Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Trump is not Right Wing because America has no Right Wing

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American conservatives, Trump included, by definition cannot be Right Wing, because their primary goal is to lessen government control over the individual.

Donald Trump NOT Right WingJohn Lott wrote an article challenging the media’s contention that the New Zealand mosque shooter is “right wing” and, naturally, tying that right-winged-ness to President Trump and his supporters. Lott based his challenge on the fact that the shooter’s manifesto, aside from some trolling about Trump and Candace Owens, aligns perfectly with the Left’s ideology and is utterly unrelated to Trump’s words or policies. It’s a good article and I recommend it.

I want to head in a slightly different direction which is to say, as I have said before, that there is no Right Wing in America, meaning that neither Trump nor his supporters can or should be smeared in that way. Moreover, there is almost no relationship between ostensible conservatives outside of America and those of us in America who identify as conservatives. We are entirely different breeds. I have a tendency to be wordy, but I’ll try to keep this as streamlined as possible.

I’ll start with the absolutely true statement that there are only two forms of government: Bigger Government and Smaller Government. No matter the label affixed to the governing entity, it’s either Bigger, which means fewer individual rights, or Smaller, which means more individual rights. This is true whether the government is a monarchy, an aristocracy, an oligarchy, a republic, a democracy, a theocracy, a junta, or whatever. It’s not the label that matters; it’s the amount of government control versus individual liberty. Of course, socialist governments, whether denominated as socialist, communist, or fascist, are all Big (indeed, Biggest) Governments by definition.

“Right Wing” and “Left Wing” are purely European concepts, dating to the French Parliament in the lead-up to the French Revolution. The people to the right of the Speaker were monarchists; the people to the Left were revolutionaries in what came to be understood as the socialist mold. Both sides demanded Biggest Government with total control over the individual.

The battle between Bigger Government political powers raged in Europe through the 19th century and continued in continental Europe right into the 1930s. During that decade, the two rising political movements were both socialist. One socialist movement, communism, demanded nationalizing all private property as party of its Biggest Government plan. The other socialist movement, fascism, agreed to leave private property in private hands, provided that the government called the shots. It was therefore still a Biggest Government ideology.* [Read more…]

Religion should look like and act like religion — or why bother? *UPDATED*

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There’s nothing like trying to find a good synagogue to teach you that, when religion seeks meaning in pop culture not God, it no longer serves mankind.

Religion Judaism Passover Seder PlateWould any of you argue with me if I opened this post by saying that traditional religion is under attack in the West? No, I didn’t think so. Some religions, though, or at least some branches of the Judeo-Christian faiths, didn’t wait to be attacked. They just surrendered. They thought that, by surrendering, they’d stay alive, but they merely hastened their deaths. I have a few examples, and then I’ll see if I can use those examples to help prove my point.

On April 19, 2019, just as the sun is setting, Jews around the world will begin to celebrate Passover. According to tradition, Jews have been celebrating the Exodus story, and their escape from slavery, for more than 3,300 years. Even if one doubts tradition, it’s certain that they have been celebrating it for over 2,500 years.

As with all serious rituals, Passover follows a strict form. For thousands of years, in Israel itself, in Europe, in the Americas, in Asia, in Africa, and in the Middle East, in Australia and New Zealand, in whichever part of the world Jews have settled, they have taken seriously the admonition that they must commemorate the Exodus story. It’s a story that began when Moses, on behalf of an enslaved people, faced down the most powerful monarch in the world, a feat he accomplished because God was at his side and had his back. In different countries, there will be differences in food, language, clothes, furnishings, and music, but the core ceremony is always the same. Whether I go to a traditional seder in England or Argentina or Israel, I will feel at home.

Regular readings know that I grew up in a non-religious, yet highly Jewish, household. My father grew up in an orthodox German orphanage and then, having escaped the Nazis, spent the next two decades in British Mandate Palestine/Israel. My mother grew up the child of a mixed marriage, but from the age of 13, interrupted only by her years in a Japanese concentration camp, lived in British Mandate Palestine/Israel. For both, Jewish education and observance went without saying.

When my parents moved to America, though, they still thought that “being Jewish” went without saying. They were wrong. In America, if you want your kids to know Judaism, you must belong to a synagogue. It never occurred to them, though, to join one and, given my Dad’s long-standing communist tendencies, he would have resisted if my Mom had suggested they join. Moreover, given that my Mom’s favorite holiday was Christmas (remember that mixed marriage, right?), a wholly Jewish lifestyle wasn’t going to happen.

