For proudly “progressive” people, American history is one long, uninterrupted obscenity

“We do not want to sell anything that offends people,” said Walmart CEO Doug McMillon.

Benny Huang strikes back:

McMillion is lying and he doesn’t even know it. Almost anything can be offensive to someone. Walmart doesn’t accommodate everyone’s prickly sensibilities because they couldn’t operate as a retailer if they did.

You know what offends me? Cheap crap made in Chinese sweat shops. Walmart won’t discontinue those products because then their shelves would be bare. But besides the entirety of their crappy inventory, I can think of a few individual items that offend at least some segment of the population. To name a few: Duck Dynasty merchandise, Barbie dolls, toy guns, real guns, Dan Brown books, the Bible, rap music, heavy metal, contraceptives, and tobacco.

And let’s not forget another common item known to offend—the American flag. Will they eliminate Old Glory too? The argument for dumping the stars and stripes is essentially the same as the argument for dumping the stars and bars—that it stands for racism and oppression.

Another strike against the American flag is that it is known to cause offense among the same demographic group—namely, black people. Not all blacks take umbrage at the sight of the flag, of course, but many do. If black Americans had to choose between the American and Confederate flags, Old Glory would surely win out, though many would prefer to have neither. Some black Americans associate it with slavery and oppression. I would argue that a lot more misdeeds could be cast upon the American flag than on the Confederate, if only because the USA has existed so much longer than the CSA ever did.

Witness the spate of flag-burning incidents that have surrounded the Ferguson, Baltimore, and New York protests. Many people see episodes of real or imagined police brutality as symptomatic of a distinctly American pathology. It’s not just a few abusive police officers they condemn, but the whole American system. They show their disgust for that system by incinerating the flag that symbolizes it. Blacks haven’t yet created a public relations headache surrounding the American flag, but that’s not to say that they never will. Will Walmart cave to their demands? Probably.

Most people reading this will probably think that the American flag has been the victim of a malicious frame-up, but that’s because most of this audience is center-right. The further one moves to the Left (or toward the extreme Right) the more animosity one feels toward our flag. For proudly “progressive” people, American history is one long, uninterrupted obscenity. The banner we’ve always rallied around is drenched in blood. Read a little Noam Chomsky and you’ll see what I mean.

The one-time comedian turned unbearable malcontent Janeane Garafolo summed up the feelings of her fellow leftists well when she said, “Our country is founded on a sham: our forefathers were slave-owning rich white guys who wanted it their way. So when I see the American flag, I go, ‘Oh my God, you’re insulting me.’ That you can have a gay parade on Christopher Street in New York, with naked men and women on a float cheering, ‘We’re here, we’re queer!’ –that’s what makes my heart swell. Not the flag, but a gay naked man or woman burning the flag. I get choked up with pride.” Deep down inside, that’s how most people to the left of Harry Reid really feel about America. Garafolo is just woman enough to admit it, and for that, I accord her respect.

I do not believe, however, that the Left reserves all of its hate for the American flag. With a few notable exceptions, leftists seem to hate flags generally.

 … When people start waving flags, leftists get nervous. It all feels very fascistic, unless of course the flag in question is the rainbow flag, in which case they become the biggest flag-wavers of them all. The difference between the rainbow flag and most others is that the rainbow flag doesn’t represent a nation state—a key distinction in the Left’s appraisal of its value. Neither does their other favorite flag, the sky blue banner of the United Nations. The UN flag gives them a warm fuzzy because it represents internationalism. Systemic corruption, the Oil-for-Food scandal, and the persistent rape epidemic that seems to follow UN troops wherever they go never seem to dull leftists’ admiration for the UN flag.

French Cartoon Monthly Takes Aim at American Imperialism

A few years back, the Psikopat monthly had a special American Imperialism issue. Inside were some gems (sic) such as one Yank, as a G.I. on the coast of Normandy in 1944, asking a friend "Can you tell me what the hell we're doing on this shitty beach waiting for death?!" (only to be told that that they are fighting for U.S. capitalists) and then the same Yank, as a retiree on a Florida seaside 70 years later, asking the same friend "Can you tell me what the hell we're doing on this shitty beach waiting for death?!"
More interesting, back in January 2015, was their plethora of homages to their colleagues at Charlie Hebdo.

Bow or be persecuted — The ruling class shouts: “The debate is over!” “Shut the bigots up!”

Peaceable behavior will not protect you from being hounded as a “hater” 

warns Angelo M Codevilla, author of To Make and Keep Peace (2014) and The Ruling Class (2010) (thanks to Instapundit).

A whiff of “offensive” attitudes is enough for the ruling class to make you as untouchable as the lepers of old. Nor is silence a refuge. 

Just as you must honor homosexuality, so you must affirm that certain Americans are “racists” addicted to “white privilege.” Do you demur? Then, Racist that you are, you must be shunned and should be fired. Do you support governmental efforts to reverse “anthropogenic global warming”? If you demur, you are a Denier who endangers our national security, and must be treated as a kook. Should you refuse to pledge your fealty to the proposition that life and the universe are the meaningless result of chance, you reveal yourself to be a Religious Zealot, an “American Taliban,” ineligible for public and private trust. Do you have reservations about the constitutionality or beneficence of administrative government? Then you are an Extremist, a proper target for Homeland Security, the IRS, the NSA, etc. Do you refuse to celebrate “terminating a pregnancy” as women’s fundamental right? Then you are a Warrior against Women, possibly a terrorist. Do you own guns? Ipso facto, you are a Violent Extremist. 

The pretexts differ. But the reality is the same: Bow or be persecuted.

