It looks like they got Vox Day

It looks like the forces of censorship and liberalism have brought down another conservative blogger. The popular blog Vox Popoli has been shut down by blogger. When you go there this is what you get.

Vox Day is a conservative commenter, writer, book publisher and savant who has long predicted that they would shut him down someday. He was one of the leaders of the "Sad Puppies" who led the fight against liberal extremism in the publishing of science fiction. Vox Day is an extremely good sci-fi writer who has neglected his writing to lead a movement against censorship and liberal tyranny. He started a publishing house and has started an on line comic book magizine that has become quite popular. He is a no holds barred truth teller and as such must be silenced by the powers that be. 

I am truly not surprised and I am sure he is not either. He always said you had to find your own means of engaging and to not participate in Facebook, Twitter or Instagram since they are liberal monoliths that will censor you. I guess that the internet provider is following suit and censoring him as well.

This bodes ill for freedom of expression all across the board.

 

Best post mortem of the French election that I have seen from Vox Day

From Vox Day's blog:

A Le Pen loss, however, will hardly be a knockout blow for populism — or a ringing vindication of the establishment.

If anything, the French campaign has solidified the new fracture lines in modern politics, which bear little relation to the relatively modest differences marking the old left-right divide. Instead, the choice voters face on Sunday illustrates the profound new chasm in the West: between those who favor open, globalized societies and others who prefer closed, nationalized ones.

“What’s the common ground between Macron and Le Pen? There is none. What we’re seeing is historic: a choice between two completely different modes of organizing a society,” said Madani Cheurfa, a professor of politics at Paris’s Sciences Po.

I think this is essentially correct. There is a split between globalists and nationalists. You can be a conservative or a liberal globalist. Both were united in their hatred of Donald Trump. Trump is nominally a nationalist. He talked the talk. We have to see if he is going to walk the walk. The results have been very mixed so far even though it is very early in his administration. He does need to do things to burnish his nationalist credentials. Otherwise he will become a captive of the swamp. I have supported President Trump vigorously since the process began. I am troubled by some of the things he has done. I though he would put America's interests first. I am not in favor of looking for wars overseas in places like Syria and North Korea. He needs to rethink this policy. He needs to be much more of a nationalist in deeds and not just in words. We shall see what enfolds. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt. But he needs to put America First.

A Throne of Bones

I have just finished reading "A Throne of Bones" by Vox Day. For those of you who enjoyed "A Game of Thrones" I will really recommend that you get this book and start reading this series. It is extremely well done.

Vox Day uses the same format that Rape Rape used in Thrones. He starts each chapter off from a different perspective. However there are several different aspects to his work. He uses some of the conventions from Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" in that there are elves and dwarves and orcs and goblins. As well as a stand in for the Roman Empire and the politics of the change over from Republic to Empire,

I zipped through it in two days and am on to book 2. It is a series and I am sure I will be waiting around for the next few books to be published.

I think this is in fact superior to Game of Thrones and I recommend it to all fantasy fans in the highest way possible. Get it if you can. You will be glad you did.

From Page to Screen Part Two

It is unusual to see a faithful adaptation of one of your favorite books. The director and the producers get involved and they always want to “improve” it in some way that makes you hate the movie. The fact of the matter is that pulp or genre fiction usually adapts well. The types of directors and actors drawn to it just like to tell a good story. They are not all up in their artsy fartsy heads about it.

Two of the best book to screen adaptions that I have seen came from the works of one of my favorite authors and role models Elmore Leonard. “Get Shorty” was an almost perfect rendition of his novel. Of course “Justified” was a sublime manifestation of his Raylan Givens stories. Elmore Leonard and his son worked very closely with the production and actually wrote several episodes. In fact one of his last books contained a couple of stories about Marshal Givens that actually used new characters that originated from the TV series. That is quite unusual. You know. That TV writers influence the author of the original work. Talent will out.

