The view from the Anglosphere
October 21, 2019 3 Comments
I think video Monday is here. First with a hat tip to both International Liberty and The Conservative Woman.
TCW kindly added a couple more, Rounds 1 and 2 of Keynes v Hayek. Enjoy.
And here is Mollie Hemingway on the divide in America today
October 18, 2019 5 Comments
American and UK flags flying together
Here we do our best to deal in the truth, sometimes gently but often unvarnished. I’ve skimmed the new Brexit deal, not thoroughly read it. I agree with the DUP and with Nigel Farage: It is unacceptable. What that really means that if Boris gets it through Parliament (and it will likely be close) it will be the end of his career and likely the Conservative party as well. Labour too, but that has several other causes as well as its muddled response to the referendum. anti-Semitism, pro-Islam, and identity politics play about as well in the shires as they do in the American heartland. The US Democratic Party also has a wake-up coming next year, I think. Insanity also doesn’t play well. In both countries, we are seeing a major realignment, from left-right to give us back our good old law, for lack of a proper term. It is what has always fueled English speaking revolutions, going back to King Stephen’s time, at least. Nothings changed, and not always have they been peaceful or even mostly peaceful. One could think of the Barons of England standing at Runnymede, in full armor fingering their swords. Regicide was in the air that afternoon.
Somebody else who tells the truth is Daniel Greenfield. Here in FrontPage Magazine, he tells us why our corporations are taking China’s part against the US and specifically against Hong Kong. There are no real surprises here if you’ve been paying attention, but he does an excellent job of pulling it together.
Think there’s a contradiction between ‘woke’ corporate titans like Apple and Disney silencing anyone opposed to China’s crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong?
It’s not hypocrisy, it’s synergy.
The same forces that made the major brands scattered around your kitchen, living room and garage broadcast their support for gun control, gay marriage and illegal immigration are fueling their support for the People’s Republic of China pulling another Tiananmen Square in Hong Kong.
The lefties in Beijing and Berkeley used the same set of ideological tools to force companies to toe the party line. They roped off access to an appealing customer base, the population of mainland China, urban millennials with huge amounts of disposable income, in exchange for ideological compliance.
Communist China is one entangled oligarchy which mingles political party and company. Sound familiar?
The CEO of Nike sits on the board of Disney. The CEO of Disney until recently sat on the board of Apple. The CEO of Apple sits on the board of Nike. Good thing we have a “free market economy” isn’t it?
There’s a lot in that, interlocking boards have been a problem in American business for well over a hundred years.
And the Mouse didn’t eat the entire entertainment industry by being unable to see the endgame. Avengers Endgame brought in $612 million in China. That’s the real endgame that it cares about.
In America and China, a lefty political elite controls the culture. Chinese and American lefties interlock cultural, economic and political power. Disney, once seen as a square family friendly studio, can rule the box offices in America and China because it advances the cultural goals of their political elites. […]
If you’re going to sell thousand-dollar phones made by slave labor in some dusty factory town where the air is poison, you need the sanction of the Communist Party of China and the culture industry of California. And if you’re going to dump your cultural garbage in American and Chinese movie theaters, both owned by the same Chinese corporations, you’ll need to run the stuff by cultural censors.
The ‘enemies of the people’ in Hong Kong are free market Christians who don’t want a police state controlling their lives. Funny coincidence, those are also the ‘enemies of the people’ in America.
Giant multinational monopolies don’t like free markets. They encourage competition.
The last thing the NBA, Disney, Apple, Nike and the rest of the ‘megas’ want is competition. What they want is a walled garden tended by a kindly Zen-Communist tyrant who will give them a virgin territory in exchange for a huge slice of the pie to be shared with local political partners. And, of course, slavish devotion to the tyranny of whatever it is the locals believe in, dialectical materialism, the transcendence of gender, which is a small price to pay by people who don’t have any principles or believe in anything. […]
Identity politics manufactures identities and then convinces its dupes that their lives are hopeless and incomplete until they also implement open borders, gun control, and a ban on fossil fuels.
Sound familiar? Buy into the revolution now. Organizers are standing by to take your call.
That’s also why religious believers are the enemy. They don’t make ideal consumers.
People who have a form of meaning in their lives that isn’t for sale on Black Friday aren’t good consumers. Lefties with thirty genders and a hole the size of Cleveland where meaning should be, are.