Law no longer protects you. The ruling class does not punish through laws, and seldom by official actions, nor in any manner amenable to argument. Its bites come from officials and judges, from the connected and protected, whose rule is “Stop me if you can,” and who shove reason aside with epithets such as “offensive” and “hateful.”

 … The ruling class shouts: “The debate is over!” “Shut the bigots up!” This may cow public opinion, but it destroys the capacity to lead it. 

In fact, public opinion can be led only by persuasion regarding true and false, better and worse. This is how free human beings deal with one another. No democratic case can be made for limiting substantive challenges to premises and pretensions. Lincoln, following John Quincy Adams, pointed again and again to the slaveholders’ efforts to silence debate about slavery’s moral and political effects as evidence of the slaveholders’ threat to the freedom of whites as well as of blacks. Like Adams, Lincoln pressed slavery’s hard, ugly realities upon audiences that preferred to evade them. As Lincoln brushed away the euphemisms and legal constructs in describing the slave trade’s merchandising of human beings, so should we not mince words regarding all that the ruling class demands that we honor. 

Check out my post, Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech".

The demand that we call homosexual unions “gay marriage” forces us to honor something that is far from “gay” — i.e., lighthearted, joyful — but, in the case of male homosexuals, anal intercourse, which impairs the health of the persons involved and of society. Why honor it by calling it marriage? Perhaps because it is an instance of “love between consenting adults”? But what sort of society can be based on honoring all manner of sexual relations between any and all “consenting adults”? This logic applies with precisely the same force to polygamy, and to sexual relations between parents and adult children, or between brothers and sisters, as it does to sexual relations between two non-consanguineous homosexuals. But the assertion that mothers and fathers and children are interchangeable is a lie. The Supreme Court, in Reynolds v. U.S. (1878), judged that monogamous (they did not have to say “heterosexual”) marriage is the cornerstone of a free society. Why, precisely, should we reject that judgment as ignorant and mean-spirited? Before 1961, all 50 states criminalized anal intercourse, heterosexual as well as homosexual. Why, precisely, were they wrong in doing so? By what right does anyone place such questions “out of bounds”?

 … to reclaim the American people’s freedom from arbitrary power over minds and souls as well as bodies, to expose the false premises on which the ruling class’s pretenses rest, a candidate would have to imitate Abraham Lincoln. His debates with Stephen Douglas — no notes, much less teleprompters — dealt with complex matters before audiences few of whom had gone beyond elementary school, and enabled them seriously to discuss the choices they faced. Said Lincoln: “Let the people know the facts, and the Country will be saved.”

In our time, if a candidate were to challenge his opponents to bare-knuckle, Lincoln–Douglas sessions, his example might lead fellow citizens to reject the combination of poisonous sloganeering and of dominance, submissiveness, and corruption that now passes for politics. Retaking control of our lives requires us to reason with one another and to decide for ourselves what is good and bad, better and worse, true and false. This is how it was when we were free.

FYI: I am working on a biography of Abraham Lincoln with Dan Greenberg…

American students should not be allowed to neuter the curriculum and hijack the classroom

Following Lexington's report of Trigger-unhappy students in The Economist, Maggie McGirr writes that

The students Lexington mentioned as posing a threat to free speech on campus (June 13th) are the ones who relish their self-righteous fervour and enjoy the limelight as they call the shots in the classroom and bring professors to heel. They are the same students who decide that people like Christine Lagarde and Condoleezza Rice should have their invitations to speak at graduation ceremonies revoked because they don’t fit the PC bill. We know things have gone too far when a good-natured comedian such as Jerry Seinfeld gives up performing on college campuses because it is not worth the trouble.

These students are more than irritating, they are dangerous. They stand to devalue the university experience for many who have fought hard to get there. They should not be allowed to neuter the curriculum and hijack the classroom.

My Acting Stint and Friendship with Omar Sharif

During the summer of 2003, my acting agent asked if I would like to do a part in a new TV series. Sure, I said. And by the way, I would be sharing some scenes with the show's star, none other than Omar Sharif.

It was a night shoot, he was to play a taxi driver and I was to play his passenger. I met him in a Boulogne-Billancourt apartment set up as a temporary dressing room, where he was totally nonchalant and set people straight at ease.

There was a party afterwards, and the following day Omar Sharif took the whole cast and crew to a fancy restaurant, where he paid the entire bill.

We became quite friendly, stayed in touch, and he would invite me over to the hotel out of which he was living for a drink in the bar. At other times, he would take me and a two or three other friends to a restaurant for lunch or dinner. He was popular with the ladies, to say the least…

Once, in the car (I can now reveal), he was talking with his girlfriend at the wheel and a lawyer over the phone aboutthe trouble he was in  for head-butting a security guard at a casino. He told me: "Tu ne dis rien à personne, hein?" (keep what you hear to yourself).

When his hotel was shut down for refurbishment, I lost contact with him, and I never got to offer him a copy of my first graphic novel.

• Omar Sharif, the star of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago and one of the world's greatest bridge players, is dead at 83 (interview in French)

• Michael Ledeen reminisces about his friend, Omar Sharif

Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system

Barack Obama Jokes about using the IRS to audit those he does not like

From Tax Audits Are No Laughing Matter by Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds in the Wall Street Journal (May 2009):

"I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."

Just a joke about the power of the presidency. Made by Jay Leno it might have been funny. But as told by Mr. Obama, the actual president of the United States, it's hard to see the humor.

 … Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system.

 … Paul Caron, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who writes the TaxProf blog, noted in response to Mr. Obama's remarks that the law calls for the termination of IRS employees who make audit threats for illegitimate reasons. He suggested that Mr. Obama's "joke" might be grounds for firing if he were an IRS employee.

