Indiana,The End Of The Beginning

It's pretty much official. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. His victory in the Indiana primary was not just decisive, it was a blowout, by 17 points and counting over Ted Cruz. Even more fascinating is that Trump went into Indiana trailing by 20 points to Senator Cruz who has now ended his campaign.

I'm pretty sure Cruz didn't help his chances much by completely losing it just before the vote and going into a rant on what he saw as Donald Trump's; character failings and telling the voters that anyone who voted for Trump was voting for evil.

 

I have a feeling this did not inspire confidence, but perhaps Cruz had just seen his internals and went into melt down, which is understandable, Whatever else you want to say about Ted Cruz, he worked fiendishly hard on this campaign.

The information I had was that ending his campaign wasn't exactly Cruz's decision, but his donors. They apparently let him know that if he lost Indiana, they weren't prepared to fund him anymore. In any event, he'd already been eliminated mathematically but was counting on people he'd managed to get appointed as delegates; with the aid of Cruz -friendly party insiders in several states. His hope was that he could hold Donald Trump off and get to a second ballot where he figured he might be able to prevail. In the end, even some of Cruz's delegates he acquired this way started deserting Cruz before Indiana even voted.




We'll return to this point in a a bit, but let's examine something else first, the sheer astonishment and shock of a number of reputedly astute pundits and commentators to Donald Trump's ascendancy and success. They admit that nothing like this has ever happened in American politics before, a novice non-politician in a national campaign breaking all the rules with a small campaign staff, modest expenditures compared to his opponents* and speeches that were mostly off the cuff with a seeming disregard for curbing his tongue in the name of political correctness. But they are at a loss to figure out how Trump ended up knocking out 16 other candidates, surviving riots directed at his rallies, millions of dollars in attack ads directed at him and an organized, well funded movement designed to keep him from the GOP nomination.

One of these puzzled pundits is Victor Davis Hanson, who in a recent article (no link because since it appeared where it did, and there was the usual quota of gratuitous insults for both Donald Trump and his supporters) admitted he couldn't really figure this out except as destruction for its own sake.

What the usually astute Dr. Hanson still doesn't get is that this election is different.It isn't about Republicans or Democrats. Both are ruled by self-serving elites whom no one with the brains G-d gave a goat trusts or depends on any more.

Ad it isn't about 'liberals' or 'conservatives.' Those terms were bastardized years ago, not least with the assistance of so-called conservative elites who lied to us about the GOP's latest products for years in order to get us to vote for what they promised us would happen but never did.

As I've said before, this is a rebellion by what Angelo Cordavilla presciently called the 'country class.' It's an uprising by Americans who see their declining nation being gleefully plundered and despoiled by their self-appointed betters. They see it as a last chance to save the country they love from those who consider them rubes, hillbillys and serfs.

Here's a clue for Dr. Hanson and anyone else who can't understand this - think of Trump as a less bloody, less autocratic Sulla. Tough times sometimes demand tough measures. And tough men.

Trump is winning, including a fair amount of crossover Democrats because finally, there's an unscripted,unpolished non lawyer and non member of the political class willing to be honest about what's going on and pledging to fix it. He is simply vocalizing what his voters have been saying for years, and their astonishment and delight at hearing a candidate for president talk to them like this rather than at them accounts for the huge turnout and high energy of Trump's events.

All elections are an act of faith to some degree. But Trump's millions of supporters believe that he's sincere about saving the country and implementing real change in the entire rotten system just like Sulla did, especially when they see he's spending his own money (yes, when you write a check from your own funds or sell stocks you own and give the proceeds to your campaign, you're spending your own money) and actually risking his personal safety when he could just as easily sit home and live the good life.

So,why didn't they feel that same assurance about Ted Cruz? There were a lot of different reasons.

Cruz, of course, tended to preach at people rather than speaking to them, with an odd, nasal cadence a lot of people found off putting. And aside from times when he relaxed into a Texas drawl, he spoke to them in the tones of exactly what he is, a Harvard-trained lawyer and part of the elite class. His body language and mannerisms sent the same message with a few rare exceptions.

A classic example was his confrontation recently with a blue collar worker in Indiana, a Trump supporter. In it, Senator Cruz actually went into debate mode, talking quickly, using various talking points the worker was ill equipped to respond to and in general treating him like a college debate opponent. It made the news pretty prominently, with a lot of Cruz supporters using it to reinforce their oft voiced opinion that Trump's supporter were simply a bunch of stupid, bigoted redneck slobs.

Ha ha ha, look at that trumpkin idiot, that moron!

Let me tell you what I think that worker thought, what the crowd around him probably thought and how a lot of Hoosiers and other Trump supporters likely saw it. Here's was this out-of-state fancy lawyer, picking out someone to talk down to who didn't speak as well as he did, showing off and trying to embarrass him and shame him. The worker, no matter what rapid fire patter Cruz threw at him simply smiled, shook his head and simply said "Indiana don't want you."

Nope, they sure didn't. And that remark alone qualifies our Hoosier worker for a cushy job somewhere as a political analyst, but I digress.The point is, Donald Trump would never have behaved like that. All you ever had to do was see how he behaved to the people at his rallies , the people he interacted with. Night and day.

People may forget what you say, but they never forget how you made them feel.

And with that in mind, let's return to a point I made earlier about Cruz's tactics with delegates. You'll recall, Cruz actually boasted about doing that in Colorado, grabbing a whole slate of delegates with the aid of party insiders no one voted for and then ironically bragging that Donald Trump should "stop whining and learn how to win an election."

Remember that one? Just like similar tactics in other states, it worked but at a tremendous cost. Whatever you think of Ted Cruz, there's no denying his campaign had already been involved in some questionable tactics. His delegate grabbing might have been borderline justified according to who was interpreting the rules, but it left a major stench in a lot of people's minds. And even more importantly, it allowed Donald Trump to paint Ted Cruz successfully as just another establishment pol benefiting from a crooked, rigged system. It didn't matter really whether what Cruz was doing was doable according to the rules. It felt unfair to a lot of people, and they reacted.

Cruz only increased that perception by attempting to collude with Governor John Kasich in 'strategic voting' which failed miserably, and ultimately by picking Carly Fiorina as his running mate, a globalist insider to the core who used 'distributors' to illegally trade with Iran and avoid sanctions, has a major soft spot for Islamism and who gleefully engaged in outsourcing and H1B abuse before she was fired by HP after the stock tanked because of her mismanagement.

In view of Ted Cruz's own record which included his role in fast tracking TPP, his vote for the Corker Amendment that allowed Iran to shove through the Iran deal, and his support of increased H1B visa abuse to put Americans out of work a great many people had the impression that perhaps they weren't all that different in many ways, and it was a major error for Cruz to ally himself with these two establishment politicians. It's another big reason why people didn't trust him and he got so few votes in the primaries compared to Trump.

The millions of dollars spent on constant negative ads by the Cruz campaign and his super-PACS failed to work either, for the most part. The voters apparently understood this time out that all those ads cost a lot of money and that Cruz had to be shaking some interesting hands behind closed doors to get it. Compared with Trump's modest ad buys it again created a clear perception of who was connected to the donor class and the establishment and who was the underdog.

In a different election, it might not have made a difference, but it definitely did in this one.

Cruz's biggest mistake was allowing himself to be used by the GOP establishment.The real story, of course, is that after all their other stalking horses failed, the GOP settled on Cruz as an unwitting dupe to stop Trump, get the nomination and then get beaten like a gong in the general, because they're actually more comfortable with Hillary who's no threat to their prerogatives,insider deals and power.

The key to that was not only to demonize Trump. but his supporters, so party elites could split the insurgency. If Ted Cruz had remained competitive but refrained from gleefully embracing the #NeverTrump movement, there might have been the possibility of a deliciously strong Trump/Cruz ticket. And frankly, Trump's responses to some of what occurred weren't helpful either. So it won't happen now.