OK, I don’t know if the Hong Kongers are actually Christians, although undoubtedly some are. His point is valid in any case. Some of our founders were pretty questionable Christians as well, even apart from some that were Jews. But his point is valid, their identity isn’t tied into their iPhone and such trash, let alone the movies and crap music. What they believe in, just like you and me, is freedom. Can you imagine if a quarter of Americans were in the streets demonstrating against the government? Some 87.5 million of us? That’s what is going on in Hong Kong.
The fact that they are waving three flags is no accident either. The flag of the Royal Colony of Hong Kong, the American flag, and the British Union Flag. Those are historically, and even now, the flags of freedom around the world. The fact that all of us are in this same battle is also significant. The EU as we’ve said before is nothing more than a corporatist empire, that will stifle everything to make a sale, especially freedom and Christianity.
That’s why Brexit is so important now. It was an excellent idea at the time of the referendum, but the last three years have demonstrated just how evil the EU is.
The same is true here, in America, as the Democrats, the Media, and the left-wing corporatists attempt a takeover.
I’ll give Mr. Greenfield the last word.
What matters is that more people, in China and America, are realizing that what they want isn’t a sale: it’s freedom.
October 17, 2019 5 Comments
Ben Domenech, the publisher of The Federalist has an outstanding column on the Hong Kong protests. It is a bit long but it also burrows down into the whole thing. It’s not very prone to excerpts, so I’m just going to suggest you read it. As the Hong Kongers say: “Be Brave. Be Water. Be Ready.” And for God’s sake don’t be a coward like LeBron James.
My other favorite from yesterday is from American Greatness, where Edward Ring visualized the Future that Trump portends. Here’s the opening:
Anyone who thinks President Trump’s victory is inevitable in 2020 is not paying attention. The entire weight of America’s profiteering elites is arrayed against him.
But what if he wins anyway? What if enough voters realize they’re being conned by the Democrats? What if enough voters decide they don’t want to feel like unwanted usurpers in their own nation? What if men and women of all ethnicities realize that despite the unrelenting avalanche of lies coming from the Left, America is a welcoming and inclusive nation and that the only way a society can stay healthy is by rewarding personal initiative?
What if a critical mass of independent voters were to conclude that, despite his pugnacity, President Trump cares about all Americans, and actually holds moderate, compassionate, common-sense positions? If these things happen, and they very well might, not only will President Trump get reelected, but control of the House of Representatives will return once again to the GOP. And if these sentiments sweep across the land, then politicians of both parties will realize it is time to stop fighting and get back to serving the American people.
Go ahead and read it and then come back, and we’ll talk a bit.
Quite the vision, isn’t it? Realistic? Perhaps not, but who can say. It reads as almost Pollyanish, embroiled as we are in the divisive culture wars. But who’s to say. In 1776, it was dead certain that Britain would regain its colonies, probably more certain than that the ChiComs will suppress the Hong Kongers. But it didn’t turn out that way, did it?
We often misapply the City on a Hill speech, but part of that is that we see beyond what Bradford could see. We can see how the American idea appeals all over the world. We have seen what free markets and free men and women can do. We saw a strip of dirt along the Atlantic Ocean, making a poor living as subsistence farmers turn into the greatest and freest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen both economically and militarily, because of that freedom. And a bit of British gold to lubricate things, because of everyplace in the world, we were and are, the most like them with a trustworthy legal system.
Right now we have the divisiveness and vituperativeness of the left, as we have had (but worse) since Wilson a hundred years ago. This is why our greatest accomplishments – so far – were in the nineteenth century. We have been swimming upstream against those who wish to shackle, for their own benefit, the people of the United States certainly, but actually all the world. Something for us all to remember, we are the ‘Keeper of the Flame’ of Liberty, if we go down, most likely all the world will follow us into a new dark age, made more sinister by the technology that free men developed. If we stand, the world has a chance.
You all know that I talk to many in Britain, like us, they have their eyeores, but when you really talk to them, they sound like the Hong Kongers, or Americans. I firmly believe that one of two things will happen there, Britain will exit the European Union, or Britain will destroy its left and destroy the European Union. God bless ’em. I said even before the referendum, that its significance is equal to July 4th, 1776, or maybe the Reformation.
In short, do I believe it will happen as Mr. Ring writes? Probably not. But if we stay the course, and continue to lead with our power and might, not only physically, but morally as well, we will win through, and others will follow us to Churchill’s broad sunlit uplands. You would be surprised how many Britons, and I suspect others, as well, read American blogs, for truthful information, of course, but also because of our thinking, and our willingness to speak.
Once again, I am reminded of the first lines of America’s first great anthem.
