VIDEO: Is wokeness really dead?

Is the voting public finally losing patience with progressive politics? How real is the anti-woke backlash? Brendan O'Neill, the chief political writer at Spiked (or Sp!ked, if you like) is the author of a new book which tackles these questions.

In, Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism, and Technocracy, Mr O'Neill.makes the case that across western countries in both North America and Europe, the tide is turning against so-called “wokeism” and that the pendulum is swinging hard the other way. But, he warns, the hydra-headed monster isn't dead yet.

In this video, Mr O'Neill is interviewed by Spiked editor Tom Slater. They discuss how the elites' crazy ideologies are colliding with reality, common sense and public fury. If you can handle the English accents, you'll hear why he believes the common sense of the ordinary people is prevailing over woke politics, but that the left lunacy, although receding, is far from dead. 

 

There's a free speech issue here... indeed, freedom of thought... particularly in Canuckistan, where the Minister of Justice (so-called) announced on Tuesday that the Liberal government of Marx Carnage are ready to limit debate on their bill banning hate symbols, which also removes the religious exemption to some hate speech laws. 

Leftist ideology is inherently authoritarian. When moral certainty is paired with institutional power (universities, HR departments, media, professional bodies), dissenting views are treated as not mere disagreement but heresy.

As our old friend Dr Jordan Peterson learned, there are social and/or professional penalties for expressing unpopular views. The consequences of speaking out are such that academics and professionals find that discretion is the better part of value and start censoring themselves.

Disagreement from the prevailing orthodoxy is treated aas a moral defect. Framing complex social issues in binary moral terms -- you're either right (like us) or wrong -- reduces tolerance for ambiguity and gives people kudos for virtue signalling rather than the seeking of pragmatic solutions to problems.

Instead of being treated as individuals, people are now treated as members of identity categories. That's  how we find people "identifying as" a group of initials: L, G, B, T, 2S, POC, and so forth. This actually encourages divisions in society rather than the tolerant multiculturalism which is the stated goal of the ideologues. "Let's all form a circle, hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya'." Not any longer!

VIDEO: Warning! Is the Roman Catholic Church about to follow the United Church of Canada into irrelevance and perdition?

Two million members lost in 40 years! That's what happened to the United Church of Canada. In 1965, the United Church was Canada's largest Protestant denomination, with 1,064,000 members and 3700 churches. It was regarded as reflecting the national identity of the non-French part of Canada.

Today the United Church has just 375,000 members -- an 80% collapse in two generations. A large number of its church are either closed or empty, save for a few elderly folk who recognize that the church they attend no longer believes what they believe, but go anyway because that's what they do.

What happend? The United Church, founded barely a century ago as a merger of four Protestant denominations with a total combined membership of about 600,000 members, got caught up in the cultural revolution of the hippy-dippy `60s. It went willingly down the rabbit hole of progressivism, liberalism and, latterly, "wokeism".

The policies of the church are totally inclusive and liberal. There are no restrictions of gender, sexual orientation or marital status for a person considering entering the ministry. LGBTQ++ "worship leaders" are welcome. The heresy of relativism is embraced. Interfaith marriages are recognized. Communion (the symbol only -- not the real Body and Blood of Jesus) is offered to everyone, regardless of age, religion or anything else.

In trying hardest to be relevant, the United Church of Canada became the most irrelevant. And that reveals something profound about the failure of progressive theology -- the same theology now being adopted by the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church, contrary to its own teachings and commandments. 

For the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ while He was with us on Earth, the handwriting is on the wall. Will Catholics follow their supposed leaders into the new "church of accompaniment", Francis' New Church of the New World Order, or will they listen to the voices of Catholic tradition and hold onto the Faith of our fathers, that we may yet be saved.

VIDEO LINK: Breitbart FULL interview with Victor Davis Hanson

Elites Are Destroying America with Globalism, Leftism, and Tribalism That's the headline atop Breitbart's two-hour interview with American conservative commentator, classicist, and military historian Victor Davis Hanson. In examining how America is being undermined by a modern globalist aristocracy, Mr Hanson draws on analyses in his latest book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America. 

Mr Hanson warns of lessening governmental accountability to citizens via the dissolution of American citizenship. The concept of citizenship, he adds is an essential component of Western civilization.

In his book, Mr Hanson argues that the concept of the "citizen" is historically rare. Yet it was among America's most valued ideals for over two centuries. But without shock treatment, American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish. 

The historical forces that led to this crisis (Mr Hanson writes) are:

* the evisceration of the middle class over the last fifty years, which has made many Americans dependent on the federal government

* open borders, which  have undermined the idea of allegiance to a particular place

* identity politics have eradicated our collective civic sense of self, and

* a top-heavy administrative state which endangers personal liberty, along with 

* formal efforts to weaken the Constitution.

As in the revolutionary years of 1848, 1917, and 1968, 2020 ripped away our complacency about the future. But in the aftermath, Mr Hanson believes, we as Americans can rebuild and recover what we have lost. The choice is ours.

Having watched the video, Walt's New Year's resolution -- the only one -- is to run [or ski? Ed.] to the  nearest bookstore and buy the book!

It's over!