 … The notion that people who are audited are probably just "enemies of the regime," coupled with the idea that big shots get a pass -- that, as Leona Helmsley is reputed to have said, "taxes are for the little people" -- is a recipe for widespread tax evasion. That's how things work in Italy, and in many other countries around the world. But do we want things to work that way here?

If racism is the irrational fear of another race then rational fear cannot be racism

“I would never trade the [Confederate] flag for a single job,”

Benny Huang quotes Andrew Young as saying, as the nation’s first black ambassador to the United Nations "urged his fellow blacks to get some perspective on the symbol and to turn their attention to more pressing matters."

“The problems we face don’t have anything to do with the flag. The fact is that 93% of black people killed are killed by other black people. So black lives matter. Let us start believing that we matter.”

It’s become something of a cliché on the Right, in the wake of the many black deaths involving police, to point out that far more black people are killed each year by other black people than by cops of any color or by racist terrorists like Dylann Roof. It’s a valid point, and one that I think most blacks understand, even if they’d prefer not to hear it from conservative white people. That’s unfortunate because the arcane rules of who’s allowed to say what are truly counterproductive, not to mention racist. Truth is truth, regardless of the speaker.

The facts are shocking and undeniable. FBI crime statistics reveal that 2,491 black people were murdered in this country in 2013, the latest year for which statistics are available. A full 90% (2,245) were murdered by other black people. That statistic is not an anomaly. A study of murder statistics in the thirty years between 1976 and 2005 found that 90% of black murder victims were killed by other blacks. Furthermore, blacks are eight times more likely to be murdered than whites. Black people murdered by other black people represented about 39% of all murders in the United States in 2013, despite the fact that blacks represent only about 13% of the population.

And black people know this. Even the pompous “Reverend” Jesse Jackson has admitted his fear of blacks. Said Jackson in 1993: “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

 … But don’t make the mistake of assuming that anyone can discuss black-on-black violence just because blacks themselves do. It’ still racist when you do it. It’s important to punish any white (or non-black) person who speaks out of turn. Otherwise, people might start to get the idea that associating black people with violence is rational.

If racism is the irrational fear of another race then rational fear cannot be racism. This is important to keep in mind when discussing, for example, the “white flight” phenomenon of the 1960’s and 1970’s. According to popular mythology, white people couldn’t tolerate living in “diverse” neighborhoods because of an irrational fear of The Other so they fled to the suburbs. That’s a deliberate distortion of what really happened. Yes, middle class white families sold their homes in droves, to the detriment of the cities they left behind, but those people wanted to stay in their neighborhoods. They were driven out. Urban America’s white refugees just didn’t want to spend their lives in an endlessly looping scene from “Boyz N the Hood.” Who can blame them?

Plenty of people, actually. Some of them are even white liberals who themselves live in the poshest of suburbs, but many are black. If you don’t want to be a white minority in a violent black neighborhood, you are an insufferable bigot, or so they say.

Black-on-black violence is no secret among blacks. It’s white people who feel the most uncomfortable discussing it, always looking over their shoulders to see who’s listening. There is a stiff social penalty to pay for white people (or non-black people) who engage in candid discussions about race and violence. Afraid of being called a racist, people pretend that violence is a commodity evenly distributed among the population. It’s a coercive mass delusion that demands all non-black people join in.

Disappointing as it may be to Anglo-Saxons, the French do not sit around shooting the breeze about Derrida, Barthes, and Foucault in the Café de Flore

France is arguably the world’s most self-consciously intellectual country. Public thinkers are cherished like national treasures, given airtime on television and column inches in Le Monde. Their counsel is even heeded. Bernard-Henri Lévy, a contemporary philosopher with an outsized reputation, is credited with a role in persuading Nicolas Sarkozy, a former French president, to intervene in Libya in 2011. As a younger French generation discovered to their defiant delight at a mass march in Paris after the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo in January, French thought is not only about dry stuff to be found in philosophy textbooks; it is a central part of their national identity.

 … Mr Hazareesingh’s main purpose is to examine how, rather than what, the French think: the framework, codes and reasoning that have marked the country’s intellectual expression over the past four centuries.

The author distinguishes five elements to French thinking. The first is the way history is used to structure reasoning, through concepts such as rupture, revolution and progress. Second is the fixation with the nation and collective identity, Mr de Villepin’s rhetoric being a fine example. Third is the intensity of public debate about ideas (“We gossip, we quarrel, we expend our energy in words; we use strong language, and fly into great rages over the smallest of subjects,” wrote Jules Michelet, a French historian, in 1846). Fourth is the importance of the public intellectual as a vehicle for disseminating such ideas. Finally, there is the interplay between rational order and the creative imagination.

In response to an Economist book review about Sudhir Hazareesingh's How the French Think (An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People), Paul Tracy writes that

Your review of a book on French intellectualism asks what is it about the French that makes them speak and think like this (“They think, therefore they are”, June 13th)? The answer is that they don’t. Disappointing as it may be to Anglo-Saxons, the French do not sit around shooting the breeze about Derrida, Barthes and Foucault in the Café de Flore. Most of them have never heard of these luminaries. They do not even have any time for Thomas Piketty. Just because such names are dropped by the media-politico microcosm do not assume that anyone pays any attention. That is what is called here: prendre ses désirs pour des réalités.

It is hard to see what intellectual content there was in the Charlie Hebdo mass march in January. And if one seeks “rupture”, artistic or otherwise, what difference is there between the Nouvelle Vague and Britain’s rebellious cinema of the early 1960s or Italy’s of the 1950s? Or between François Mitterrand’s emptying of his new Socialist Party of all intellectual content in the 1980s, and Tony Blair’s similar exercise with Labour in the 1990s? I was in France in 1968: it was fun but there wasn’t much that was intellectual about it.

