Id's New Year Resolutions

            The Wizard of Id

Related: What If Winston Smith and Robinson Crusoe
Had Communicated by Smartphone Text Messages?

Adeus, Amigo : Pelé 1940-2022

Good-bye, friend — Pelé (1940-2022) 

Le Brésilien Edson Arantes do Nascimento, dit Pelé, est mort à São Paulo le jeudi 29 décembre 2022 des suites d'un cancer. Triple vainqueur d'une Coupe du monde, il était considéré comme l'un plus des grands (si ce n'est le plus grand) joueur de ce sport, le plus populaire de la planète.

 

"Wait I don’t think that’s a beach ball!" Is This the Best Car Decal Ever?

Imagine happening upon this pickup truck in your neighborhood.

On Christmas Day, a car with a particularly large, uh, "bumper sticker" was spotted somewhere in the middle of Tennessee. 

This decal is so well made — l'm not sure whether to call the vehicle a pickup truck or a "simple" regular car camouflaged to resemble a pickup truck — that when our small email group received the email from the photographer, more than one member did a double take:

when I first beheld this image I thought I was seeing a vehicle laden with perhaps luggage and items to head off to the beach. To escape the bitter cold and go somewhere warm and fun! As I peered myopically a la Mr. Magoo I thought  to myself, wait I don’t think that’s a beach ball.

So I enlarged and zoomed in and saw that it was not a beach ball but Biden‘s head.

Same difference.

The beach ball, a "brainless circular object", is probably why no one bothered gagging Joe Biden's face in the (presumably doctored) photo. Linda, the photographer, gives more details about the couple's reaction when they pulled up behind this, uh, pick-up truck:

We were dumbstruck and could not believe our eyes.

I struggled to pull my phone out of my back pocket and I snapped at least half a dozen photos.

You’ll notice I blocked out the trucks’ license tags.

 

 … I always block out the license plate to protect the innocent.

Good thing, or some leftist would probably call the FBI… The photographer ends her email with the note:

A girl can dream!

Update: thanks to Ed Driscoll for the Instapundit hyperlink…

What If Winston Smith and Robinson Crusoe Had Communicated by Smartphone Text Messages?

Over at the Penguin publishing company, Stephen Carlick has imagined what classical novels would sound like if their protagonists had communicated through Text conversations.

As a special Christmas present to you, we present Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe…

Nazi Caroling: The Extremes Hitler Wanted to Go To in Order to Replace Christianity with the “Religion” of National Socialism

EDITOR'S NOTE (4 paragraphs): In view of Ed Driscoll's multi-hyperlink post on How Nazis Stole Christmas & Turned Adolf Hitler into Messiah, I am again calling on Google to Immediately Un-Ban No Pasarán's Posts on the Nazis' (Hostile) Attitude Towards the Christian Religion — the oldest one of which I am choosing to reprint below.

It has been two and a half months since, without the slightest explanation, Google's Blogger blocked four posts, all of them at least seven (!) years old (one of which, however, was restored within 24 hours). The three which remain censored are:
• 卐mas Caroling: The Extremes Hitler Wanted to Go To in Order to Replace Christianity with the “Religion” of National Socialism (September 2012) • Adolf Hitler in Religious Surroundings: Is There Really Evidence That the Führer Was a Christian? (December 2012) • By laying the crusades at the feet of Christianity, Obama was unwittingly laying ISIL's atrocities at Islam's feet  (December 2015)

The content of all these posts is supported by facts — hard, cold facts. It is quite clear that there is not a single paragraph, sentence, or word in any of these posts (or in any part of the blog — which turned 18 last spring — or, for that matter, in any part of my brain and soul) that is in any way admiring of Hitler, Nazism, or fascism, as well as any other type of tyranny (not excluding communism — which may perhaps turn out to be the real problem in this case).

The first of these posts remained on the internet for exactly ten years (!): I am now proceeding to reprint the September 2012 post verbatim (except for the title where the X in Xmas is no longer replaced by the Swastika — which is what one reader (David Foster) says might have started the censorship).

Update: On Christmas Day 2022, Google restored the original post! Danke!

卐mas Caroling: The Extremes Hitler Wanted to Go To in Order to Replace Christianity with the “Religion” of National Socialism

You undoubtedly know the rumor — commonly accepted as uncontroversial truth — that while Soviet tyranny was atheistic, its German equivalent was based on such traditional aspects of capitalist society as traditional religion (a rumor undoubtedly nourished — and that, entirely plausibly, it must be admitted — by Nazism's persecution of the Jewish minority). (Aktualisierung: Danke für die Linke, Glenn Reynolds, Ed Driscoll, Sarah Hoyt, und der blog Instapundit.)

The alleged link between Christianity and Nazism is quickly debunked by a few seconds' thought. Think about it, indeed: how many times, in how many World War II books, in how many documentaries with 1940s footage, have you seen pictures — whether fake poses deliberately prepared for propaganda purposes or simply "innocent", matter-of-fact news shots — of Adolf Hitler or any high-level Nazi official in silent (Christian or other) prayer?  Hands joined and/or eyes closed with head down?

How many times have you seen photos of Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Goebbels, or any SS member seated in a pew or even simply appearing inside a church?

That's right, it's like snapshots, or films, of ostriches sticking their necks in the sand: there ain't any.

Pictures of Nazis honoring traditional religion and religious traditions simply do not seem to exist.

(Unless, of course, the presence of the high-level Nazi inside or in front of a given church has nothing to do with religion per se.  For instance, there may exist photos of der Führer in front of the Sacré-Cœur cathedral — just like when he poses at the Trocadéro with the Eiffel Tower in the background — but that is as a tourist visiting a foreign capital or, rather, as a war leader visiting a defeated city.)

Now, should the need for more confirmation really exist, we have the 75 Years Ago section of the International Herald Tribune.

It is edifying — to say the least.

1937 — ‘Neo-Pagans’ Target Carols

BERLIN — De-Christianization of famous German Christmas hymns, such as “Silent Night, Holy Night,” is the outstanding contribution to the current holiday season of the rapidly spreading German faith movement or “religion” of National Socialism. In the new versions of the old songs reference to Nazi tenets of race, blood and soil replace familiar words concerning Christ, Child and the like. The accepted English translation of Mohr’s “Silent Night,” stanza three lines two and three is: “The Son of God loves pure light, radiant beams from thy Holy faith.” Equivalent lines in the Nazified version are “German blood, O how laugh the lips of thy children, blessed with joy.”

Of course, another reason a Nazi leader might meet with a religious leader might be for reasons of diplomacy with an ally — but again, no pictures seem to exist with any Catholic priest or Protestant preacher, German or foreign.

As it happens, this photo and this video seem to show the only time Adolf Hitler has met any religious leader of note.

Update: Adolf Hitler in Religious Surroundings: Is There Really Evidence That the Führer Was a Christian? — an in-depth, dispassionate look at the evidence brought by a couple of commenters claiming that Christianity was an integral part of Nazism…

Update 2: Worshipping Little Else But the Aryan Race, Hitler Abhorred the Christian Faith and Wanted to Replace Christmas with the Pagans' Yule

Related: • Jonah Goldberg: Just for the record, Hitler detested Christianity

• Ray Comfort, whose “Hitler, God and the Bible” points out Hitler devised a master strategy to crush all Christian churches, explains that it would be either ignorant or disingenuous to call Hitler a Christian:

In a special Christian Broadcasting Network program, Comfort cites the head of Hitler Youth, Boldur von Schirach, who said, “Destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist Movement.”

 … The CBN program explains how Hitler put on a religious, even Christian, façade, until he became powerful.

 … But later one of his inner circle acknowledged: “I’m absolutely clear in my own mind, and I think I can speak for the Fuhrer as well, that both the Catholic and Protestant churches will vanish from the life of our people.”

Update 3: How Hitler's Nazi propaganda machine tried to take Christ out of Christmas (danke zu Ed Driscoll)

 … the way Christmas was used by the atheist Nazis, who tried to turn it into a pagan winter solstice celebration.