I and about eleventy million other people witnessed yesterday's... errr... proceedings in and around the Capitol. As "mostly peaceful" protests go, this one lived up to its name. 

Although one woman was killed, supposed by "law enforcement", I didn't see a whole lot of violence. For the most part I saw protesters "engaging" with "law enforcement" -- shouting at them, haranguing them, reasoning with them. And I wondered how many of the assorted national guardsmen, cops and rent-a-cops had misgivings about confronting the protesters, all for the sake of making sure Joe Biden and Kamala Harris got formally elected, not just anointed by the media.

This morning questions are being asked by the usual suspects -- SJWs, the lamestream media, the anti-police gang -- about how the protesters were able to mass on Capitol Hill, and gain entry into the Capitol itself, so easily. The suggesion is that it was some sort of conspiracy between President Trump,  his supporters and "law enforcement" to stage a paramilitary coup. As if!

Whether the demonstration was orchestrated or not, it proved to be counter-productive. I understand where the protesters were coming from. Oh boy, do I understand! But what, I wonder, did the protesters think would happen? Did they really think occupying the Capitol would keep the solons from meeting... forever? Did they think "taking it to the street" would convince some of the anti-Trump senators and congresspersons to vote in favour of the objections filed by Senator Cruz et al?  Fat chance!

If anything, the protest appears to have changed the mind of some Republicans. When the objection to the counting of the votes of the Arizona electors came to a vote around 2200 EST, there were only six (6) "ayes" and 93 nays. The objections and horseshit-laden speeches continued into the wee hours, but only for the sake of form, and the vote of the Electoral College was duly confirmed. 

For me, the day and the result were best summed up by Senator Lindsey Graham when he said, "It's over!" So it is.

I note that President-elect Biden -- for now we can actually call him that -- decided last week to skip the traditional Inauguration Day parade. I wonder if he and his handlers were truly afraid for his security, or is that they were afraid of the optics of taking a victory lap following a rigged election which half the American people believe they stole by fraud and deceit.

Of course there was fraud and cheating, said some "honorable senators" last night. But there was no evidence (they said) that it was "massive". Just a little bit, you understand. Not enough to make any real difference. So that's OK then... they said. I had the sense that some who said such things were really acknowledging that the Democrats were better at cheating than the Republicans... this time! 

As they say in Lake Wobegon: What now, do ya think? I'll tell ya what. With the run-off election for both of Georgia's Senate seats now decided in favour of the Dumbocrats (albeit by narrow margins), the US of A is in for four years of affirmative action (read: reverse racism), extreme environmentalism (read: green-scam), tax-and-spend budgets, Antifa riots, weakening of "law enforcement", and all the other liberal "progressive" policies that have made California what it is today. God save the United States of America! 

Further reading: "Pelosi Appoints AOC, Other 'Squad' Members to Powerful Oversight Committee; Leftists Promptly Reveal Radical Agenda", by Mike Miller, on RedState, 6/1/21.

Hey lefties! Are you really ready for a civil war?

Further reading: What tool are the lefties using to poke the bear? Answer: "The Devil’s Pitchfork: Seeking the Origin of Our Present Troubles", by David Solway, American Thinker, 5/7/20. Mr Solway explains the three-pronged progressivist campaign to destroy America.

VIDEO: Tranny Blaire White disses tranny Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv for human rights complaint re not being able to get his/her balls waxed

Ed. here. Walt tells me there is no way he can write a better introduction to this story than that posted by our old friend Rex Murphy in "The Yaniv outrage has left Canada, rightly, the laughing stock of the world", in the National Post, 27/7/19. Rex writes:
A friend of mine recently went to his local garage, claimed he was a re-conditioned ’79 Chevy Nova and asked them to do a timing check on the carburetor and rotate his tires. They said they wouldn’t because he didn’t have a carburetor, or tires, and they only worked on “cars.” He is off now to the local human rights tribunal (after a stop for spare parts at Canadian Tire).

The story Rex refers to has been widely reported in America, Australia and Britain, but not in Canada, where the big three (((controlled media))) -- the CBC, CTV, Global -- have agreed amongst themselves to bury it, for fear of offending the suddenly powerful "transgender community" or dealing a setback to the cause of "transgender rights". That would be because the actual story is so ridiculous, such an abuse of common sense, as to defy belief. As Blaire White -- herself post-op tranny -- points out, it really does look bad for the "community".

In a nutshell -- that word being perfect here -- it concerns the efforts of Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv, a self-identified pre-op (= still has testicles) transexual to get a Brazilian wax on his groin. He/she/xe has approached over a dozen businesses which offer the service -- all of them, curiously, operated by women -- and has for some reason(s) been turned down. The technicians have said that they are too busy, or haven't been trained to do that to people with ovular appendages, or are forbidden by the tenets of their religion.

Jonathan/Jessica is outraged that he/she/xe has been insulted and discriminated against, and has filed complaints with the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, which is already notorious for hearing frivolous complaints, as in their prosecution of Mark Steyn. Mr Murphy asks: "...is it simply enough...for someone to walk into its offices, self-declare 'I am a trans woman and I can't get my scrotum waxed,' and have them take on the case? Is that truly all it takes?"

