The Battle of Midway

Famous photo of the USS Yorktown ablaze during the battle

It was eighty four years ago that one of the most decisive days in military history occred.  Technically the battle lasted for several days.  But today is the day people remember.  Not that the US had no significant advantages, but the Japanese definitely had many on their side.  Not the least of which - so it appeared - being their superior grasp of the fledgling carrier combat doctrine. 

But we all know how it turned out.  My mom's older brother was on Midway island proper.  It appeared to be, as the Duke of Wellington remarked about Waterloo, the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life, until it wasn't.  

If you're interested, watch the below video.  I'm usually skeptical about Internet video versions of history, though there are some good productions out there.  I wouldn't say I'd take everything the fellow in the video says as gospel truth.  But he does an excellent - and I mean, excellent - job of unpacking the battle from the Japanese point of view.  He uses 'the fog of war' to keep the viewer from knowing any more than what the Japanese knew.  And he unpacks how America's own bumbling approach to carrier warfare ended up saving the day.  If you have time, I heartily recommend it.   

That sound you hear is our freedoms leaving the room

So I was working here on some bills and banking, with the local news on in the background.  Suddenly I heard a story - a long story - that some trustee in a local township is being called upon to be fired.  That's because he said a 'racial slur' when talking about Juneteenth.  

What caught me, other than the reporters camped out near the town hall like they were waiting for the white smoke, was an interview with a local representative of the NAACP.  She went completely terminator on the fellow, at one point saying his neighborhood should be made aware of this and should not tolerate him living anywhere near them. 

What?  Over a racial slur?  Over a word?  A single word?  And you say the communal equivalent of tar, feather and exile?  What happened to that lazy, crazy,  hazy liberalism I grew up with that said you can't ever judge? Rehabilitate and forgive, that's the ticket.  When exactly did that liberalism die?  But of course, it's more serious than a woman donning her Salem apparel when it comes to the wrong people saying the wrong things.  That is, he wasn't a black trustee nor was he Quentin Tarantino.  In those cases it would be fine.  

A friend of mine who is a Presbyterian minster, and no slouch as a historian, once told me that when you live in a free country like ours, tyranny is like a vampire.  You have to invite it in.  Which is what we're seeing with our catastrophic levels of divisions and group identity.  Hence the NAACP woman who apparently feels a single misstep is enough to be forever exiled into the outer darkness and loathed by entire communities.  

I wonder if she would like that standard applied to her. If she gets her wish with this fellow, I have no doubt she'll have her chance down the road.  Our Founding Fathers were smart enough to grasp that little fact of history that so many today are strangely forgetting. 

Another win for equality

Fast on the heels of this small victory for freedom comes another victory for equality and universal humanity.  A California law that would have made corporations hire based on various group identity labels over and against personal qualifications has been struck down as unconstitutional.

I'm sure there are more laws like this out there.  Likewise, aside from laws, there is pressure for everyone to see humanity through group identity glasses. God may have loved the world, but we must love the demographic group. 

Running along with this, we also have rejected equality and replaced it with equity.  What does that mean?  It means that, per the diversity training (labeled Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, or "DIE") we've seen in our own family's college education and work place training instruction, equality is bad, and must be replaced with equity.

But Dave, what does that mean?  It means depending on your group identity, we can assume you either have had privilege, or have been unfairly blocked from opportunities and chances to succeed.  Therefore, we must treat different people differently based upon what type of group they're in.  We can give to some, or take away from others.  Last year, when NYC said it would move minorities to the front of the line in the fight against Covid - therefore moving non-minorities to the back of the bus line - was an example of this thinking in progress.

And this isn't, by the way, some inferred belief about equality being bad.  It is stated explicitly in the training courses that equality was at best a pipe dream that was tried and found to be seriously wanting. It had, sadly, became a tool of oppression and discrimination and unfairness, and that's why we need to stop thinking in terms of equality.  At worst, some suggest equality  was always a sleight of hand to be used to keep the minority down.  Just as concepts like forgiveness, reconciliation, liberty and even democracy. 