 … 'Christmas was a provocation for the Nazis - after all, the baby Jesus was a Jewish child,' Judith Breuer told the German newspaper Spiegel. 'The most important celebration in the year didn't fit with their racist beliefs so they had to react, by trying to make it less Christian.'

The exhibition includes swastika-shaped cookie-cutters and Christmas tree baubles shaped like Iron Cross medals.

The Nazis attempted to persuade housewives to bake cookies in the shape of swastikas, and they replaced the Christian figure of Saint Nicholas, who traditionally brings German children treats on December 6, with the Norse god Odin.

The symbol that posed a particular problem for the Nazis was the star, which traditionally decorates Christmas trees.

 … The is a legacy of the Nazi Christmas. The wartime version of the traditional Christmas carol 'Unto us a time has come' is still sung. 'The Nazis took out the references to Jesus and made it into a song about walking through the snow,' Breuer said.

Surprisingly, German churches put up little opposition to the Nazification of Christmas. 'You would have expected them to protest loudly and insist that it was a Christian festival,' said Breuer. 'But instead they largely kept quiet, out of fear.'

Update 4: "Out With Jesus" — During His 12 Years in Power, Hitler Tried to Ban the Tradition of Christmas

Merry Christmas to the Entire Planet

Merry Christmas to the entire world

And from artist Maria Scrivan, the following cartoon:

Only four of the 31 authors contributing to the 1619 Project are historians, and none are experts on the U.S. founding; It shows

As unbelievable as it may sound, one MSM news outlet, Minnesota's Star Tribune, has allowed an alternative op-ed on the 1619 Project to be published, one penned by Robert Maranto and Wilfred Reilly:

 … the project's analysis is in fact highly questionable.

A Pulitzer Prize winning collection of essays and works of art, The 1619 Project proposes to define America by its history of racism and slavery, which allegedly motivated the American Revolution. Factually, this is highly problematic.

Only four of the 31 authors contributing to the project are historians, and none are experts on the U.S. founding. It shows.

Prominent historians such as James McPherson, James Oakes and others have rebutted 1619's central claims. A 1619 Project fact-checker and (sympathetic) professional historian publicly regretted that Nikole Hannah-Jones refused to accept facts that contradicted her simplistic story of unrelenting oppression.

1619's mistakes are many. For instance, Native Americans practiced slavery long before Europeans arrived in the Western Hemisphere, and the first enslaved Africans (and first slave revolt) came to what became the U.S. not in 1619, but in 1526.

Historians agree the founders did not fight the Revolutionary War to save slavery, which continued in British colonies for a half-century after Americans declared independence in 1776.

Plantation owners considered the Declaration of Independence so anti-slavery that in the years before the Civil War, they sought to rewrite the document to impose their view that only all white men are created equal.

The Founders saw the ideals of the American Revolution as advancing freedom. Many (mistakenly) hoped slavery would die out after they banned the importation of enslaved peoples.

Though a slave owner, Declaration of Independence chief author Thomas Jefferson proposed gradual emancipation in his native Virginia. In 1784 Jefferson came within one vote of securing a congressional ban of slavery in the West, including lands that later became Alabama and Mississippi. This might have sent U.S. slavery into a slow death. Jefferson observed bitterly that his failure doomed "millions unborn."

In the first decades of independence, most Northern states incrementally ended slavery, becoming among the first governments on earth to do so. Northern state legislatures often ended slavery in response to petitions from Black Revolutionary War veterans.

The 1619 Project ignores this complicated history. Instead, as scholar Peter Wood writes in 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project, 1619 is in part a case for reparations, but also "an effort to destroy America by teaching children that America never really existed, except as a lie told by white people in an effort to control Black people."

 … 1776 Unites, an ideologically diverse group of Black intellectuals to which one of us belongs, has made a standing offer to debate Nikole Hannah-Jones and other prominent leftists regarding our nation's founding and purpose. Tellingly, none have responded, just as powerful segregationists never debated Martin Luther King. When you dominate major institutions like the New York Times and higher education, why allow dissenters to expose your errors?

For this very reason (that none of the 31 authors contributing to the 1619 Project are experts on the U.S. founding), the New York Times saw one of its top columnists rebel, back in October 2020, against the paper's position on its very own 1619 Project, as reported by the Daily Wire's Ashe Schow:

New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens criticized the 1619 Project lauded by his employer and progressives across the country by calling it a “thesis in search of evidence.”

He spent the first few paragraphs of his latest op-ed lauding the “ambition” of the project, which sought to reframe how Americans saw the country’s origins.

“But ambition can be double-edged. Journalists are, most often, in the business of writing the first rough draft of history, not trying to have the last word on it. We are best when we try to tell truths with a lowercase t, following evidence in directions unseen, not the capital-T truth of a pre-established narrative in which inconvenient facts get discarded. And we’re supposed to report and comment on the political and cultural issues of the day, not become the issue itself,” Stephens wrote. “As fresh concerns make clear, on these points — and for all of its virtues, buzz, spinoffs and a Pulitzer Prize — the 1619 Project has failed.”

Related: The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence

• 1619, Mao, & 9-11: History According to the NYT — Plus, a Remarkable Issue of National Geographic Reveals the Leftists' "Blame America First" Approach to History

• Wilfred Reilly on 1619: quite a few contemporary Black problems have very little to do with slavery

Biden completes worst US-Russian prisoner swap in recorded history

On December 8, writes Paul Reen,

Joe Biden proudly announced from the Oval office that professional women’s basketball player Brittney Griner was freed after 9 months in Russian captivity. With a giddy Kamala Harris in tow, Biden embraced Brittney’s wife with the cameras rolling. Clearly by shocking coincidence, on the same day the Democrat House celebrated the passing of a bill to protect same-sex marriage, even though same-sex marriage is already legal in all 50 states. The political theatre from the Biden Administration never ends.

OK putting political theatre aside for a second, America was truly happy for Brittney who stupidly tried to enter Russia carrying cannabis oil but was held far too long in Russian prisons. She should have been released much earlier. Until, of course, America heard the details of the release. Most of the world now knows that Brittney was part of a 1 for 1 prisoner swap that freed the most notorious, dangerous and Putin’s top priority Russian prisoner, the “Merchant of Death”, Victor Bout. Then it was revealed that Biden had tried to release a 2nd American in exchange for Bout, a decorated Marine Veteran, Paul Whelan, who has been unjustly detained in Russia for nearly 4 years. But Putin refused, so Biden caved and gave up Bout anyway, leaving the Marine behind enemy lines. The most notorious Russian arms dealer, guilty of selling arms to terrorists to kill Americans swapped for an athlete carrying cannabis oil for her own use. Incredible negotiations Biden!

Who is Viktor Bout? According to the New York Times, Viktor Bout has been accused of selling Russian weapons to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and militants in Rwanda as well as ignoring arms embargoes in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Algeria, where he sold weapons to both the government forces and the rebels fighting them. His diabolical actions helped inspire a 2005 film, “Lord of War,” starring Nicolas Cage. He was captured and convicted in 2011 on charges including conspiring to kill Americans and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Russian experts have stated that he is a member of, or at least was in close collaboration with, Russia’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U. Experts also say that he was the highest-profile Russian in U.S. custody and the prisoner Russia had campaigned the most to have returned. He has now been freed after serving less than half his sentence.

Paul Whelan served in the Marine Corps Reserve from 1994 to 2008. While serving in the Marines, he did two deployments to Iraq and rose to the rank of staff sergeant. Whelan was arrested by Russia at a Moscow hotel in 2018. Russia claimed he was carrying out "an espionage operation," which resulted in his arrest. Whelan's brother David said Whelan was in Moscow for the wedding of a fellow Marine. He’s been sentenced to 16 years in prison. This the 2nd time that Whelan has been left behind this year. In April he was also a potential Russian prisoner swap but another US Marine, Trevor Reed, imprisoned more recently in 2019, was released instead. Paul’s brother David also says that Paul remains positive that he’ll be released soon and continues to begin every morning by singing the U.S. National Anthem.