What does this case tell us about the dominance of radical progressivism in western society, particularly on the Pacific coast (for BC is Canada's version of California, just not quite so degenerate...yet). The mind boggles. Anyway, here's Blaire White's take on the whole sordid mess.



Further viewing: Lindsay Shepherd, a young Canadian woman who has been raked over the coals, and banned from Twitter, for standing up for free speech and against progressive censorship, has had her Twitter account reinstated. Click here to watch her video on how she got banned and unbanned, and on human rights tribunals, the Yaniv case and its impact on the respondents. WARNING: Contains vulgar language related to female genitalia!

Footnote: Speaking of "transgender rights", a report just in from Pakistan says police have found the bodies of two transgender women who were tortured and beaten to death. Senior officer Mohammad Ali Zia says the bodies were recovered late Saturday from a locked house in eastern Punjab province. He says it's unclear what motivated the killings, which appear to have taken place three days ago. Transgender people are often subjected to abuse in the conservative, Muslim-majority shithole. They are also among the victims of so-called honour killings carried out by relatives to punish perceived sexual transgressions.

VIDEO: Reid Henrichs likens his dead rooster to socialists

Ed. here. A couple of Walt's agents (PBUT) have noticed that Walt has been MIA since the atrocious Islamic terrorist attack in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. He is not ill, just having difficulty finding words that won't get him arrested for "hate crime", Islamophobia, racism or all of the above. While he's recovering his faculties, I'll repost some interesting articles or videos, so faithful readers will have something new(ish) to read and watch.

We begin with "What My Dead Rooster and Socialists Have in Common", a Valor Ridge video featuring Reid Henrichs.

In this educational allegory, Mr Henrichs describes how an entitled, aggressive, and ungrateful rooster met his end. There are also many similar traits between farm life and real world socialists. The utopia they plan to bring about is far worse than the reality of luxury they live in. Socialism is the most corrupt, oppressive, and deadly ideology this planet has ever seen. The information in this video is for educational purposes, and serves to illustrate the wisdom of nature over the mischief of progressive do-gooders who actually do evil.



Out of the mouths of farmers and other "plain folks" oft comes wisdom.

VIDEO: 4-minute truth bomb: what happened to our society

Patrick "Pat" Condell is a writer, polemicist, and former stand-up comedian. In his early career he wrote and performed in alternative comedy shows during the 1980s and 1990s in London, winning the Time Out Comedy Award in 1991. He was also a regular panelist on BBC Radio 1's Loose Talk. Mr Condell seems to have given up on comedy, perhaps because nothing's funny any more. In this short video (3:55) he sums up everything that went wrong in the society in which we grew up, the society we loved. There's no place there, any more, for such as we. Watch and listen.



Mr Condell is right in what he's saying. Let me repeat that. Mr Condell is right in what he's saying. If you know that, you should also know what's the right thing to do... that's right... not left, but right! Don't be shy! Don't be apologetic! Be RIGHT!

Wynne loses, conservatives win in ON -- a warning to "progressives"

It's taken me a few hours to get going this morning, following a night of toasting [marshmallows? Ed.] but a small serving of Ma Nifkins' jellied gin has me almost back to normal, so let me share some thoughts from yesterday's provincial election in the Canadian province of Ontari-ari-ario.

To set the stage, and get our American readers up to speed, Ontario is one of the more "progressive" provinces in one of the most liberal nations on earth, outside of Scandinavia. For the last 15 years it has been misruled by the Liberal Party -- the party of Big Government and social justice for all (except for straight, white, Canadian-born males). For the last five years, the Premier (head of the provincial government) was Kathleen Wynne, pictured at left below, the image on the right being that of her sister.

Ms Wynne is proud to be a lesbian, and is largely responsible for the much-reviled dirty sex education curriculum imposed on Ontario schools (including Catholic schools) in 2015. See WWW passim.

After 15 years of the Liberal nanny state's social engineering and tax-and-spend mismanagement, the people of Ontario were crying, begging for change. But who would change what the liberal elites and the (((controlled media))) keep saying is the natural order of things? Could anyone promise to turn back the clock?

Two other parties -- three, if you count the Green Party -- said they would do things differently. The socialist New Democratic Party (NDP), led by Andrea Horwath -- another short, shrill lady (?) -- promised to tax more and spend more, to give Ontarians free drugs, free dental care, and the sun, moon and stars, all by making the corporations and the rich, pay for it. As part of that, Ms Horwath said she would declare Ontario a "sanctuary province", so the bounties of socialism would be available to the huddled masses entering Canada illegally, at a cost of a mere C$2.5 billion (about $1.93 billion in real money).

The alternative -- and quite a stark choice it was, according to Ms Wynne herself -- was the oxymoronically named Progressive Conservative Party, led by Doug Ford, brother of the late Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, famous for having appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Like his brother, Doug Ford portrayed himself as a tax-cutting warrior, a fiscal conservative who believes governments waste too much taxpayers' money. Over and over, he repeated a simple message: a Ford government will be a responsible steward for taxpayers' money, and that "help is on the way for hard-working families!"

Mr Ford said he would cut taxes, cut the price of gas, cut hydro rates, cut the price of beer and eliminate the deficit while spending billions on transit and infrastructure projects. He had a simple product, and he was selling it at a lower price than anybody else in terms of tax cuts and other commitments of reduced prices. Those are tangible things that people understood and -- after 15 years of liberalism -- very much wanted.

