Liberals and conservatives and the infamous Fact Checkers

THIS IS AN OLDER POST, BUT I BELIEVE IT IS VERY PERTINENT TODAY

Especially since I notice a staggering dearth of Catholics who once screamed against the terrors of lying for Jesus to save innocent babies calling out the coordinated deception and dishonesty of the White House and Press over former President Biden's clear and obvious cognitive decline. That wasn't lying to save babies.  If nothing else, it was lying no matter how many babies and others might be suffering so that the sitting president they supported could dodge any trouble.  Yet go ahead and bring it up and see how far you get.  It shows how far the Christian Left is in their comfortable position of knowing the ones holding the orb, scepter and crown are on their side and will do anything by hook or by crook for their side to win. 

***********************************************************************************

When I consider the reaction conservatives have to what is humorously known as modern fact checkers, and compare it to the reactions of liberals, I think of this scene from the movie Amadeus:

Ah, a classic.  I wonder why that movie has fallen off the radar in recent decades.  In the 80s it was one of the most celebrated and influential movies of its time - bringing back both period costume pieces and kicking off a post-disco classical music renaissance.  Eh. 

Anyway, my point is that Mozart is appalled at such a nakedly stupid and false statement as 'there are only so many notes that an ear can hear in an evening.'  The emperor, looking for validation, turns to Mozart's rival (in the movie) Salieri.  A trained composer and musical genius in his own right, he knows darn well that the idea of too many notes per evening is garbage.  But in an effort to both suck up and stick it to Mozart, he goes along with the stupid.  Much to Mozart's outrage.  Note Salieri's smug smile as Mozart rants.  Salieri knows it's bunk, but he won, and the power of the emperor is on his side in this.

That's conservatives versus liberals when we see the joke-a-minute farce fest that is modern fact checkers.  Unless it really happens to be that liberals and Democrats are almost always right and honest, versus conservatives and Republicans who are almost always wrong and liars, I feel there is more to the fact checkers than bare naked facts. 

I get the gut feeling that, like Salieri, liberals know it too.  Including liberal Christians.  But the nice thing about aligning with a movement that almost flaunts amoral duplicity as a core value?  You get to indulge as well. Even if you aren't actually lying or spreading the lies you can look on smugly as conservatives rant and rave and know there is nothing they can do.  

After all, like Salieri in the film, liberals know they have the power of vast global corporate interests, billion dollar entertainment outlets, pols and judges, world leaders, the military and even a growing number of religious institutions and leaders at their back.  And when that's the case, you can be smug all day - until the final reckoning that is. 

Christopher Lamb and Salieri both know when to sneer

Food for thought

 Because this generation:

Indulged and even encouraged this generation:

We're now stuck facing the rise of this generation:

Yep.  It's not enough to be brave on the battlefield if you buckle and fold in the face of adversity on the home front when the shooting has stopped.  Exactly what went wrong is more than a blog post can handle.  And I'd never suggest that things were a step off the New Jerusalem until the war ended and then everything went to pot. But the speed with which it has unraveled since the closer of the war, and the growing movement all about destroying everything to do with the Christian world view, the democratic West and the American experiment, is nothing less than breathtaking in its scope and reach. Therefore whatever praise and honor that generation deserves for so bravely winning the battle for our civilization, it deserves as much criticism for losing so badly the overall war for which they fought that great battle in the first place.

A fitting image

 For Memorial Day:

That's the USS Arizona Memorial, the camera near the surface of the water during a rain shower.  I don't know why, but that evoked.  Who knows?  Maybe it's just AI.  In any event, it seems fitting for such days' usual memories.  

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat

The soldier's last tattoo;

No more on life's parade shall meet

That brave and fallen few.

On Fame's eternal camping-ground

Their silent tents are spread,

And Glory guards, with solemn round,

The bivouac of the dead.

    No rumor of the foe's advance

Now swells upon the wind;

Nor troubled thought at midnight haunts

Of loved ones left behind;

No vision of the morrow's strife

The warrior's dream alarms;

No braying horn nor screaming fife

At dawn shall call to arms.

    Their shriveled swords are red with rust,

Their plumed heads are bowed,

Their haughty banner, trailed in dust,

Is now their martial shroud.

And plenteous funeral tears have washed

The red stains from each brow,

And the proud forms, by battle gashed

Are free from anguish now.

    The neighing troop, the flashing blade,

The bugle's stirring blast,

The charge, the dreadful cannonade,

The din and shout, are past;

Nor war's wild note nor glory's peal

Shall thrill with fierce delight

Those breasts that nevermore may feel

The rapture of the fight.