Brittney Griner meanwhile has been a very active social warrior since 2020 and the Black Lives Matter protests against perceived police brutality and racial injustice. She has refused to stand for the National Anthem before games, choosing instead to stay in the locker room. "I honestly feel we should not play the national anthem during our season," Griner said. "I think we should take that much of a stand. I'm not going to be out there for the national anthem. If the league continues to want to play it, that's fine. It will be all season long, I'll not be out there. I feel like more are going to probably do the same thing. I can only speak for myself.”

Ridiculous Reactions from Biden Cabinet and Democrats:

Joe Biden: Biden on Thursday was asked after an unrelated speech what he would say to Whelan’s family concerning the shocking developments. His answer was a non-answer, his handlers quickly scurried him away from cameras and inquiring reporters.

John Kirby, Security Council Coordinator for strategic communications: when pressed on the situation Thursday, he insisted that the negotiations for Whelan were still ongoing in what sounded more like a pre-approved White House response.

Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary: Although it was earlier reported by ABC that both Griner and Whelan were offered as options for Viktor Bout, Karine Jean Pierre gave her usual dishonest spin stating “This was not a choice for us on which American to bring home. It was a choice between bringing home one American or none". Adding, “Brittney Griner is an inspiration for LGBTQI+ Americans and Women of Color".

Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers: She exclaimed over Twitter, "What a great relief!!! Extraordinary news, a basketball star, but also a gay, black woman is released." She added, "And yes of course we want other prisoners like Paul Whelan released." Meanwhile Russia state TV is enjoying mocking Biden’s weakness for choosing an athlete over a Marine and laughing at what this says about Americans priorities. More serious is how Putin and other U.S. adversaries see Biden’s weakness once again after Afghanistan. Will they start kidnapping Americans as bargaining chips? It also brings back memories of another terrible prisoner swap under Obama who released the famous “Taliban Five”, 5 of the worst “GITMO” terrorists, in a swap for US deserter Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in 2014. A pattern of Democrat weakness.

For Griner let’s hope she appreciates the US a little more after seeing what a real totalitarian regime is like. For Paul Whelan let’s pray for his continued strength and patriotism until he is released. The sad truth is Biden’s weakness threatens the security of America and all Americans living abroad. 2024 can’t come fast enough.

A French version of Paul Reen's article was published on Causeur.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/world/europe/viktor-bout-brittney-griner.html
https://ussanews.com/2022/12/08/paul-whelans-family-speaks-after-griner-prisoner-swap/
https://theweek.com/us-military/1019120/who-is-paul-whelan
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2022/12/09/nolte-left-wing-nbc-edits-brittney-griner-story- to-benefit-biden-white-house/
https://www.foxnews.com/media/weingarten-slammed-tweet-fixating-brittney-griners-race- sexuality-after-release-complete-clown
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/russia-state-television-mocks-u-s-for-brittney-griner- prisoner-exchange

Ever since Stalin declared Trotsky a "fascist," the Left has labeled its opponents precisely what the Left itself is

Ever since Stalin declared Trotsky a "fascist," the Left has labeled its opponents precisely what the Left itself is.

Recently, as Dennis Prager states in his Townhall column,

The New York Times published a column by a left-wing academic (forgive the redundancy), John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.

In his first sentence, Mr. Della Volpe reveals his politics.

He described young Americans as "stressed and sickened by thoughts of their rights and democracy slipping away."

That is what Harvard and just about every other university tells America's young people: "Because of the Right, you should be stressed and sickened -- the Right is taking away your rights and destroying your democracy."

The terrible irony is that there is a mortal threat to Americans' rights and democracy -- but it is entirely from the Left. Ever since Stalin declared Trotsky a "fascist," the Left has labeled its opponents precisely what the Left itself is.

And it almost always works.

It is certainly working in America. Della Volpe writes: "According to the fall 2022 Harvard Youth Poll, a national survey I oversee for the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, 59 percent of young Americans believe their rights are under attack and 73 percent are troubled that the rights of others are threatened."

Whatever the Left says is essentially the only thing the majority of young Americans ever hear. For almost six years, the Left has called former President Donald Trump a fascist. The current president of the United States went even further, declaring that most Trump supporters are also fascists.

Yet, Trump was president of the United States for four years, and civil rights were not abridged nor was democracy threatened. As regards the illegal entry of conservative protesters into the Capitol in January 2021, Trump repeatedly called for a peaceful protest and respect for law enforcement (as evidenced, in part, by his now-restored Twitter account). 

And, let it not be forgotten, that unlike the violent left-wing protests in 2020, which almost no Democrats condemned, the Jan. 6 Capitol breach was virtually universally condemned by Republicans -- and the then-Republican vice president, Mike Pence, rejected the protesters' demands to invalidate the 2020 election result. Moreover, the Left called Trump a fascist for four years prior to Jan. 6.

As regards Trump's belief that the election was stolen, Democrats, including the losing presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, claimed Trump did not win the 2016 election. And it has been a common left-wing tactic for decades to illegally occupy state offices, not to mention college presidents' offices. In 2011, thousands of left-wing protesters took over the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison for four months. More recently, in 2018, protesters took over a Senate office building on Capitol Hill demanding rejection of Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

It is not conservatives who threaten freedom and democracy. It is the Left; its party (the Democrats); the legacy media (virtually all mainstream media); and Big Tech (Google, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and, until now, Twitter). They are the ones who suppress dissent -- which, as I pointed out in my last column, is proof the Left lies, since truth-tellers have no need to cancel lectures, censor dissenters, manipulate search results, etc. The Left constitutes the greatest threat in American history to freedom of speech -- the most important of all freedoms.

Yet the young vote for the Left. … In short, it seems that young Americans voted for the people who are ruining their lives.

It is the Left that is primarily responsible for the unprecedented levels of depression and despair among young people.

 … The Left frightens young people about their future -- through its hysteria over global warming -- in a way that no group ever before frightened young Americans.

The Left has destroyed the healthiest beliefs in a citizen's life -- especially in the life of a young citizen: Belief in God and belief in one's country. God, religion, patriotism and the national flag have all become objects of mockery.

The Left lies to them about everything -- from nonbinary genders to the founding of America to the extent of white racism in the country to opponents of the Left being fascists.

The Left works feverishly to prematurely sexualize children by talking about sex and the nihilistic falsehood of sex being "nonbinary" to children beginning in kindergarten.

 … The Left works feverishly to diminish the authority and stature of parents, the most important people in a young person's life.

 

 … The Left corrupts young people's ability to think clearly by suppressing common sense dissent. Everyone knows it is grossly unfair for a man to compete in women's sports. But if a man says he is a woman, we are supposed to believe and to assert that it becomes fair. And any girl or woman who says it is unfair is threatened with expulsion from her team, the end of her chances for a sports scholarship to college and social ostracization.

Yet, they vote for their destroyers.

The Central Absurd Inconsistency of the Ray Epps Conundrum Described in Two Sentences

Well, Leftists, which is it?

EITHER the January 6 protests were so wicked that the fiendish scoundrels who participated — all of them (not least the ringleaders) — should be persecuted to the full extent of the law. 

OR ELSE, insofar as we accept that one of the protesters — and a ringleader, at that — is no more than a "poor schmuck" who should be left alone (as the man most visible in urging the masses to march on the capitol was described by one irate Democrat member of the Jan. 6 Committee), then all (or at least the majority) of the other protesters should be left off the hook, exactly like Ray Epps, no more and no less.

As usual, we are presented with the drama queens' usual double standards. 

But you cannot have it both ways. (We know that you would like to, and we know that the MSM is covering for you here, but the fact remains that you cannot have it both ways…)

• In that perspective, be sure to read The January 6 Protest Summarized in One Single Sentence

The Patriots Beacon points to the central absurd inconsistency of the January 6 committee (emphasis theirs):

As the so-called investigation moves forward each day, more and more pieces of evidence prove that the riot at the Capitol was plotted but they are doing their best to blame the whole thing on Trump and his supporters.

The most iconic rat is Ray Epps whom the agency keeps on protecting from claims that he is a Federal informant, his removal from the most wanted lists, and claiming that this guy is a law-abiding citizen. Really?

But shreds of evidence cannot tamper especially when it’s posted online.