I was very disappointed in the various video interpretation of Robert B. Parker’s “Spenser” novels. The original TV series with Robert Ulrich was a good effort but really missed the boat. The various TV movies really sucked. Joe Mantegna is not any reasonable embodiment of the protagonist in those novels.

The series of Jesse Stone movies with Tom Selleck were excellent if a little dreary. I think they thought film noir means depressed or something. Still it was a worthy effort and they should get kudos. It is the only filming of Parkers work that is worth a shit.

I couldn't have said it better!

From the Vox Day blog quoting the Zman:

Yesterday, the alt-right and even many seasoned geezers like me took a body blow when Trump abandoned everything he said over the last two years and embraced the idiocy of yet another war in the Middle East. Not only is he embracing the lunacy of the traitorous neocons, he is risking war with Russia. His “reason” for condemning himself to ruin is that his daughter got the sads over seeing pictures of dead kids in Syria. She takes to twitter over this latest agit-prop and in a day daddy is launching missiles at Assad.

The United States has no interest in Syria. There are no good guys to back. There’s no “solution” to what ails that part of the world, short of another flood. Syria is a mess because it is full of Syrians. The only sane policy is to make sure it remains full of Syrians. Let them kill each other there, not in Paris or Portland. If the Russians want to build their pipeline there and pay the price for it, good for them. If the Saudis want to stop them, best of luck with it. This is not an American problem. It is their problem. Let them own it.

Will the other shoe drop before the election?

Remember, remember the Fifth of November by Vox Day Vox Popoli blog November 4, 2016

Anonymous plants its flag and declares that the information it possesses will be made available "to the public in an organized, searchable, manageable way."

Anonymous 11/03/16 00:09:23 No.95833740

Over the next few days many new documents will be released. The contents of these documents will contain evidence of perhaps the largest coverup in American History. Before this happens we would like to explain ourselves and answer a few questions you may have.

Until this month, WikiLeaks and Anonymous have worked together in building an efficient, detailed, comprehensive set of documents that would be responsible for the incarceration of Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and 21 individuals ranging from the DNC, FBI, CIA, and Clinton foundation. These documents will show without a doubt, evidence of Treason, Obstruction of Justice, Election Fraud/Manipulation, and Bribery.

This was intended to be the October surprise. But before the release of these documents, we were contacted by a member of the FBI, as well as another from the CIA, and a week later by the NYPD. All with information retaining to something much darker than even we imagined.

Due to the nature of these leaks, we all worked together as efficiently as possible to ensure two objectives.

1. That all necessary information would be given to the public in an organized, searchable, manageable way.
2. Those who provided us with this information would be able to find safety before these releases were made. (This concern wasn't without warrant.)

Anonymous 11/03/16 00:09:46 No.95833807

The new leaks being released this week will provide documents in the form of emails, pictures, and videos. Within these will be evidence of Bill Clinton, as well as at least 6 other Government officials, taking part in sexual acts with minors. As well as evidence of Human trafficking that also included minors.

We believe these pictures and videos were taken for the purpose of political manipulation. In order to make sure all participants followed through on a previously agreed agenda.

These documents were given to us by an American Governement official when he had come to learn that this crime had been covered up by Hilary and her staff through methods including bribery and blackmail. He also told us that due to the restricted access to these documents, they would soon know he was the one who released him to us.

We tried to make arrangements for him to exit the country safely, but he was killed before those arrangements could be carried out. We are still not sure if this is because they became aware of the leak, or if they were scared that he may in the future. In either case, his identity will be made public in this next set of leaks so that he can be honored for the hero that he was.

We will not only be releasing these documents, but we have multiple memebers of the FBI, CIA, and NYBD who will be publicly verifying their authenticity once their safety is assured.

This hack has not come from Russia or anyone else they may try to blame this on. This is a leak from Americas own Government Officials who fear for their safety had the opposed them directly due to reasons that will be made clear soon.

