[EnterStageRight] The Babylon Bee could avoid the punitive scrutiny of our Big Tech overlords if the site would just follow the lead of Senate Republicans.
The Babylon Bee is a conservative Christian satire site that has — in the eyes of Silicon Valley censors — committed the unforgivable sin: It’s too effective and too funny.
The Bee is different because it’s unpredictable and most important it satirizes all sides. It pokes gentle, non—profane fun at Christians and atheists, along with conservatives and leftists. This is not to say the satire is split 50—50. The Bee leans conservative and many of the satiric items require insider knowledge of how Christians worship and wrangle.
For example, an insider headline from today’s homepage: "KJV-Only Church Still Staunch Defender Of Early Web Design Principles"
Then Trump is targeted: "Trump Tries To Win Suburban Women By Starring In Series Of Romance Novels." That article features Donald Trump wearing a frilly, pirate shirt open to his navel on a book titled, "Orange Passion: Four More Years of Ecstasy."
Two generations of Bidens are satirized. Joe gets, "Health Experts Now Recommend Maximizing Social Distance By Attending A Biden Rally."
And the son merits, "Heartwarming: Amy Coney Barrett Just Adopted A Local Troubled Youngster Named Hunter." Under that headline is the familiar Barrett family photo with a Photoshopped Hunter Biden inserted into the last row.
My favorite was the "KJV" headline, but I know it stands for King James Version of the Bible. The casual reader probably wouldn’t recognize the abbreviation or know that Christians have been arguing about what version of the Bible to use in Sunday services for over 100 years.
Had The Bee stayed with Christian insider jokes it would have been safe at least until Kamala Harris’ second term. Publishing topical items is what attracted the Eye of Sauron. The Bee’s Facebook page was demonetized last week after it published, "Senator Hirono Demands ACB Be Weighed Against A Duck To See If She Is A Witch."
Demonetized means any ad revenue generated by visitors to the site will no longer be shared with The Bee. Facebook will keep all the money. It’s censorship abetting theft. Facebook isn’t worried about repercussions. It’s a monopoly and monopolies do as they please.
The Babylon Bee can’t exist without revenue, which is exactly the point.
Facebook’s justification for digital robbery was the story "incites violence." Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon summed the situation up nicely, "So after a manual review, Facebook says they stand by their decision to pull down this article and demonetize our page. I'm not kidding. They say this article ’incites violence.’ It's literally a regurgitated joke from a Monty Python movie! In what universe does a fictional quote as part of an obvious joke constitute a genuine incitement to violence?"
The Babylon Bee is being punished for being too effective and having too much reach with its impure thoughts.
This could have been avoided if The Bee would only follow the lead of the country club conservatives in the Senate. The last few days have seen a coordinated effort by Big Tech to censor a series of stories from the New York Post based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Less than three weeks before the vote Silicon Valley is suppressing an international scandal that could prove deadly to Biden’s chances for winning the election. It’s unprecedented election interference by Big Tech monopolies.
Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were initially talking tough. Subpoenas were going to compel Twitter and Facebook CEOs Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg to explain their enormous in—kind contribution to the Biden campaign. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R—Spineless) promised a vote last week.
Now Politico says even that tiny bit of umbrage has been stamped out. "Judiciary staff has indicated internally that plans for the vote were delayed in part due to some GOP panel members wavering on whether to support the action. Republican officials have also expressed trepidation about how quickly the committee has moved to vote on the subpoenas."
Well, yes. No need to be hasty. It’s not like there’s an election at stake! These collaborating conservatives will slither back into their offices and hope the storm passes. They don’t particularly like Trump and certainly don’t want their Twitter or Facebook accounts to be frozen.
Instead of continuing to feature the Hirono satire on its home page, The Bee could have buried it with the rough draft of the Senate subpoenas. The Senate’s housebroken conservatives have grown accustomed to bowing before Big Tech.
Had The Babylon Bee stuck to critiquing the cuisine at Baptist potlucks, all this could have been avoided. Just follow the advice of Matthew 10:16 in the Senate Revised Version: "Therefore, be as craven as serpents and harmless as doves." ESR
#2
"But they haven't finished giving us money!"
In the 60s, one of Howard Hughes' aides, noticing the wide variety of politicians that stopped by to pick up their 'touch', asked Hughes what he looked for in a pol to support. "The ability to close their hand when I tell them to." was the answer.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/02/2020 14:54 Comments ||
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[VictoryGirls] We supporters of President Donald J. Trump have to listen every day as the Democrat Media Industrial Complex and Republican Never Trumpers call the President everything but a child of God. Because he is deified now, we never hear how President Abraham Lincoln was treated by the media of the time and even members of his own party. It’s almost heartening in these days to remember that the intelligentsia of the time is often very wrong about Presidents.
In the long term, historians will judge Donald Trump and his Presidency. And, whether or not he is judged a hero or a zero, it is helpful to look back and see how Lincoln was judged in his own time versus how Trump is viewed now.
