civil wars. I did say there also needs to be some real economic stress involved and some real ideological differences. There are none in question here today in the US. No one believes in racial inequality – let alone slavery – or sex based inequalities, communism, naziism, nationalizing industries, secession ….. I don;t know, anything else? This is still a centrist country where 90%+ of us agree on the major ideas and we are fat and happy. In such soil, civil war can not begin.
“2. what major ideological differences separate the GOP from the Democratic party, one of which most Americans belong to.”
It isn’t binary. About 40% of Americans are registered Independents.
I might not be the best person to try to articulate this, as I am an Independent.
Republicans do not think there is systemic racism. They do not examine rights according to identity groups, preferring to adhere to the inalienable rights of all Americans. They are against affirmative action, viewing this as inappropriately discriminatory (preferring instead a meritocracy). Republicans probably view hate speech laws as infringing on free speech, whereas Democrats are more likely to support such laws because they view hate speech as a form of violence.
“Democrats are more likely to support such laws because they view hate speech as a form of violence.”
Prairie, one has to consider the definition of hate speech. Democrats in many instances promote anti-Semitism and permit desecration of Jewish houses of worship. To Democrats anything is hate speech that disagrees with their present policies. When their policies change so does their definition of hate speech.
I did think the Democratic platform was sorta funny.
“Above all, Democrats are the party of inclusion. We know that diversity is not our problem–it is our promise. As Democrats, we respect differences of perspective and belief, and pledge to work together to move this country forward, even when we disagree.”
Kinda falls flat in light of the situations with Bari Weiss and Steven Pinker and James Damore and others.
Our civil war, Russian Revolution, Weimar Republic to Hitler, Cuba, China, etc.
We have none of the elements of any of these, and that’s just a small list.
You are wrong in every case. Stop pretending you know anything. You don’t.
Prairie aside from those that support the violent protesters, directly or indirectly, I don’t think many want bloodshed.
If all you can say is, “I do not want disagreements to go so far as bloodshed and war.” then you are not providing a solution. The act of disclosing your cards so early in the game lets other people know that bloodshed works. Let’s hear a solution not the limitations to a solution.
Allan,
The media ought to stop giving them positive airtime and print space. More good people need to refute the critical theory assertions in layman’s terms to a wide audience. There should be citizen’s arrests if the police are told to stand down, and the guilty parties need to face the full effect of the law. They need to take responsibility for their actions. They should work to pay restitution to those they harmed–nice long days mucking out stalls or hoeing rogues or weeds out of cornfields might be best–something hard that causes callouses.
“The media ought to stop giving…”
Unless you are for laws stopping them from doing so that isn’t a solution.
“There should be … ” also is not a solution.
No one wants bloodshed or a war. But so far you haven’t proposed any true solutions.
There are already journalists pointing out to their fellow journalists that they need to shape up. They need to heed the critique. The news is maligning itself until it will be a horrific example of the boy who cried wolf. That is not good for the well-being of the nation.
Prairie, if people are not acting correctly and refuse to act correctly then telling them what they ***ought*** to do is not an effective solution. It’s like telling a murderer not to speed. If he is willing to break the law killing he is liable not to listen to you.
Prairie, it was always so and always will be. That is the nature of a free press and what it’s consumers – us – are drawn toward. In a democracy it is up to us recognize hyped BS and act accordingly.
PS The freak out on the right is hyped BS led by a President grimly trying to distract from virus coverage – where our real danger lies – and find an issue to get back some independents. It’s a smart move, but phony.
Bythebook,
“The freak out on the right is hyped BS led by a President grimly trying to distract from virus coverage – where our real danger lies – and find an issue to get back some independents. It’s a smart move, but phony.”
I disagree that this is what is going on. It’s sideways from this. I worry there are other goals. And, that that’s not where our real danger lies.
Prairie, we can’t and shouldn’t try to control the press under the 1st amendment, so of course the protests and riots should receive airtime and we citiznes should be able to handle it. Similarly, Trump should receive coverage for his pronouncements and we citizens should be able to handle that. They are both exaggerations for political advantage and we have to be smart enough to recognize it.
The problems are:
1. Summer and the virus has many young people with no obligations to take care of out late at night in certain cities looking to raise hell. No football victories to burn couches over, so this will do.
2. Local politicians and police should do a better job sweeping the streets – declare curfews and enforce them.
3. Unless and until the protest/riots become lethal and wide spread – they are neither as you could visit Portland or Chicago and not know any of this was happening – Trump should offer help but stay out of it.
Bythebook,
I never said they shouldn’t receive airtime. Journalist should just report the straight news. I sometimes feel that how they are writing their articles is perpetuating the problems.
No doubt Prairie, media always has and always will try to sell soap and that means selling sensationalism.
Prairie Rose,
I can easily imagine General and then President Washington saying this about today’s media:
I am wearied to death all day with a variety of perplexing circumstances, disturbed at the conduct of the media, whose behavior and want of discipline has done great injury to our nation.
The ideology is the leader.
The ideology of critical theory is essentially revered as an indisputable tenet. This brings on an a quasi religious attitude where the core principles are unassailable, and those who disagree are not merely heretics, but a threat to the progress defined in those sacred writings.
Ask the mayor if she is related to the prisoner plaintiff in Lightfoot vs. Walker?
(music to tune of O Hi O)
This summer I hear them coming.
They’re probably on their way.
Gotta get down to it!
A holes are cutting us down.
I’m just a stat chew…
I don’t hold no ground!
Our leaders continue to abdicate their responsibilities. I always wondered exactly how the nation would crumble. With so much transparent betrayal to the mobs on our streets, in our universities, on social media, in the traditional media, by our sports leagues and corporations and elsewhere, it’s hard not to feel that we have moved past the beginning of the end.
Not so fast, Lorenzo, the people as a whole haven’t spoken yet. Come November we’ll see if we’re on the road to perdition or paradise. We may have to overthrow an institution or two — and the NFL would be a good place to start — but let’s wait for the end if the race before declaring g a winner. It’s either a vote for Trump or Mao. Maybe JT is seeing that now. Usually takes something personal to make the change.
Mespo,
“It’s either a vote for Trump or Mao.”
There’s that scene in Toy Story 2 where Mr. Potato Head tells Woody he has to choose between one thing and another. I liked his answer–‘I choose…Buzz Lightyear!”
That’s where I’m at.
“Not so fast, Lorenzo, the people as a whole haven’t spoken yet. Come November we’ll see if we’re on the road to perdition or paradise.”
No matter who wins it won’t be paradise. The USA has been on the road to doom for some time now.
Sleeping inner city Chicago children are frequently killed by stray gunfire from the thugs and criminals that roam the streets, and Mayor Lightheaded reacts by removing a statue of a historical of which few Chicago Public School students have any understanding?