We thank you for your patience, as well as your determination and assistance in helping us expose the corruption that has infested our own government. Democracy will be restored to America.

Remember remember the 5th of November.

The dates would appear to preclude the possibility, but I can't help wondering if the inexplicable suicide of Maj. Gen. John Rossi two days before he was to receive his third star might have been somehow connected to the events that Anonymous is describing.

WKRLEM: Tears of a Cuck

By Vox Day Vox Popoli Blog October 28, 2016

David French demonstrates that he definitely wasn't the man for the job as he cries about how mean the Alt-Right is to NPR, of all places:

In September or mid-September of last year, I had noticed that Ann Coulter, who is a very prominent supporter of Donald Trump, was tweeting out a lot of thoughts that are common to this part of the right - even though I hate to even call them part of the right, they call themselves part of the right - called the alt-right that were explicitly white nationalist in their tone and tenor. And so I wrote in our group blog on National Review called The Corner that Ann Coulter was deliberately appealing to these people. And I - and basically and politely said this is something that's inexcusable and it has no place in the conservative movement.

And then I had no idea what was about to happen next. My Twitter feed basically exploded. I have - did not have that many followers - in the thousands, certainly not like the more prominent folks in politics, but it was unbelievable. I began to see images, for example, of my youngest daughter, who we adopted from Ethiopia many years ago, who at the time was 7 years old - images of her in a gas chamber with a - Donald Trump in an SS uniform about to push the button to kill her. I saw images of her Photoshopped or, you know, artist's rendering of her face in slave fields.

I was called all manner of unbelievable names, which is kind of par for the course for Twitter, but among them was this term that has gained currency in recent years called cuckservatives. Cuckservative is somebody who's been cuckolded by the establishment, by the liberal elite. And then people began to refer to my wife as having sex with black men when I was deployed to Iraq in 2007, 2008. And it just descended from there. And that's a side of Twitter I know that others had experienced, but I had certainly never experienced it before. And then it just got worse.

GROSS: So this was all because you criticized Ann Coulter?

FRENCH: Yes, it was because I - not just criticized Ann Coulter. I mean, that happens all the time. I mean, she's a frequent target of criticism. It's because I criticized this group called the alt-right. It's - and for, you know, those who don't know what the alt-right is, it's a collection of mostly younger people who are rebelling against mainstream conservatism, rebelling against progressive liberalism and have really began to adopt white nationalism, white identity politics.

All I did was politely try to John Birch conservatism's most popular writer out of conservatism! And then they were mean to me! They sent me pictures!

The horra, the horra.....

A failed and fearful establishment

by Vox Day October 21, 2016

Pat Buchanan observes that the Establishment is terrified. And rightly so:

What explains the hysteria of the establishment?

In a word, fear.

The establishment is horrified at the Donald’s defiance because, deep within its soul, it fears that the people for whom Trump speaks no longer accept its political legitimacy or moral authority.

It may rule and run the country, and may rig the system through mass immigration and a mammoth welfare state so that Middle America is never again able to elect one of its own. But that establishment, disconnected from the people it rules, senses, rightly, that it is unloved and even detested.

Having fixed the future, the establishment finds half of the country looking upon it with the same sullen contempt that our Founding Fathers came to look upon the overlords Parliament sent to rule them.

Establishment panic is traceable to another fear: Its ideology, its political religion, is seen by growing millions as a golden calf, a 20th-century god that has failed.

They should be afraid. From America to New Zealand, they have gradually backed the people of the West into a corner from which there is only one way out. We do not accept their legitimacy. We do not accept their authority, moral or otherwise. They have lost the Mandate of Heaven.

Soon the hour will be upon us. Given the growing fear of the Establishment, they will probably strike first. And, in doing so, they will spark the very revolution that terrifies them.

Donald Trump is not the savior. Donald Trump is not the movement. Donald Trump is the warning. It makes very little difference if he is elected or not. Because, as Mike Cernovich points out in the bestselling MAGA MINDSET, Trump is merely the symbol of the moment. There will be more to come.