    Like the fierce northern hurricane

That sweeps the great plateau,

Flushed with the triumph yet to gain,

Came down the serried foe,

Who heard the thunder of the fray

Break o'er the field beneath,

Knew well the watchword of that day

Was "Victory or death!"

    Long had the doubtful conflict raged

O'er all that stricken plain,

For never fiercer fight had waged

The vengeful blood of Spain;

And still the storm of battle blew,

Still swelled the gory tide;

Not long, our stout old chieftain knew,

Such odds his strength could bide.

    Twas in that hour his stern command

Called to a martyr's grave

The flower of his beloved land,

The nation's flag to save.

By rivers of their father's gore

His first-born laurels grew,

And well he deemed the sons would pour

Their lives for glory too.

    For many a mother's breath has swept

O'er Angostura's plain --

And long the pitying sky has wept

Above its moldered slain.

The raven's scream, or eagle's flight,

Or shepherd's pensive lay,

Alone awakes each sullen height

That frowned o'er that dread fray.

    Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground

Ye must not slumber there,

Where stranger steps and tongues resound

Along the heedless air.

Your own proud land's heroic soil

Shall be your fitter grave;

She claims from war his richest spoil --

The ashes of her brave.

    Thus 'neath their parent turf they rest,

Far from the gory field,

Borne to a Spartan mother's breast

On many a bloody shield;

The sunshine of their native sky

Smiles sadly on them here,

And kindred eyes and hearts watch by

The heroes sepulcher.

    Rest on embalmed and sainted dead!

Dear as the blood ye gave;

No impious footstep shall here tread

The herbage of your grave;

Nor shall your glory be forgot

While fame her records keeps,

Or Honor points the hallowed spot

Where Valor proudly sleeps.

    Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone

In deathless song shall tell,

When many a vanquished ago has flown,

The story how ye fell;

Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight,

Nor Time's remorseless doom,

Shall dim one ray of glory's light

That gilds your deathless tomb.

"Bivouac of the Dead" by Theodore O'Hara

A sign of the times

2025 University of Maryland commencement speaker

Now, I'm fine with Kermit.  Grew up with him.  Before the dark days, The Muppet Show was a cultural watering hole in which everyone at school talked about last night's guests and mimicked the old geezers in the balcony box.  But Kermit?  And I know, that's Henson's alma mater.  Nonetheless, Kermit? 

Remember when this is what was considered a newsworthy commencement speech back in the day:

Solzhenitsyn's legendary 1978 Harvard commencement speech

Even high schools tried.  I recall one of our graduations (not mine, but a grade or two ahead) featured a young, starting out state politician named John Kasich.  Even in a small, rural high school, that's what we shot for.  But Kermit?  Oh, and flash - it's not Kermit.  It's a puppeteer and performer who delivered, and possibly wrote, the message.  Just saying since the news coverage this morning failed to point out that most obvious fact. 

Lowering standards, lowering expectations, discarding historically grounded values and common sense has been a goal of our ruling institutions for generations.  The result?  I think it speaks for itself. 

BTW, to show I'm not anti-Muppet, a little song from my kiddo days.  I've liked it since I first heard it on an old Sesame Street record I was given to cheer me up when we moved to a new home.  It wasn't Kermit, but it's a reminder that pop culture has it's place, as long as it stays in its place: 

I would like to think so

RIP George Wendt: 1948-2025

Happy birthday to the cute one

 

Hard to believe it was a year ago that we were in the NICU with her, seeing her hooked up to the tubes and wires that were keeping her alive.  She is certainly a fighter.  And about as happy a baby as I’ve known.  

I'm especially glad with the top corner pic of my mom and her playing together.  Right now Mom is in a skilled rehab facility, trying to help her get over her injury from turning too fast over the arm of a chair.  At her age, anything deviating from the norm is a problem.  But prayers are she'll be back with us soonest.  In the meantime, she still enjoys seeing pictures of the little'un when I visit her. 

I'll admit that being a grandparent is everything it’s cracked up to be.  For all the happiness she brings all of us, a blessed and happy year for her and her parents.

Heh

 

By the way, that's Oh - HI - oh! There's a joke that Michigan fans like to tell that suggests only in Ohio do we consider it an accomplishment to spell out our own state.  We like to say we do it for the sake of Michigan fans who might struggle with big words like Ohio. 

What I've been saying for years

John C. Wright, who sometimes can be a bit gruff for my tastes, nonetheless hits the nail on the head:  

The Left will support whatever causes the most harm to Christian civilization and likewise will oppose whatever most is needed to help it: whatever most degrades the social fabric, whatever spreads vulgarity and ugliness, whatever promotes vice and crime

Because: 

They hate the West and seek to dismantle it, because and solely because the West is Christendom.