Let tyrants shake their iron rod
And slav’ry clang her galling chains;
We’ll fear them not. We trust in God;
October 16, 2019 8 Comments
Well, you know our problems as well as I do. We’ve got ourselves some iconoclasts running about trying to destroy our heritage by destroying anything (like statues) that remind us of who we are while quoting Marx (sadly Karl, not Groucho). We’ve got a media and deep state that thinks they know better than the people and should rule us, the people who invented the maxim that America being ungovernable is a feature, not a bug. We’ve got a lot of problems but the words of Captain James Lawrence of USS Chesapeake, “Don’t give up the ship, fight her till she sinks”.
Some say he wasn’t the greatest captain in our history, and the crew did give up the ship after he died, but his words live on, not least because Commodore Oliver hazard Perry had the first part made into a flag and nailed to his mast at the famous (and very unlikely) victory at the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813.
That legacy lives on, in Erie Pennsylvania as Salena Zito tells us in American Greatness.
Several large pieces of cobalt-blue glass panels bearing “Don’t Give Up the Ship” and a bold likeness of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry lay broken at the top of the third-floor stairs of the old Park Place building in the city’s main square.
If ever there were a motto that exemplified a place and her people, it would be those five words Perry had stitched on a flag—words that inspired him over 200 years ago when he bore the flag in his unlikely defeat of the British at the Battle of Lake Erie.
Given everything this town has gone through—from her heyday as the industrial powerhouse of the Great Lakes to a city bleeding people, jobs, and opportunity—finding this inspiring reminder in a building that used to produce “Carter’s Little Liver Pills” brought into focus the city’s effort at rebuilding. […]
John Persinger and Matt Wachter could live in any other city in the country and prosper quite nicely. Instead, the CEO and vice president of finance and development are the founding leaders of the Erie Downtown Development Corporation. They, along with Tim NeCastro, CEO of Erie Insurance, the city’s largest employer, have committed themselves to not give up the ship but to stabilize and rebuild it.
All three men are standing along a row of century-old buildings on North Park Row. The bones are good, but the buildings have all seen better days. The three men are discussing the projects they already have underway. These are projects meant to spark a cultural and culinary center, which they hope will, in turn, lead to a citywide metamorphosis.
“This is Perry Square. This is the heart of downtown. It’s often been called the ‘beating heart,’ but we’re not sure how much it beats these days because there’s not a whole lot of activity,” he said of the boarded-up buildings and scant pedestrian activity.
Here’s the odd thing: The moribund heart is surrounded by an arc of life. “UPMC Hamot campus is a few blocks away,” Persinger explains, “where they (are) putting in a new $111 million patient tower.”
There’s more: “Erie Insurance employs 3,000 people right there. They’re building a new office building. You can kind of see it over the tree line.”
And that’s how, I think, we are going to solve our problems if they are to be solved. Not by running to Washington for grant money, not by asking experts, but by going and doing it ourselves. After all, that is how we built this country, and it’s how we will rebuild it, better than ever.
For America, the rule is going to have to be the one Captain Lawrence gave us:
October 14, 2019 9 Comments
A lot of (what I think is) good thinking showed up over the weekend. So let’s take a look at it. In American Thinker, Shoshana Bryen tells us that Trump’s foreign policy is “more money, less military’“.
One way to understand Trump administration foreign policy is to understand that it is more comfortable with the currency of currency than the currency of American soldiers abroad. That isn’t always the best approach, since many of America’s adversaries are wedded to military interventions — including grossly illegal ones. And how the United States reassures its allies that it is not abandoning the playing field to soldiers on the other side is of inestimable importance.
But since money appears central to administration thinking, consider China, the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the Trump administration.
That’s an interesting thought, and while I agree that it is not always the best approach, it’s not a terrible default idea – the soldiers are still about, but money is cheaper (for us, anyway) than blood.
The Trump administration, on the other hand, appears to have a stiffer spine, as befits the government of the United States. It has gone straight after what China cares about most: energy, espionage, and the surveillance of its people. […]
And Huawei, the Chinese tech company, is looking to be running low on American semiconductors and other parts for its 5G network, raising questions about its ability to maintain global dominance in telecommunications — and industrial and national security spying. Huawei can substitute its own parts in the network for American parts, but The Washington Post reports that “analysts have said a Huawei operating system would have a tough time competing globally with Google and its popular Gmail and Chrome apps[.] … Huawei chief executive Ren said the U.S. blockade was causing a large drop in Huawei’s smartphone sales outside of China.”
See what I mean, this may or may not have completely desirable results, but it’s a lot better than getting our people in the way of the Chinese Communists. It also leads into our next article, also from American Thinker by Robert Arvay, who asks is Trump leading Xi and Kim into a death trap.