(I think this is exactly right. Trump is just another spot on the continuum that started with the Tea Party and continued with Sarah Palin and moved on to Trump. All of them attacked viciously by the Rhinos and the conservative establishment. There is much more to come. More radical. More vociferous. More confrontational  and in your face. You can't put the GOP Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I think the idea of the establishment striking first is right on the money. If Hillary wins she will attempt something that could spark it off. An  executive order to seize guns the way they did in Australia for example. That is just the spark that could start the fire. The only way to avoid it is if Trump is elected and stops the slide. The establishment should hope that happens. Because they are really not going to like what happens next)

Vox Day's prescription to fix the NFL decline.

• Reduce the 17-week, 16-game season to 15 weeks, with 14 games.
• Ban all politics by players and the league. No more flags on helmets, pink cleats, or protests. If the league can discipline a player for wearing the wrong color wristband, it can do so for failing to stand at attention, Bud Grant-style, for the anthem. Black helmet stickers for one game to honor a deceased player, coach, or owner are acceptable.
• Cut down on the number of flags, particularly those that nullify a big play without having directly affected it. And get rid of instant replay. It's only made matters worse, to the extent that no one even knows what a catch is anymore.
• Stop emphasizing the pass. 500-yard passing games are flag football and BYU, not the NFL. Pass interference is 10 yards, automatic first down.
• Encourage more white players by adopting standard, race-neutral 2-game bans for an arrest, 4 more games for a conviction. Teams will tend to prefer the more law-abiding marginal white players over the more athletic marginal black players because the former will be able to stay on the field.
• No more wild card teams. Win the division, make the playoffs. Two rounds and the Super Bowl will end playoff fatigue.

Conservatism is dead. This is a class election not an ideology election.

The Flight 93 Election revisited By Vox Day September 14, 2016

Publius Decius Mus is taking a considerable amount of flak from conservatives because he is directly over the target, which is the staunchly pusillanimous way in which they have betrayed America and Americans for at least 50 years, and the way some of them are stilltrying to do so:

Conservatives have shouted since the beginning of Trump’s improbable rise: He’s not one of us! He is not conservative! And, indeed, in many ways, Trump is downright liberal. You might think that would make him more acceptable to the Left. But no. As “compassionate conservatism” did nothing to blunt leftist hatred of George W. Bush, neither do Trump’s quasi-liberal economic positions. In fact, they hate Trump much more. Trump is not conservative enough for the conservatives but way too conservative for the Left, yet somehow they find common cause. Earlier I posited that the reason is Trump’s position on immigration. Let me add two others.

The first is simply that Trump might win. He is not playing his assigned role of gentlemanly loser the way McCain and Romney did, and may well have tapped into some previously untapped sentiment that he can ride to victory. This is a problem for both the Right and the Left. The professional Right (correctly) fears that a Trump victory will finally make their irrelevance undeniable. The Left knows that so long as Republicans kept playing by the same rules and appealing to the same dwindling base of voters, there was no danger. Even if one of the old breed had won, nothing much would have changed, since their positions on the most decisive issues were effectively the same as the Democrats and because they posed no serious challenge to the administrative state.

Which points to the far more important reason. I urge readers to go back through John Marini’s argument, to which I cannot do anything close to full justice. Suffice to say here, the current governing arrangement of the United States is rule by a transnational managerial class in conjunction with the administrative state. To the extent that the parties are adversarial at the national level, it is merely to determine who gets to run the administrative state for four years. Challenging the administrative state is out of the question. The Democrats are united on this point. The Republicans are at least nominally divided. But those nominally opposed (to the extent that they even understand the problem, which is: not much) are unwilling or unable to actually do anything about it. Are challenges to the administrative state allowed only if they are guaranteed to be ineffectual? If so, the current conservative movement is tailor-made for the task. Meanwhile, the much stronger Ryan wing of the Party actively abets the administrative state and works to further the managerial class agenda.