Both Trump and Cruz made interesting speeches in the aftermath. cruz finally relaxed a little - just a little- and delivered a speech which was an attempt to sound Reagan-esque which actually succeeded in places. It was as though he was secretly glad the ordeal was over. He sai dnoting whatsoever about party unity, the need to defeat Hillary or any semblance of congratulating Donald Trump on his victory. I doubt he will support Trump in the general election.

Trump's speech was another of his plain spoken off the cuff jobs that always sound like he's having a conversation with the audience. His family was all there, and his entrance music was the middle part of Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture' which morphed in Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries' as Trump entered, something I could have done without personally.



As always, he stayed on message and repeated his usual points, but there was something else there, a lower key than usual. After his long campaign Trump was like an athlete who had just won a match doing a post game show, and it worked for him. He made a point of calling for party unity and complimenting Ted Cruz for being such a great competitor. I have a feeling that's not going to make much of a difference, but hopefully I'm wrong.

In spite of my reservations, I was always prepared to vote for Ted Cruz if he'd gotten the nomination.So I don't mind telling you that I have no respect for anyone who helps a corrupt snake like Hillary Clinton slither into the Oval Office by indulging in #NeverTrump fantasies of write in campaign for Cruz or kinky third party fantasies that will only throw the election to Hillary Clinton

The Establishment still has some arrows in its quiver, rest assured, and they still prefer Hillary. Trump has spoken a lot lately on the need to unify the Republican Party and beat Hillary Clinton, but I doubt the GOP establishment will actually facilitate that. The reverse in fact.

So really, perhaps, after a brief period of reflection it's up to us.

The choice is really simple. We can continue to allow the GOP establishment to divide,conquer and rule us while the country is led by the Clintons and continues to decline. Or we can choose to unite, take back the country and renew our Republic.

As for the Republican Party it will either be remade totally to be what it should have been years ago or it will shatter just like the Whigs of its own irrelevance.

So perhaps when Dr. Hanson was writing about destruction, that's what he sensed but didn't realize it.

Not all destruction is evil, not by any means. And rebuilding can be exactly what's called for as the old rotten structure is swept away.

Donald Trump's a builder by trade, and a pretty successful one. I say we give him a shot at it.

Forum: What Have Been Your Most Influential Books?

Every week on Monday morning , the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question:What Have Been Your Most Influential Books?

Fausta's Blog : Many, may books, but the one that made a difference when I was very ill almost twenty years ago is "Toughness Training for Life: A Revolutionary Program for Maximizing Health, Happiness and Productivity."

I had developed hypoglycemia - not diabetes - was misdiagnosed twice, and it took me two years to find the right way to control my blood sugars. Loehr's book gave me a roadmap of sorts, and I highly recommend it.

 Bookworm Room : A lot of books have made a difference to me. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People. I’d grown up in a very European household, which meant that I was snotty, prissy, and judgmental. Dale Carnegie’s book was the first step in my becoming a much nicer person, one who learned to respect and value others.

2. Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice, a book that helped me gain a bit of perspective about the (to me) overwhelming life choices I was making in my early and mid-20s. The book’s structure is a little unusual, as the narrator, Noel, is the lawyer for a young woman named Jean Paget. He meets her after the war because he is the executor of a will that leaves her a legacy.

The first part of the book has Jean describe to Noel her experiences as a prisoner of war held by the Japanese in Malaya, a time of great hardship and personal tragedy. The second part of the book is about Jean’s life after the war, and the way in which her wartime experiences end up profoundly influencing not only her life, but many other people’s lives as well.

At the end of the first half of the book, when Jean sees herself facing a bleak and lonely future, she concludes her narrative to Noel with regret over the waste of a part of her life, but Noel disagrees:

“It was three years wasted, just chopped out of one’s life,” she said. She raised her head and looked at me, hesitantly. “At least — I suppose it was. I know a lot about Malays, but that’s not worth much here in England.”

“You won’t know if it was wasted until you come to the end of your life,” I said. “Perhaps not then.”

For me, Noel’s simple statement was a stunning truth: I cannot control the future. My responsibility is to make the best decisions I can now, and then to make the best of whatever effects those decisions have upon my life. And that’s all I can do. It was a simultaneously freeing and empowering revelation. Incidentally, in the 35 or more years since I had that revelation, I’ve repeatedly been reminded that my ability to predict either my future or the changes in my world was terribly flawed and that many of my “smart” choices were stupid or irrelevant, and many of my haphazard choices have paid off.

3. Keith Richburg’s Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, which tells about Richburg’s time as the Washington Post’s bureau chief in Africa. For him, it was a stunning revelation that he had benefitted greatly from his black ancestors’ suffering when they were sold from their homes, shipped in horrible conditions to America, and then enslaved. Life for blacks in America, he learned, is infinitely better than it is for blacks in Africa. America, moreover, has a much healthier and, at least when he wrote the book, much less corrupt culture than Africa. The book was a stepping stone in my journey to conservativism.

4. Christina Hoff Sommers’ Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, which opened my eyes to the insanity that is modern feminism. (And keep in mind that she wrote the book in 1995, before things had reached the critical mass we see now.) I had an old-fashioned notion of feminism: equal pay for equal work, equal access to jobs provided that women could meet reasonable standards, and the freedom from being subject to workplace harassment. Sommers described a very different animal indeed, with campus feminists vying for the title of most oppressed (is a black feminist more or less of a victim than a white feminist in a wheelchair). When the insanity of American campuses exploded into the public eye last year, it was old news to me.

5. Philip K. Howards’ The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, which tackles the regulatory state more than the statutory one (or at least that’s how I remember it). I’d always thought of regulations as our friends. It wasn’t until I read his book that I realized that modern regulations perfectly embody the statement that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” They stifle economic development and individual initiative. This is another book from the 1990s that describes a situation that has only become worse in the ensuing years.

6. All of Jane Austen’s and Georgette Heyer’s books, which have provided endless laughter and solace because of their exquisite renderings of human decency and human foibles in a vanished pastoral landscape.

7. The Bible is a wonderful book. I read it first as a history book and literary effort. I’ve read it since as a history book and moral guide.

I’m sure that, given a bit more time, I could create an endlessly long list, but this seems like a reasonable stopping point.

 The Razor :Books can play very personal roles on one’s life, and one whose every word resonates with one person may completely bore another. Years ago a friend pestered me to read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s "Black Swan," and I have to admit it really changed how I viewed economics, risk and Life in general. Another friend bought PJ O’Rourke’s "Holidays in Hell" for me, and I’ve since included it at times when I could only bring a few books along for extended stays. Finally, "The Logic of Failure" by Dietrich Dorner explains the fallacies and mental shortcuts that lead to disaster in complex situations, whether its Chernobyl or one’s bad personal decision making. Final mention is Philip K. Dick’s "Ubik" – perhaps his best work and one that has never reached the screen. Like most of Dick’s work it questions the very foundations of Reality and has stuck with me ever since I devoured the book in high school.

But I must reiterate: Books are extremely personal and so I tend not to demand others read them. Instead I prefer to raise their existence to the awareness of others so that they may find, like some literary stray cat, their proper owner.


 JoshuaPundit : Ahh, books. I was a pretty steady reader from a very young age. The first book I can recall making a major impression on me was Gibbon's Decline And Fall Of the Roman Empire, which I read at sixteen. I went to a fairly blue collar, rather run down high school not noted for its academic prowess, but it was an older school with a library that reflected different times. I found the book in the shelves, read a few pages and was hooked.The last time anyone had checked it out was over a decade ago. It was simply there waiting for me.

It taught a great deal about how societies become decadent and collapse, often without the inhabitants even fully realizing it.

I ended up reading quite a bit of history of the ancient and modern world. Favorites would be Caesar's Commentaries,Xenphon's Anabasis,Plutarch, Bernal Diaz Del Castillo's The Discovery And Conquest of Mexico, a first hand account from one of Cortez's conquistadors, William H. Prescott's The Conquest of Peru, Bruce Caton's Civil War trilogy, and Churchill's histories of WWI and WWII. William L. Shirer's books on the Twentieth Century  and Barbara Tuchman's books are also favorites of mine, although both lean a bit to the Left at times. Henry Kissinger's books are huge favorites of mine as well..what a mind!

I also learned a great deal from Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and Miracle in Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen, a brilliant account of the 1787 Constitutional convention, which shows how the Founders hammered out our Republic based on the diaries and accounts of those whom were there.

While I do read fiction for pleasure (I've always been a Melville fan and still consider him one of America's best writers and I've always loved Somerset Maugham and Shakespeare's plays  among others) the other books that especially influenced me are spiritual and metaphysical in nature.

Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi is one of them, simply because his style is so, well, human. Sir James Fraser's The Golden Bough is another favorite, as well as some of its offshoots from the Golden Dawn Society, leading ultimately to the Zohar.

 And as those of those of you whom know me might imagine, I have also been quite influenced by the Jewish Torah (the Five Books Of Moses) as well as the Writings, The Prophets, the Megillot which include the Book of Esther and Kehilla (Ecclesiastes) as well as my admittedly limited knowledge of Gemara, Talmudic law. I admit to also being influenced by the Qu'ran and hadiths of Islam as well which I read after 9/11, but in quite a different way.

GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD :

How America Got it Right by Bevin Alexander

Left-wing critics—both at home and abroad—relish blasting our country for being the world’s sole superpower, or even an “imperialist” power.

But as acclaimed military historian Bevin Alexander shows in How America Got It Right, these criticisms are completely off the mark. Alexander reveals how the United States has done and continues to do exactly the right thing in military and foreign affairs. As the world’s dominant political force and military power, he says, we are the only nation that will actually go into the world and strike down evil. And we must not shirk that responsibility—especially because we cannot rely on our so-called allies to defend our freedoms.

Alexander tells the dramatic and sometimes surprising story of how, from the American Revolution to the War on Terror, America’s core principles and ideals have shaped our march to economic, military, and political supremacy.

 To Rule The Waves by Arthur Herman

In the mid-16th century, England was a minor player on the world stage. The Spanish and the Portuguese, ahead in the race for the spoils of Asia and South America, dominated international trade and controlled the world's oceans. They were the European superpowers. England could only watch enviously as ships laden with gold, silver and spices sailed into Lisbon and Cádiz, fattening the treasuries of their enemies.

The situation would change quickly. By the end of the century, England would defeat Spain. Her growing navy, almost mystically identified with the national character and destiny, would defeat the Dutch and the French, on the road to creating a global empire and, Arthur Herman argues in his rousing history, the world as we know it today. The British Navy, he writes, reshaped the world to suit the British Empire, and "those needs -- access to markets, freedom of trade across international boundaries, an orderly state system that prefers peace to war, speedy communication and travel across open seas and skies -- remain the principal features of globalization today."

 Soldiers of Destruction by Charles Sydnor

Simply one of the best written books available despite the subject matter.

With "Soldiers of Destruction", Sydnor has managed to write a military account of the infamous SS Death's Head Division that is both lively and engrossing. Sydnor delves into the history of the division, their actions in combat and their involvement in the concentration camp system. He does all this without getting bogged down in statistics (like so many other books on the Wermacht or SS). He does however, provide massive amounts of footnotes for those who wish to do further research.

The writing style is smooth, engaging and engrossing.

As you read it's nigh impossible not to develop a great amount of respect and awe for the fighting capabilities of the SS, yet always counter the praise with derogatory mention of their fanaticism and loyalty to National Socialist ideology; two factors that molded them into what they were. It helps to negate their combat achievements.

The subject matter of this book is not for everyone. The SS Totenkopf Division personified Himmler's absolute ideal of the SS. It could be argued that they were the most politically indoctrinated of all the SS divisions. They were brutally efficient soldiers who were indifferent to hardship. Defeat was an unacceptable option for Totenkopf soldiers in combat. It is no wonder that on several occasions the division fought until almost total decimation. Victory of annihilation was the order of the day.

Numerically outnumbered almost 6 to 1 on the Eastern Front, the Totenkopf soldiers of the SS managed to rout entire Soviet armies. They were constantly thrust into the most dangerous of situations on the front. Even today the United States Marine Corps and the U.S. Army mimic some of the combat tactics developed and perfected by SS divisions like the Totenkopf on the Eastern Front.

If you like military history you'll love this book. Your WWII collection will not be complete without Dr. Sydnors' book

 The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman

Those of us raised up by besotted Beatle worshipers long after Lennon was assassinated have a mystical legendary idea of what exactly wiped clean and drew again the face of popular music.

Goldman's writing is simply amazing – easily one of the best written books in any library.

The critics hated it including cats like Sir George Martin, Yoko Ono and Sir Paul McCartney. Other writers like Bob Spitz in “The Beatles” take pains to demolish it even as they lift (with attribution) great bits of it – truly a tribute to Dr Goldman's all absorbing fantastic writing.

Lennon was presented in the book as a talented but deeply flawed man who manipulated people and relationships throughout his life, flinging them aside when they were no longer useful to him. Goldman also suggested that Lennon was a heavy drug-user and that he was dyslexic, schizophrenic and suffered in the early stage stages of Parkinson's.

The Persian Puzzle by Ken Pollack

Indispensable to understanding Iran. Informed and eminently readable study provides a detailed narrative of that turbulent quarter-century of U.S.-Iranian relations from the advent of the Islamic Republic to the present. Having tracked this subject since the late 1980s, as a U.S. government analyst until 2001 and at the Brookings Institution since, Pollack writes as an insider just far enough down the pecking order to be able to describe the official thinking and action without the compulsion to defend past policy.

It's especially good in recounting Washington's different efforts to reach arrangements with Iran, from the ill-fated Iran-contra affair to the carpets, caviar, and pistachios initiative in the 42's term. Pollack gives considerable attention to the pressing problem of trying to keep Iran from going nuclear: he lashes out against Washington's European allies for their "perfidy," accepts that Iran's rulers so badly need to present the United States as the existential enemy that a settlement is unlikely, and rejects pre-emptive military action against Iran, instead advocating a three-track diplomatic approach as the least bad of the unpromising options available.

Other influential books include:

The Pentagon's New Mapby Thomas P.M. Barnett

Neoconservatism&by Justin Vaiise

An End To Evilby Dave Frum and Richard Perle

Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen

Secret History of The Iraq War by Yossef Bodansky

Dreadnaught and Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

No Higher Honor by Condoleezza Rice

War and Decision by Douglas Fieth

Fatherland by Robert Harris


Stately McDaniel Manor : My students often ask me my favorite book. They also ask me my favorite song--to them, all music is a “song.” They have no idea how impossible it is to answer those questions. My favorite book is often the book--usually books--I’m reading when the question is asked. My favorite music is the music I’m rehearsing when the question is asked.

But, meaningful books…

Anything by John Ringo, for understanding of novel narration, characterization, getting tactical and gun details right, how to write women, and for sheer fun in reading.

Shakespeare, for understanding human nature--and dramatic irony.

The Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill, for understanding ideas and their influence.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, for its humanity.

C.S. Lewis, for helping in the spiritual struggle.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens because it’s timeless, honest emotion.