Both Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln Are Made Fun Of For Their Looks
About Lincoln from the Irish Times from Carl Schurz in 1858:
Nothing had prepared him for the sight of this remarkably "homely, deeply furrowed, swarthy, haggard face, topped with a somewhat battered stovepipe hat". The large and mobile mouth bent into a "kind smile", and the "deep-set, melancholy eyes from time to time illuminated with a merry twinkle". But the overall effect was bizarre, inexplicable. Something about the man was ugly, even repellent; something else was magnetic, almost irresistible.
From his own law partner:
John Todd Stuart, who became his first law partner, thought Lincoln looked "torpid" and "gloomy" and believed that the "pores of his flesh acted as an appropriate organ" for his "Evacuations", adding, in something of an understatement, that he "differed with other men about this".
Everyone, including moi, has made fun of Donald Trump’s comb over. He should shave his head. The haters call him an Oompa Loompa and, the popular, Orange-Man Bad.
Both Donald Trump And Abraham Lincoln Were Called Dictators
Lincoln considered the saving of the Union the highest priority. From Lincoln The "Dictator" by Dennis J. Hutchinson:
"The godfather of despotism": the charge has haunted Abraham Lincoln
from the advent of the Civil War to the wake of his bicentennial. 1 From
partisans during the war to early twentieth century historians to post-World War
II political scientists fearing an "imperial presidency" to the latest libertarian
Lincoln-hater, Lincoln has been vilified as someone who destroyed the
Constitution in order to save the Union. The bill of particulars is lengthy and
grave: he suspended habeas corpus and jailed opponents, flouted a court order by the Chief Justice of the United States, ordered troops raised and materiel
purchased, blockaded Southern ports, emancipated slaves after denying the
power to do so-all without prior Congressional authorization. Professor
Clinton Rossiter of Columbia put the case starkly in 1948: "dictatorship played a
decisive role in the North’s successful effort to maintain the Union by force of
arms .... Lincoln’s amazing disregard for the words of the Constitution was
considered by nobody as legal."
Wow, when it is written that plainly, it’s breathtaking. Foreign Policy.com has a list of the 10 ways that DJT is becoming a dictator. Here is the first one:
1. Systematic efforts to intimidate the media.
This tactic has been a central feature of Trump’s presidency from the beginning, whether in the form of his constant tweets about "fake news" and his none-too-veiled attempts to threaten the owners of media outlets he dislikes (such as CNN or the Washington Post). As he reportedly admitted to CBS reporter Lesley Stahl, Trump has attacked the press quite deliberately. "He said, ’You know why I do it?’" she later told PBS. "’I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.’"
Such efforts continue to this day. In May, for example, Trump signed an executive order that could eventually allow the government to oversee political speech on the Internet, a move that came the same week Twitter had marked two of his erroneous tweets with a "fact-checking" label. But that’s not all.
Pretty mild by the standards of President Lincoln. Personally, I love the idea of discrediting and demeaning the dishonest media. Speaking of the media:
Both Trump’s And Lincoln’s Speeches Were Panned By The Press
Every time that Donald Trump opens his mouth, the Democrat Media Industrial Complex has a collective heart attack. You can read some critiques of Trump’s acceptance of the Republican renomination here. Abraham Lincoln was ridiculed as "namby pamby" and " making us the laughingstock of the world". And the famous Gettysburg Address, Tom Kacich has researched the critiques of the time:
The Chicago Times, on Nov. 23, 1863, accused Lincoln of "ignorant rudeness," "boorishness" and "vulgarity" for including "political partisanship" in his Gettysburg speech.
It was especially upset about his statement that "all men are created equal," and cited the three-fifths rule, contained in the Constitution, for counting slaves.
"Do these provisions in the Constitution dedicate the nation to ’the proposition that all men are created equal?’ Mr. Lincoln occupies his present position by virtue of this Constitution, and is sworn to the maintenance and enforcement of these provisions," the anti-Lincoln, pro-Democratic Times said.
And:
But Lincoln’s hometown newspaper, the Illinois State Register, was especially savage in its criticism of the speech at Gettysburg.
"Nothing could have been more inappropriate than to have invited the prince of jokers, Old Abe, to be present at the consecration of the Gettysburg Cemetery," the Register wrote on Nov. 24, 1863.
"But having been invited, it was hoped by his apologists that he would at least refrain from his clownish jokes about standing over the new-made graves of thousands who had been slain in the recent battle."
Doesn’t that sound as if it could have been written about anything President Trump says? I recommend to you Donald Trump’s speech at the 2019 Remembrance of September 11, 2001:
Finally
It will always help to remember that just as there are Never Trumpers, there were Never Lincolnites. And, every Republican president since Abraham Lincoln; Reagan, both Bushes and Donald Trump among them, has been made fun of by the Democrat Media Industrial Complex.