Trump is the first candidate since Reagan to threaten this arrangement. To again oversimplify Marini (and Aristotle), the question here is: who rules? The many or the few? The people or the oligarchs? Our Constitution says: the people are sovereign, and their rule is mediated through representative institutions, limited by written Constitutional norms. The administrative state says: experts must rule because various advances (the march of history) have made governing too complicated for public deliberation, and besides, the unwise people often lack knowledge of their own best interests even on rudimentary matters. When the people want something that they shouldn’t want or mustn’t have, the administrative state prevents it, no matter what the people vote for. When the people don’t want something that the administrative state sees as salutary or necessary, it is simply imposed by fiat.

Don’t want more immigration? Too bad, we know what’s best. Think bathrooms should be reserved for the two biological sexes? Too bad, we rule. And so on and on.

To all the “conservatives” yammering about my supposed opposition to Constitutional principle (more on that below) and who hate Trump, I say: Trump is mounting the first serious national-political defense of the Constitution in a generation. He may not see himself in those terms. I believe he sees himself as a straightforward patriot who just wants to do what is best for his country and its people. Whatever the case, he is asserting the right of the sovereign people to make their government do what they want it to do, and not do things they don’t want it to do, in the teeth of determined opposition from a managerial class and administrative state that want not merely different policies but above all to perpetuate their own rule.

If the Constitution has any force or meaning, then “We the People” get to decide not merely who gets to run the administrative state—which, whatever the outcome, will always continue on the same path—more fundamentally, we get to decide what policies we want and which we don’t.

Conservatism as we have known it since Reagan is dead. Whether the Alt Right or NeoTrumpism or something else will ascend in its place is presently unknown, but we can be fairly certain that conservatives will never win another national election, thanks to the demographic transformation they supported, and, in many cases, still support.

Shed no tears and spare no pity for them. Like every ideology that stands in opposition to observable reality, their eventual irrelevance is assured, it is merely a question of time.

Gondors Choice!

From Vox Populi September 10, 2016
John C. Wright laments what he sees as internecine warfare on the Right in the place of a unified effort against the Left:

The Dems are merely the political arm of the darkness.

It was the Reds who invented the idea of Critical Theory, that is, accuse Christendom of each and every imperfection imaginable, especially in areas, such as race relations or the equality of sexes, where the criticism cannot exist outside Christendom. It was done to weaken confidence in Western institutions, especially the Church, the family, the marketplace, the townhall, the entertainment industry, the courts, the academy, and the press.

Over the decades, the press was captured partly and then fully, then the academy (which is now merely a seminary for Leftism), then the courts of law (which began systematically to undermine rule of law), and Hollywood (Sen McCarthy was right, and the Hollywood ten were commies) and then townhall (which was taken over by a donor caste of Leftwing millionaires, with whom Trump broke ranks and turned against).

Wall Street was basically bought and broken to the whip after the sabotage by the government of the housing market, the student loan industry, the motor car industry, and health care practice. The marketplace is firmly under Leftist control, which is ironic, since the millionaires learned that by funding politicians who denounce them, the millionaires can maintain their wealth and power and suppress free market competition.

The family was successfully smashed to bits among the inner city blacks, American Indians living on reservations, and poor whites. No fault divorce is to blame, and the normalization and celebration of sodomy is the victory lap.

The Anglican and Episcopalian denominations have spat in the face of Christ and embraced Caesar, and kneel to give oral sexual favors to the homosex lobby, so these congregations had declared their fealty to antichrist. The Roman Catholic Church, a fair and strong fortress, still holds out, but the press has decided on a policy of pretending Pope Francis is one of them, and many an unwary reader, including Catholics who should know better, are deceived.

The darkness is on the brink of absolute victory. The last few lamps are fluttering and guttering and the oil is scarce.

And there is still no organized opposition to any of this.