Anglo-Saxons might understand the French better if they accept that they get up every day to worry about jobs, money and kids, just like everyone else, not “rupture, revolution and progress”.

How the "Big Tent" Scams Work: If you open the door a crack, the RINO barges in and puts her feet up on the coffee table

Meghan McCain greeted last month’s same-sex marriage ruling with all the class we have come to expect from her

notes Benny Huang,

which is to say, none at all. “Also, Republicans. #Lovewins,” she tweeted. “This is the future and everybody better now get in line.”

Yes, “get in line.” You will recognize same-sex marriages and you will like it. This one is settled, so shut up.

Is it obvious now that “big tent” philosophy that Meghan McCain advocates for the Republican Party is a sham? What she wants is a tent that’s big enough for her but not big enough for you. She wants to talk endlessly about social issues but to shush you if you happen to disagree. “For the last four years, I’ve been calling for Republicans to stop concentrating on social issues,” she wrote after the 2012 election. And for those same four years she talked of nothing but social issues and why her party is wrong about them. She doesn’t want anyone to apply “purity tests” to candidates, while reserving the right to apply her own. The most important issue in McCain’s purity test is “marriage equality.” It’s the only thing she seems to care about. In 2012, she even threatened to leave the GOP if the party didn’t change its tune on that issue. Sounds like a purity test to me, and one based on a social issue to boot.

This is how “big tent” scams always work. First, the liberal Republican knocks at the door and asks nicely to be let in. She appeals to your better instincts—can’t you make a little room for divergent viewpoints? If you open the door a crack, she barges in and puts her feet up on the coffee table. Before you know it, you’re out in the cold begging her to let you in.

And she will deny you. Because you’re an insufferable bigot, that’s why.

In all of Meghan McCain’s years in the public spotlight, I have never once heard her say anything the least bit conservative, with the exception of a few completely disingenuous statements she regurgitated to establish her conservative credentials just before delivering a left-wing rant.

 … McCain’s going to “modernize” the rest of us, whether we like it or not, mostly by demanding that we modify our stances on social issues. It’s for our own good. 

 … Meghan McCain may be a Republican but that’s only a party affiliation and doesn’t mean much. She is not however, a conservative, and no amount of forcing a square peg into a round hole will change that. She’s a professional “seminar caller.” A seminar caller, for those not familiar with the term, is a person who calls into (usually conservative) radio talk shows claiming to share the host’s political convictions but who feels compelled to disagree on this or that point. Often, seminar callers try to appropriate their opponents’ vocabulary. A seminar caller might, for example, claim to oppose lifting a finger to enforce our immigration laws because enforcement costs too much. The seminar caller’s opposition is supposedly grounded in fiscal conservatism, which forces the host to sound like a profligate spender and a hypocrite if he objects. The key to seminar calling is always to pretend to be an ally. It helps to begin every call with “I’m a lifelong Republican but…” 

Meghan McCain makes an excellent seminar caller because she really has been a Republican her entire adult life, if only because it’s something of a job requirement. Though not really a conservative, she plays one on TV. In October of 2010, McCain appeared on Rachel Maddow’s left-wing talk show and agreed with everything the host had to say. McCain, ever the one-trick pony, launched into her well-rehearsed monologue about how the GOP needs to become the Democrats’ doppelganger. Shockingly, Maddow agreed with her. Maddow apparently shared McCain’s concern for the long-term viability of the Republican Party. She’d really miss those evil Republicans if they went the way of the dodo.

 … How big of her. Rachel Maddow wants to have dialogue. She’s willing to host conservatives as long as they aren’t really conservative just as she is willing to give a forum to an opposing voice as long as it doesn’t oppose her. It’s a win-win. Rachel Maddow gets to pretend she’s open-minded enough to have a discussion with someone who disagrees with her while Meghan McCain gets to pretend she’s a conservative. Don’t believe her? Of course she is. That’s why Rachel Maddow invited her on the show!

At some point in Meghan McCain’s life, … she … saw an opportunity to remake the Republican Party into what she wants it to be—the Democratic Party.

Lenin or Lennon? Can you name the source of the following profound thoughts?

Now I Know's Dan Lewis has a quiz entitled Can you name the source of the following quotes, either Vladimir Lenin or John Lennon?
There are 20 profound thoughts…

Teddy's Rough Riders Sing Garryowen As They Head Towards the Battlefield

There are only a handful of war movies and/or historical films that portray the men that fight battles realistically, and two of them — both "starring" Theodore Roosevelt (The Wind and the Lion and Rough Riders) — are by John Milius. "Rough Riders" is an unforgettable film on the events of the Spanish-American War and it is too bad that more movies cannot be like this or like films such as Zulu, Gettysburg, or The Longest Day.

In this brilliant outtake that shows the pathos of the departure to the front, the troops of Teddy Roosevelt's (Tom Berenger's) 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry fall in under the orders of Captain Bucky O'Neill (Sam Elliott) for the train ride east across the South to Florida (for embarkation to Cuba), discovering in the process that the wounds of the Civil War (or the War Between the States, to make everybody happy) have started to heal, all to the tune of Garryowen, stunningly sung by Elan Oberon (who happens to be Milius' wife).

If there are DVDs that all Americans (hell, that all people everywhere) should own, this is one of them — don't miss other outstanding portrayals, notably Marshall Teague as Black Jack Pershing and Gary Busey, utterly outstanding in the role of Fighting Joe Wheeler.

(Thanks to Hervé for all his work in creating this video)

(Bumped)

Happy Fourth of July: Some Thoughts on American Patriotism…

Some Independence Day links for your perusal (obrigado per Sarah Hoyt).