Cyrano de Bergerac (OK, it’s a play; so what?) by Edmund Rostand, for its humanity and grace.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, for its hopefulness.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, because sometimes there are no good choices.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I would have liked him.


The Glittering Eye : That's a subject I haven't thought about in years. From age 7 to 20 my life was marked out in books like milestones along a road.

The book that influenced me the most was the first one I ever read--my dad's fourth grade reader. When I completed first grade I couldn't read a word. According to my mom that summer I took my dad's fourth grade reader, disappeared behind the couch, and when I re-emerged at the end of the summer not only could I read, I was reading far above grade level.

It was a wonderful book! An anthology of stories, fables, poetry, and snippets from popular literature (popular at the turn of the last century that is). It was the first of many.

There is no frigate like a book, indeed.


Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason : As a young teenager full of questions of a philosophical nature I discovered the authors Taylor Caldwell and Ayn Rand. Throughout the years I have consumed nearly everything they have written. Caldwell wrote many works of fiction and several historical fictions. After reading many of her books I dove into a book titled A Pillar of Iron, which revealed the life and writings of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Caldwell wove the story of Cicero’s life in Rome during the time of Julius Caesar with many of his writings and orations concerning government, philosophy, law, religion, and the nature of man. Cicero’s words spoke to me and provided many answers to the questions I sought; particularly the concept of natural law. I went on to read many of his works after being introduced to him through Caldwell’s book.

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged also impacted me tremendously. Growing up in the Soviet Union she saw firsthand the destruction brought upon the people by communism. She extolled the virtues of selfishness in its purest form and believed that capitalism is the only system where the individual can reach their own potential.

Having not yet been introduced to such ideas as capitalism and communism these works opened my eyes and impressed upon me the rights of the individual. Perhaps being women writers both Rand and Caldwell portrayed female characters of independence and intelligence, many in spite of the circumstances of the times in which they lived. Of course, growing up during the women’s rights movement of 60s and 70s these characters were particularly appealing to me.

More recently The 5000 Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen shed light on the founding fathers and the philosophers whose writings they drew upon in crafting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The writings of Cicero most decidedly contributed to their belief in the laws of nature and nature’s God and the inherent rights of the individual which is at the core of our country’s founding.

Finally, when I attended college in the 1970s I took many classes in German given by professor Rainulf Stelzmann. He had grown up as a young boy during the Weimar Republic, saw the rise of Hitler and was later conscripted into the Wehrmacht. His parents were both university professors. His father had spoken out against Hitler and was dismissed from his teaching position and later arrested for being what the Nazis deemed politically no longer “bearable,” a crime punishable by death by decapitation or hanging. Professor Stelzmann would tell little bits of his experiences during his years in Germany and I kept taking his classes just to hear more of his stories. Like so many I wondered how such evil could be permitted to exist in what was considered a civilized society.

Many years later I met Herr Stelzmann and discovered he had written a book. Thinking of Germany at Night recounts his experiences as he explains the methods the Nazis used to indoctrinate the German youth and assert control over an entire population. It is quite an enlightening read as he described his life in Germany and his experiences as a soldier having been sent to the Russian Front. Fortunately for him he was captured by the Americans and not the Russians.

Repeatedly throughout history we have seen the struggles between those who seek to enslave men and those who stand and fight for freedom and liberty. If people would acknowledge that this struggle between good and evil has always existed and understand the conditions that allow evil to insert itself into a society we could somehow stop it before it ends in death and destruction. Unfortunately, too few of us are able to see the very real threats we face as evil grows again in the world. By the time most people wake up to the threat it will be too late to stop it. And so the cycle will continue.

  Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it.

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The Council Has Spoken! Our Watcher's Council Nominations

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

"As an American liberal with impeccable credentials, I would like to say that political correctness is going to kill American liberalism if it is not fought to the death by people like me for the dangers it represents to free speech, to the exchange of ideas, to openheartedness, or to the spirit of art itself." - Best selling author Pat Conroy

"Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable." - Stephen Molyneux

“The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.” - John Cleese



This week's winning essay,Staely McDaniel Manor's Progressives: Bayoneting Their Wounded is his account of exactly what goes on in academia at your typical Orwellian White Privilege and Male Bashing conference, this one ironically held in Philadelphia where our freedoms began! Here's a slice:

As regular readers will doubtless remember, I have often written about leftist ideology. Paramount in leftist thought—such as it is—is the principle that leftist policies, no matter how idiotic on their face, no matter how spectacularly and often they fail, can never be wrong. They’re not wrong; the people who thought they were wrong were mistaken. This unfortunate tendency to double down on disaster was nowhere in greater evidence of late than at the 17^th annual White Privilege Conference held in Philadelphia.

I was not aware that there had been 16 prior conferences, but that omission is no doubt due to my white privilege. And to think: I’ve been missing out on 16 years of self-flagellation for working my buns off my entire life and believing the world owed me nothing at all, despite my general blue-eyed, pale-skinned whiteness.

One would think such a conference would be a safe and diversity-friendly place, however, as John Belushi used to say: “but noooooooooooooo! Consider the horrific reality from participants of the conference, courtesy of heatst.com:

Even at the White Privilege Conference, blatant, brutal racism runs amok! It’s just like Democrat-controlled cities: they’re all cesspools of racism, sexism, and violence. And imagine the horror of this:
 
Certainly no white person of the same gender and approximately the same size, shape and hair color—brown—has ever been mistaken for another white person. And imagine the unimaginable horror of this:
 It’s almost unfathomable. POC and indigenous ppl come to their very own white people bashing conference and find themselves unsafe! Who coulda thunk it? But the horror was just beginning:

The disaster of understanding culminated in the keynote speech, delivered by Jim Loewen, a demonstrably progressive sociologist, respected professor of African American Studies and perhaps the country’s leading expert on racism in the deep south during the Confederacy and beyond. Little did Prof. Loewen know, as he was delivering his speech, that his very act of speaking to the audience was cause for concern.

 Imagine the consternation of poor Professor Loewen, a man who doubtless imagined himself an intolerant, politically correct, perpetually outraged progressive, a man ashamed of his own privilege and whiteness, when people at the White Privilege conference, a conference whose premises he unquestionably believed and took to heart, was accused of white supremacy. And for what? Allegedly running over the time allotted for his speech about white supremacy:

But wait a white privileged moment! He didn’t go over his allotted time; so what’s the problem?

Of course. The facts don’t matter. The accused must lay down and accept the death sentence. Aeriel A. Ashlee was completely wrong, but because she’s non-white, she has absolute moral authority and can’t possibly be wrong. The issue is that Professor Loewen is demonstrating his white privilege defensiveness instead of accepting responsibility for what he didn’t do wrong. Progressive ideology cannot possibly be wrong!

But it’s even worse, gentle readers, than we, with our white privilege, can possibly imagine. Professor Loewen used the “N” word!

More at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Andrew McCarthy with First, Let’s Get the Facts on Saudi and Iranian Involvement in 9/11 submitted by Joshuapundit. Commenting about the pending bill in congress to allow the families of victims of 9/11 to sue the Saudi government for what appears to be it's obvious complicity, he comments that great nations do not address acts of war with lawsuits. That is, unless your president is George W. Bush. He wants us to get the facts about Iranian and Saudi complicity and then decide how to proceed.

For what it's worth, Iranian complicity in the 9/11 attacks is already proven fact and verified by a US federal court decision, something I wrote about some time ago. That two U.S. presidents, including our current one knew about this and did nothing about it is a clue as to why Iran has no respect for America anymore. Especially when that attitude was underlines by President Barack Hussein Obama's blatant appeasement of the islamo-fascist regime in Teheran.