For a time, I had some hope in the voters electrified by Trump, but, like the Tea Party, both the mainstream conservatives and the newer movements and the treasonous establishment GOP have decided to fritter away their energy attacking and provoking attacks from each other. Instead of riding to the aid of Gondor, the Riders of Rohan decided this was the best moment to loot Minas Tirith.

What the Alt Right is.....From Vox Day at Vox Popoli

What the Alt Right Is!  By Vox Day  @ Voxpopoli blog

In the interest of developing a core Alt Right philosophy upon which others can build.

1. The Alt Right is of the political right in both the American and the European sense of the term. Socialists are not Alt Right. Progressives are not Alt Right. Liberals are not Alt Right. Communists, Marxists, Marxians, cultural Marxists, and neocons are not Alt Right.
2. The Alt Right is an ALTERNATIVE to the mainstream conservative movement in the USA that is nominally encapsulated by Russel Kirk's 10 Conservative Principles, but in reality has devolved towards progressivism. It is also an alternative to libertarianism.
3. The Alt Right is not a defensive attitude and rejects the concept of noble and principled defeat. It is a forward-thinking philosophy of offense, in every sense of that term. The Alt Right believes in victory through persistence and remaining in harmony with science, reality, cultural tradition, and the lessons of history.
4. The Alt Right believes Western civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement and supports its three foundational pillars: Christianity, the European nations, and the Rule of Law.
5. The Alt Right is openly and avowedly nationalist. It supports all nationalisms and the right of all nations to exist, homogeneous and unadulterated by foreign invasion and immigration.

Inconvenient Truth Number 678: Are blacks worse than Atomic Bombs?

Are blacks worse than Atomic Bombs?

by Vox Day @ Vox Popoli August 14, 2016

I was drawn to look into this for myself after Snopes tried to dismiss a meme that was going around comparing Hiroshima to Detroit on the basis of some rather spurious grounds, so I thought I'd have a look at the evidence myself.

Now, some have argued that because Detroit's core downtown is still intact, this proves that the decay of the city surrounding it is irrelevant. But a city is more than its downtown, as the comparative population figures demonstrate the same contrast that the pictures do.

Detroit population 
1950: 1.8 million
2016: 680,000

Hiroshima population
1945: 260,000
2015: 1.2 million

Note that this is the most favorable possible comparison for Detroit, as the 1945 Hiroshima population is post-bombing and is based upon the smallest reported casualty count. Moreover, Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, which was the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in US history.

The claim that the pictures are misleading is a dishonest and knowingly deceitful response. The fact that the downtown still exists merely indicates the destructive process is not yet entirely complete, as that downtown is now "a tiny urban island" in a grass-covered, depopulated sea.

A troubling sign.....or a sign of things to come?

An NCO leaves the US Army
By Vox Day @Vox Popoli August 13, 2016

And none too soon, by the looks of things:

I leave the Army for good in September of this year.  My chain of command has been shell shocked that I am going through with it.  Two years ago when I first came to grips with what was happening and resolved to no longer be a part of it, there was derision and even an officer telling me that voicing my opinions about the state of the US economy and its moral failings could be considered a violation of the UCMJ for conduct “prejudicial to good order and discipline.”

When I gave my Operations NCO a copy of the book “A Distant Mirror” by Barbara Tuchman he came to me a month later stating that if there is a civil war, he and his fellow Hispanics will “have to choose sides.”

When I told my first sergeant why I would not be re-enlisting, she said “Don’t you want to re-enlist to get your 20?”

I said that I wanted to re-enlist, but I couldn’t, that my pension was nothing compared to being prepared to sacrifice my life. Then she and I went on to discuss my (your) ideas on why there was a possible collapse of the US government in the future, she went from denying the possibility to stating “Well, it all depends on what level of collapse you’re talking about,”  needless to say I was stunned.