And Some Thoughts on American Patriotism: 

 … Following 911, I expected French friends and acquaintances of mine who came back from visits to the U.S. to return with some sense of respect or admiration. Don't kid yourselves! Many shared the same tone of exasperation and disbelief in their voices: How can one be so patriotic (that is, so superstitious)?

It was a rhetorical question, and some were surprised that I answered it. My answer was that I didn't know what they are talking about. What happens when one goes to the United States? One sees a lot of flags and… That's about it. Ain't that right? One does not see hysterical demonstrations walking down the avenues. One does not see signs reading "Down with the Taliban" or "Death to Iraq". One does not hear the "cowboys" shout "Vive la guerre!" I have not seen many Americans set fire to Iraqi or Afghan (or Vietnamese) flags. I don't remember seeing any throw tomatoes or molotov cocktails on the Soviet or Chinese embassies.

When one points out that George W Bush made a speech in an American mosque, or that he observed Ramadan, or that he spoke of a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan, the reaction is only horse laughter or scorn, because of course — of course! — it can only be a sham. (As it happens, it is not in America that mosques [or synagogues] are burnt down at alarming rates.)

In January 2002, the Council of American-Islamic Relations put the responsability of eight murders on reactions to the events of September 11. The authorities could only confirm one of those, at the most two, as motivated by anti-Arab hatred. In any case, one is far from that fear (expressed in America as well as elsewhere) that Americans, as a people, would lump Muslims in general together with the terrorists (faire l'amalgame) and unleash a wave of terror against the Muslim population of their country. (Once more, the Europeans hold that without their precious advice, unthinking Americans could only act irresponsibly — how modest of those Europeans.)

We have seen many a time on this weblog that by simply doing a little digging, it appears that so-called humanistic activists (whether in the shape of intellectuals, groups, national leaders, or countries) are not as neutral, idealistic, and lucid as they seem to believe themselves, but present many an inconsistency, often more than the Americans they criticize. Thus it is with patriotism as well. In contrast to the irony expressed when dealing with American patriotism (and that of other Western countries), they seem often to lose all their marbles when confronted with the national pride of developing countries. They can only marvel when third-world countries (or, rather, their unelected leaders) evoke "national aspirations" and the construction and the future of their nations.

In the aftermath of 911, then, Americans unfurled the Stars and Stripes, voiced their support for the acting president, and pulled up their sleeves to go to work. Insofar as this character trait is supposed to provoke ridicule, I find it rather solemn and low key. And there is nothing new about this. In fact, the journalist Arthur Higbee, a Pacific War veteran, wrote in the International Herald Tribune that after Pearl Harbour, America's attitude was even more low key.

Very few people hung out flags, and nobody wore a flag lapelpin. No flag-waving was needed. The tone of the nation was one of grim determination. Recruiting offices were overflowing.

"Grim determination": there is a better description of patriotic America, today and in the past, than Dana Burde's pacifist caricature which was praised by Le Monde ("the loud cries demanding war and vengeance, combined with media censorship, have almost drowned out the few voices of the left" [the only voices filled with reason and understanding, of course, you realize]) — a caricature which has been eagerly repeated day in and day out in the French media, in the European media, and in the Arab media for years.

But it is not only in wartime that American patriotism is low-key. While many countries favor solemn military parades on their national holidays, or at least a predominant role for the military, the Fourth of July is, above all things, a party. Oh, of course there is the flag ceremony, with a handful of military people present from each service — army, navy, air force, marines — but it's above all a party, with barbecueing (hotdogs, burgers, spare ribs, etc), games, and fireworks.

And if the military — and veterans — have a special place at the festivities, whether on July Fourth or other holidays, they are only a piece of the puzzle which also includes bands, pompon girls, floats, ethnic pride groups, cowboys, Indians, and clowns — I've seen a parade where the marching soldiers were preceded, followed, and surrounded by dozens of clowns. (Try that on the Champs-Élysées, in Red Square, on at Tien An Men!)

As I write this — 4 juillet oblige — I am listening to the Jingle Cats sing The Star-Spangled Banner and Yankee Doodle Dandy. For some reason, I have trouble imagining a lucid Frenchman, a down-to-earth Russian, or a wise Chinese person setting their national anthems to cats' meows. Non, their wailing takes other, less enjoyable, directions.

Wailing Europeans and other Uncle Sam detractors ought to make sure they keep their droning continuous and never-ending. Because, if instead of endlessly lamenting the distressing state of Americans' patriotism, they were to shut up and try and study it a little more closely and a little more rationally, they might come to believe that Yankee patriotism is not so mystical, or frightening, or perilous, as is commonly believed. Then they would have less to wail about. Can you imagine that!? Wouldn't that be awful?!

As for me, for some reason, I prefer the laughter and the joy of the American spirit.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody!

"Criminalizing millions of Americans overnight": those pushing a neo-Victorian code of sexual conduct are on the Left

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve increasingly had the experience of saying things that would have been considered pieties in the liberal catechism when I was young—and which now will get you labeled as a howling reactionary 

muses Robert Tracinski.

 … The left had the reputation of being defenders of free speech, for example, but it was always something of a case of “free speech for me but not for thee.” They were all in favor of “questioning authority”—until they became the authorities.

More important, the left has moved farther to the left, leaving moderate “liberalism” behind and embracing a more consistent, authoritarian collectivism.

Robert Tracinski goes on to list Seven Liberal Pieties That Only the Right Still Believes (thanks to Instapundit). Number 3 goes thusly:

3) Government should stay out of the bedroom.

This was one of the big selling points for the liberals. Conservatives were scary religious zealots who wanted to tell you what music you should listen to, censor your movies and television shows, and worst of all, invade your bedroom and tell you who could sleep with and what you could do with them.

