The Bookworm Beat 5/2/16 — the “Hell in a hand basket” edition, round 2, and open thread

I’m back, and still playing beat the clock when I blog, so let me get right down to business:

Just one thing about Target’s preexisting open bathroom policy. You may not have known about Target’s long-standing open-access bathroom policy (all gender identities welcome wherever they want), but it appears that word has spread amongst the pervert population. The Target experience nicely exemplifies the point I was making here about Leftist policies that lower the bar for the bad guys. The Target experience also makes an ironic joke out of a particular type of smug Leftism that’s been making the rounds on my Facebook feed.

Has Dennis Prager been reading my blog? For how many years have I been saying that the Left hates the Judeo-Christian tradition because it’s predicated on justice, morality, and grace? I don’t know how many myself, although I was already making the argument back in 2011. I’ve made it fairly recently too, but can’t locate the darn post.

Why am I waffling about past posts? Because Dennis Prager makes much the same point I’ve been making when he asks “Why the Left loathes Western Civilization?”

So, then, the Big Question is, Why? Why is the Left hostile to Western civilization?

After decades of considering this question, the answer, I have concluded, is: standards.

The Left hates standards – moral standards, artistic standards, cultural standards. The West is built on all three, and has excelled in all three.

Dennis Prager’s discussion, of course, is more learned and in-depth than mine, but it’s gratifying to me to see that we’re thinking along the same lines.

Why it pains me that Mr. Bookworm is so invested in sending our kids to college. My kids are fairly bright, although somewhat lazy. They have the grades to get into really expensive upper second-tier colleges. This pains me. I’d rather they spend time holding an entry-level job, attending community college, or working hard in the military.

Why? Because I hate the thought of spending around $250,000 very hard-earned dollars per child for them to learn . . . nothing. Two posts from Louder With Crowder explain: (a) Dear High School Students: Don’t Go to College. No Seriously. . . .; and (b) Dear “Triggered” UMass Student Who Wrote Me This Letter. . . . (If you only have time to read one of those posts, read the second one.)

Hollywood continues its anti-Christian crusade. Back in the late 1980s, I was a lazy, young attorney who justified my lack of corporate progress by complaining that the law firm was discriminating against me because I was a woman. The real reason I was being “discriminated against” was because my male peers worked so much harder — as they still do. Indeed, their work ethic is so good that an article in The Atlantic recently blamed them for the American pay gap. America’s economic problem, apparently, isn’t because of too many lazy people; it’s because of too many hardworking white men.

Anyway, back to my point.

At that victim stage in my life, I was much taken by Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.  That lugubrious book’s basic premise was a dystopian future America ruled by old, misogynistic Christians men whose wives were so shriveled that they could no longer have babies. The solution was for these devout Christians to imprison fertile young women and routinely, ritualistically, and religiously raped them. You will not be surprised to learn that this virulently anti-Christian book is being made into a TV miniseries.

Enough of bad books; let’s talk about good books. This week’s Watcher’s Council forum asked Council members to name books that had a big impact on them. You would be surprised to learn that we Watcher’s Council members are a well-read group.

I actually forgot to include three books that mattered a great deal to me over the years. The first is Max I. Dimont’s brilliant Jews, God, and History, which is a bit outdated in archeological terms, but which, when I read it in Israel, truly connected me to my Jewish identity.

The second and third are both by Thomas Cahill: (1) The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, which I am re-reading now because I found it on my Mother’s shelf when I cleared out her room; and (2) How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, which is about the way in which, during the darkest of Dark Ages, the Irish saved that Jewish gift.

Ocean acidification is the latest climate change lie.  It’s gotten to the point that, whenever I hear another doom and gloom prediction from the climate changistas, I instantly discount it.  So far, my knee jerk reaction has been right every time.  These people are grifters, using climate change as their grand con.  James Delingpole boldly takes on the gross dishonesty underpinning the latest fraud, which is that human activity is destroying the oceans through acidification.

Apparently the slogan should be “white lives matter.”  It turns out that, if you get in a police officer’s cross hairs, you’d better hope you’re black.  A study shows that, in a conflict between cop and civilian, you’re more likely to be killed if you’re white.

Even when Leftists get science right, they get it wrong.  Jesse Singal wrote an honest article explaining — with mountains of fact — that, when it comes to politicizing science, with all the attendant lies and career destruction, no one beats the Lefties.  Then, at the end, without adducing any facts at all, she concludes by saying what amounts to “But the conservatives are still wrong about everything scientific.”  Even when they try to be intellectually honest, Lefties are blinded by their mindless prejudices.  They’re like the scorpion that stung the monkey carrying it across the flooded river — their nature is such that they cannot refrain from destroying those who would save them.

The fact is that Leftists don’t understand reasoned, informed discussion and debate.  As my friend Patrick O’Hannigan explains, they understand only whining, invective, and personal attack.

How Penn Jillette became a liberterian.  I think Penn and Teller are two of the most brilliant magicians around, and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing their live show two or three times now.  I also respect that they’re open libertarians in a generally Leftist entertainment world.  I don’t always agree with them (I’m a little more conservative than your average libertarian), but I love their honesty and their vigorous attacks on Leftist stupidity.  It was therefore fascinating to read Penn’s intellectual journey from Left to libertarian.

I’ve discovered my inner shopper. I hate shopping. Clothes, food, household goods — you name it, I hate buying it. But after watching this video, I got the sudden yen to buy everything I saw in it: