"I have offended God and man that my work did not rise to the level it should have."  -Leondardo Da Vinci's dying lament

What do Leonardo Da Vinci, Rush Limbaugh, and Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer have in common?  Two things:  Unsurpassed success.  And the haunting feeling of being a failure.

That's not to say they're totally wrong.  Da Vinci didn't finish lots of paintings, including what was perhaps his finest Battle of Anghiari.

Rush didn't convince tens of millions of people to reject socialism and hyper-regulation.

Dakota Meyer didn't save the four men he promised to.

But I hope, particularly this time of year, that all of us who have failed are able to ask, "But was I good?"  And if the answer is yes, we should take a respite from guilt.  

Merry Christmas.

"The beauty of doing nothing is that you can do it perfectly. Only when you do something is it almost impossible to do it without mistakes. Therefore people who are contributing nothing to society except their constant criticisms can feel both intellectually and morally superior."  -Thomas Sowell

I didn't mention this on the show, but I once wrote an email to Walter Williams to let him know how moved I was by an interview I had watched.  And he responded very graciously to a high school me, all those years ago.

"If a private person took money from one person and gave it to another, we'd deem it theft and, as such, immoral. Does the same act become moral when Congress takes people's money to give to farmers, airline companies or an impoverished family?"

"The suggestion that Congress ought to take part of [Michael] Jordan's earnings and give it to someone else is the same as arrogantly saying, "I know better who ought to receive those dollars."

"It was practices like [the affirmative action practices] of the University of Michigan, but against blacks, that were the focal point of much of the civil rights movement."

"I say America's nearly 50 million smokers should not timidly comply with one attack after another. I doubt there's jail space to house all of us."

“When you read in the newspaper that the government has taken Walter Williams' guns, then you will know that Walter Williams is dead.”

-Walter Williams

“I was totally ignorant, so I said, ‘Why not give it a try?’” -Malcolm McLean

There are two traits present in virtually every world-altering innovative genius:  Confidence and obsession.  The man who saw to it that goods were shipped internationally primarily by container -- he might have been as confident as any innovator ever was.

"His idea for modernizing the loading and unloading of ships, which was previously conducted in much the same way the ancient Phoenicians did 3,000 years ago, has resulted in much safer and less-expensive transport of goods, faster delivery, and better service."  -Norman Mineta

 

The bulk of the information I used in this show comes from "They Made America" by Harold Evans.  You can find it here:  https://www.amazon.com/They-Made-America-Centuries-Innovators/dp/0316277665/ref=sr_1_1?crid=UHD9LLOV27FS&dchild=1&keywords=they+made+america+by+harold+evans&qid=1607073286&s=books&sprefix=they+made+america+%2Cstripbooks%2C148&sr=1-1

 

"...the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to set still and to be contented."  —Adam Smith

"And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want."  -Edward Winslow, 11 December 1621

"If I could think that I had sent a spark to those who come after I should be ready to say Goodbye."  —Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

“You could afford your house without your government if it weren’t for your government.”  -Rush Limbaugh

I read part of Francis Galton's novel.  He was a celebrated scientist who coined the term "eugenics."  He proposed that "fit" people be paid to have large families.  Then it hit me:  He probably thought he was fit.  If so, the appeal goes from hard to understand to very easy.

The Oregon governor wants Americans to rat on their neighbors if they're having Thanksgiving.  This is the same governor that lets Antifa run rampant for over 100 days of mayhem during Covid!  This is tyrannical -- you cannot effectively have one law for favored people and another for disfavored.  What a brazen disgrace this woman is!

"There are certain possibilities that many among the intelligentsia cannot even acknowledge as possibilities, much less try to test empirically, which would be risking a whole vision of the world -- and of themselves -- on a roll of the dice."  -Thomas Sowell

According to Genesis, after God made man he looked at all of his creations:  "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

But for environmentalists, it was almost all very good.  Except for the people part.  Namely, other people.  Since the '60s, environmentalists have been screaming at us that they hate people:  One of their unending quests has been, since that time, for depopulation.  But sometimes they have been more explicit:

"It'd be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of cheap, clean, and abundant energy because of what we would do with it."  -Amory Lovins

"Giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun."  -Paul Ehrlich

The environmental left have had the same solutions to our problems since way before we had our problems.  And yet they think of themselves as "scientific."