Nevertheless, in an interesting way, my childhood still managed to be wholly Jewish. Despite my Mom’s mixed DNA, she identified 100% as Jewish, as did my Dad. Having both been in the Israeli military during the Israeli War of Independence, they identified 100% as supporters of the world’s only Jewish state. With only one or two exceptions, all their friends were Jewish. My parents were steeped in Jewish history, values, and culture, which inevitably found its way into my psyche. Even in silly ways, we knew we were Jews. As kids, my sister and I could identify every old-time Hollywood star who was secretly Jewish (Leslie Howard, Lauren Bacall, June Allyson, John Gilbert, Edward G. Robinson, Theda Bara…. I can still list most of them).

Most importantly, although we did not observe the High Holidays (that would have involved paying to belong to a synagogue, plus Mom would never fast because, as she said, “I have low blood sugar”), we did celebrate Passover. Oy, did we celebrate it! [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 3/15/19 — Ides of March illustrated edition

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It’s only the Ides of March, not April Fools’ Day, but this jumbo illustrated edition, with all the Leftist craziness, shows Americans played for fools.

Regarding this first poster, I’m not giving it as an example of Americans being played for fools. I just love the Trump puppy, who looks singularly foolish:
Ides of March edition

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The media once hid Democrat craziness; now it trumpets it

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Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the media did its best to normalize Democrat craziness; today, though, the media trumpets Democrat craziness. That’s scary.

Media Walter Cronkite Democrat crazinessI was a child in the 1960s and a teen in the 1970s. Every morning, along with my parents, I read the San Francisco Chronicle while we ate breakfast. Every evening at dinner we all watched Walter Cronkite. I remember the nightly sense of satisfaction as Cronkite signed off with “And that’s the way it is.”

In the 1980s, after Cronkite’s retirement, we switched to Peter Jennings. My Mom had a crush on him; he was, after all, smoothly good-looking with a Canadian savoir-faire that appealed to my European parents. In the 1980s too my parents discovered Ted Koppel — “he’s so smart and, you know, he’s Jewish.” And through it all, they always read the Chronicle. By the 1980s, I was out of the house, but I still remember the prominent role played in our lives by what we now call the “mainstream” or “drive-by” media.

Here’s the thing about the media in those days: We believed it. We believed it implicitly. Walter Cronkite said “that’s the way it is” and we knew with certainty that this was true: Whatever he just told us was indeed the way it was. Cronkite was, after all, “the most trusted man in America.”

I don’t think young people today can imagine the shock to our system when we later learned that Cronkite’s famously stated opinion that America had lost the war in Vietnam after the Tet Offensive was 180 degrees wrong. In fact, after the Tet Offensive, the American military was in its best position ever since entering Vietnam. Cronkite’s preeminence in the American psyche, however, turned a huge American military victory into an even bigger Viet Cong propaganda victory. But we only learned that later. [Read more…]

A delightful visit to historic Charleston

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Charleston may well be the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen after decades of travel around the world. I try to convey some of that here.

Charleston flowersI just returned from my first visit to Charleston, South Carolina, and I have to say that I’m in love. I have traveled through most of Europe, whether western, northern, southern or central; wandered around the Baltic and the North Sea; dipped into North Africa; traversed the British Isles; spent time in Israel; and visited sizable parts of Southeast Asia; and even spent time traveling around here in the U.S., but I have to say that I’ve never seen a more beautiful city than Charleston.  Whether the buildings are from the 18th century, the 19th century, or the early 20th century, they are just breathtaking. The erupting spring foliage is breathtaking. The harbor is breathtaking. And of course the history is fascinating.

Here’s a very quick history of this place. The city was founded in 1670 thanks to a land grant that King Charles II of England gave to eight lords proprietor to run as a corporation — hence the original name of Charles Town. Thanks to its large harbor, and thanks to its rice, indigo, wood, Native American supplied deer skins, naval supplies, and (sadly) slave trades, it quickly became one of the richest cities in America.

Although most people think of Boston, Philadelphia, and Virginia as the major players in the Revolutionary War, more battles were fought in South Carolina than in any other colony. One of the first major battles protected Charleston from a British sea-borne invasion. A few years later, though, the British wised up and attacked the peninsula from the land side while blockading the harbor. Eventually, the Charleston citizens opted to surrender rather than have their city completely destroyed.