Because this is happening outside the hallowed halls of law and legislature, my guess is we'll see more of these laws in the future.  As goes the culture, eventually so go the laws.  But a victory, no matter how slight and temporary, is at least a victory

An educational image I've seen on not a few Catholic sites.  Equity is good. Equality bad.
And anything Western has to go (that would be the fence)

Why this does not work

My general dislike of Internet memes is well documented.  Yes, sometimes they hit home and make more sense than what is taught in our universities or reported in our news media nowadays.  On the whole, however, at best they're a poor man's editorial cartoon, but without the wit. At worst they're used to attack, lie or otherwise misrepresent issues and people.  

So I saw this pass by at Facebook:

Yeah, I get it.  But here's the point.  First, I know it's a joke.  I get jokes. I have a sense of humor.  But that's falling into the pit of sin that somehow we'll fight the Left by adopting its elevation of pride as virtue and biblical ethics as dependent upon one's group identity.  That's one problem.

The other problem?  Pride in being straight?  That's like saying pride in gravity.  To imagine there is some alternative to being straight that being straight has to vie with is already conceding the position to the opposition.  It's playing their game, as if Straight is the option I'm proud of, as opposed to that other legitimate option they're proud of.

I know.  I'm being a poo-poo.  But you get my point.  I've said one way in which Christians, as well as the broader world of conservatism in general, have lost has been repeatedly conceding the high ground with a host of issues by accepting the rules, the premises, even the broader narratives of the Left.  

That would be like playing a game of Monopoly with someone who insists on writing their own rules.   So they demand the game begins with them having all the money, all the properties, railroads and unities, and hotels on every monopoly - and you say, OK, that's fair, let's play.  I'll bet you lose. And so those who would resist the Left by conceding the Left so much ground have lost, and lost, and lost again. 

That's why I'd wager LGTBQ activists are more than happy with something like this.  Not only can they shoot it down, as many FB commenters did, insisting with science and laboratories we have all we need to get gay people pregnant today. But in their guts, they know somehow we're handing them a tremendous amount of high ground in the process by accepting their basic premises. 

Hyatt shows some guts

While so much of Corporate America buckles and paves the way toward the end of freedom, every now and then one of the board rooms decides to show a couple.  In this case, the left's digital lynch mob tried to come for Hyatt for daring to host divergent points of view in the form of the conservative CPAC.  Hyatt said no way, we won't bow before the leftist Nazis of America.  They will allow people who aren't leftists to have a place in modern discourse.  When Hyatt says inclusive, it means inclusive, not what leftists mean when they say inclusive (which means grovel and obey the Leftist State or else).  For that, I salute them. 

Senator Tom Cotton is correct

Under no circumstances should the "1619 Project" be distributed to public schools.  It is so filled with errors and lies it isn't funny.  Just from it's headline punch that in 1619 slavery came to America.  Hello.  Slavery was universal and was in the Americas long before the first Europeans showed up.  Such an anti-American propaganda piece should never be in our media, much less our schools.  If, in fact, truth and facts matter for anything.

Anyone who values truth and opposes lies would have to agree.  This is a Marxist hit piece, designed to increase the calls to burn America - and its corresponding values and freedoms - to the ground.  It's driven by the Presentism that now saturates our approach to history.  A person who opposes Senator Cotton's sane and obvious desire to avoid teaching our students erroneous narratives is a living example as to why we bend over backwards to keep our son in homeschool. 

Governor Mike DeWine wins one for Religious Liberty

A hateful thought to many 21st Century Americans

By signing a law that will allow religious students in public schools to express their religious beliefs freely.  Naturally that great opponent of non-secular progressive values, the ironically titled ACLU, has fought this like a mad dog.  As have most open minded and tolerant liberal activists.

Their fear is that this will allow students to dismiss science and state their fanatical belief in the world as the great Earth egg goddess.  Which, of course, is ridiculous .  That's simply the same hysterics, stereotyping and fear mongering that progressives always engage in when someone wants to think freely.  Fact is, the law does not allow students to answer the wrong answer in a classroom. If the class taught evolution and evolution is tested, the student must answer what was taught.