And guess what, folks? It worked! The simple small-C conservative message, delivered by a straight white male -- the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with -- carried the Progressive Conservativess to a solid victory over lefties. Here's Doug Ford celebrating going to Queen's Park today as the head of a majority government.

Any resemblance to Donald Trump is purely coincidental, don't you think? Mr Ford's detractors say otherwise. They accused him of cultivating the same image to win the same voters -- the plain people of Ontario, ignored for so long by liberal chattering classes of downtown Toronto. Whether he did so deliberately or not doesn't matter. It worked! Don Guy, a veteran Liberal political campaign strategist and former chief of staff to Kathleen Wynne's predecessor, Dalton McGuinty, said "[Mr Ford] was the ideal candidate because he gave small-c conservative voters a very comfortable home, a very comfortable archetype and a very strong message."

Kathleen Wynne had a mutual love affair (philosophical, not physical!) with Canuck Prime Minister Justin "Mr Socks" Trudeau. She shared Junior's "progressive ideals", and could be counted on to support his view of government as an agent for change. Doug Ford? Not at all! A price on carbon? He's against it. Asking the wealthy to shoulder a greater tax burden? He's against that, too. Free drugs for all? Social housing, especially for "refugees" and the idle poor? Gender-based analysis of government initiatives? Such entitlement programmes weren't at the bottom of Mr Ford's to-do list. They weren't on it at all! The priorities of a Ford government, he told voters, begin with "A" for "austerity".

A political scientist at Queen's University, in Kingston ON, said, "I think the fact that he came across as sensible during the debates really helped him a lot. He didn't get upset during them. It was a very controlled campaign. He was very much in control as well. He had his key messages. He stayed on point. He repeated them." Mr Ford's message that he would find "efficiencies" in government resonated with Ontario voters, she said. "People do see government as being wasteful in some ways. Everybody's got a story about that, so that kind of hits home."

As well as a warning to the libtards, progressives and SJWs, Doug Ford's victory -- and it's very much his, personally! -- is a good lesson for small-C conservatives everywhere. Keep the message simple, stay focussed on bread-and-butter issues more than ideology, and you will win. Next target for Canadians -- turf Trudeau in 2019! If I were "Mr Socks", I'd be quaking in my loafers.

Note from Ed.: For American readers who are wondering what's with all the blue in a conservative celebration... party colours in Canada are, like those of Britain, the reverse of what you're used to in the Excited States of America. Liberals wear red. Conservatives wear blue. The Greens favour green -- DUH! As for the NDP, who you'd think would be in the pink... their colour is orange. Go figure.

MAGA to MAAA - Walt explains President Trump's "trade war" strategy

The (((controlled media))) in the USA, Canada and western Europe are aghast at the American government's announcement, yesterday, that punishing tariffs against imported steel, aluminum and other products would go into effect today.

The importation of such good from coutries such as Canada and Mexico, the administration says, constitutes a threat to national security. Mr Dressup, the Acting Prime Minister of Canada, calls that claim "absurd", and for once he is right. But that doesn't mean President Trump is wrong to fire the first shot in what could become a global trade war. Walt will explain.

Next weekend Canada is due to hose ["host", shurely! Ed.] the G-7 summit, a meeting of the leaders of the world's seven most economically important countries, including Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Canada, and the USA. [That's only six. Ed.] [I can't remember the seventh. Would you believe Italy? Walt] A few years ago they were trying to bring Russia into the circle, to make it G-8, but President Putin wasn't having any. Now the libtards on the "At Issue" segment of the CBC national news are suggesting that the coming meeting will really be the G-6+1, since (they say) President Trump has clearly signalled his intention of "taking the USA out of the world community". That is not absurd. Walt will explain.

The "world community" is a pretty sick community. With the possible exception of Japan and the certain exception of the red half of the Paranoid States of America, the G-7 is infected with four fatal diseases, which are killing western, Christian (?) civilization, slowly but surely. The diseases, which are now not epidemic but endemic, are:
Globalism - aka one-worldism; the rich must give their wealth to the poor
Multiculturalism - all races and cultures are equally good, but the white race is not so good as the others
Secularism - denying religion and the need for religion; making man into god
Relativism - the notion that all cultures, are civilizations are of equal value

We could add liberalism and "progressivism", which are the creeds of all right-thinking people in western Europe and North America, according to the elites and opinion-makers who know (better than you and I) what's wrong with the world -- racism, colonialism, white supremacy, yada yada yada -- and what must be done to fix it. What's that, you ask? Why, the establishment of a one-world government, of course, so that the Disunited Nations can rule us all. Political rock stars like Canada's Trudeau II are practically wetting themselves in anticipation of being chosen Benevolent Dictator of the Brave New World.

"Join us! Join us!", the one-worlders say to the only country which stands apart from the movement to make us all one big happy family. That country is the USA. The Prez nearly succeeded in eradicating American exceptionalism and surrendering the country to the feckless foreigners. Truly, Americans dodged a bullet by rejecting Barry's anointed successor, the one who would carry on his "legacy". Under President Trump, America stands alone against the suicide of the west, and a good thing too!