There are no plain and simple problems any more. From poverty to race to crime to Vietnam, all we face are crises which threaten to bring down the world upon our heads.  –Ben Wattenberg, The New Republic, “The Nonsense Explosion,” 1970

"Leftism is both a way of understanding the world and a value system.  It is, in fact, a form of religion, albeit a secular one.  Many of its adherents believe in it with the same passion as religious Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe in their respective religions."  -Dennis Prager

A Muslim has beheaded a woman in France and killed two others for Allah.  For decades now, the West has received a deluge of migration, much of it from Muslim countries (which differentiates it from earlier migrations).  Bigotedly thinking beheading is worse than whatever the left calls "xenophobia" or "Islamaphobia," I oppose this.

Glenn Greenwald has been censored at the publication he co-founded.  He has resigned.  Why has he been censored?  He criticized Joe Biden.  The new left simply wants to shut people up.

"Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution."  -Donald Trump

If nothing's horrific, life is terrific.  -Dennis Prager

Demonstrably, the left creates anti-black sentiment in three ways:

The left has banned asking about criminal records in hiring in some jurisdictions.  The result of this is increased discrimination against races which commit disproportionately high levels of crime.

"The New Racism" was the term given to racism which was generated by the leftist policies of the 1960's.  These policies were:  Tolerate worse behavior by blacks than by whites, admit into schools less qualified blacks than whites.

Since the Democrat VP pick is part-black, now we get all the fun of being called racist every time we don't applaud Kamala's latest pronouncement.  Among those who don't enjoy slander, this creates a downside to nominating even the most qualified black candidate.

Being a good person begins with being a wise person.  –Antonin Scalia, Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived

https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/88366/ban_the_box_and_racial_discrimination_4.pdf

https://books.google.com/books?id=Nfd2KKqZbNYC&pg=PT342&lpg=PT342&dq=sowell+%22nasty,+british,+and+short%22&source=bl&ots=bTl-VC-K7v&sig=ACfU3U3AYSQFBseXQuSfY-0grk6r9BXJDw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_s6Kr_pjrAhXFxFkKHfeiBUsQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/13/politics/kamala-harris-joe-biden-running-mate-choice/index.html

Vasily Stalin was "fine proof that the abuser of power corrupts everyone he touches, including his own children.  The Caesars, having reached the acme of their power, often left behind them children flawed in body and soul, morally dead while the dictator was still living and revelling in his own immorality."  -Dmitri Volkogonov

Svetlana Stalin, daughter of Josef, was by many standards mediocre at best.  She had several children by several men with whom she had short relationships, wasn't particularly productive, and at times equivocated between the USA and USSR.  And yet -- having some of the most awful parents in the world -- perhaps she was great.  As Jay Nordlinger writes, "[Stalin's] lone daughter broke through the mesmerism... Her conscience rose in rebellion against her father and his state.  This makes her exceedingly rare..."

John McWhorter wrote, "Being middle class, upwardly mobile, and Black has been quite common during my existence" and "I neither need nor want anyone to muse on how whiteness privileges them over me."  Hear hear.  

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”  -Friedrich Nietzsche

If a man can be driven to suicide by guilt, perhaps so can a nation.

 

It's very easy to repudiate racial stereotypes.  Unless you're a cab driver.  Unless you're a shop owner.  Unless you're a cop.  Unless you're someone whose life or livelihood depends on stereotyping.

Just like it's easy for me to repudiate dialysis since I have two working kidneys.

 

A remarkable number of free people today follow the maxim, "A still tongue makes a wise head."  I’m not sure our country can survive the quiet of the good.

 

https://nypost.com/2020/07/11/the-fallacy-of-white-privilege-and-how-its-corroding-society/

 

"Here is an industry, which supplies convenience and comforts to the day laborer which kings could not command half a century ago."