Here are this week’s full results. Bookworm Room, GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD, the Noisy Room, the Razor, and The Right Planet were unable to vote this week, but all were not subject to or not affected by our usual two thirds vote penalty for not voting :

Council Winners

• *First place with 2 2/3 votes!-Stately McDaniel Manor-Progressives: Bayoneting Their Wounded


• Second place with 2 votes – Joshuapundit-When The Cannibals Eat Their Own...


• Third place with 1 2/3 votes –Bookworm Room – The infantile Left


• Fourth place with 2/3 votes –Fausta's Blog – Mexico: Investigators call it quits


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote –Puma By Design – Parents demand privacy protection after school approves transgender bathroom use


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote –The Right Planet – Baofeng UV-5R Counterfeit Cable Madness


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote –Nice Deb – Bizarre New Super PAC Ad Has Kasich Winning the Nomination at Convention

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 votes! –Andrew McCarthy – First, Let’s Get the Facts on Saudi and Iranian Involvement in 9/11 submitted by Joshuapundit


• Second place with 1 2/3 votes –PJ Media: Klavan On The Culture –UnAmerican ESPN submitted by Stately McDaniel Manor


• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Ben Shapiro/The Daily Wire -10 Signs You've Joined The Trump Cult submitted by Nice Deb


• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –38 Pitches/Curt Schilling-The hunt to be offended…submitted by The Watcher


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Richard Fernandez/PJ Media – The Surprising Weakness of Invincible Institutions submitted by Fausta's Blog


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Carolyn Zelikow/Market Urbanism – Richard Florida Should Replace The Term ‘Creative Class’ With ‘Country Club submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Fifth place with 1/3 votes – The Other McCain –Feminism: It's about SCIENCE submitted by The Razor

See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every  Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

Our Watcher's Council Nominations - Secrets To Hide Edition

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.


So, let's see what we have for you this week....

Council Submissions

• Stately McDaniel Manor – Progressives: Bayoneting Their Wounded


• Fausta's Blog – Mexico: Investigators call it quits


• The Noisy Room – Welcome to the Triggering! Steven Crowder Spanks ‘Social Justice Warriors’ in 5-Minute Reality Check [VIDEO]


• The Daley Gator – Greta van Susteren, The Marxist Moron of the Day


• The Glittering Eye -We’re Living Beyond Our Mean


• Joshuapundit-When The Cannibals Eat Their Own...


• Bookworm Room – The infantile Left


• VA Right! Vote Cynthia Dunbar for Republican National Committeewoman from the Commonwealth of Virginia


• Nice Deb – Bizarre New Super PAC Ad Has Kasich Winning the Nomination at Convention


• The Razor – Time to Outsource the CEO?


• The Right Planet – Baofeng UV-5R Counterfeit Cable Madness


• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – The End Of A Saudi Alliance?


• Puma By Design – Parents demand privacy protection after school approves transgender bathroom use

Non-Council Submissions

• PJ Media: Klavan On The Culture –UnAmerican ESPN submitted by Stately McDaniel Manor


• Richard Fernandez/PJ Media – The Surprising Weakness of Invincible Institutions submitted by Fausta's Blog


• Doug Ross -LITTLE NICKY KRISTOF HARDEST HIT: Hillary's Latest Email Disclosures Prove She's a Malevolent, Repulsive Liarsubmitted by The Daley Gator


• Carolyn Zelikow/Market Urbanism – Richard Florida Should Replace The Term ‘Creative Class’ With ‘Country Club submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Andrew McCarthy – First, Let’s Get the Facts on Saudi and Iranian Involvement in 9/11 submitted by Joshuapundit


• Sean Hannity – Trump Slams 'B-List Actor' Who Threatened To Leave If He's Electedsubmitted by VA Right!


• Ben Shapiro/The Daily Wire -10 Signs You've Joined The Trump Cult submitted by Nice Deb


• The Other McCain –Feminism: It's about SCIENCE submitted by The Razor


• US Defense Watch – In Obama’s Navy – It’s Not a Job or an Adventure, It’s a Fiasco submitted by The Right Planet


• Washington Post – An Indian spiritual guru tried to start peace talks with ISIS. This is how it responded submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• 38 Pitches/Curt Schilling-The hunt to be offended…submitted by The Watcher


• Roger L. Simon/PJ Media – Is Trump Right on Trade? submitted by The Watcher


• PC Magazine – Avoid the Trash Heap: Great Uses for an Old PC submitted by The Watcher

Enjoy! And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!And don't forget to tune in Friday for the results!

When The Cannibals Eat Their Own...

 

The Republican Party is in an amazing state these days, where a relatively small establishment centered in the DC-New York City bubble has become almost totally divorced from the vast majority of its voters. Not only are they divorced from them, in many cases they actually despise them

I have to admit, this is something you don't see every day - a political party trying to destroy its own front runner! But when you look at it from their point of view, it not only makes perfect sense, but it's tactically sound. And it's how they plan to win the 2016 election, believe it or not. Or at least, win it from their perspective. Walk with me awhile.

The Republican establishment had a problem when the campaign season started in 2015. They expected to be able to field the usual product to present to the despised rubes and hillbillys in flyover country as the least worst choice, just like the last 5 election cycles. And why not? These are our betters, the Smart Guys,who are such experts they have only managed to win the popular vote in one presidential election since 1988!

Except this time, the peasants rebelled. Rather than try to figure out why, once the GOP establishment realized what was happening and that the thing had legs, their main concern was how to maintain their power and position by stopping it. And what do you do when you're a powerful faction that's a minority opposed by a majority? Rather than confront it head to head, you divide and conquer. And you confuse the issue by finding allies some of the insurgents think are on their side but that you actually own.

Donald Trump, who was the first one out of the box to tap into the anger of not just the Republican base but a whole lot of dissident independents and disaffected Democrats was considered a joke at first. Except a lot of people, hearing a relatively non-scripted candidate saying things to them for the first time that they'd been long muttering privately, speaking to them in the accent and idioms of what writer Angelo Codevilla presciently called the Country Class a few years ago was a breath of fresh air. They didn't think Trump was a joke at all. They had become painfully aware not only that the fix was in, but that the country was being gleefully plundered by the elites at their expense. And they saw clearly that the GOP establishment is just another greedy feeder at the trough. And when they heard this guy, Donald Trump willing to openly say so without any sugar coating or hesitation and saw he was willing to put his money where his mouth was, did they rally around him? You bet they did.

Senator Ted Cruz, with an ear to the prevailing winds came out a few months later and announced his own insurgent candidacy as well, albeit aimed at a somewhat different group of people.

Everything came to a head just before the Iowa caucus.

What launched what PJ Media's Roger L. Simon has accurately called a jihad against Trump was an endorsement by someone whom we're constantly now told is supposedly irrelevant, Governor Sarah Palin. Yeah, she's irrelevant all right..irrelevant enough so that almost as soon as she finished her endorsement speech for Trump, the phone calls and e-mails went out in droves from the donor class to mobilize the troops.

There are a lot of these self styled conservatives who get a paycheck from various think tanks funded by the donor class, or by private arrangements with a patron of their own from the donor class. Or from the articles they write for these magazines and the exposure they can get for things like speaking tours and book deals. So when the order went out to go into full attack mode, a lot of these people were willing to do the jobs Republican voters won't do. And if you remember where that pungent little phrase originated in its original form, it sheds quite a bit of light on the anti-Trump jihad.

Aside from various tried and true establishment sources, self styled conservative organs like the National Review and the Weekly Standard as well as a few brand new sites funded by the donor class became essentially anti-Trump comic books. The National Review even came out with an entire special issue, with short puff pieces by most of their writers demonizing Trump. He was referred to the so-called GOP intelligentsia as 'Mussolini, ' a 'nativist,' America's 'Moqtada al-Sadr' and of course, 'not a conservative.' And those are just some of the milder epithets.