The January 6 Committee’s entire purpose is to argue that Trump and his allies “incited” a riot with their rhetoric. Yet, with one man who seemed to have actually helped incite the riot with his words, the entire committee comes out to defend him as a law-abiding citizen.

Weird.

— Scott Greer 6’2” IQ 187 (@ScottMGreer) January 12, 2022

And Tucker Carlson calling out Adam Kinzinger as a liar is just a complete fact.

Tucker Carlson Calls Out @AdamKinzinger For His Bizarre Statements On Ray Epps And Challenges Kinzinger To Come On His Show

“Adam Kinzinger is lying.”

“Kinzinger is withholding critical information from the public.”pic.twitter.com/BFbgEo2hS7

— The Columbia Bugle (@ColumbiaBugle) January 13, 2022

Indeed, one seething Democrat on the Jan.6 Committee interrupted a GOP colleague and shamed him, claiming that Ray Epps is nothing more than a "poor schmuck" "just trying to survive and he's on your side." Maryland's Jamie Raskin chided the Republicans to: "Leave that guy alone, whoever he is." 

To repeat: Look, no matter what you think about the January 6 protest (or about a participant like Ray Epps, for that matter), one thing should be perfectly clear:

EITHER the January 6 protests were so despicable and destructive of "(our) democracy" that anybody and everybody who participated in them should be thrown into jail and prosecuted (persecuted?) to the full extent of the law. 

OR ELSE the average protester is no more than a "poor schmuck" — as, again, the man most visible in urging the masses to march on the capitol was described by one irate Democrat member of the Jan. 6 Committee — and then all (or at least the majority) of the protesters should be left alone, off the hook, exactly like Ray Epps, no more and no less. (Thanks for the Instalink, Ed…)

If they can’t explain Ray Epps - they were in on it.

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) December 29, 2022

Update:  Twitchy's Brett T reports (thanks to Instapundit) that with the final report of the January 6 select committee having "zero mentions of one-time Oath Keeper Ray Epps", this means that “The one person on film telling people to go into the Capitol (multiple times) disappears from FBI list and is not even mentioned in the 845-page final report”. This leads Catturd to tweet the obvious: If they can’t explain Ray Epps, ‘They were in on it.’ with Detective51 saying Right, and adding that 

"if they weren’t they would have made him the poster boy of the whole thing and demanded his head."

Update: On his Substack, Raheem Kassam lists the "top 12 strange, stand-out moments" of the January 6th Committee's interview with Ray Epps (you’ll never see Kinzinger be so nice to a supposed Trump supporter as he is throughout this interview)…

.
Speaking of (more or less related) scams, Dick Morris writes:

Don’t Let The Media Con You — The GOP Did Not Lose The Midterms

One of the biggest media hoaxes is that the Republicans lost the midterm elections…and that it was a sign voters are tiring of Donald Trump.

The Republican candidates for the House got 52,690,787 votes while Democrats only got 48,096,016 votes — almost a 5 million-vote Republican majority.

 … The only defeat we suffered was at the hands of our own expectations.

And none of it was Trump’s fault.

 … The main tactical reason for the Senate defeats was the Democrats’ advantage in early voting combined with their control of Election Day machinery.

In Pennsylvania, for example, Democrats had banked a 300,000-vote advantage in the Senate race before the polls even opened. Such a handicap was almost impossible to overcome, especially with the Democratic secretary of state gladly tolerating machine breakdowns that lengthened lines around the block on Election Day.

 … Our victory in the House has been obscured, likely deliberately, by the absurd delay in vote counting. But 2022 was one of the best years for Republican House candidates ever, so don’t let the media con you into believing it was a defeat.

Related: • Déjà Vu All Over Again in the Banana Republic of Biden: No, the Democrats did not run better campaigns; they cheated, as usual
• Isn’t it strange that in Florida, with all those strict rules against cheating, the GOP red tsunami happened as predicted? The Democrats have again fixed, rigged, and stolen an election
• Let’s dispense with the myth that liberals are really against voter fraud; Voter fraud is actually an essential part of their election strategy
• If the Democrats learned anything from their 2016 debacle it’s that they didn’t cheat nearly enough
• Democrats don't support voter fraud; they just worry about disenfranchising the deceased
• Voter ID: Apparently not allowing minorities to cheat is a form of racial oppression
• Of the 47 countries in Europe today — the nations and the continent that the Democrats are always telling us to emulate — 46 of them currently require government-issued photo IDs to vote
• Joe Biden, Why Are You Calling Denmark a White Supremacist Country? And You, Barack Obama: Why Are You Calling Africa a Racist Continent? 
• Our élites constantly lecture everyone about "disinformation," about "big lies", etc; They're the biggest liars of all, with zero accountability
• Isn't America Being Governed by a Mafia Family Dynasty, setting things up so that there will always be Democrats in power?
• Inside of a month, Democrats have redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy — And by “democracy”, they mean the Democrat Party
• Voter Fraud: A Note to Leftists Who Claim that "Not a shred of hard evidence has been produced"
• Dennis Prager: The Numerous (and Sweeping) Anomalies Regarding the 2020 Election That Cannot Be Ignored

No, the “greatest threat to democracy” is not MAGA Republicans; the true and actual threat to democracy is the Biden Administration and the Democrat Party

On December 2, writes Paul Reen, Elon Musk

exposed a bombshell of internal communications by 2020 Twitter leadership. E-mail exchanges prove Twitter had actively colluded with the 2020 Biden Presidential Campaign, as well as the Democrat National Committee, to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story in order to help sway the election for Joe Biden. Twitter deliberately suppressed the first Amendment, free speech of both a major American news journal and ordinary citizens to interfere in the presidential election. It’s one of the biggest scandals in America because it not only confirms the political bias of a major social media platform but, more importantly, it exposes the coordinated attacks on U.S. democracy by Biden and the Democrat Party who have used the weight and power of the government to help censure truth-telling , opposition voices. After the Hunter laptop story had been authenticated, surveys have shown that 79% of American voters believe that “truthful” coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story would have changed the outcome of the 2020 election (NY Post), including 17% of Biden voters who stated that they would NOT have voted for Biden had they known the truth (Media Research Center). Prior to the recent U.S. midterm elections, Biden gave numerous divisive speeches that slandered MAGA Republicans as the “greatest threat to democracy”. It is finally becoming clear that the true and actual threat to democracy is the Biden Administration and the Democrat Party. 

Democracy dies with Censorship 

What was censored? Musk exposed the coordinated censoring of a New York Post’s Oct 2020 article, one month before the Nov 2020 Presidential elections. The New York Post article was damaging to then candidate Joe Biden because it revealed that his son Hunter Biden, through actual emails found on his abandoned laptop, had been involved in nefarious “pay to play” activities while his father was Vice President under Obama. Hunter’s laptop, which has since been authenticated, showed that he was involved in managing access to his father for Ukrainian officials while he received a massive salary from a Ukrainian Energy Company. After conferring with the 2020 Biden Campaign team, Twitter leadership decided to label the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell as “Russian disinformation” and block any and all tweets trying to discuss and share the Hunter Biden laptop story. The biased media and all other social media platforms decided to collectively support this false narrative in order to avoid the “...disaster of 2016” (Trump being elected) per Twitter leadership exchanges exposed by Musk. We have since learned that Hunter had been paid millions of dollars by both Chinese and Russian companies and, allegedly, his father received 10% of the money. 

None of this, of course, is news to Conservatives who have known about this laptop scandal since mid-2020, even before the New York Post article. Conservatives who have tried to speak about the scandal have been censored, shamed and slandered for speaking out- not just by Twitter but by all social media platforms including Facebook, Google and Instagram as well as the Mainstream “News” outlets, and not just in Oct 2020 but throughout 2021 and 2022. The Democrat, left wing control of US society is so strong that it took Elon Musk’s buying of Twitter and exposing the actual communication behind the scenes to finally prove what we already knew. This left wing control consists of the Democrat Party, biased left wing media, Big Tech Social Media, Academia, Hollywood and even much of today’s Corporate America who have bowed to the woke, left wing ideological mob. Together they create a powerful “left-wing cabal” that suppresses right wing opposition voices as extreme and hate-filled. In fact Joe Biden is the one giving hate-filled speeches against ordinary, right wing American citizens smearing them as extremist, election denying threats to Democracy. 