Not that he's alone, or that I'm the first to say such a thing.  It's just something I've been saying for years now, especially in the last few years where it takes more blind ignorance to deny the fact than admit it.  

The Left is about the utter destruction of the Christian, Western democratic tradition.  The values, heritage, heroes, principles, manners, attitudes, beliefs, virtues, decency, common sense and base morals of anything vaguely connected to the Western Tradition are at best suspect, at worst in dire need of eradication.  And that includes apparently timeworn assumptions such as liberty, equality, the value of life and the abhorrence of violence.  All thrown upside down, changed or tossed in the trash.  Anything, anywhere or anyone that aids in that mission will be tolerated at worst, lionized at best.  

Whether it can be stopped or we're merely witnessing that next stage in history that moves into a dark age after a period of development and striving for the better remains to be seen.  After all, a growing number of Christian leaders today seem to begin every statement with an explanation that Christianity is best seen through a post-Western set of glasses.  

Nonetheless, know thine enemy, as the old saying goes.  And it's almost impossible to think of the manifold blessings and benefits that the Christian West brought to the world and not see the ones trying to undo it all as the enemy. 

"We are told to love our enemies, but Jesus never once said that in doing so they would cease to be our enemies."  A quote from an old Presbyterian colleague and friend from my ministry days. 

Some great news and then there is the news

 So why is she smiling?

Because she's going to be an older sister, that's why!  Yes, it's confirmed that the kiddos are going to be parents times two.  Due date sometime in November.  The first ultrasound confirms the happy news.  So blessings all around this Easter season!

Then we have a pope named Bob who is - I can hardly bring myself to say it - a White Sox fan.   I hear he also plays a mean tennis.  That he took the name of Leo, any Leo, to me is a bonus point.  I know, everyone is scared or thrilled or, in some cases, happy they have a new pope shaped cudgel with which to beat those reprehensible reprobates who pollute the beautiful Church because they didn't realize how close to God Pope Francis walked.  For now, I'm putting my thoughts together.  Since at least one reader seemed only concerned with me trashing Pope Francis, and wasn't interested in anything else I had to say, I might hold off with any 'Pope Francis: The Rebuttal' posts.  Instead, I might reflect on things over the last decade or two and where I think we might go from here.

But then the other news, which is why it might be a bit.  My mom, God bless her, is in the hospital owing to an injury from turning wrong in her chair, and a potentially tough diagnosis they're working through (she is in her 90s after all).  I was all night at two different ERs, and will likely be back and forth with long commutes for a few while they help her through things. Because if it is anything major, typically patients are sent to one of the big hospitals in Columbus proper. 

Prayers in both of these developments would be appreciated.

Until then, I appreciate those following things here, and will be back when I can.  Until then, a photo that is near and dear to my heart right now:

Our oldest and youngest.

Habemas Papam

By now the news is spreading.  My oldest said there was the white smoke.  He was right.  We'll have to see what happens next.  Prayers all around.  

If you get your news from the news media

You probably missed that this is the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. That's because I haven't seen a single news outlet mention it yet.  That's a far cry from when I was in second grade, and can remember hearing about the upcoming Bicentennial of 1976.  Even before the year 1976 began, we were getting ready in school and hearing about our nation's plans for the upcoming celebrations on both local and national outlets.  But then those who sought to destroy our nation and heritage, though coming into their own in various institutions of influence, were still a minority.  

Fast forward to today.  Since I haven't seen any television news outlet mention this yet, I Googled the actual 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution and this is what I got in the top results:

Thank goodness for the Cape Cod Times!  PBS is there, reminding us of our divisions and not too subtly giving a microphone to those who see the true revolution being against Trump.  But I failed to locate a story in any major, national newspaper or outlet. 

I think it's tough for us old timers to comprehend just how deliberate the war to destroy the Christian, Western Democratic tradition is.  And how much it has achieved.  Those cases of journalists and academics and others preaching the doctrine of racial discrimination, curtailing free speech, mitigating religious liberty, supporting government censorship, justifying proper uses of violence, and putting an end to the West and its bastard child America, have been doing yeoman's work to be sure.  I doubt for them that this notable anniversary will be anything more than a bump in the road, if they bother to mention it at all. 

Who knows?  Perhaps Ken Burns's Revolutionary War documentary will remind us how blessed we are and how wonderful our country and its founding truly was.  I won't hold my breath. 

FWIW, I could say the same thing about the anniversary of VE Day.  The 80th anniversary I should note.  I did find a slew of stories from British outlets, including the BBC.  But here in the US?  Reuters mentioned it, and that's all.  The call to either hate our history or at least forget its history is one of progressivism's key strategies.  From what I have seen over the years, it appears to be working like a charm.