Within three years of war’s end, Charleston was right back to trading with England as if the war had never happened. The indigo trade, which Britain had originally subsidized, was over, but with the addition of cotton and other supplies in the mix, Charleston was a money machine again. More gorgeous buildings went up. [Read more…]

Just one more day….

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I told you all that tonight I would blog about my trip, but I’m so gosh darn tired it’s just not going to happen. Tonight, after driving all day (and seeing wonderful things), I have just enough energy to write this apology for not writing. Tomorrow, though . . . well, that’s different and you can count on something from me.

VIDEO – “Panodrama” exposes BBC fake news

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I’m still traveling, so blogging still isn’t do-able. (I return tomorrow and, if I’m not too tired, will blog tomorrow evening.)  However, I recommend Tommy Robinson’s “Panodrama,” a video exposing how BBC manipulates news.

The video is a bit rough, the British accents can be a bit hard to understand, and Tommy doesn’t make his case as clearly as he could. Indeed, regarding that latter point, sometimes Tommy’s point only works because of the vast chasm between the BBC’s stated standards and its actual conduct. That is, what it’s doing isn’t that shocking a deviation from how journalism always works as it is a shocking deviating from the BBC’s own poncey purported purity, which is all a fake.

 

A power outage in Venezuela and Leftist denial

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The collapse in Venezuela, rather than bringing enlightenment to America’s Leftists, instead sees them double-down on their delusions about socialism.

Venezuela hospital medical care socialismThis post is what Instapundit refers to as a “shot” and “chaser” scenario. Here’s the shot (hyperlinks omitted):

In Venezuela, there’s a new front — the equivalent of an EMP attack, an attack on all the people, based on the massive and unprecedented electrical blackout still covering the country.

The Washington Post’s thorough report on the matter is horrifying.

CARACAS, Venezuela — One of the severest power outages in Venezuelan history ravaged the country for a second day Friday, with hospital patients languishing in the dark, most supermarkets closed and phone service largely knocked out in the oil-rich but economically collapsing country.

Venezuela, which has been roiled by a political struggle between President Nicolás Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaidó, has been hit by outages before. But the blackout that began Thursday evening is the longest and most widespread in recent memory, a sign of the rapid deterioration of the economy, which is expected to contract sharply in the next few weeks as U.S. sanctions on the oil industry begin to bite. Some analysts even worry that the country — once among the richest in South America — could face famine.

The chaser is a poster I saw this morning when scanning through my real-me Facebook (on which I no longer post). Because I spent most of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area, my real-me Facebook has a substantial cohort of Leftists: [Read more…]

Is #AOC-ward (aka Ocasio-Cortez) a mere puppet for sinister people?

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Is a video arguing that Ocasio-Cortez isn’t a real politician but is instead an actress being used by hard-Left conspirators real or a conspiracy theory?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez PuppetA conservative Facebook group to which I belong, one with several hundred members, has seen at least four people post a video in which a man calling himself Mr. Reagan, who has a fruity, game-show host voice, advances the theory that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka #AOC-ward, pronounced “awkward”) is not a ditzy Leftist millennial politician at all but is, instead, an actress. According to Mr. Reagan, Donkey Chompers is the pretty face for a radical Leftist group that wants to remake the entire Democrat party by defeating establishment Democrats using people just like #AOC-ward: telegenic and able to recite their lines.

Because people whose intelligence I have come to respect through years of following this Facebook group thought the video was important, I took the time to watch it. And you know what? I can’t decide whether it’s a brilliant insight into what’s going on in American politics or if it’s the sane-sounding ravings of a delusional man. Some of what Mr. Reagan advances makes absolute sense in a scary way; some of what he describes sounds more like the organic coming-together of like-minded people rather than a vast conspiracy; and some of it sounds as if it came out of a Hollywood scriptwriter’s conference.

The one thing the video does, which is true for both real conspiracies and conspiracy theories, is to make sense of several ongoing mysteries: (1) How a bartender could swiftly rise out of nowhere and defeat an incumbent who was bringing home the bacon for his community; (2) why #AOC-ward is undeniably one of the most telegenic politicians around; and (3) most of all, why #AOC-ward is an idiot when speaking impromptu but an effective political dynamo both on Twitter and when speaking in controlled situations. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 3/8/2019 — the Democrat Party goes full anti-Semitism

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An illustrated edition focusing on the Dems’ weirdly ecumenical transition from anti-Black (slavery, Jim Crow, ghettoization) to untrammeled anti-Semitism.
(Plus other examples of the myriad threats socialists pose to America, and the way Trump is a bulwark against those threats.)