Horrendous as it is, the Twitter collusion with the Biden Administration is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Biden’s efforts to censure opposition and destroy democracy. After he was elected, Biden tried to create something called the “Misinformation Governance Board”, as part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He hired an openly biased left wing activist to run the department and be responsible for “fact checking” so-called right wing “misinformation”. This was so blatantly partisan akin to totalitarian governments that public outraged ensued, referring to it as the “Ministry of Truth” as in George Orwell’s novel “1984”. All Republicans and even some Democrats called for the group to be immediately disbanded and Biden was forced to in a matter of weeks. 

Biden’s Politicization of the Intelligence Agencies and Department of Justice 

Even more concerning and totalitarian has been the way in which the Biden Administration and the Democrat Party have politicized and weaponized the US Intelligence Agencies and the Department of Justice (DOJ), which oversees the FBI. When the Hunter Biden laptop information was first exposed by the New York Post in Oct 2020, somehow 51 former U.S. “Intelligence” officials, many of which had served under President Obama and were then contributors to leftwing “news” sites like CNN and MSNBC, quickly published a joint response. This response stated that the laptop “had all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign”, even after admitting they had no evidence of this and they had no idea whether the e-mails were genuine or not. They’re just “suspicious” they said. Why? Because they hurt Biden’s campaign, that’s evidence enough. This ambiguous “earmark” statement enabled the entire left-wing cabal to use this letter as cover to slander Republicans as dangerous conspiracy theorists while giving the authors room to say they never actually confirmed it was Russian disinformation. This was the clear politicization of the intelligence community to protect Joe Biden’s campaign right before the election. Since the laptop and its contents have now been authenticated and in no way Russian disinformation, not one of the “intelligence “officers have apologized or been held accountable for their own disinformation. 

Since Biden’s election, his Justice Department has constantly harassed American citizens for having opposing views to the Biden White House narrative. Attorney General Merrick Garland, head of the Justice Department, drafted a widely criticized letter comparing concerned parents to domestic terrorists for simply voicing their concerns at local school board meetings over hyper, left-wing ideologies contaminating their children’s education. Garland instructed FBI agents to monitor these so-called dangerous parents which resulted in undercover FBI agents appearing at school board meetings to intimidate them into silence. But it didn’t work, not surprisingly brave parents continue to speak out to protect their children and are beginning to make a difference. 

After 6 Jan 2021, Biden’s FBI harassed and arrested Americans all over the country, some who had not even entered the Capital Building. Some of those that did enter the Capital in order to take selfies at Pelosi’s desk, have been held in Gulag like prison conditions for nearly 2 years, many in solitary confinement, denied legal representation or even private visits, most still awaiting trial with no bail. Biden has created, for the first time in America, political prisoners. He doesn’t hesitate to send armed FBI agents on surprise, early morning raids on Trump supporter’s homes, culminating of course with the raid on Trumps own Mar-A-Lago estate this past August.

Throughout 2021 Biden’s Justice Department helped strong arm the mandating of COVID vaccinations for all government officials or risk termination, including the military and even first line health care responders. This resulted in tens of thousands of people losing their jobs and benefits. 

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade and sent the question of abortion rights back to each state, Biden did nothing to stop left wing thugs from illegally harassing Justices at their own homes. Harassing Supreme Court Justices is illegal per the U.S. Constitution. Justice Bret Kavanaugh, a frequent target of the hate-filled left wing mob, even had an assassination attempt on his life, thwarted by quick acting police. Biden, of course, said nothing to protect the Justices. Biden, rather than trying to unite Americans behind his policies would rather threaten to change the US proven, democratic structures – like stacking the Supreme Court with nearly double the number of Justices to ensure a left-wing activist majority, or to eliminate the Senate filibuster which forces Senators to make compromises and prevents simple majority rule. 

When considering the constant totalitarian behavior of the Biden Administration, it should come as no surprise that Biden is silent and absent when asked to condemn the Chinese Communist Party for their horrific and inhumane COVID lockdown treatment of their own citizens, or to actually do something to support the killing and suppression of the brave Iranian people by their own Islamo- fascist government. Biden’s silence is not unlike the pathetic silence of Obama during the 2009 Iranian Green revolution. 

Republicans retake majority of the House of Representatives 

After winning back the House of Representatives in last month’s midterm elections, Republicans will take control in Jan 2023 and have already announced they will begin investigations immediately on Joe Biden’s role in Hunters corrupt business affairs. Republicans will also start to hold the various Biden Executive Departments accountable for their unconstitutional attacks on free speech of opposing views, their unjustified targeting of concerned parents, their creation of political prisoners and their irresponsible “open border” policies that have allowed a record number 5 million illegal aliens to enter the US over the past 2 years. This is a good start as we head into the 2024 Presidential Election season and begin the slow process of undoing the wrongs of Biden and returning actual democracy to the USA. 

Sources : https://www.theepochtimes.com/elon-musk-unveils-twitters-censorship-of-hunter-biden-laptop- story-in-2020_4901498.html 

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/12/02/everyone-knew-this-was-fcked-elon-musk-releases- twitters-internal-convos-on-hunter-biden-laptop-censorship/ 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/elon-musk-says-some-twitter-bans-violated-first- amendment_4901921.html 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/incoming-republican-chairman-issues-warning-to-twitter- employees-tied-to-hunter-biden-story_4903186.html 

https://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2022/03/named-and-shamed-the-51-intel-officials- who-lied-about-the-hunter-biden-laptop-emails/ 

https://nypost.com/2021/10/21/wh-aided-school-board-groups-letter-before-garland-sicced-fbi-on- parents/ 

https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/16/doj-whistleblower-documents-suggest-merrick-garland-lied- about-the-targeting-of-parents-as-domestic-terrorists/ https://amac.us/jan-6th-prisoners-detained-and-forgotten/ 

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/j-6-political-prisoner-describes-lawlessness-sickening- political-antics-kangaroo-court-proceedings-first-week-trial-washington-dc/ 

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/07/06/army-cuts-off-more-60k-unvaccinated-guard- and-reserve-soldiers-pay-and-benefits.html 

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/04/27/the-vast-majority-of-troops- kicked-out-for-covid-vaccine-refusal-received-general-discharges/ 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10118843/Biden-says-cops-emergency-responders-fired- not-getting-vaccine.html 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-ridiculed-despicable-speech-threat-democracy-delusion-looks-like

The January 6 Protest Summarized in One Single Sentence

Please stand to attention for a one-single-sentence summary of the January 6 protest, or the January 6 riot, or the January 6 mêlée, or the January 6 controversy, or the January 6 committee — or whatever you choose to call it:

The critical date is not January 6;
the critical date is November 3.

It is not January 6 (2021) — repeated (quite deliberately) ad nauseam by the Democrats and the mainstream media alike (it is no accident that that date is the name of the committee that could just as well have been called, say, the Congress Breach Committee) — that is the significant date; no, the historical date is November 3 (2020).

In that perspective, all of the incessant chatter about the "riots" is so much fog — as is Donald Trump's alleged connivance in the "deadly" "attack" on "democracy" (a "deadly" attack in which no protestor had weapons, no protestor killed a single soul, and none of the half dozen victims — most of them by unrelated heart attack — was not pro-Trump). Speaking of riots, incidentally, how about the current protests in Iran and China — should they also be poo-pooed as scandalous insurrections?

You can rave and rant all you want, however honestly you hold the belief, about insurrectionists, traitors, conspiracy theorists, and domestic terrorists; the mainstream media (here's looking at you, New York Times) can tag on the (highly un-journalistic) adjective "baseless" and the (highly un-journalistic) expression "the big lie" to every single news (sic) item about Donald Trump and his (eminently reasonable) accusations; you can bewail "disinformation" threatening "our democracy" all you want… the fact remains that without November 3 — without the (numerous as well as the sweeping) anomalies of November 3 — there is no January 6.