No, this will allow students to wear religious symbols, refer to their faith where appropriate in school, stand up for religious perspectives where secular perspectives have alone been given, and generally be free of being barred and banned due to their religious faith.  You know, a freedom of religion thing. 

Which, of course, is anathema to the secular left.  To the left, there is only the freedom to tear down the Christian West and America in deference of a strong Marxist inspired totalitarian state that will shower me with endless free things, including the right to define my gender and abort six million prenatal babies while pursing endless narcissism and decadence. 

That is what the left wants taught in school.  What Mike DeWine did was take an important step in allowing those who don't see such things as the highest values for which to strive a chance to speak out and express themselves accordingly.

As if on cue

Mark Shea provides an example for 'who in the name of sanity would want our government to label an entire swath of our fellow citizens as domestic terrorists just because they oppose those politicians' policies?':

Yep.  That's right. Of course this is nothing new.  When Facebook (or was it YouTube?) announced it would proudly ban white supremacists, Nazis, white nationalists and other far right extremists, Mark was among the first to cheer.

I remember seeing a screenshot of a conversation with one of his readers who advised caution.  After all, see here. It could set a bad precedent.  No problem, retorted Mark.  They'll only go for those evil types over there!

You can't make this up. I've said for some time that you have to accept a large amount of BS, lies and idiocy to follow the modern Left.  And you must do so mindlessly, and blindly. Sadly, it's not just Mark.  From movements calling to abolish democracy as a tool of white nationalist imperialism, to college students convinced free speech and religious liberties were just sleight of hand instruments for white racism, to the popular push against due process, presumption of innocence and burden of proof in the name of condemning based on socially assigned group labels, there is much to be concerned about.

People, it seems, are just what Tommy said they are.  They've been that way for eons.  After billions spent on education and expanding access to information, they still are.   Somewhere Mark stopped being person, and became people.  It can happen to the best of us.  It has already happened to so many.

One victory for the Constitution

Against the forces of the Left. 

One of the most laughable outrages aimed at Trump is that he's a threat to the Constitution.  This outrage is from the same Left peddling the NYT's The 1619 Project, meant to portray the entire American experiment as a giant, racist, genocidal slave holding corporation.   That approach has yielded the growing number of young'uns who think it's time to ditch the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and all that pesky freedom, liberty, due process and presumption of innocence rubbish.  That they somehow are outraged that Trump is a threat to the very thing they're encouraging people to dismantle is one of the most hilariously twisted and moronic developments in the modern era.  And that's saying something.

But this is at least a momentary victory against crybaby Democrats and progressives who will insist the rules need changed or thrown out the window when they don't get their way. What do you expect from a movement that watched the following clip and must have concluded that the little boy with the bicycle was the hero:

Go Miss Michigan

So young Kathy Zhu, Miss Michigan, has been booted from the Miss World pageant, and now has had her title of Miss Michigan stripped for breaking with Leftist newspeak.  She dared to question the consistency in Muslim dress as it is sometimes presented and sometimes not presented. She also bothered to mention that the press's false narrative of millions of Blacks dying at the hands of racist white people is counter to the real problem the Black community faces. 

One, of course, is a valid question, but not necessarily a fact.  But the tweet about Blacks being the biggest killer of Blacks, well out of proportion to Whites killing Whites, is a fact.  In fact, the biggest threat Blacks face today is from other Blacks.  

But again, we are already 1/3 Soviet, and with the Press and a growing number of Corporations jumping on board to eradicate freedom, life and God, it might be too late.  When the best chance we have is the reelection of a president like Donald Trump, you have to admit things are bleak.  And that's not a reflection on Trump as much as the utter impotence and cowardliness of so many who see the problem, but simply won't band together to do anything about it.  Unlike Miss Zhu. 

A post on Memorial Day movies and memories

Here is an old post I did on movies we watch around Memorial Day.  We don't do it as much together anymore as the boys are moving on with their myriad obligations in life.  They'll still try to make some time this weekend to be together.  But the full weekend off is pretty much a thing of the past.  So how many we will see?  Hard to tell.  But we'll at least get to the cemetery (weather permitting) and do some remembrance of what the holiday is all about. 