Does anyone remotely remember the good folks at The National Revue or the Weekly Standard ever referring to the president, Senator Harry Reid or any other figures on the far Left in these terms?

David Boaz even compared him to George Wallace, an exceedingly odd thing to say about the one GOP candidate actually capable of carrying a chunk of the black vote. George Wallace? Really?

I must confess, when I see these commentators and others like them mouthing off about conservative purity, my reaction is somewhere between wild laughter and wanting to throw something. Didn't they tell us how 'conservative' Bob Dole, the Bushes, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Mitt Romney were? And how we needed to trust them and vote for them?

The labels 'liberal' and 'conservative' have been so bastardized they are meaningless nowadays in America. Of course, this particular election isn't really about labels like that, but of course the anti-Trump jihad preferred that we believe that it was, and with some notable success in some circles.

Donald Trump lost the Iowa caucus to Ted Cruz, largely because he was new to the caucus game and Cruz simply out organized him. But Trump came back to win the New Hampshire primary. And then the #NeverTrump movement went into full hate mode and hasn't stopped since.

The clever twist the GOP establishment put on this was a two-pronged attack. First, they dressed the the most establishment friendly of 16 other candidates in 'real conservative' clothes, and all of them were touted for their fifteen minutes of acclaim as the Anti-Trump. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio...but they all ultimately fell by the wayside no matter how much money they spent and how much they were touted as 'real conservatives' and 'electable' because the voters recognized that familiar stench and said 'no thanks, we had some of that before and we're not buying it this time.'

The second front was sheer genius.Unlike most negative campaigns, not only did they demonize the candidate but his supporters. They, of course, were and are called rednecks, racists, trumpkins, trumptards, idiots and members of the 'Trump Cult.'

It was brilliant because, after seeing one anti-Trump after another bite the dust it played into a new establishment strategy. Since the insurgency wasn't going to buy into one of the obvious Establishment choices, they could ensure an end result they could embrace by ensuring that Mrs. Clinton wins in November, something a number of them like Bill Kristol were even willing to admit. Even with Hillary Clinton in the White House, their perks and power were assured as well as globalist policies like amnesty, continued cheap labor, H1B visa abuse and our current ridiculous trade policies.

Ted Cruz was made for the part of fall guy, which why people like the Bush donors were willing to fund him once things reached this stage.

Aside from being a candidate for the Trump haters to embrace as a Real Conservative, he was a cinch to lose a general election even if he was able to stop Donald Trump. The demonization of Trump supporters, which even extended to blacklisting and threatening people who supported him and threatening others with an end to their careers if they worked on Trump's campaign ensured that the millions of new voters Trump had brought into the GOP tent would stay home, and Cruz's own persona would likely do the rest. And if it was really necessary, they could always sabotage Cruz from the rear.

As an important extra benefit, after Ted Cruz got beat like a gong in the general,they could say to the demoralized peasants 'You see, you got your conservative and he got beat like a gong. Next time fools,listen to us, your betters.'

The one thing that was needed to make this work was for Ted Cruz to buy into the #neverTrump demonization,and unfortunately he performed exactly like the GOP establishment expected him to. Rather than keeping things competitive but civil, he not only embraced the #NeverTump demonization of Trump's followers, he poured gasoline on the flames with questionable campaign tactics,inflammatory rhetoric and millions in negative campaign ads from his campaign and super PACs funded by the donor class.

Trump responded with a few nasty things of his own, including a stupid tweet about Ted Cruz's wife after a non-allied Super Pac ran naked pictures of Trump's spouse in conservative Utah, something Cruz claimed he had nothing to do with. Whether he did or not (and the jury's still out on that plausible deniability), the GOP establishment had exactly what it wanted...a split in the insurgency. And an assurance that the most powerful possible GOP ticket, an insurgent Trump/Cruz run would never happen.

As added insurance for the GOP Establishment, the only way Ted Cruz is going to get the nomination now is by subterfuge and backroom tactics. Cruz's use of party insiders friendly to him to collect delegates without any kind of election or votes might have been just inside the rules, but that and his collusion with John Kasich in a year when people are fed up with business as usual and backroom deals has already backfired, because it has allowed Donald Trump to successfully paint him, with some justification as just another sleazy insider politico benefiting from a corrupt system. Perception matters. Even if Cruz is the nominee, that mud is going to stick, rightly or wrongly and a lot of people will simply stay home.

The bogus comparison with Lincoln's 1860 nomination isn't going to fly either. *

The Establishment Republicans were always more afraid of Trump, because they understand that his getting the nomination and winning represents a real game change and a threat to the status quo. At this point, when Trump is likely to win the nomination or at least show up with close to the number of delegates he needs to win, the GOP Establishment has two choices - they can either pull some sort of shenanigans to disqualify Trump's delegates or otherwise keep him from being nominated, or they can allow him to win the nomination. If Trump is sidelined by some kind of arcane tactics, a lot of the millions of voters he brought into the GOP tent will sit home, which is exactly what demonizing and insulting them was all about.

If the GOP allows Trump to be nominated, not only can the RNC sabotage him from the rear, but they have created a major #NeverTrump bloc that will likewise not just sit home but actively oppose and sabotage him as well during the general. Do you really think NRO and people like Mark Levin or Glenn Beck are going to suddenly change over? Will Ted Cruz, for that matter? The GOP establishment has created a situation where the party unity needed to defeat Hillary Clinton will be insanely difficult at best.

So they have a shot at winning either way.

I realize how upsetting and even angering this is to people who see Ted Cruz as a principled conservative - whatever that means these days. Some of them are people I respect, and I'm sure that the idea that they've been played is repulsive to them. But the facts are the facts.

A number of the usual suspects are now putting out the meme that the Republican Party has a difficult choice between denying Trump the nomination and alienating millions of voters or deciding whether they can win with him as the nominee. As usual, they're late to the party.

Trump and Hillary are actually in a dead heat according to some polls, and the Democrats are going to have their own problems with party unity running with a serially unlikable candidate. So the choice really isn't deciding whether Trump can win. At worst, he's already eclipsed Romney's popular vote in the primaries and he has a better shot than the last two losers.

The real choice the Republican Party needs to make is whether it is going to accept being totally remade in a brand new image or if it is simply going to shatter into pieces like the Whigs and disappear. That's generally what happens when a party eats its own and treats its voters with disdain and disrespect. it either changes for the better or it dies as something new is born.

So far, it still appears that the cannibals are more interested in eating their own than accepting that reality. In which case, the choice will simply be forced on them.


* The Lincoln analogy is ridiculous in my opinion. I know a bit about that convention. The Whigs had shattered for good, the Democrats split in two and there was a fourth party as well. The Republicans were a brand new, minority party and ultimately Lincoln ended up squeaking by with only 39% of the popular vote.

Also, while Seward had more delegates, the difference was nowhere near as pronounced as Cruz's and Trump's.

Lincoln only got the nomination because (a) he was a westerner (Illinois was considered the West) and the republicans as primarily an east coast party needed to carry those states. Seward was a New Yorker. (b) His supporters made a deal with Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, who offered to trade his delegates in exchange for a government job and control of all patronage in Pennsylvania. The deal was made and Lincoln was the nominee. If Cruz attempted the same bargain Lincoln used in this anti-establishment year, the fallout would be massive...especially given what he's already being perceived as because of his previous conduct, regardless of what excuses are used to defend it.

Forum: What Do You See As The Most Important Fronts In The Culture War?

Every week on Monday, the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: What Do You See As The Most Important Fronts In The Culture War?

Stately McDaniel Manor :The battle over what is wrongly termed “gun culture”  is our most vital cultural struggle. The term assumes there is some monolithic, massive group of people that share the same ideals, aspirations and values. This kind of group-think is natural for Progressives, who are compelled to place people in specific, progressive-defined categories, but it is nonsense. Most Americans own motor vehicles. Do they comprise a “car culture?” Is there a blue jean culture? Perhaps an underarm deodorant culture?