The re-enlistment NCO refuses to talk to me, and several other mid to senior level NCOs who previously thought I was kidding have left the Active reserves for the Individual Ready Reserves.

One stated that he too was disgusted with both candidates for president and then asked me if I thought things would be so bad, why wouldn’t I stay in and try to fix things “from the inside”?  I cited the example of the Yugoslav army and how there were fire fights within units and stated that I would refuse to follow unconstitutional orders.  I then asked, “Don’t you think if one of the two candidates gets in power that either might order the power of the state to be used against their political enemies?  That’s what would be likely to START those kinds of firefights, right?”

If you're not familiar with military culture, NCOs are the mortar that hold the whole thing together. Young officers are eminently replaceable, as new ones can be trained up in a matter of months, but the veteran NCOs that provide them guidance are not.

ESPN is losing subscribers at an astonishing rate and they don't care because their SJW agenda is more important than money!

The Cost of SJW Convergence by Vox Day August 6. 2016
ESPN is paying it, having lost 4 million subscribers and $350 million in the last year:

In the past five years ESPN has lost 11,346,000 subscribers according to Nielsen data.

If you combine that with ESPN2 and ESPNU subscriber losses this means that ESPN has lost over a billion dollars in cable and satellite revenue just in the past five years, an average of $200 million each year. That total of a billion dollars hits ESPN in the pocketbook not just on a yearly basis, but for every year going forward.

It's gone forever.

That's not just bad, this is downright cataclysmic.

And it's getting worse.

In the past year ESPN lost 4.159 million subscribers, that's another $350 million in lost revenue across the ESPN family of networks.

Here is a post that will dial the outrage meter up to red zone!

We'll make it up on Volume
Vox Popoli Blog by Vox Day July 31, 2016
Steve Sailer observes that Muslims serving in the US military have been a net negative since 2000:

As far as I can tell, 14 Muslim-American U.S. soldiers have died in this century versus 15 American soldiers murdered in a couple of terrorist attacks by Muslim-American U.S. soldiers.

Okay, so we’re losing soldiers on each one. (Never mind 3,000 dead civilians in the U.S.)

But we’ll make up for it on volume!

But that’s not the point. The point is that global empire costs a lot of money, which lines a lot of pockets around the Beltway, so we need to keep the Invade / Invite perpetual motion money machine going.

The Khizr Khan story was pretty good rhetoric for the Democrats. But it was hampered by the fundamental weakness of rhetoric that is used to sell falsehoods rather than the truth. Of course, one can't effectively counter rhetoric with dialectic, although Trump could have been even colder than he was in pointing to the silence of Khan's headscarf-wearing mother.

The more effective rhetoric would have been to point out that Khan's death likely saved American lives, as he was killed before he experienced an attack of Sudden Jihad Syndrome and turned his guns on his fellow soldiers. The outrage would have been epic and would have served to underline the fact that even some who wear the uniform and are sworn to defend the US Constitution are not, and never will be, Americans.

Conservatism in Ruins...a commentary by Vox Day

Conservatives








Vox Popoli by Vox Day July 26, 2016
Andrew Klavan's first thoughts on rebuilding conservatism:

The conservative movement has collapsed and is in ruins. Its vehicle for political expression, the Republican Party, is now in the hands of an authoritarian nationalist who has never read the Constitution and does not believe in free expression, free trade or the separation of powers. Its central vehicle for expression in the news media is in disarray as Fox News becomes embroiled in scandal. Even its defenders on talk radio and in the blogosphere are severely at odds as they are forced to choose whether to defend Trump as the lesser of two evils or to stand fast with the founding fathers against both terrible sides.

The conservative movement has collapsed and lies in ruins. And it has done so due to the deceit and dishonesty of conservative commentators like Andrew Klavan, who apparently feel the need to make provably false statements about everyone from Donald Trump to the Founding Fathers.

The New Revolution....A Rabble in Arms!