Indeed, if anything is proof of disinformation, the big lie, and perhaps (why not?) treason to "our democracy", it is the very ubiquitousness of the January 6 date. (During the 1850s, incidentally, notably in his debates with Judge Douglas, Abraham Lincoln used the expression "the democracy" more than once as a synonym for the Democratic party, suggesting that it was far from an uncommon expression in the 19th century.) Update: obrigado to Sarah Hoyt. 

As details have been emerging every week or even every day (most recently, Elon Musk's Twitter Files) about what really has been common sense since… the morning of November 4, 2020, the fact that the Democrats, the MSM, and the January 6 Committee continue unabated with their gaslighting — Update: referring Trump to the DOJ for prosecution on December 19, 2022 — is particularly egregious.

There is only one thing that you need to do to react to a mainstream media outlet, a Democrat politician, or any other type of leftist every single time that they mention the words "January" and "6" in unison. 

Dear reader, please stand up from your chair and repeat after me (aloud, if you will): 

The critical date is not January 6;
the critical date is November 3.

This post could end here, but for your convenience here are two recent commentaries on the matter, plus, at the bottom, a link to every one of this blog's posts on the subject of January 6 (sorry, on the subject of November 3) from the past couple of years.

"These people had a reason to be frustrated":
January 6 was never an insurrection, it was a mêlée

On a recent Fox News show, host Tucker Carlson is for once the one being interviewed (2nd video, 2:26):

[Adam] Schiff is a totally sinister person, and of course discredited. He's on the intel committee, and he was caught lying repeatedly over the past five years, and he retains his position, so that's a failure of our system. … he said "Look, Trump is going to run again, we better prosecute him." In other words, he believes that the point of the Department of Justice is to take his potential political opponents off the table by putting them in jail. I mean, that's what juntas do. So, like, that Adam Schiff is a huge problem for democracy …

Later Tucker Carlson had some things to point out about January 6 (3:58):

It was never an insurrection, it was a mêlée, and people got super-exercised, I think there were some complicated components, there were — clearly — federal informants and/or agents in that crowd, their role is still unknown, we should find out. But in general these are people who thought the election was stolen, they had some evidence to support that view, it was not a free and fair election. 

You don't have to believe that the voting machines were rigged to look at 2020 and say "that wasn't fair". I mean, you shut down negative stories about one guy, and highlight stories of the other. I mean, Google stopped the Trump campaign from sending out fund-raising emails on Gmail! 

Nothing like that has ever happened before! We changed the way that we vote! We did it by mail! Of course there was massive fraud! I mean, these are real concerns. Whether they swung the election we can argue, but these people had a reason to be frustrated. 

Democracy, which they really believed in, turned out to be kind of fake! So, rather than answer their questions or reassure them that out system is real, we throw them in jail?! I mean, what is that?! I will tell you what it is: It is a rotting, falling ruling class that sees its hold on power slipping away, and is grasping even tighter. And that just never works — in any régime — ever!

 … You should never punish someone for expressing his political views, period! And above all, in a democracy, you have to answer people's questions. And if the question is "was the election fair?" tell me how it was. Tell me how it's fair for the tech monopolies to act in concert with the Democratic Party to shut down the other side. That's not fair. And if you claim it is fair, like Chuck Todd or whatever the kid's name is, you're a liar. You're a liar.

People are tired of woke bullies bossing them about,
and Donald Trump stands up to those bullies

Regarding the main intent of this post, the people (left-wing, conservative, or other) fixating on Donald Trump's shortcomings, real or alleged, are likewise (and many of them quite deliberately) focusing on the wrong spot. In that perspective, the Spectator's Lucian G. Conway quotes G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

“It is rational to attack the police; nay, it is glorious. But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars.”

 … Casting about for someone to hold accountable after Republicans performed below expectations in the midterm elections, many Republicans offered a simple solution: Blame Trump.

 … The sentiment has been echoed across the country. But this blithe dismissal of Donald Trump — and, by proxy, millions of Trump supporters — is misguided. To borrow Chesterton’s metaphor, Republicans are attacking the Trump police without ever having heard of the liberal authoritarian burglars that he was largely elected to stop.

We’ve seen this movie before. Rewind back to 2016. Mainstream Republicans back then didn’t like Trump either. So why did he win both the Republican nomination and the presidency? It’s actually not that complicated: People were tired of woke bullies bossing them about, and Donald Trump stood up to those bullies. He said he’d stand up to China even though people called him a racist for it. Trump said he’d stem the flow of immigration from Mexico, and he was roundly criticized. But he didn’t back down from the liberal media that relentlessly attacked him. Trump kept speaking his mind. In contrast, Establishment Republicans largely forgot about the lower middle class affected by these policies. Trump spoke to the forgotten class — spoke for them. 

And it wasn’t just the lower middle class. There were plenty of people who were tired of the varied left-wing bullies in their world. 

 … These reasons are even more important today. And if Republicans want to win moving forward, they need to better understand this fact. They need to more fully “get” Trump voters. They need to understand the metaphorical Trump police and the authoritarian burglars.

 … This time, as Republicans wrestle with the issues posed by another Trump run at the presidency, they should remember that — for all his flaws — the former president spoke for a lot of average people tired of the bullies throwing them under the bus.

Related: • The Central Absurd Inconsistency of the Ray Epps Conundrum Described in Two Sentences
• Kabuki Theater: the "top 12 strange, stand-out moments" of the January 6th Committee's interview with Ray Epps
• Déjà Vu All Over Again in the Banana Republic of Biden: No, the Democrats did not run better campaigns; they cheated, as usual
• Isn’t it strange that in Florida, with all those strict rules against cheating, the GOP red tsunami happened as predicted? The Democrats have again fixed, rigged, and stolen an election
• Let’s dispense with the myth that liberals are really against voter fraud; Voter fraud is actually an essential part of their election strategy
• If the Democrats learned anything from their 2016 debacle it’s that they didn’t cheat nearly enough
• Democrats don't support voter fraud; they just worry about disenfranchising the deceased
• Voter ID: Apparently not allowing minorities to cheat is a form of racial oppression
• Of the 47 countries in Europe today — the nations and the continent that the Democrats are always telling us to emulate — 46 of them currently require government-issued photo IDs to vote
• Joe Biden, Why Are You Calling Denmark a White Supremacist Country? And You, Barack Obama: Why Are You Calling Africa a Racist Continent?
• What the January 6th protest actually reveals is the criminal determination of the Democrats to establish a one-party state at whatever the cost
• 2020: an almost totalitarian effort by the national political and social media to suppress and ridicule any doubt of the accuracy of the election result
• Our élites constantly lecture everyone about "disinformation," about "big lies", etc; They're the biggest liars of all, with zero accountability
• Isn't America Being Governed by a Mafia Family Dynasty, setting things up so that there will always be Democrats in power?
• Inside of a month, Democrats have redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy — And by “democracy”, they mean the Democrat Party
• Voter Fraud: A Note to Leftists Who Claim that "Not a shred of hard evidence has been produced"
• Dennis Prager: The Numerous (and Sweeping) Anomalies Regarding the 2020 Election That Cannot Be Ignored

Thanksgiving: Can the Élites' Contempt for American History and for the Voters' Desires in the 21st Century Be Traced All the Way Back to the Jamestown and Plymouth Colonies?

Could it be that the 2020 and 2022 elections, as well as the teaching (sic) of history in American schools, are somehow linked all the way back to the first Thanksgiving and, more to the point, to the differences between the Virginia colonists and the Plymouth pilgrims?

Offhand, it may sound far-fetched, but don't be too quick to dismiss the idea.

In the videos How The English Civil War Caused The American Thanksgiving and How Thanksgiving Sowed The Seeds For The American Civil War, Dick Morris explains how "America was founded in two installments" with the founding of Jamestown in the South of British North America in 1607 and the landing of the pilgrims in the North in 1620. 

Dick Morris makes the case that the two groups were to a great extent natural opposites, the "people devoted to class system, wealth, and privilege" landing in Virginia, and the common people — "the average person, the merchants, the traders" — making landfall in Massachusetts. 

The two groups would proceed to engage in civil wars, first between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads in England in the 1640s and, over two centuries later, between the South and the North (or between the Democrats and the Republicans) in the (dis-)United States. 