During the Age Of Obama, an unprecedented number of progressives--some now former progressives--have become gun owners. Surely progressives, by definition, cannot be part of a gun-loving, God-honoring “gun culture?” Would not the same apply to women? Black people? Hispanics? Are gay and lesbian gun owners members of the “gun culture”--first, or is their primary allegiance to their sexual orientation?

Since Barack Obama became the greatest gun salesman in American history, progressives have bemoaned the enormous ground lost in the gun culture battle. The NRA’s membership continues to skyrocket, and more and more Americans buy guns, yet the rates of violent crime continue to decline. True, Progressives are doing all they can to reverse that trend by forcing the police to avoid arresting criminals, and by trying to free convicted felons from prison, but poor Progressives have been horrified to discover that the fundamental transformation of America Mr. Obama promised did not extend to gun ownership.

However, as it took progressives a century to get Obamacare, and they had to do it through trickery, they will never give up on destroying the Second Amendment though it take millennia. Actually, all it will take is a progressive Supreme Court majority or a Democrat President and a large enough Democrat majority in the House and Senate. Either and both are possible in the near term.

So why is this the premier cultural struggle? It is the Second Amendment that secures every other human right. If there is no Second Amendment, or via Supreme Court dismantlement it has no application in the lives of Americans, there is no right to self-defense. When that day comes, expect government to take advantage of that advantage. Politicians have not yet gone too far because of the rule of law, enforced by the individual arms of all Americans. When we lose those arms, we lose the rule of law, our lives, and America. That process is already under way.

 Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason : The culture war is being fought primarily in our schools, beginning in pre-K and all the way through to our universities. Teaching multiculturalism and diversity seems to have started in the United States with the International Baccalaureate program which came out of the United Nations. It was and has been sold to parents as a rigorous program in which only a select few students are invited to participate. According to the IB website “The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.” In addition:“These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.”

While International Baccalaureate began as a high school program in the 1960s it now includes a primary years program for ages 3 to 12 and a middle school program. Getting to children at younger ages when they are still impressionable and their consciences and belief systems developing is extremely dangerous to a society. It is how Hitler was able to bring about the rise of the Third Reich; indoctrinating German youth beginning as early as ten years and the Hitler Youth programs that began when they turned fourteen years old. It was easy for Hitler to engage the German people with promises of a return to greatness for their country. Here in America we are a nation comprised of people from many different nations and cultures who have been able to keep alive some of the traditions of our former cultures while assimilating into this melting pot with the shared vision of a land of limitless opportunity for those who work hard and follow the rules. However, our country’s foundation comes from the Judeo Christian tradition and the belief that we as individuals are born with rights coming from our Creator. We understand the concept of the “laws of nature and nature’s God.” Most of us acknowledge these laws are inviolable and should not have anything to do with one’s culture.

While exposing our children to other cultures can be educational and enlightening, it is the moral relativity that comes with it that is where the culture war is being fought… and sadly being won. This moral relativity creates doubt and uncertainty and leaves our children vulnerable to indoctrination from forces with evil intentions. This is not so much a culture war as it is an attempt to deny the laws upon which we have based our western civilization.

Progressives are working hard on college campuses inciting our youth to protest for social, economic and even environmental justice. They have no idea they are being used in this effort to fundamentally transform America. The only way to win this war is to take back our education from the progressive left and teach our children the truth; that the laws of nature are and always will be inviolable and cannot be denied. And that other cultures and people, with their differences, might just be wrong.

 JoshuaPundit : We live in a time when decadence is not only celebrated, but mainstreamed. The work is done through our media, our schools, our politicians and even some of our religious institutions. When someone like Curt Schilling can be fired by ESPN merely for pointing out (privately, not on the air) that he's against allowing males with male equipment to use women's bathrooms where they have the opportunity to assault and molest women and children, you know the rot goes deep. And yes, some cases of this have unfortunately occurred already.

This is yet another tool to be used to disrupt and eventually supplant the traditional family with loyalty to the state, something Mao, Hitler and Stalin would find completely familiar and understandable.

Votes and even our Supreme Court have proven to be of little help in this struggle against the destruction of our culture, although voting and political activism may still play a role in the future. The basic weapons are organization, the realization that money talks  and voting with our feet.

First, any parent should do two things. First, if they have the means, they need to get their kids out of the public schools as soon as possible and into private schools, or if not, home school. And organize to force politicians to allow voucher programs and school choice, or elect ones that will.

The second thing, if very young children are involved is to get rid of television. Even a casual glance at  supposedly innocuous PBS might surprise you. Very young children lack the mental armor to defend themselves from what's being fed to them, and it takes time for them to develop it. Also, the amount of television viewed in many homes promotes passivity and inaction.

A third tool that needs to be used far more aggressively is the realization that money talks. Imagine what would happen if ESPN's advertisers received a few thousand or more e-mails and calls informing them that those members of the public would no longer patronize the products of companies that supported a network that violated Curt Schilling's First Amendment Rights? And that they were going to spread the word to others?  Duck Dynasty is a good example of what happens when this garbage is exposed to sunlight.

Part of that sunlight also involves seeing whom these companies give their money and support to. Often, they're not even aware of the full nature of whom they write the checks to.  Calling their attention to it and perhaps even following up with a practical demonstration of what their continued support can cost often can be surprisingly effective.

Organization, voting with our feet and political action.That's how to win the culture war. In fact,it's how the Left has been waging it, bit by bit.


Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

The Council Has Spoken! Our Watcher's Council Results

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

"Holly came from Miami F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she..." - Lou Reed, "Walk On The Wild Side"

"All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man." - John Irving, "The World According to Garp"

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” - Aldous Huxley



This week's winning essay,Bookworm Room's It’s time for conservatives to take advantage of the Left’s reality denial Focuses on what she sees as a the Left's reality denial...the fashionable confusion over what's male and what's female, what's right and what's wrong, and who gets free speech and who doesn't particularly in our universities. Here's a slice:

I finally got around to watching last week’s 60 Minutes, which had a segment devoted to Schuyler Bailar, a person who got admitted to Harvard as to swim on its women’s swim team, but who had breast removal surgery over the summer and presented at Harvard asking to swim on the men’s team. Harvard, reeking of political correctness (you can see oleaginous pride oozing off of the interviewed coaches), agreed, which infuriated me. Schuyler, as a woman, would have set breaststroke records deserving of a place on a highly competitive swim team. Schuyler, as a man, is a chubby, hip-heavy slow poke, who routinely comes in last.

Given that I loathe Harvard, why does this infuriate me? Shouldn’t I be cheering anything that lowers Harvard’s standing in the world?

Well, in theory, yes. In fact, though, I think it just stinks that, in the name of political correctness, some deserving young man with good grades and a fast breaststroke couldn’t get into Harvard (presuming, as I do, that such a man exists) because chubby little Schuyler got his place. It seems to me that if Schuyler wants to play with the big boys, Schuyler should also have to play by big boy rules — one of which is, if you’re really slow, you’re not on the team.

As far as I’m concerned, Schulyer’s gender “bait and switch” is tantamount to committing fraud against Harvard, although Harvard is happily complicit in its own victimization. Thinking in terms of fraud, though, has legal ramifications. If there is no reality anymore — in other words, if reality is shaped by our subjective desires rather than by any objective “facts” (and isn’t “facts” such a silly, old-fashioned word?) — we truly have entered a brave new world legally.