It's not easy to read POTUS' mind [Reminder: Comments are moderated! Ed.] but my take on the imposition of tariffs against America's "allies" -- like the French surrender-monkeys -- is that it's just part of a bigger vision, which is... wait for it... to take the USA out of the so-called "world community". However timidly, Britiain is backing out of the European Union. Why can't America leave the G-7, the World Trade Organization, the UN, and any other international organization which exists chiefly to subjugate the USA and "redistribute" American wealth to the shithole countries of the world? If that's President Trump's real goal, Walt says GO FOR IT! Make America Great Again is a good idea. Make America Alone Again is even better!

Further reading:
Burnham, James: The Suicide of the West: an essay on the meaning and destiny of liberalism - 2nd ed. - Encounter Books, 2014
Murray, Douglas: The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam - Bloomsbury Continuum, 2017 - see "Douglas Murray explains the lie of multiculturalism", WWW 24/9/17 - includes video
Steyn, Mark: America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It - Regnery Publishing, 2006 - see "Muslim journalist admits Mark Steyn was right", WWW 22/6/16

Are you ready for the brave new world of fashion?

As the pussification of the West progresses, here's what you can look forward to in the brave new world of fashions for ze.

Credit where credit is due. This was created by "Captain Craptek (Haberdasher in training)" and posted on The People's Blog. Don't break your wrist clicking on the link to read the accompanying text because there isn't any. But I do recommend you bookmark the blog. You may think it's satire but it's actually a grim prediction of the world in which we'll be living in soon... too soon... if the "progressives" have their way.

Ken Dryden explains how Hellery and the media blew the election

There are those who think of hockey players as big, dumb guys who beat each other upside the head with curved sticks. Some of them are. But some are well educated, thinking, feeling human beings. Intellectual, even. One of the latter types is Ken Dryden: lawyer, teacher, author, former member of the Canadian cabinet, and Hall of Fame NHL goaltender. [Poor Len wants it clearly understood that Mr Dryden played always and only for the Montréal Canadiens! Ed.]

Even when he was on the ice, in the middle of a game, Ken Dryden could be seen observing and thinking. This picture says it all. There he is, taking it all in, seeing the obvious and the not-so-obvious, figuring out what's going on. Like many thoughtful Canucks, Mr Dryden has spent the last couple of months pondering American politics, the events of last Tuesday and what the Trump triumph means for the Excited States of America, the Democratic Party and the lamestream media.

How could Mrs Bill Clinton, her Democratic and other supporters, and virtually all of the country's press and broadcast pundits get it all so wrong? Mr Dryden presents his analysis in a powerful op-ed piece in today's Toronto Star, headed "Clinton, media never understood Trump".

That the piece should appear in the Toronto Red Star is rather ironic, given that the Star has this year moved even more to the left than normal. It has long been a propaganda organ for the Liberal Party, and now finds itself the smug and self-righteous voice of progressivism and the fight for "social justice". Here are some other articles in its Commentary section today: "Why did women vote for Trump?"; "Canada could have its own Donald Trump" (intended as a warning); "Trump’s victory has become Obama’s legacy"; "We are really going to miss Obama"; "Prepare for the new world disorder"; and "How best to mount an anti-Trump opposition?"

What a load... But there is some gold hidden amidst the dross, in the form of Mr Dryden's article which is as unbiased as anything the Star would ever publish, clear and (IMHO) right on the money in analyzing what happened. And yes, I believe it could happen in Canada... and France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The next 18 months or so could well see a true "people's revolution" in which the will of the people -- the real people -- is expressed and acted upon. Let us pray....

UPDATED: Obama and Trudeau tell UN "Let's all be nice to each other"

Not all of Walt's readers pay a lot of attention to the intersection of American politics and Canadian politics. But you have to be have your anti-liberal blinkers firmly in place to not see the fine bromance that has developed between the Prez and Canada's ultra-photogenic new(ish) Prime Minister Justin "Selfie" Trudeau.

Sadly for their countries, the two amigos share not just a love of the adoration of the masses, but liberal, one-world views on globalization, free trade, refugees and immigrants (especially Muslims), and the war on The Enemy Which Cannot Be Named (especially Muslims). Now that President Obama is the lamest duck of all, Justin ("Himself Redux") is bidding fair to become the leader of the forces of liberalism, secular humanism and the war for "social justice". To him, from President 0's failing hands, the torch of progressivism is about to be thrown. (The Prez's preferred recipient, Hellery Clinton, is, alas, not guaranteed to be well enough to lift her arms high enough to make the catch.)

Messrs Obama and Trudeau were in the Big Apple this week to case a few pearls before the swine at the Disunited Nations. Some have suggested that Ahmed Khan Rahami was out to get the Prez when he planted his little bomb in Chelsea. (Shoulda used a GPS, Ahmed!) If he had, the assembled parasites would have been spared a speech in which POTUS actually admitted that his country was going to have to give up its "freedom of action" and "bind itself to international rules". If you think Walt is making this up, click here. Don't say you weren't warned.