Before getting to the posters, a short video I urge you all to watch:

We now return to our regularly scheduled illustrated edition

Anti-Semitism Ilhan Omar David Duke Democrats

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Leftism, Islam, anti-Semitism, and the Jews

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Democrats and Muslims have come together with anti-Semitism because it is their ideological destiny — and Leftist Jews are too indoctrinated to see it.

Islam Socialism Anti-SemitismOne of the fascinating things about the world in which we live is the alliance between Leftists and Muslims. At first glance, it seems as if they have nothing in common. Leftists tout women’s rights; Muslims tout women’s burqas. Leftists tout LGBTQ rights; Muslims tout homosexual hangings. Leftists purport to hate slavery; Muslims have slavery as a core doctrine. Leftists hate rape; Muslims have rape as another core doctrine.

Given these profound differences, one way to account for the Leftist/Muslim alliance today is to look to the old Arab adage stating “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” (Or, as Aristotle said first, “a common danger unites even the bitterest enemies.”) Both the Left and Islam are united in a fight against Western civilization. And significantly, the thing they are fighting against most fiercely is what lies at the core of Western civilization: The value of the individual.

Here’s the thing: Despite their superficial differences, Leftists and Muslims have something very profound in common, which is that both are completely totalitarian ideologies. Each envisions complete control over all people around the world. Individualism is anathema to them. It is this common vision that binds them in the short term. In the long term, of course, each assumes that its ideology will be victorious and that, like the Borg, the winning ideology (whether Islam or Leftism) will either assimilate or destroy the losing ideology (whether Leftism or Islam).

Oh, I almost forgot. There’s another thing that binds them and that is their abiding hatred for Jews. (They hate other religions too, don’t get me wrong, as we can see from the murderous purge of Christians across the Muslim world as well as the softer effort to purge Christians in America. But there’s something about the Jews….) [Read more…]

#DearFellowJews: a hashtag to help a #Jexodus (or #Jexit)

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Jexodus (or Jexit) asks Jews to leave an increasingly anti-Semitic Democrat Party, something I’m trying to facilitate with tweets to my #DearFellowJews.

DearFellowJews, Jexit, Jexodus

Jewish women and children escaping the Nazi death train at Farsleben (read the story here)

If you’ve been paying attention to the news of late, you can’t have missed stories about anti-Semitism. For example, for many years now, France has periodically been roiled by grotesque anti-Semitic murders, including one that happened in connection with the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, in January 2015.

I mention that massacre specifically, because it was an event that lifted for Leftists American Jews, even if ever so slightly, the veil hiding the anti-Semitic rot at the heart of the Democrat Party. As you may recall, in January 2015, Islamists committed a mass murder at the headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo because it had dared to mock the eminently mockable Mohamed. Two days later, a member of the same radical Islamist community entered a kosher market in Paris, took hostages, killed four people, and injured nine.

The massacre did not occur because anyone in the Hypercacher market had mocked Mohamed. No one had, of course. The only reason the Hypercacher massacre happened was because Islamist murderers always use the opportunity of a massacre to include a few Jews. Thus, when Islamists committed the exceptionally bloody Mumbai massacre, they wasted resources deviating from their central massacre just so that they could torture to death a rabbi and his wife who had a small Chabad House in Mumbai.

In a way, this Muslim massacre technique (a big massacre that includes, as a sideline, brutally killing a few Jews) is comparable to Hitler’s Holocaust: For Hitler and Germany, the primary goal was world conquest. However, just as was the case with the Islamists, Hitler’s anti-Semitism was so all-encompassing that he willingly diverted resources from the main goal to accomplish a secondary goal that was neither ancillary to nor necessary for world conquest. Indeed, it lessened the chances for world conquest, but Hitler couldn’t stop himself.

But I digress. This is not a post about rising anti-Semitism around the world. It’s just a prelude to a post about rising anti-Semitism in America and, more specifically, about the anti-Semitic rot at the heart of the Democrat Party . . . which brings me back to the purposefully anti-Semitic attack on Jews in the Hypercacher market in Paris. [Read more…]

#AOCaMovie — the latest Twitter meme with AOC-ward as the star

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#AOCaMovie is today’s hot meme applying Alinsky-esque ridicule to AOC-ward (pronounced “awkward”) and the Twitterati are showing their collective genius.

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