Once you start down that road, it’s a short stop to rethinking entirely the latest chapter in the Left’s despicable and un-American efforts to stifle free speech and association. I’m speaking, of course, of the lawsuit that 20 Democrat attorney generals have launched against ExxonMobile for “fraudulently” denying climate change. In the course of this litigation, the same attorney generals are attacking any conservative institutions that are speaking out against these Stasi tactics:

[U]nder the pretext of combatting fraud, these officials, clothed in immense power, have started what can only be termed a campaign of intimidation against businesses and organizations advocating a thoughtful, cautious approach to public policies dealing with man’s role in impacting the global climate.

Begun by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and followed-on by California AG Kamala Harris, this effort started by looking at the efforts of ExxonMobil in dealing with proposals that would have a tremendous impact on the energy sector in the United States. Among their concerns were the research and education organizations that ExxonMobil may have supported.

Schneiderman and Harris were soon joined by another eighteen attorneys general — and when this effort was questioned by CEI’s Hans Bader in January, CEI found itself to be the target!

Last week, Claude Walker, the AG for the U.S. Virgin Islands, subpoenaed the donor records for CEI — sending a clear signal to both CEI and its donors that such dissent simply will not be tolerated.

Let’s be clear here: Exxon has a fundamental right to support whatever non-profit organizations it wants to, and to do so privately. CEI has a right to accept donations from any U.S. Citizen or U.S. company it wants to. Both have the right to keep their donations private, a right that is protected under the First Amendment, and enshrined in the Supreme Court’s 1957 NAACP v. Alabama decision.

As it happens, after practicing law for almost three decades, I know a little bit about fraud: A fraud claim requires some semblance of objective fact as the standard by which to measure the defendant’s actionable deviation from those facts. Thus, an essential element in any fraud claim is the existence of a “material fact” as to which the defendant lied.


Much more at the link.

In our non-Council category, the we had a three way tie for first place between Caroline Glick's Obama's Political Legacy submitted by The Noisy Room, Andrew McCarthy's piece in Pajamas MediaPay Attention! While Primaries Distract, Obama Shreds Constitutional Governance submitted by Nice Deb , and David P. Goldman (AKA Spengler) withTo be kind is to be cruel, to be cruel is to be kindsubmitted by Bookworm Room .

According to our bylaws, on such occasions I get to put on my Watcher's hat and break the tie, which in this case means I have two Council members peeved at me instead of just one. Well, they don't pay me the big bucks for nothing...

David Goldman's 'To Be Kind is To Be Cruel' is yet another one of Spengler's masterful pieces. His take on how Islamofaschism uses the West's humane impulses against it to intimidate and ultimately subjugate it as well as how to combat this tactic should be required reading for anyone at all interested in turning this tide and saving our freedom. I had no problem picking it as this weeks' winner in our non-Council category.

Here are this week’s full results: Fausta and Puma By Design were unable to vote this week, but were either unaffected or not subject to our usual 2/3 vote penalty for not voting. Two other members voted partially, one whom picked only a first choice in both categories and another who did not pick a second choice in the Council category.

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 votes!-Bookworm Room – It’s time for conservatives to take advantage of the Left’s reality denial


• Second place with 1 2/3 votes – Nice Deb – Survey: What British Muslims Really Think


• Third place with 1 1/3 votes –Stately McDaniel Manor – An Educator's Dilemma: Whoa, That's Disturbing!


• Fourth place with 1 vote –The Noisy Room – Rush Limbaugh: ‘BEST DIRTY TRICK I’VE EVER SEEN!!’ Ted Cruz Silenced In New York


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Glittering Eye -Keep Your Enemies Closer


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Razor – The North Carolina Boycott – The HB2 Hypocrites


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Puma By Design – New York State Primary: Chaotic!


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Daley Gator – Trump And The Politic Of Victimhood


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –VA Right! - Mechanicsville Walmart Profiled, Discriminated Against Young White Couple


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –Fausta's Blog – The Carnival Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 votes! –David P. Goldman (AKA Spengler)/Asia Times-To be kind is to be cruel, to be cruel is to be kindsubmitted by Bookworm Room


• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes –Andrew McCarthy/Pajamas Media -Pay Attention! While Primaries Distract, Obama Shreds Constitutional Governance submitted by Nice Deb


• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes –Caroline Glick –Obama's Political Legacy submitted by The Noisy Room


• Third place with 1 1/3 votes – Simply Jews – Israel To Europe: Can We be Of Assistance? submitted by The Watcher


• Fourth place with 1 vote - Defining Ideas –The Climate Wars Get Ugly submitted by Stately McDaniel Manor


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -The American Interest – Democrats, Not Republicans, Have Moved on Immigration submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -al-Monitor – Is Hamas on the offensive or defensive? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -The Investigative Project On Terrorism – How Radicalization Was Allowed to Fester in Belgiumsubmitted by VA Right!


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Anthony Fisher/Reason.Com –Saudi Arabia's Alleged 9/11 Connection Just One of Many Reasons the U.S. Ally is a Problem submitted by The Razor


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -OGN – How Do Syrian Women Feel about the Men Leaving for Europe as Refugees? submitted by The Right Planet


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Christopher Caldwell/The Federalist – Why Vladimir Putin’s People Love Him submitted by The Watcher

See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every  Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

Our Watcher's Council Nominations - 'Trust Me' Edition

If President Barack Hussein Obama says something...need I finish that sentence?

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

So, let's see what we have for you this week....

Council Submissions

• The Noisy Room – Rush Limbaugh: ‘BEST DIRTY TRICK I’VE EVER SEEN!!’ Ted Cruz Silenced In New York


• Fausta's Blog – The Carnival Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean


• Stately McDaniel Manor – An Educator's Dilemma: Whoa, That's Disturbing!


• The Glittering Eye -Keep Your Enemies Closer


• Puma By Design – New York State Primary: Chaotic!


• Nice Deb – Survey: What British Muslims Really Think


• The Razor – The North Carolina Boycott – The HB2 Hypocrites


• The Right Planet – Mark Zuckerberg Proposes Love, Care and Empathy to Defeat Terrorism


• Bookworm Room – It’s time for conservatives to take advantage of the Left’s reality denial


• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Bad to Worse


• The Daley Gator – Trump And The Politic Of Victimhood


• VA Right! - Mechanicsville Walmart Profiled, Discriminated Against Young White Couple

Non-Council Submissions

• Caroline Glick –Obama's Political Legacy submitted by The Noisy Room


• National Review – Minimum-Wage Activists Should Look to Puerto Rico for Clues to the Future submitted by Fausta's Blog


• Defining Ideas –The Climate Wars Get Ugly submitted by Stately McDaniel Manor


• The American Interest – Democrats, Not Republicans, Have Moved on Immigration submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Andrew McCarthy/Pajamas Media -Pay Attention! While Primaries Distract, Obama Shreds Constitutional Governance submitted by Nice Deb


• Anthony Fisher/Reason.Com –Saudi Arabia's Alleged 9/11 Connection Just One of Many Reasons the U.S. Ally is a Problem submitted by The Razor


• OGN – How Do Syrian Women Feel about the Men Leaving for Europe as Refugees? submitted by The Right Planet


• David P. Goldman (AKA Spengler)/Asia Times-To be kind is to be cruel, to be cruel is to be kindsubmitted by Bookworm Room


• al-Monitor – Is Hamas on the offensive or defensive? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• The Lonely Conservative -Ted Cruz Gets The Constitution Like No Other Candidatesubmitted by The Daley Gator


• The Investigative Project On Terrorism – How Radicalization Was Allowed to Fester in Belgiumsubmitted by VA Right!


• Simply Jews – Israel To Europe: Can We be Of Assistance? submitted by The Watcher


• Christopher Caldwell/The Federalist – Why Vladimir Putin’s People Love Him submitted by The Watcher

Enjoy! And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!And don't forget to tune in Friday for the results!