It was all a bit overblown and it wasn’t as simplistic a partisan narrative as you might remember. (The campaign against rock music lyrics, for example, was spearheaded by Tipper Gore, wife of then-Senator Al Gore.) But there’s little doubt that things have changed, and now it’s the left that is pushing a neo-Victorian code of sexual conduct.

I remember during Bill Clinton’s impeachment, when Ken Starr released a report poring over the details of Clinton’s sordid encounters with Monica Lewinsky, how creepy all the liberals thought it was for a prosecutor to examine every detail of other people’s sexual encounters, like some kind of peeping Tom. Yet this is now the exact system set up on every college campus, which is prepared to produce a Starr Report for every drunken hook-up.

And the crazy ideas that start on campus have a tendency to escape from the asylum. Thus, the Washington Examiner‘s Ashe Schow reports that the campus system of “yes means yes,” in which lovers must receive express permission for every minor stage of a sexual act or risk being prosecuted by a regretful partner after the fact, is now being proposed as the legal model for criminal prosecution nationwide. As Schow puts it, this is a standard “so stringent that it would criminalize millions of Americans overnight,” and is “part of a push to bring authoritarianism into the bedroom.”

And it’s not just what goes on behind closed doors. Every statement about sex, every public depiction of anything that remotely connotes sex—from movies to music to video games—has to be loaded up with social and political significance and policed for evidence of forbidden sexual attitudes.

These days, if you want to hear someone tell everyone to lighten up when it comes to sex and to stop making everything a crime, you’re far more likely to hear that from the right. Frankly, there are a lot of us who are just wishing we could hear less about what is going on in everybody else’s bedrooms.

Indeed, take a look at Elizabeth Nolan Brown's Reason article:

The biggest threat to sex as we know it is the coming revision of U.S. sex-crime laws. For a glimpse into this frightening future, look no further than Judith Shulevitz's latest in The New York Times. Shulevitz chronicles how "affirmative consent" (the principle, often referred to as "yes means yes," that the mere absence of a "no" is not sufficient permission to proceed sexually) has been quietly spreading from California universities to colleges across the country, and could soon mutate out of academia entirely.

 … "The traditional premise in the law has been that individuals are presumed to be sexually available and willing to have intercourse—with anyone, at any time, at any place—in the absence of clear indications to the contrary," states ALI. The new model "posits, to the contrary, that in the absence of affirmative indications of a person’s willingness to engage in sexual activity, such activity presumably is not desired."

Mind you, these are not conservative prudes; these are not Americans in general; who these people are are the leftists who are allegedly open, and tolerant, and against the prudes.

The draft guidelines drew strong criticism from some members, including law professors and lecturers from the University of Pittsburgh, Duke University, Rutgers, Harvard, and Georgetown University. "If there is political consensus on anything in the United States today, it is the consensus that our government has overcriminalized and overincarcerated the American public," they write. Yet "against this political consensus and judicial backdrop, the current ALI draft is an extreme deviation, focused on expanding criminal sanctions for sexual behavior."

 … "None of this is inadvertent or the result of loose drafting," the lawyers and professors suggest.

To the contrary, the intentionality of the draft is fully disclosed in the announcement that its purpose is to create very expansive statutes and standards with a "default position" of overcriminalization

Look around the world and you’ll find that America is the most tolerant and open society on earth

  … despite what Obama says, racism is not passed along in DNA through the generations 

writes Katie Pavlich (thanks to Instapundit), echoing Dennis Prager.

 If that were the case, America wouldn’t be the tolerant, multi-racial country it is today.

Yes, America, like the vast majority of the rest of the world, at one time participated in slavery. While the sin of slavery is not justified, it is important to acknowledge that the sin of slavery isn’t a uniquely American sin, but rather one of mankind throughout the course of history. Further, owning slaves is not a sin unique to white people; in fact, black Africans sold other blacks into slavery (and still do today). Slavery is uniquely human, but societies and countries that respect human dignity, like America, have stopped the horrifying practice.

America had the dignity to end slavery through a civil war and has since moved forward to correct wrongs with the civil rights movement, affirmative action, legislation, pop culture and much more. Institutional racism is no longer prevalent in the ways the left claims. Obama, elected twice by American voters, is black, as is former Attorney General Eric Holder and current Attorney General Loretta Lynch. There are a number of blacks serving in the U.S. Congress, including Republican Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) and Congresswoman Mia Love (Utah). The likes of Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé are business and pop culture icons.

Look around the world and you’ll find that America is the most tolerant and open society on earth. The World Values Survey shows India, not the United States, is in fact the most racist country with a class system. The same survey has shown for years that Americans are among the least racist in the world and therefore are the most tolerant.

Do racists exist in this country? Of course they do. Is their racism sanctioned by the government and celebrated by fellow citizens? Absolutely not. In fact, the Charleston shooter (who I refuse to name) told friends he felt isolated and alone in his evil, racist views. That’s a silver lining. As a society we have corrected many of the wrongs of slavery and racism, the individuals who have not corrected their racist views are an innumerable minority roundly and strongly condemned by the rest of society.

The Charleston shooter’s feelings about race are the exception, not the rule, in this country. This is demonstrated by the response in Charleston of blacks and whites holding hands and coming together, not apart, to honor the memory of those who were killed.

America isn’t a racist country, not even close, and it certainly isn’t a “white supremacist” society. The left falsely saying so promotes not progress but division. American history includes slavery and racism, but its current status and future as a whole does not.

The people who lost loved ones at Emanuel AME Church have forgiven their killer. It’s time the left does the same with America for her long past sins.

"Please let it be a white guy, please let it be a white guy!" White guy terrorism is the media’s favorite story; It’s Islamic terror stories that journalists report only grudgingly

Former White House “green jobs czar” Van Jones joined a vast chorus last week when he voiced his opinion that a double standard exists in the way we discuss white guy terrorism versus other varieties 

writes B A Duffy on Accuracy in Media. (Gee, Ben, it seems like it's been such a long time since you've authored anything, can't we get posts from you to read more often?!)

Jones, who is a 9/11 truther, a self-described communist, and a supporter of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, sounded about as cogent as usual when he tweeted: “I call on the media to use the terms ‘white racist’ + ‘terrorist’ with same force & ease that we would use terms ‘Muslim’ + ‘terrorist.’”

How insightful of him. Hmmm…could the Charleston shooter be the benefactor of #whiteprivilege?

The main problem with Jones’s shallow analysis is that plenty of people are calling Dylann Roof a terrorist. Like most people on the Left, Jones is calling Roof a terrorist within the context of wondering why no one else dares to call him a terrorist. He singles out the media, as if they have been reluctant to slap Dylann Roof with the T-word. They haven’t.

 … Clearly, Gladstone, The New York Times, CNN, and pretty much everyone else believes that the Charleston shooting was terrorism. So do I, by the way, though I’m not prattling on about how no one is saying what everyone is saying.

If Van Jones wants to find a double standard in this story, I could point him in the right direction. Answer me this, Van: if “black lives matter” why do the media only care when the killer is white? Why was Kermit Gosnell’s dead baby factory a “local crime story” virtually ignored by the mainstream press? Why don’t gangland murders get the same coverage as the Charleston shooting?

Jones’s other premise—that reporters couple the words “Muslim” and “terrorist” with ease—is even less supportable. Many news outlets are scared to use those words together, nearly as scared as Jones’s former boss, Barack Obama.

When Jones says that the media are quick to label Muslim violence “terror,” I think of MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer. After a Pakistani man named Faisal Shahzad attempted to blow Times Square to smithereens in 2010, Ms. Brewer appeared on the liberal Stephanie Miller Show. “I get frustrated…” she said. “There was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country.”

Please let it be a white guy, please let it be a white guy…

Brewer continued: “…There are a lot of people who want to use terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way. I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry.” Interestingly, that’s exactly what’s happened in the wake of the Charleston shooting and her former network is leading the charge.

Don’t let Van Jones fool you—white guy terrorism is the media’s favorite story. It’s Islamic terror stories that journalists report only grudgingly, often conjuring up alternative explanations to make the jihad angle disappear. When Major Nidal Hasan shot 45 people at Fort Hood in 2009, the media went into overdrive trying to find a motive other than Islam. They were hoping for a crazed Iraq vet story, preferably one that implicated a white male. As luck would have it, the perpetrator was a soldier! Unfortunately, he was also a Palestinian-American, a Muslim, and a psychiatrist who had never deployed. The media tried their best to convince the public that Hasan had contracted “secondary PTSD” from listening to actual combat veterans tell grisly war stories. Clearly, they intended to deal with Hasan’s problematic religious affiliation by rendering it coincidental.

 … The BBC is particularly shy about calling Muslim terror by its name. Their policy is to be very, very careful with the T-word because it can be a “difficult and emotive subject with significant political overtones.” … the BBC uses the word “terrorism” sparingly…to describe right-wing bombers, or to ask why everyone isn’t using that word to describe Dylann Roof. Yes, the BBC had its own column lamenting the fact that no one is using the term “terrorist” in relation to the Charleston massacre. No one except everyone.

What a truly curious phenomenon—pundits across the media spectrum are demanding to know why no one will use the T-word to describe the Charleston shooter, when in fact nearly everyone is using that exact word.

 … As I’ve learned from watching the news, there is no Muslim terrorism, only occasional acts of terrorism committed by people who happen to be Muslim. White racist terrorism, on the other hand, is very real indeed.

For this Supreme Court, extremism in the pursuit of the Sexual Revolution’s goals is no vice; and LGBT activists and their fellow travelers will be coming after social conservatives

…I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the founding fathers.

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refuge — a businessman who had escaped from Castro — and in the midst of his story, one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are!" And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are?! I had some place to escape to…"

And in that sentence, he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth…

Almost 50 years later, Ronald Reagan's A Time for Choosing warning of 1964 seems to have came to pass, its content unheeded by hundreds of thousands of citizens "taught" by state schools, and Rod Drehere has the depressing details (thanks to Ed Driscoll):

No, the sky is not falling — not yet, anyway — but with the Supreme Court ruling constitutionalizing same-sex marriage, the ground under our feet has shifted tectonically.

It is hard to overstate the significance of the Obergefell decision — and the seriousness of the challenges it presents to orthodox Christians and other social conservatives. Voting Republican and other failed culture war strategies are not going to save us now.

Discerning the meaning of the present moment requires sobriety, precisely because its radicalism requires of conservatives a realistic sense of how weak our position is in post-Christian America.

The alarm that the four dissenting justices sounded in their minority opinions is chilling. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia were particularly scathing in pointing out the philosophical and historical groundlessness of the majority’s opinion. Justice Scalia even called the decision “a threat to democracy,” and denounced it, shockingly, in the language of revolution.

It is now clear that for this Court, extremism in the pursuit of the Sexual Revolution’s goals is no vice. True, the majority opinion nodded and smiled in the direction of the First Amendment, in an attempt to calm the fears of those worried about religious liberty. But when a Supreme Court majority is willing to invent rights out of nothing, it is impossible to have faith that the First Amendment will offer any but the barest protection to religious dissenters from gay rights orthodoxy.

Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito explicitly warned religious traditionalists that this decision leaves them vulnerable. Alito warns that Obergefell “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” and will be used to oppress the faithful “by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.”