A dictatorship is nothing more than an organized crime mob on steroids. The head of state must brutally suppress (read: murder) anyone and everyone who poses even a remote threat to his power. Dictators do not get voted out of office. They get carried out, feet first.
Kim Jong-un, the dictator of North Korea (the title of chairman is a euphemism), is exceedingly paranoid. Paranoia in a dictator is not a disorder; it is a necessary survival mechanism. Kim not only murders anyone and everyone whom he even suspects of disloyalty, but takes nonlethal measures as well. He even takes his own toilet with him wherever he travels, in order to prevent his DNA from falling into the hands of analysts who might deduce his physical infirmities. […]
The dictator, then, must carefully balance his threats and promises. His acolytes must fear him. Indeed, they must be constantly terrorized by the dictator’s ruthless exercise of authority. However, the dictator must be exceedingly careful in how much terror he can impose. Terror keeps him alive. Panic can kill him. […]
Finally, this is what brings us to the ingenious method by which President Trump is deftly maneuvering both Kim and Xi into their potential death traps. Both men are surrounded by loyalists who are not only terrorized, but also richly rewarded for their continued loyalty. Once those rewards stop, once the dictator shows weakness, once he is defeated by a stronger enemy, the loyalists might panic.
Now mind, I doubt the President has thought all this out as clearly as the author writes, but Trump has been around the block a few times with some not overly nice guys, corrupt bureaucrats, even more corrupt unions and I imagine he learned some ways to get things done since he got things done.
Finally, yesterday, in 1775, something new was seen on the sea, for it was the birthdate of the American Navy. From that first salute at Stasia, to gunsmoke off Flamborough Head on the east coast of England, to a commendation from Lord Nelson himself, to the famous single-ship actions, to the destruction of two Spanish fleets, to Midway, Leyte Gulf, the successful submarine campaign, to Inchon, to the disaster relief provided by the fleet and the hospital ships, and right down to this week, the Navy has done it all and done America proud.
None of what we talked about today, or will in the future would be possible without the evident power of the United States Navy.
He who controls the sea controls the trade of the world,
He who controls the trade of the world controls the wealth of the world.
Sir Walter Raleigh and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz.
October 5, 2019 14 Comments
I noted an article at The Duran yesterday. While I suspect many of you have not heard of the site, I often enjoy their view, which is not conventional. Here Matthew Ehret comments on Trump’s speech to the UN. The video clip is at the link: “Future Belongs To Patriots, Not Globalists”: Donald Trump Tells UN.
The author states that:
This powerful intervention broke the narrative that the UN Climate summit or the attempts to impeach him had anything to do with “saving the environment” or “stopping corruption in politics” as those running these operations would have us believe. The reality, as Trump eloquently made clear at this venue, is that the issue now, as it has always been, is truly about the nature of the world order- and whether that order shall be run by sociopathic technocrats under a one world government, or patriots under a community of sovereign nation states.
He’ll get no argument from me on that.
But there’s more. Ehret, I had never heard of so I Duck, Ducked him. He’s an iconoclastic Canadian author, who has done a lot of work on the roots of the ‘Deep State’. It’s probably a good thing for a Canadian to research, more than anyone they sit halfway between Britain and America. He seems to be making the point that the ‘Deep State’ is, in fact, the old British elite’s attempt to reestablish the old Empire, that he says failed about the time of the Boer war.
I think he may be correct. One of the things that I have never understood was FDR’s antipathy to the Empire. Ehret puts it in opposition to the American system as designed by Hamilton and further extended by Lincoln.
He has authored a 55 page PDF on the origin of the ‘Deep State’ that I found this morning. While I’m only about a fifth of the way through it, I’m finding it fascinating. From the introduction:
“Two systems are before the world; the one looks to increasing the proportion of persons and of capital engaged in trade and transportation, and therefore to diminishing the proportion engaged in producing commodities with which to trade, with necessarily diminished return to the labour of all; while the other looks to increasing the proportion engaged in the work of production, and diminishing that engaged in trade and transportation, with increased return to all, giving to the labourer good wages, and to the owner of capital good profits… One looks to under working the Hindoo, and sinking the rest of the world to his level; the other to raising the standard of man throughout the world to our level.
One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other in increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.”
– Henry C. Carey, Harmony of Interests, 1856
The PDF is here. I do not know if he is right, nor do I know he is wrong. But, either way, it is by far the most plausible answer to the origin of that shadowy grouping that I have read. If you are interested, you should too.