The first time I heard about this general line of thought, by the way, was while reading the History of the American People (with the Palmetto State substituting for the Old Dominion), in which Paul Johnson wrote that

it must be noted that [John Quincy] Adams came from Massachusetts and [John] Calhoun from South Carolina, the two extremist states.  Many Americans believed — General Grant was one — that, when the Civil War finally came, these two states bore the chief responsibility for it; that, without them, it could have been avoided.   

However much that might or might not be the case, four centuries later, don't the differences between the anointed élites (with their plantations) and the common people persist?

Over at Breitbart, which has been instrumental in debunking the 1619 Project, Rebecca Mansour treats us to a more detailed account (not least a fateful meeting between members of the two colonies) in the True History of the Pilgrim Fathers and Our Founding Myth.

If you want to undo a nation, you start by falsifying its history until no one remembers anything but the “endless present.” Thus, every Thanksgiving it seems like fewer Americans know the true history of this national holiday commemorating our nation’s founding myth. Few even understand the concept of a founding myth.

 … the left-wing revisionism does not come from a place of love. It’s driven by hatred and ignorance; and, therefore, it requires a full refutation.

The Pilgrims’ Progress from Heroes to Villains

The same wokesters who have been busy toppling statues are also unfairly maligning our Pilgrim fathers and reframing the history of the nation they founded in 1620.

The most radical and effective effort at this revisionism is the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which commemorates the year that the first ship arrived in the Virginia colony carrying African slaves. Recognizing the significance of the beginning of American slavery is certainly worthwhile, but the 1619 Project’s authors went beyond recognition and sought to “reframe” all of American history around the events of 1619. For this, they have been roundly criticized by historians who decry their many inaccuracies and revisionist interpretations (including, for example, their claim that the American Revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery in the colonies). [Among the denunciations, see No Pasarán's very own The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence.]

Most of the criticism has focused on the Project’s controversial claim (which was later scrubbed from the New York Times’ website) that 1619 is the year of “our true founding,” not 1620 when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth and planted the seed of our democracy that ripened in 1776.

 … In other words, they think Abraham Lincoln got it wrong when he said our nation was “conceived in Liberty.” They think it was conceived in racism.

 … All of this is malicious nonsense. Shame on any educator spewing this garbage.

We know who the Pilgrims are and what they did because they meticulously documented their history for posterity.

Our Founding Myth

Our knowledge of the Pilgrims comes from two primary sources. The earliest account is from Edward Winslow, whose report on the founding of the Plymouth settlement was published in London in 1622, just two years after the Pilgrims arrived in the New World.

The more detailed and authoritative account comes from the Pilgrims’ second governor, William Bradford, whose poignant and eloquent history Of Plymouth Plantation, written between 1630 and 1651, tells the story of the community from their formation in England to their exile in Holland and their eventual founding of the Plymouth Colony.

 … There is a reason why we chose the Pilgrims and their establishment of the Plymouth Colony in 1620 as our origin myth, not the Virginians who settled in Jamestown over a decade before that date. Our reasoning had everything to do with the Pilgrims’ lack of racism. Americans have always aspired to be on the right side of history, and the Pilgrims were nothing if not righteous.

Their story embodies our most sacred American values. Like Aeneas fleeing the fall of Troy, the Pilgrims saw themselves as fleeing a cataclysmic conflagration about to engulf Europe. And like the Roman hero, they too hoped to forge a new civilization with a spark from the dying embers of the old one.

This is exactly how John Quincy Adams viewed the story of the Pilgrims. In a speech in 1802 commemorating the landing at Plymouth, Adams described the Pilgrims as America’s origin myth; but unlike other nations, the heroes of our founding myth were clearly known to us by their historical record, and they were defined by their virtue, not by their conquest.

“In reverting to the period of [their] origin, other nations have generally been compelled to plunge into the chaos of impenetrable antiquity, or to trace a lawless ancestry into the caverns of ravishers and robbers,” Adams told his American audience. “It is your peculiar privilege to commemorate, in this birthday of your nation, an event ascertained in its minutest details; an event of which the principal actors are known to you familiarly, as if belonging to your own age; an event of a magnitude before which imagination shrinks at the imperfection of her powers. It is your further happiness to behold, in those eminent characters, who were most conspicuous in accomplishing the settlement of your country, men upon whose virtue you can dwell with honest exultation.”

What’s more, Adams explained that the Pilgrims were the antithesis of cruel or racist conquers seeking to vanquish and plunder. Instead, they “were illustrious by their intrepid valor no less than by their Christian graces … Their glory has not been wafted over oceans of blood to the remotest regions of the earth. They have not erected to themselves colossal statues upon pedestals of human bones, to provoke and insult the tardy hand of heavenly retribution. But theirs was ‘the better fortitude of patience and heroic martyrdom.’ Theirs was the gentle temper of Christian kindness; the rigorous observance of reciprocal justice; the unconquerable soul of conscious integrity.”

Who were these heroes who engendered such praise?

And why should this small group of English settlers be revered by Americans today who aren’t directly descended from them?

After all, unlike John Quincy Adams, I have no personal family connection to the Pilgrims. My family didn’t arrive on the Mayflower in 1620. They came from Lebanon on an ocean liner in 1913.

So why should Americans — diverse as we are today — call these English settlers our “Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers”? Why should we feel a kinship to them as if we were their children, when most of us don’t have a drop of their blood in our veins?

Let me tell you their story in their own words. You will see that we are all their children — whether we arrived on these shores in 1619, 1913, or were here all along.

And you will see why we chose their arrival as the date of “our true founding” and why that decision says everything about our progress as a nation.

Their story tells us who we were, who we are, and who we aspire to be.

Saints and Strangers

The Pilgrims were devout Christians, and much like evangelical Christians today, these Englishmen and women sought to live by a simpler Biblical-based faith modeled after the early church of the Apostles.

They wanted to live as a community that worshipped and worked together, but England and its established Church enacted laws that forbade religious gatherings in private houses. These laws basically thwarted the Pilgrims’ ability to practice their faith as a community. So, in 1608, faced with the threat of imprisonment for their faith, the small community fled England and settled in Holland, which was known as a refuge for Protestant dissenters.

But after living a decade among the Dutch, they realized it was time to leave the Old World altogether. In 1618, Europe was on the cusp of one of the most violent periods in its history. The conflict, which became known as the Thirty Years War, would pit Protestant and Catholic European powers against each other. For the Pilgrims, the impending cataclysm seemed like the beginning of Armageddon. They felt that the best course of action was to leave the Old World behind and try to establish some holy remnant in the new one.

Getting there was the hard part. The small community was not wealthy. They were humble working class folks. They were pious husbands and wives with children seeking a place where they could worship in peace, not adventurers seeking treasure and conquest on behalf of a monarch. Nevertheless, the congregation pooled its resources and obtained a land patent from the Plymouth Company to settle in an area at the northernmost tip of the Virginia Company’s colony. They would eventually receive financing from London bankers who offered to back their venture with the understanding that the Pilgrims would repay these debts with their labors in the New World.

 … After 65 days—and two deaths—at sea, the Mayflower made landfall on November 9, 1620.

“Having found a good haven and being brought safely in sight of land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries of it, again to set their feet upon the firm and stable earth, their proper element,” Bradford wrote of that moment.

But the jubilation was short lived. They soon discovered they were over 200 miles off-course. They were nowhere near Virginia. And what’s worse, it was almost winter—in Massachusetts.

“Having thus passed the vast ocean, and that sea of troubles,” the Pilgrims “had no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain and refresh their weather-beaten bodies, nor houses — much less towns — to repair to,” Bradford wrote …

The Kernel of Our Democracy

A new conflict arose before they could even get started. They had no governing agreement binding them. Their charter was for Virginia, not wherever this place was.

The “Strangers”—who weren’t especially civil or pious—felt no allegiance to the Pilgrims or to each other. They figured it was every man for himself. (If anybody in this tale were libertarians, it was the “Strangers.”) But with winter setting in and with dangerously few provisions to speak of, the Pilgrims knew that if they didn’t all stick together, they would all die.