Here's part of what Ted Cruz had to say about Mr Obama's suggestion that the US surrender to the Islamists. "At the United Nations today, President Obama took to the podium to once again blame the United States for the woes of the world. He suggested our country is just one of many that need to get beyond the old divisions of nationality. He chided those who would limit the inflow of refugees from nations infiltrated by Islamic terrorists as ignorant bigots, predicted climate change would destroy countries and cause mass conflicts, and referred to Israel as an occupying power. Mr. Obama would have done much better to use this opportunity to advance an American agenda, not a global one."

Mr Obama's speech was a pretty hard act to follow -- or swallow -- but M Trudeau tried out his "sunny ways" shtick on a half-empty General Assembly. In an article headlined "Mission accomplished: Trudeau wins over UN with strange speech full of liberal platitudes", John Ivison writes: "The lesson from both Obama and Trudeau is that if everyone just did more nice things, and not so many awful things, things would be much nicer." That's all ye know and all ye need to know.

Further reading, added 23/9/16: Rex Murphy calls Justin Trudeau's UN address "a meaningless speech to a worthless body": National Post, 23/9/16.

Rex Murphy on Kathleen Wynne

I hope no-one will be misled by the headline. Rex Murphy is not literally "on" -- as in "on top of" -- Kathleen Wynne. The very thought boggles the mind. But buddy dere has been talking about Ontario's openly lesbian (and proud of it!) Premier, as has the openly heterosexual man she replaced. See "Ontario's lesbian Premier thrown under school bus by former boss" (WWW 26/11/15).

Ms/Mr Wynne has a self-righteous, dogmatic approach to "conversations" about such things as "gender fluidity", sex education, diversity and any other issues on which she knows she's right. Her liberal (and Liberal) bias was made even more clear than usual earlier this week when she called the 67% of Canucks who had misgivings about the federal Liberals' plan to import 25,000 Muslim refugees "closet racists".

One of the many who advocated for a more thorough screening than the original plan allowed for was Ujjal Dosanjh, a card-carrying Liberal, former Premier of British Columbia, and former federal cabinet minister. Mr. Dosanjh is himself an immigrant to Canada, and has been a target of racists attacks, including a brutal beating by Sikh extremists. He was quite understandably miffed by Ms/Mr Wynne’s statement that critics of the latest example of Liberal pandering to vizmins were "tapping into a racist vein." Mr. Dosanjh shot back that he didn’t much like being called "a racist and a xenophobe."

In his column in Canada's National Post, Rex Murphy calls Ujjal Dosanjh "a truly admirable Canadian", and takes Mr/Ms Wynne to task for her narrow-minded attitude. He writes:

Wynne has lately shown an unseemly eagerness to mark any disagreement with her "progressive" worldview as the product of corrupt thinking or moral defect. She seems unwilling or unable to believe that others can have ideas different from those she espouses, unless they, her critics, are morally inferior to her and their ideas are the products of ugly or ignorant minds.

This stance is unworthy of any citizen in a democracy, especially a premier. Progressives share with the most regressive fundamentalists, this tendency to mark off the world into good and evil. Naturally, the progressives are on the positive side of that table. It is a nasty phenomenon. And if it results, even indirectly, in an indictment of Dosanjh as less of a moral being than those he challenges, as being in the camp of racists and xenophobes — the very forces he has faced with personal courage and resolve — then it is very easy to see how shameless and bankrupt that line of thinking really is.

Are we making any progress?

Just reread The B.S. Factor, by Arthur Herzog (Simon & Schuster, 1973). The subtitle of the book is "The Theory and Technique of Faking It in America". It's about "thought pollution" -- the fakery and hypocrisy that pervades American communications. In the conclusion, Mr. Herzog calls for a new breed of "radical skeptics" who, he hopes, will clear away the bullshit that is now engulfing the USA.

Writing in 1973 -- not long after the "flower power" revolution -- the author poses an excellent question: did the social upheaval of the hippy-dippy `60s result in any real progress towards making America a better society? Here's a quote.

Among the things a asociety might want to conceal from itself -- because the realization might be too painful, or imply a need for changes that the society did not want to, or was afraid to make -- would be the failure to achieve its own stated goals. Progress, for instance.

Americans work, and work hard, but do they in any fundamental sense progress? And in a time-frame small enough so that progress is clearly focused? How do we measure progress? Greater personal security? Shorter work week? Better education? Improved medical protection? Higher culture? More happiness? In none of these ways does there seem to be progress commensurate with the enormous effort Americans have been putting out.

In a footnote to the quoted passage, Mr. Herzog says: "For a chronicle of our 'progress', see William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion (Random House, 1970). The remarkable (or perhaps unremarkable aspect of Douglas' depressing findings is that the conditions he reports are so persistent. In other words, years have passed and nothing has been done about them."

Walt hastens to add the the William O. Douglas whose book Mr. Herzog recommends is the same William O. Douglas who was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. He survived two attempts at impeachment before retiring in 1975, having served the longest term in the history of the court.

In 1975 Time magazine called Justice Douglas "the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court". He appeared to have little regard for judicial consistency or stare decisis when deciding cases. And what were the fruits of the liberal judicial activism for which he became so well known? Was any progress made? Errr, no.