Vox Popoli by Vox Day July 4, 2016

Joel Kotkin tries to explain why the world is rebelling against the experts claiming the right to lead it:

The Great Rebellion is on and where it leads nobody knows.

Its expressions range from Brexit to the Trump phenomena and includes neo-nationalist and unconventional insurgent movement around the world. It shares no single leader, party or ideology. Its very incoherence, combined with the blindness of its elite opposition, has made it hard for the established parties across what’s left of the democratic world to contain it.

What holds the rebels together is a single idea: the rejection of the neo-liberal crony capitalist order that has arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union. For two decades, this new ruling class could boast of great successes: rising living standards, limited warfare, rapid technological change and an optimism about the future spread of liberal democracy. Now, that’s all fading or failing.

Living standards are stagnating, vicious wars raging, poverty-stricken migrants pouring across borders and class chasms growing. Amidst this, the crony capitalists and their bureaucratic allies have only grown more arrogant and demanding. But the failures of those who occupy what Lenin called “the commanding heights” are obvious to most of the citizens on whose behalf they claim to speak and act.

The Great Rebellion draws on five disparate and sometimes contradictory causes that find common ground in frustration with the steady bureaucratic erosion of democratic self-governance: class resentment, racial concerns, geographic disparities, nationalism, cultural identity. Each of these strains appeals to different constituencies, but together they are creating a political Molotov cocktail.

It's moderately amusing that Kotkin first asserts that nobody knows where the Great Rebellion is leading before promptly explaining where it is going to go. He doesn't know. No one does, but the idea that someone whose sympathies clearly lie with the dishonest, predatory elite that has met with such a visceral rejection from widely disparate people suggests that he will no more be able to anticipate its direction than he was able to see it coming in the first place.

Vox Day talks about "Quintessential Cuckservatism"

Vox Popoli June 25, 2016 by Vox Day
Rod Dreher demonstrates the effete and useless nature of modern conservatism:

The Speaker of the House of Representatives was shouted down by Democratic Congressman as he attempted to regain control of the House of Representatives. Actual US Congressmen behaving like a bunch of giddy Oberlin undergraduates.

They had better not give in. Look, on gun control matters, I am generally — generally — more sympathetic to Democrats than to Republicans. But this mob insurrection on the House floor is profoundly unsettling. I have not looked closely at the legislation, so it is entirely possible that I might support the Democratic proposal. But to attempt to get one’s way by showing utter contempt for rules of the House? No. No, no, no. Their passion does not justify their behavior.

This country is in trouble.

Déjà vu all over again.

Now is the time in which all good Republicans put on long faces and pretend to be upset that Donald Trump is behind in the very early polls:

Just a few weeks ago, Trump supporters were upbeat because he was within just a few points of Hillary Clinton. This was a false dawn. What they didn’t take into account is that she was still in a pitched battle with Bernie Sanders, which meant the Democratic support she can count on in the fall was suppressed. Trump, having effectively won the nomination, was consolidating Republican support. Once Clinton effectively secured the nomination, which she has now done, the gap was bound to increase. The fact that Trump was still losing to Clinton when he had that advantage should actually have been a warning sign.

What should be particularly worrisome for those rooting for Trump is that things have gotten markedly worse. Negative views of Trump have increased 10 points in the last month. That is because he is acting just as he has acted all year. The hope that he’ll flip the switch and become more “presidential,” more unifying, and less repulsive just isn’t happening. The Trump attacks on Judge Curiel and his heritage, arguing that because Curiel was a “Mexican” (he is not) he had an “inherent conflict of interest” and was, therefore, unable to render a fair judgment–along with Trump dabbling in more crazy conspiracy theories (Vince Foster was murdered!) and now suggesting that the president is either connected to/sympathetic with Islamic terrorists–are all simply the latest additions to the same script.

Republicans now have to struggle with the realization of what they have done, the nature of the man their party has nominated, and the coming political catastrophe. It is a very painful time for the party of Lincoln.