I realize for having put aside blogging, I've done a lot of it.  I said I would put it aside unless something crazy or important comes up.  Given the growing chorus of those on the Left openly declaring their desire to make war on the Christian Faith, Christians, white people, men, heterosexuals, Americans, the Christian West, and the United States, our liberties and our freedoms, it's almost impossible to go a day without seeing something that rises to the occasion of crazy or important.

Nonetheless, not this weekend.  With what time we have, we'll be busy.  When the boys are all together, we'll definitely try to cram in what we can.  It will be next week before we are back.  Here are a few post of Memorial Days gone by, just for the memories.

In the meantime, consider the blind foolishness of the modern Left, and why it is emerging as the preeminent threat to mankind and liberty in our time, as you gaze on this image:

Where, or where, is Michael Flynn of TOF when we need him?  See you next week.

Pennsylvania lawmaker Brian Sims demonstrates how to berate an elderly woman

While also condemning her for her white skin and failure to conform to liberal absolutes.  It's hard to watch.  You feel sorry for her.  You also see the horrible lows to which some are willing to sink in the name of the new Democrats (whose party always seems to have an obsession with skin color, black or white).

Bonus if you note the classic Leftist hypocrisy of condemning people for telling other people they are wrong.  You also get a bonus if you notice his condemnation of her for exercising her constitutional right to protest.

Again, it's difficult to watch.  You can't help but get angry at a large, strong adult male berating and browbeating an old lone woman like that, insulting her, condemning her, threatening her.  This is the face of too many representing the modern Left, with little to no push back from our press, pop culture or even political leaders.  God help the world if the likes of Mr. Sims ever gets within a thousand miles of real power.

Oh, and if you could explain how being against abortion is racist, other than the fact that she dared be born with white skin, I'd appreciate the help.  He kept accusing her of racism, and I heard her say nothing of the sort.  In fact, I heard her say almost nothing at all. 

UPDATE: Apparently Matt Walsh - who I know little about - has organized a large protest at the abortion clinic in question.  It's on Friday at 11:00 AM (I'll assume this Friday).  Again, don't know much about Mr. Walsh, but in this case I'll stand with him.  If I was within a hundred miles I'd try to be there.  As it is, he might also be raising money.  It's time for the forces of decency and devotion to God and Man to rise up and fight this dark cloud of evil setting itself upon our land.  If we don't, then our posterity will pay the horrible price.

UPDATE II: Here is a gofundme page dedicated to raising money for life.  It's a direct result of Mr. Sims' browbeating of that elderly lady.  It seems a worthy cause and the right way to go.  This is what I'm talking about.  It's time to stop laying down.

What conservatives just won't admit

Rod Dreher, like most sane Americans, has been covering the Kavanaugh hearings with a growing sense of urgent disgust.  Here he posts a reader whose family was from the Soviet Union.

Yep.  I had friends from the former USSR back in seminary in the mid-90s.  I know a few from Eastern Europe at our Church.  They told stories about growing up in the Soviet Union that all sound alike.  The same things said.   The fact is, Orwell knew what he was talking about when he laid out the characteristic of the 20th century's totalitarian states.

And conservatives can't figure out why the Left is doing these things. All of this assumes that those on the Left can't see what is happening.  It might be time for conservatives to admit the unpleasant and ugly fact that those on the Left may actually want what is happening to happen.

An' the Democrats'll gits you ef you don't watch out

With all due respect to James Whitcomb Riley.  The Democrats are going after adolescents now, reminding even teenagers (boys at least) that someday the slightest deviation from perfection, the slightest joke, the slightest indiscretion, or even a pure life of morality and goodness, may still wind you up in the Left's Soviet gulag dreamscape.  If it takes decades to point the finger of accusation, so be it.