 

Samuel Insull was quite a man:  Personal secretary to Edison before becoming an energy magnate.  Then an international fugitive.

 

"Aim for the top. There is plenty of room there. There are so few at the top it is almost lonely there."

 

Most of the quotes for the episode came from They Made America by Harold Evans.  It's one of Thomas Sowell's favorite books, so you should probably buy it:  https://www.amazon.com/They-Made-America-Centuries-Innovators/dp/0316277665/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=harold+evans+they+made+americac&qid=1595317983&sr=8-1

 

A "Very Good" copy available now for $6.  Unbelievable deal for this tome.

'Why is it that people who worry the most about mankind have the least concern for any actual human being?'  -Ayn Rand

I read an excerpt from "Not With a Bang But With a Whimper" by Theodore Dalrymple.  He writes of a British man who was convicted of assaulting or raping 15 women before being released and murdering Naomi Bryant.

The Scorpion and the Frog and is the best explanation of evil I know of.

 

Forgiveness is overrated.  Case in point:  An Arkansas woman forgave and even befriended her mother's killer.  He then killed her.

“There are pleasures, no doubt, to be had in crying in the wilderness, in being a man who thinks he has seen farther and more keenly than others, but they grow fewer with time. The wilderness has lost its charms for me.” -Theodore Dalrymple

https://people.com/crime/ark-woman-befriended-moms-killer-out-of-spiritual-obligation-and-then-he-murdered-her/

Some great men have defended civilization when we needed it.  In this episode, I discuss George E. Albee, Ernest C. Williams, and Robert J. Miller.  It's worth reflecting on what the world would look like without men like them.

I read a bit from Black Rednecks and White Liberals which points out that perhaps the reason why anti-Irish sentiment went away was because the Irish changed.

I offer my hypothesis as to why the Polish were thought stupid.

Then I tell the story of a fascinating man, Garrett Morgan.  Morgan invented the first good gas mask which he used to save 29 men suffocating below Lake Erie in 1916.

Morgan was later the pioneer of traffic signals, embellished his own triumphs, discovered a hair-straightening solution and marketed skin-bleaching to blacks.  He was discriminated against, but in the end he was acknowledged a hero.

Barack Obama was spotted golfing at a country club the day after his wife unveiled her "stay at home" PSA.  I would love to ask him how he justifies that.

There have been 97 "murder hornet" articles written by media in the last two days.  The media scares us into clicking on stuff and wasting our time and making us anxious.  It's their MO.  Why do we keep clicking?

New York has been forcing nursing homes to accept Covid patients.  The Editorial Board of the New York Post called it "evil."  Why in the world would they put Covid patients there?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/04/29/barack-obama-goes-golfing-during-coronavirus-quarantine-n386764

https://nypost.com/2020/04/22/forcing-nursing-homes-to-take-coronavirus-patients-is-just-insane-and-evil/

Theodore Dalrymple offers many wonderful second opinions in his book by that name.  You might want to pause the show between excerpts to let them all sink in.

Jake Tapper and Mara Gay are two leading representatives from their respective organizations, CNN and the New York Times.  What does this tell us about their organizations?

For one, that they're happy to lie to you.

I'm bored of Coronavirus news!  Instead, I'm going to relate the story of how, in 1776, a generally forgotten document paved the way for our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The music in this episode is:

Americana by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3361-americana

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In opposition to the world's indifference, I offer some words of thanks for the zealous innovators who came before I did.  In particular:

Charles Goodyear, a man who endured perhaps as much as any innovator ever did on his way to triumph.

Igor Sikorsky, a man who escaped the Communists and achieved his dream of creating the first mass-produced helicopter.

The show starts off light:  In WW2, the RAF attributed its nighttime success to carrots to hide a secret.

Then:  "Stay Woke, Drop Out" -Strassel

"Boomer Socialism Led to Bernie Sanders"  -Ukueberuwa

"The New War Against Africa's Christians"  -Levy

The last of these I had not decided to read prior to the show, having highlighted the passages I found interesting a couple of weeks ago.  I had forgotten how graphic it was, so when I slow down that's part of the reason.  Should have reviewed it just prior to recording.