Book review: Walt savages Savage's "Savage Truth"

Michael Savage (né Michael Alan Weiner) is a famous (it says here) talk/shock jock. He is also a "#1 New York Times bestselling author", according to the dust jacket of Stop the Coming Civil War (Center Street, 2014) which attracted Walt's attention on a recent visit to the Fort Mudge library.

When someone uses the American flag as a backdrop for his publicity pic, you pretty much know what you're going to get. Here's a sample.

Mr. Savage has summarized his political philosophy in three words: borders, language, and culture. He calls himself a conservative nationalist, while critics (and there are many) characterize his views as "fostering extremism or hatred." Since 2009 he has been barred from entering the UK on those grounds.

Critics on the right (and there are many) call him a "cuckservative".

The King of Speak-your-mouth opposes illegal immigration to the United States, supports the English-only movement and argues that liberalism and progressivism are degrading American culture and emasculating American men.

Walt agrees with most of those views. But if you paid 26 bucks for Stop the Coming Civil War, Walt thinks you overpaid by about $25.01. It's a crappy book, a veritable witches' brew of vitriol, hyperbole and right-wing rant, masquerading as a political manifesto.

Mr. Savage argues that "The United States may well be [note the hedge words] in the midst of a military, economic, and cultural collapse that is turning us into a country in danger of catastrophic failure and leading to the nighmarish scenario of a civil war." He presents his talking points as five questions, which you can get from the dust jacket:

• Why have so many of our top military commanders been summarily pushed aside, after years of brave service? 
• Is the falsification of records by VA personnel in order to cover up the horrific neglect of our brave soldiers a sign of what's to come with Obamacare? 
• How is Obama's irresponsible foreign policy not just weakening us in Russia, China, and the Middle East, but actually endangering our security at home as well? 
• What does it mean for our freedom and our way of life that negligent immigration law enforcement allows illegal aliens to cross the southern border into our country with little fear of penalty?

That's it. That's all. The "author" takes those four points and repeats them, rearranging the order, for ten chapters. Eventually -- I chose this word deliberately -- he tells us who the combatants in "the coming civil war" will be. North vs South? Black vs White? Noooo... It will be:

• The haves against the have-nots.
• The illegal aliens against hard-working middle-class families.
• Liberals who hate the Second Amendment versus lawful gun owners, millions of whom refuse to register their guns and ammunition in anti-gun jurisdictions.
• Climate activists whose policies cause forest fires and exacerbate drought against those who understand the effect of human activity on the climate is negligible.
• Anti-Christian communist educators versus god-fearing families.

So there you have it. Walt just saved you 26 bucks. Choose which side you want to be on and act accordingly. But what does "accordingly" mean? In the final chapter of Stop the Coming Civil War, Mr. Savage tells us that to win (not stop) the war "...our resistance must be a peaceful resistance. It must be waged through the ballot box, or else this country will descent into chaos and violence."

The ballot box? Who can Americans vote for who will stand up for hard-working, middle-class, god-fearing etc. families? Believe it or not, Mr. Savage says "Vote Republican"! He calls on Republicans and "Independents generally" to "return to being a nationalist party, a party that understands that such actions as cutting entitlement spending will spur us to take action against the leftist takeover that is occurring before our very  eyes."

The goal is to have Republicans win both houses of Congress in 2014 and elect a Republican president in 2016. That will avert the coming civil war and make America great again. Oh... wait... haven't I heard that phrase somewhere recently?

Walt cannot disagree with Mr. Savage's argument that a Republican president and Congress will be better for America than the incumbent administration, but if that president is a "moderate Republican" or "cuckservative" like Jeb, the difference will hardly be noticeable.

My main quarrel with Stop the Coming Civil War is that it's badly written, a point I'll return to later. It's not so much a piece of writing as a collage of transcriptions of Mr. Savage's radio rants. And it's hard to take seriously someone who (at page 7) calls "the most vicious of all terrorist groups... the Islamic State of Iran and Syria". Too bad Center Street didn't invest a few dollars in the services of an editor and fact-checker.

"Bless you!" - not in Calilfornia!

Quick now. What do you say, without even thinking, when someone sneezes? "God bless you!" Right? No. Not right -- that is, not politically correct -- in Steve Cuckovich's classroom in Vacaville CA.

The teacher has banned his students at Will C. Woods High School from saying "bless you" -- even if God's name isn't invoked --when someone lets one rip. [You need to make it clear you're talking about a sneeze! Ed.] He has gone so far as to lower students' grades if they let a blessing slip past their lips.

And get this. Mr. Kookovich says it has nothing to do with the political correctness plaguing California even more than the rest of the once-Christian country. Here's how he explains himself.


OK, so he's a wingnut. California is full of them. There's a nation-wide network of ultra-PC teachers. [Are you talking about teachers unions? Ed.] And Mr. Cuckovich has since been forced to lift his policy. So who cares?

Well... let's not forget that, while banning "bless you" is certainly a bit extreme, "public" schools in North America and Europe have been forced to phase out religious -- read "Christian" -- artifacts and dress for years now.

France, having banned Christian symbols from its state schools over two centuries ago, outlawed Islamic headscarves and other religious symbols from in 2004. In 2009, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Italy to remove all crucifixes from schools. (Italy appealed and won, so the crucifix remains, much to the dismay of the secular humanists.)