Unlike most totalitarian regimes that feel the need for kangaroo courts and trumped up evidence, the Left is proudly boasting that no evidence is needed.  No courts, kangaroo or otherwise, need be bothered with.  They point a finger, they destroy a life.  They don't even have to be sure of the accused's identity!

From the latest accusation meant to destroy a life that has hindered the political Left.

John Oliver, one of several slavish thralls of the political Left with his lips pressed firmly against the Left's collective buttocks, demonstrates that willingness to hate and destroy all who fail to worship the progressive idol.  This is showing the KGB how it really works.  No need for fake trials or bogus evidence.  The modern Left just destroys with nothing but its pointed finger. 

Strike one for liberty

And the all important principle of keeping government out of the doctor/patient relationship.  A bill that would make it illegal for adults to sex therapy to overcome homosexual desires has, thankfully, been shelved.  Another attempt by the Left to end the right to not be liberal bites the dust.  A great Labor Day present.

When the free press becomes the greatest threat to freedom

Rod Dreher shudders, as do I.  Was a time when freedom meant the freedom to be, well, a nasty, rotten, lousy, no-good wretch of a person. As long as you didn't actually do, or provoke, violence against someone, you were free to be obnoxious and wrong.  You were certainly free to have opinions, though a sense of common decency, long since dismantled by American liberalism, kept public debate on a mature, respectful plane.

Nonetheless, the emergent Left wants none of it.  It wants freedom and liberty dismantled.  The Constitution?  Bah.  The Leftist meme is that the whole thing was just a big pitch for slavery and racism (racism officially being the unforgivable sin, though I'm sure the list of unforgivable sins that preclude mercy will grow).

The funny thing?  When I was in the College of Education, c. late 1980s, the big movement was 'Schools should have nothing to do with our private lives!'  Of course by that they meant teachers or students who indulged in gay sex, group sex, living together, smoking pot, enjoying porn and all the yummy carrots that the Left dangles before the population.   In fairness, they never said this included punishing wrong-think, private or otherwise.

But that's the miracle of the emergent Left.  Principles? Standards?  Morality? Ethics?  Truth?  Even facts?  Why, here today, gone later today.  The emergent Left is almost rushing toward a 20th century unfree society of thought control and oppression, and doing so proudly. It is almost a carbon copy of everything liberalism condemned in the later half of the 20th century.

Mr. Dreher notices the obvious warning flags, bells, whistles, and anything else that sane and mature and decent and common sense people who want a free society based on equality, liberty and the common good notices.  He also sees the glaring problem in our nation today, and that's the sad fact that the institutions that should be protecting us and our freedoms are, in many ways, the ones that are threatening them the most.

Conservatives can be wrong

As can capitalists, socialists, atheists, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, druids, pagans, witches, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, doctors, lawyers, chefs, police officers, priests, ministers, doctors, lawyers, evangelists, architects, railroad engineers, journalists, politicians and delivery truck divers.

So why do I spend most of my time harping on the modern Left?  Easy.  Because I consider it the most direct and visible threat to our nation, our well being, our freedoms and the world in which my sons will raise their children.

This is not because the Left itself is filled with people any worse at their worst than the worst in any other group.  Nor is it because the Left alone is wrong, and everyone else is spot on correct about everything.  It is because the Left has the full support of the agencies, industries and institutions that should, and typically do, protect us from the excesses and wickedness of various groups.  The press, the world of arts and culture, the academy and educational institutions, and those professions that they fill, such as courts and judge's benches, are increasingly backing and promoting even the worst the modern Left has to offer.

These bulwarks of freedom have embraced new forms of racism, bigotry, discrimination and pining for segregation based on ethnicity, nationality, religion and gender.  They have stood by as the worst of the Left has called for censorship, oppression, intimidation and outright violence.  They have pardoned and made excuses or downplayed or ignored as the radicals of the Left have declared themselves grand inquisitors, judge and jury with the right to accuse and then destroy all based on a mere insistence of guilt, even including destruction of property and physical violence.  These institutions have even turned blind eyes to antisemitism, racism, sexism and even sexual assault when those might tarnish the designs and narratives of the Left.