Edward Winslow explained what happened next:

This day before we came to harbor, observing some not well affected to unity and concord, but gave some appearance of faction, it was thought good there should be an association and agreement that we should combine together in one body, and to submit to such government and governors as we should by common consent agree to make and choose, and set our hands to this that follows word for word.

Thus, they wrote out and signed what became known as the Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony—and the first document to establish self-governance in the New World.

 … It was clear to them that the only thing binding them to this governing document was their own consent to be governed by it.

“What they did was enact social compact theory that had been sort of kicked around in Europe, especially in Britain, for a while,” University of Oklahoma historian and author Professor Wilfred McClay told Breitbart News. “They created a body politic out of the consent of those who were aboard the ship, and they had the foresight to realize they should and could do that.”

The Mayflower Compact wasn’t an elaborate political and legal charter establishing a system of government, like our Constitution. Nor was it a treatise establishing a governing philosophy, like our Declaration of Independence. It was little more than a paragraph. But within that paragraph we have the kernel of our democracy.

This true historical event, taking place nearly two centuries before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, embodied a fundamental American value: the belief that government is based on the consent of the governed.

Our First Dark Winter

Having signed a governing agreement, the Plymouth settlers then elected their first governor, John Carver. During their first forays ashore, the settlers discovered that the area was largely desolate.

In the years prior to their arrival, the population of the local Indian tribes had been decimated by civil wars and by a plague brought by European fisherman. The disease had wiped out whole villages, where the settlers found only scattered bones, left to the elements because no one survived to bury them.

 … So, finally on December 18, 1620, with the Mayflower anchored a mile offshore, the Pilgrims came ashore in the bitter cold, with rain and sleet pouring down on them, to build their settlement.

Is it any wonder that they lost over half their numbers that winter?

They were ill-equipped. The weather was impossible. Many of them didn’t even leave the Mayflower, and eventually the ship was turned into a makeshift hospital for the sick and dying. Those who settled in the village lived in constant fear of being attacked by hostile Indian tribes.

During the course of the winter months, so many members of the Plymouth Colony died that they were afraid to bury their dead lest the Indians realize how thinned out their numbers had become. At one point, they propped up the corpses against the trees surrounding the settlement and placed muskets in their arms to disguise the dead to look like sentries guarding the perimeter of the colony.

By the time March came around, the settlers were barely holding on, but the captain and crew of the Mayflower were ready to leave for the return voyage to England. This was a make-or-break moment for the Plymouth Colony. Would they survive on their own with their last tie to England gone and no hope of return?

Samoset and Squanto

At that providential moment, an Indian named Samoset of the Wampanoag Tribe walked into the Plymouth camp and astonished the Pilgrims by greeting them in English, which he had learned from his encounters with settlers from the Virginia Colony.

 … Six days later, Samoset returned to the village with the Wampanoag leader Massasoit. After entertaining their visitors with food and sport, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags negotiated a mutually beneficial agreement. They would defend each other in the event of an attack by the hostile tribes. And later on, they would establish trade with each other. To help the settlers survive the next winter, an Indian by the name of Tisquantum, or Squanto, stayed with the settlers to show them how to plant their spring crops.

Massachusetts and Virginia

Squanto’s story offers us a good opportunity to explain the difference between the Plymouth and Virginia colonies.

Squanto spoke English because in 1614, six years before the Pilgrims arrived, an expedition from the Virginia Colony led by Captain John Smith (of Pocahontas fame) charted the area around Cape Cod and Massachusetts Bay.

One of the commanders with Smith, a man named Thomas Hunt, decided to make extra money by kidnapping Indians and selling them into slavery. Squanto was among the victims Hunt trafficked to England, which is how he learned English. He eventually regained his freedom after his final captor, an English explorer named John Dermer, died during an expedition to the Wampanoag territory.

The tragic irony is that, had Squanto not been taken against his will across the ocean, he would have died with the rest of his village when Patuxet was wiped out by the plague. You see, Squanto was the sole survivor of the Patuxets—the people whose deserted village the Pilgrims had built their settlement upon.

And yet this man, who had so many reasons to curse the English, worked side by side with the Pilgrims that spring of 1621, showing them how to plant crops and assisting them in establishing trade with the surrounding tribes. Without his help, the Plymouth Colony would have failed.

From their encounters with Squanto and the other Indians, the men and women of Plymouth came to respect the Native people and feel shame for the treatment they had endured at the hands of other Englishmen.

 … Before they left England, the Pilgrims were looking for a military commander for their settlement. By far the most qualified man for the job was Captain John Smith (again, of Pocahontas fame). No one knew the whole region better than Smith. He literally drew the map of it. But the Pilgrims didn’t like him. They found him arrogant and too worldly and figured they could just make do with his maps without hiring the map-maker.

The dislike was mutual; Smith despised the Pilgrim’s piety and later mocked their refusal to hire him. He dismissively described them as “humorists” (meaning religious fanatics)

 … Nearly two centuries later, John Quincy Adams would state that “no European settlement ever formed upon this continent has been more distinguished for undeviating kindness and equity toward” the Native Americans than the Pilgrims at Plymouth.

And that brings us to the Thanksgiving story.

Our First — and Most Expensive — Thanksgiving 

With the help of Squanto, the Pilgrims had a successful harvest in the fall of 1621. They had come through the first winter, after losing 60 percent of their group. But rather than mourn the 60 percent lost, they rejoiced that 40 percent still lived and gave thanks to God. …

Why Lincoln Chose 1620 to Rebuke 1619

So why did Abraham Lincoln choose to make this account of Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863?

Our origin myth was still a matter of some debate up until that time. Throughout the early nineteenth century, Americans hotly debated whether the nation’s founding should be celebrated as the Jamestown Colony in Virginia or the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. The decision to favor Plymouth was helped along by the rediscovery of Bradford’s beautiful diary, Of Plymouth Plantation.

Bradford’s manuscript had disappeared from the New World in 1777 when the last royal governor of the colony took it from the Old South Church in Boston and carted it across the Atlantic to England … But in 1856 the British allowed a special edition of Bradford’s journal to be published, and that inspired a renewed appreciation for the Pilgrims and their history.

The publication came right at a time when our nation was on the cusp of a great conflagration as bloody and catastrophic for us as the war that caused the Pilgrims to flee Europe. It was a fight over our most basic and sacred values: the right of all men—not just Englishmen—to live in freedom and enjoy the fruits of self-governance.

So, is it any wonder that in the midst of the bloodiest year of our Civil War—just one month before he delivered his Gettysburg Address—Abraham Lincoln decided once and for all that our nation’s founding should harken to Plymouth, not Virginia?

Of course, Lincoln chose to honor the ancestors of the New England abolitionists, not the rebellious slaveowners of Virginia.

On October 3, 1863, our 16th president declared that Thanksgiving would be commemorated as a national holiday every year on the last week in November in honor of the Pilgrim fathers.

In this sense, Lincoln chose the events of 1620 as our true founding in order to repudiate the events of 1619.

We chose the Pilgrims as our founding myth because they embodied our most cherished ideals. They were the best of us.

They endured despite the odds; and through trial and error, they established the principles of self-governance, private property, a common defense, and peaceful commerce as a means of coexistence. They even established the practice of religious tolerance and pluralism with the “Strangers” among them, who became friends.

What’s more, the decision to embrace the Pilgrims as our true founders was made at a time when Americans were most keenly aware of the scourge of slavery because they were fighting a bloody Civil War to eradicate it. These Americans understood that slavery was not just a moral blight; it was a deadly contradiction that we couldn’t live with and still pretend to uphold the self-evident truth that all men are created equal. The generation that suffered the most to abolish slavery chose the Pilgrims as our founders because the Pilgrims embodied the ideals that inspired them to free the slaves. They wanted us to know that our nation was founded on God-given freedom, not racism.

This sentiment was made clear in the speech Massachusetts Gov. Roger Wolcott delivered in 1897 at the official ceremony to accept the return of Bradford’s manuscript by England to its rightful owners in America.

Related: • The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence

• Thanksgiving — it is worth revisiting the Pilgrim’s five significant achievements, writes FrontPage's Scott S. Powell, which created The Seminal Story of America