In 2002, New York prohibited Nativity scenes from its public school system, while an Ottawa school gained notoriety in 2007 for dropping the word "Christmas" from a rendition of "Silver Bells".

The campaign of the liberals and "progressive thinkers" -- exemplified by Teacher Kookovich -- continues. If this kind of thing outrages you, do what the parents of Vacaville did. Say something! Don't hold your tongue when people are being punished for expressing even a mild belief in the existence of God.

"I didn't see this coming!": Marx

On July 18th, I wrote about "The new oppressed minority", and introduced to you the British neologism "chavs", standing (possibly) for "Council Housed And Violent". I was looking for an example and came up with just one picture. Since this weekend, though, you've been able to see hundreds of pictures and videos of chavs in action, in the riots that have spread from a largely black area of London to several English cities.

Who are the chavs -- the hooded hooligans we see burning, looting and pillaging their own neighbourhoods? Where do they come from? Why are they doing this? In "More about chavs", I tried to show how Britain's welfare statism -- relentless even during the government of Margaret Thatcher -- has produced a large and growing underclass of uneducated, unemployed and generally useless young people, parasites sucking on the tits of the British taxpayers. It is that scummy underclass -- on this side of the water we would call them "white trash" -- who are revolting. And no, I'm not making a cheap joke.

Karl Marx saw class warfare as inevitable. He predicted a revolution of the proletariat -- meaning workers and peasants -- who would rise against the upper classes, the landlords, capitalists and gentry who (he claimed) held the lower classes in poverty and servitude.

Marx had the general idea, but he never imagined that the upper classes would create and nurture the drunken mob which roams the streets of British cities even as I write.

For the hoodlums you see kicking in windows and robbing the wounded are not workers, peasants or students. They are NEETs -- another new word for you -- Not in Employment, Education or Training. In other words, they are idlers and layabouts, who would be starving and homeless but for the largesse of the nanny state which provides them with public housing ("council houses"), free healthcare, and "allowances" for being unemployed or unemployable.

Marx would doubtless approve of all these socialistic -- OK, communist! -- programmes. However, it was the British electorate which voted for one government after another -- not excepting that of Margaret Thatcher -- which instituted these "measures for the assistance of the less fortunate and disadvantaged". "Progressive" thinking, "progressive" thinkers and "progressive" politicians have sowed the wind. And now Britain reaps the whirlwind.

But before we say it can't happen in America, let us remember the so-called race riots of the `60s and `70s: Detroit, Harlem, and of course Watts. While there were racial overtones to those riots, they were just as much about class as about race. In the USA, "progressive" civil rights, welfare and criminal justice policies have spawned a huge underclass which just happens to be comprised largely of brown and black people. Those are the ones who take to the streets and steal TVs to get even for "police brutality" and other real or imaginary injustices.

Marx, it seems, was colour-blind. Perhaps it was because most of the citizens of his native Prussia and of Britain, where he did most of his thinking and writing, were white. The UK had not yet been inundated by wave after wave of South Asian, Caribbean and African immigrants.

And in the 19th century, when Marx wrote, Britain had not yet tried putting his theories into practice. It's a pity Marx didn't live to see how his vision of Utopia played out. What happened to the Great Britain of the Victorian era? "Progressive" policies turned it into the mongrelized anti-society that is collapsing tonight.

Are we liberal, conservative...or what?

Continuing with the theme of government intervention in our lives (see preceding post) let's turn to David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, July 19th.

Mr. Brooks poses the question of whether the politics of our time is predominantly liberal or conservative. His answer: neither. Read on.

When historians look back on this period, they will see it as another progressive era. It is not a liberal era — when government intervenes to seize wealth and power and distribute it to the have-nots. It’s not a conservative era, when the governing class concedes that the world is too complicated to be managed from the center. It’s a progressive era, based on the faith in government experts and their ability to use social science analysis to manage complex systems.

This progressive era is being promulgated without much popular support. [My emphasis. Walt.] It’s being led by a large class of educated professionals, who have been trained to do technocratic analysis, who believe that more analysis and rule-writing is the solution to social breakdowns, and who have constructed ever-expanding networks of offices, schools and contracts.

Already this effort is generating a fierce, almost culture-war-style backlash. It is generating a backlash among people who do not have faith in Washington, who do not have faith that trained experts have superior abilities to organize society, who do not believe national rules can successfully contend with the intricacies of local contexts and cultures.

The "backlash" of which Mr. Brooks speaks is the Tea Party movement, which to my mind is nothing more or less than the latest expression of libertarianism.

Sadly, those who espouse and preach libertarianism are now demonized as being "anti-progressive". It is implied, if not stated outright, by the liberal media that we who would reduce the intrusion of government in our lives are hopeless curmudgeons.

We are intent, the enlightened and progressive "thinkers" say, on returning the West to the dark ages, before we had the benefits of globalization, multiculturalism, secular humanism and all the other universally accepted ideologies unleashed on us in the hippy-dippy 60s. (See Walt, passim.)

To all the libertarians and curmudgeons out there, Walt says, wear your epithet proudly and proclaim your contempt for "progress" loudly. I'm pullin' for ya.