Instead of protecting us and our democracy, the press, schools, entertainment industry and even some courts look away, or even cheer along.  When Muslim groups said they want Christians with traditional beliefs barred from government positions, we heard nothing.  When radical leftists attacked, shot at, tortured and assaulted conservatives and  Trump supporters, it barely made more than a polite discussion on most media outlets before being swept under the rug.  When people were fined, fired and punished for their non-liberal views about gay marriage or gender, the press and most of our popular culture venues rejoiced with great rejoicing, or joined in the fray.  Oh, and it's worth noting that a growing number of liberals, religious or otherwise, are joining in, as are some conservatives who are clearly growing tired of the fight.

That's why I'm so hard on the emergent, insurrectionist Left.  If conservative radical racists came out and said Blacks deserve what they get when it comes to violence, and the press said nothing or, worse, entertained debate about it, I'd pounce all over it.  If someone on the right said that violence against non-conformers could be justified, and you had scholars and movies and television shows and news broadcasts giving it some form of legitimacy, I'd be on it like white on rice.

As it is, it's the Left saying the same damn thing about whites committing suicide and falling through America's cracks who receive the same exact responses I just laid out as extreme examples, and that's why I focus on the Left.  Because it's not focused on by the press, universities, or halls of Hollywood - unless it's to excuse and support the evil.  The same goes for the left's calls for censorship, oppression, violence, government retribution against non-conformity, and the manifold sins with which the Left has long flirted.

When you see even Christians justifying the grave evils of our age in fealty to a force of evil, and those agencies that should protect us joining in, it's time to admit what the greatest threat to our well-being and the future of our posterity actually is.  We'll have time for other, less direct threats down the road.  And some day other forces of evil may tickle the ears of our establishment, and then we will focus accordingly.  But today's evil is enough, and today's evil threat wears the label 'Leftist' for easy identification, fully supported by our protectors, and advocated by a growing number of leaders who appear to have given up the fight.

Free Speech and Abortion head to court

The Supreme Court will hear a case pondering the age old question: does free speech include the right to remain silent - even for medical providers?  The details, the facts, the topics are well beyond my pay grade.  I'm neither lawyer nor medical provider.

It seems to me that since the person is not compelled to go to that particular provider, especially if the provider is up front about his or her beliefs, then they can't demand that provider to act like any other provider in terms of what it does and doesn't offer.

But then I'd have bet you dollars to buttons that people free to pick any bakery to bake a wedding cake couldn't go in and demand a particular baker violate his or her conscience.  So there you go.

Here are two opposing views, one representing the more conservative opinion at National Review.  The other the decidedly liberal view at the always progressive Center for American Progress.  Read it and decide.

A thousand times yes

You'd think this was some faux speech from an Orwellian novel.  But it isn't.  It's someone speaking to the very real designs of the emergent Left in our country today. 

The Left has let its disguises fall.  It is Marxist inspired, Communist yearning, pining for a totalitarian state that dangles sex and drugs in front of the population while eroding every other liberty or freedom while at the same time eradicating the last vestiges of Christianity from society. Get them obsessed with sex and drugs, and freedom is an easy thing to steal.

That the Left, with Hollywood and the media, joined by academia, has been able to convince an entire generation of youngsters that freedom must go - as long as they get what they want - shows the power of propaganda.   Obviously part of the power rests in the fact that those same institutions - media, art, education - once standing against such tyranny and threats to liberty are now happily on the side of oppression.

There is still plenty of time to stop the regress.  But as many, including Christians, feel that joining with the Left is the more prudent course of action, it makes me wonder how much longer we have until we pass that point of no return.

A small step for religious freedom

A very small step.  But given the tidal wave of support that ending religious rights and freedom of speech is achieving, even a small step is something.  If nothing else, a small spark that could ignite a flame?  Or maybe a small enough step that will drive those who should be alarmed back to apathy.  In any event, it's nice to see that banishing religious thought and other forms of non-progressive wrong think from the public forum is not a forgone conclusion. Well done 5 of 9 Supreme Court Justices.