"[Some] used their belief that blacks were innately lacking in ability to justify, for example, forbidding the teaching of blacks. Frederick Law Olmsted’s response to the claim that blacks were no more capable of being educated than animals were was to ask why there were no laws forbidding animals from being educated."   -Thomas Sowell

I had a leftwing friend years ago and I explained why I was so outraged by NPR.  “Taking my tax money to push an ideological agenda I hate!”

My friend couldn’t wrap his head around what I was so mad about.

The failure to put themselves in our shoes is almost total.

Therefore I propose hundreds of radio stations and podcasts funded by the left via tax money which push rightwing politics.  We have to explain less and illustrate more.

“I never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute; but I know how to raise a small and obscure city to glory and greatness...whereto all kindreds of the earth will pilgrim.”  -Themistocles

When feminist discourse is unable to discriminate the drunken fraternity brother from the homicidal maniac, women are in trouble. –Camile Paglia

Russell Brand is in hot water because the media and ex-girlfriends hate his politics.

Which makes me wonder: How many Ukraine-flag waving triple maskers have skeletons in their closets? Bet more than a few. But the correct politics can cover you for quite a long time.

just got raped. i’ll let you know who the culprit is in about 10 years or so when i’m bored -@ChillAssMinor

“Feminism liberated women from the natural dignity of their sex and turned them into inferior men.” -Francis Parker Yockey

"Perhaps all history books hold a danger for those who don't know a great deal of history already" -Herber Butterworth

Given that there are virtually no writings by American Indians during the early years of contact, what do you assume they were like?  Do we take Europeans' descriptions of them at face value, or do we imagine what they were like based on movies and biased histories?

"You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you."  -Karl Popper

“That idea of hardships being good for character and of talent always being able to break through is an old fallacy. Talent alone is helpless today. Any success requires both talent and luck. And the “luck” has to be helped along and provided by someone. … Talent does not survive all obstacles. In fact, in the face of hardships, talent is the first one to perish; the rarest plants are usually the most fragile… Are talented people born with tough skins?  Hardly.  In fact, the ore talent one possesses the more sensitive one is, as a rule.”  -Ayn Rand, 1936

We like to tell stories of how adversity makes us better.  "That which does not kill me..."

But adversity makes us weaker.

America was less free after WW1 (Permanent income tax).  America was less free after WW2 (Taxation went from approx 5% of GDP before WW2 and approx 20% after.  It's practically never been below 15% since.  JFK's assassination all but doomed us financially (LBJ, Dems unequivocally big govt).

Bad things proceed from bad things, good from good.

Good families make good men and women.  Bad families make bad men and bad women.  If adversity were good it would be reversed.

Wars in Iraq, afghanistan:  6.5 T, 8 T

More than 7,000 troops and 8,000 contractors died in Afghanistan/Iraq. 

Wound rates for troops are perhaps 10x as high, 70,000 troops.  I never forget the wounded because some of them were grievously so, only marginally less so than the dead.

Bear in mind the USA, in current dollars, spent approx 4-5 trillion on WW2.

So we are accomplishing less and less with more and more.

We thought too much about how we would be judged by historians or journalists and too little about getting the desired effect.

In closing, adversity can piss up a rope.

"Well I believe that whatever doesn't kill you makes you very, very weak."  -Norm MacDonald

Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." -MLK Jr, 1967

Mayor Eric Adams has said that illegal immigration will "destroy" New York. My question is why are the feds sending them?

An influential Minnesota Democrat is now a law-and-order enthusiast after thugs broke her leg. But why is there such a failure of empathy on the left for victims of crime before they themselves are battered?

"It is easier to forgive the evil done to others than to forgive the evil done to oneself, especially if in the first place we don't really like those others to whom the evil is done." -Theodore Dalrymple

"Recently I was sent for review a book by a woman who had been in analysis for twenty years, with four or five sessions a week, in all about four thousand.  Four thousand hours of talking about oneself!  Full marks for endurance, if not for choice of subject matter."  -Theodore Dalrymple

"The suicide rate among the medical fraternity is said to be between 5-7 times the general population with psychiatrists on the unfavourable end of the spectrum across specialities."  -Guarding the Gatekeepers, Psychiatry Res, 2020 Dec

"Often the masses are plundered and do not know it."  –Frederick Bastiat

I took the day off due to the holiday but you'll still get two shows this week.  Just not today.

"When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles."  -Frank Herbert

"The jailing of political opponents is a feature of repressive dictatorships, not vibrant democracies."  -The Atlantic, October 2016

The law means nothing today. And I hate to say this, and I've always loved my country and I've always believed that America was something that, today, I would tell you that I'm not so sure that the America that I've loved all my life ever existed.

When I see what has happened to America, I don't recognize my nation. I don't recognize my country. And when I look at young people, as well as my own great grandchildren, I'm not optimistic at all about their future.  -Carol Swain, retired professor of law at Vanderbilt