The warning to conservatives from the four dissenters could hardly be clearer or stronger. So where does that leave us?

For one, we have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist. To be frank, the court majority may impose on the rest of the nation a view widely shared by elites, but it is also a view shared by a majority of Americans. There will be no widespread popular resistance to Obergefell. This is the new normal.

For another, LGBT activists and their fellow travelers really will be coming after social conservatives. The Supreme Court has now, in constitutional doctrine, said that homosexuality is equivalent to race. The next goal of activists will be a long-term campaign to remove tax-exempt status from dissenting religious institutions. The more immediate goal will be the shunning and persecution of dissenters within civil society. After today, all religious conservatives are Brendan Eich, the former CEO of Mozilla who was chased out of that company for supporting California’s Proposition 8.

Third, the Court majority wrote that gays and lesbians do not want to change the institution of marriage, but rather want to benefit from it. This is hard to believe, given more recent writing from gay activists like Dan Savage expressing a desire to loosen the strictures of monogamy in all marriages. Besides, if marriage can be redefined according to what we desire — that is, if there is no essential nature to marriage, or to gender — then there are no boundaries on marriage. Marriage inevitably loses its power.

In that sense, social and religious conservatives must recognize that the Obergefell decision did not come from nowhere. It is the logical result of the Sexual Revolution, which valorized erotic liberty. It has been widely and correctly observed that heterosexuals began to devalue marriage long before same-sex marriage became an issue. The individualism at the heart of contemporary American culture is at the core of Obergefell — and at the core of modern American life.

This is profoundly incompatible with orthodox Christianity. But this is the world we live in today.

One can certainly understand the joy that LGBT Americans and their supporters feel today. But orthodox Christians must understand that things are going to get much more difficult for us. We are going to have to learn how to live as exiles in our own country. We are going to have to learn how to live with at least a mild form of persecution. And we are going to have to change the way we practice our faith and teach it to our children, to build resilient communities.

It is time for what I call the Benedict Option. In his 1982 book After Virtue, the eminent philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre likened the current age to the fall of ancient Rome. He pointed to Benedict of Nursia, a pious young Christian who left the chaos of Rome to go to the woods to pray, as an example for us.

…/… Last fall, I spoke with the prior of the Benedictine monastery in Nursia, and told him about the Benedict Option. So many Christians, he told me, have no clue how far things have decayed in our aggressively secularizing world. The future for Christians will be within the Benedict Option, the monk said, or it won’t be at all.

Obergefell is a sign of the times, for those with eyes to see. This isn’t the view of wild-eyed prophets wearing animal skins and shouting in the desert. It is the view of four Supreme Court justices, in effect declaring from the bench the decline and fall of the traditional American social, political, and legal order. …/…

 

French Female Sex Therapist: "A Man Who Rapes a Woman Is Looking for Love"

In America, you would never hear the end of it, as she would be crucified on the public square.

Interviewed by Voici's Sophie Brugeille, Brigitte Lahaie is a former porn star turned sex therapist (most lately on RMC radio).

When asked why she speaks so much about feelings in her book with Bruno Martin, the author of Love and You! (Why Women Love While Men Lust) answers that

Even when a man rapes a woman, it is a search for love. Mind you, that in no way justifies the act. But we can not understand sexuality if it is separated from tenderness.

Voici:

Dans votre livre, vous parlez beau­coup de senti­ments…

Mais parce que c’est lié ! Même un homme qui viole une femme, c’est une recherche d’amour. Atten­tion, ça ne justi­fie en rien l’acte. Mais on ne peut pas comprendre la sexua­lité si on la sépare de l’af­fect. 

Being socialist at heart, France offers completely free Wi-Fi access at some of its popular tourist attractions and beauty spots

France is famous for its sense of tradition, like two-hour lunches, August holidays and resistance to any attempts to modernise its language 

muses Mark Johnson,

but its approach to the modern never fails to delight me either.

 … I was delighted to discover the other week … that France, being socialist at heart, does in fact offer completely free Wi-Fi access at some of its popular tourist attractions and beauty spots.

We were wandering around the lovely little park in the middle of the Place des Vosges, when we stumbled across this tiny little ‘Keep off the grass’ style sign, planted quietly and discreetly by a tree, which read ‘Paris Wi-fi’.

It was too good a moment to pass up, so we sat down on the grass, with all the other Parisians and spent a good hour tweeting and texting, while we soaked up the sun and admired the impressive, ancient architecture of one of the city’s oldest squares.

Paris Wi-Fi, as it is known, has more than 250 locations in the centre of the city, and is usually very reliable. Of course, best of all is the fact you don’t even have to buy a coffee to get online.

Early 20th-century life through the lens of a pioneering British press photographer

From The Daily Telegraph: London life through the lens of a pioneering press photographer (Christina Broom)
 

BREAKING: Man Decapitated by ISIS Terrorist at French Alpine Town Factory

A terrorist action in Isère has resulted in an explosion at an industrial gas factory, several wounded, and one dead, who was decapitated. Le Monde and Le Figaro report that the perpetrator, who walked inside the Saint-Quentin-Fallavier factory holding an Islamist flag, has been arrested. The dead man's head was attached to the gate along with a note in Arabic.


Fox News:

One person was decapitated and several others were injured in an apparent terror attack at a chemical factory in eastern France Friday morning, local media reported.

According to Le Dauphine newspaper, a loud explosion was reported at approximately 9:50 a.m. local time in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, northwest of the Alpine city of Grenoble.

According to the paper, a man walked into the company's offices saying he was a member of ISIS and carrying one of the terror group's flags. After beheading a man at the company's entrance, he went into the building and set off several gas canisters.