#1
You are correct! Read the civil war trilogy written by Shelby Foote. The reasons are the same, the Northern Oligarchy of the time made their living by turning cotton into exported products. The rich in the north and the south hated Lincoln!
Now Google “ Ten richest people in the USA”, and ask yourself why they support people like Biden.
#2
Lincoln, Reagan, and Trump all put the lie to their claims old white men are all racist. but they'll try to twist words and change history if necessary.
#3
The papers also tried to ruin Grant by claiming he was a drunk. Grant taught Sherman how to fight at Vicksburg even though Sherman was opposed to the attack. He taught him more at Chattanooga. The student became a master and marched through the south.
#5
Don't forget Richard Nixon. The hate for Nixon was every bit as bad as it is for Trump, maybe even worse. But I think that history will be much kinder to him. We know now that Watergate was a schoolboy prank compared to some of the crimes that Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton, Obama and Biden have committed.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/02/2020 11:56 Comments ||
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#6
Compared with what is transpiring now, I hardly even think of Nixon. Definitely Kinderspiel in comparison.
And even Nixon resigned, some say, for the good of the country.
#7
Yeah, and I remember people saying Nixon was a dictator. What kind of a dictator resigns?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/02/2020 12:48 Comments ||
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#8
Ronnie Raygun - dumb actor, union-busting evil capitalist, warmonger, woman-basher, AIDS-ignorer, KKK supporter!! Vote to save civilization! The most important election EVER!!
GHW Bush - preppy capitalist tool, CIA warmonger, woman-basher, AIDS-ignorer, rayciss!! If you love peace truth and justice, VOTE FOR MIKE THE GREEK! Deliver us from evil!
GW Bush - fortunate son, warmonger, death penalty ogre!! Muslim-basher, gay marriage opponent.. AND RAYCISS!! Save our civilization! The most important election EVER!!
John McCain - warmonger, muslim-basher, fake maverick.. AND RAYCISS!! VOTE, most important election etc..
Willard Mitt Romney - evil capitalist, warmonger, muslim-basher, gay marriage opponent.. AND RAYCISS!! Save civiliza- yadda yadda
DJT - fortunate son!! warmonger!! capitalist ogre!! Muslim-basher!! RAYCISSRAYCISSRAAAAAYCIIIISSSSS!!! Save our civilization! The most important election EVER!! RAYCISS!!
VOTE! Twice thrice ten times. Cuz it's ... the most importantest cruciallest election ever. Really. I mean it this time. C'mon, maaaan!
#13
I love how Trump is supposedly evil for "attempting to intimidate the media" while Obama is given a pass for using law enforcement and intelligence agencies to harass reporters critical of his administration.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
11/02/2020 17:04 Comments ||
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[AmGreatness] Until Donald Trump’s arrival, the globalist revolution was almost solidified and institutionalized—with the United States increasingly its greatest and most "woke" advocate. We know its bipartisan establishment contours.
China would inherit the world in 20 or 30 years. The self-appointed task of American elites—many of whom had already been enriched and compromised by Chinese partners and joint ventures—was to facilitate this all-in-the-family transition in the manner of the imperial British hand-off of hegemony to the United States in the late 1940s.
Our best and brightest like the Biden family, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg would enlighten us about the "real" China, so we yokels would not fall into Neanderthal bitterness as they managed our foreordained decline.
We would usher China into "the world community"—grimacing at, but overlooking the destruction it wrought on the global commercial order and the American interior.
We would politely forget about Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and the Uyghurs. Hollywood would nod as it put out more lucrative comic-book and cartoonish films for the Chinese markets, albeit with mandated lighter-skinned actors.
The NBA would nod twice and trash a democratic United States, while praising genocidal China—becoming richer and more esteemed abroad to make up for becoming boring and poorer at home. The universities would nod three times, and see a crime not in Chinese espionage and security breaches, but in the reporting of them as crimes.
So our revolutionary role would be to play stuffy and snooty Athenian philosophers to the new muscular Roman legions of China.
Given our elites’ superior morality, genius, and sense of self, we would gently chide and cajole our Chinese masters into becoming enlightened world overseers and democrats—all the easier, the richer and more affluent Chinese became.
For now, Trump has stopped that revolution.
INTERNAL COUNTERREVOLUTIONS
Until Trump’s arrival, Big Tech was three-quarters home on the road to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Five or six companies monopolized most American—and indeed the world’s—access and use of the internet. In cynical fashion, Silicon Valley grandees patronized naïve conservatives that they were the supposed embodiment of Milton Friedman libertarianism and 19th century robber baron daring. Yet to their leftist kindred, the moguls of Menlo Park simultaneously whispered, "Don’t worry about such necessary disinformation: we will enrich only your candidates, only your agendas, only your foundations, only your universities—in exchange for your exemptions."
Antitrust legislation was as much an anathema to good liberals as rigging searches, institutionalizing the cancel culture, and censoring thoughts and ideas were welcomed. For now Trump, almost alone, is battling that revolution.
Until Trump’s arrival, there was increasingly no border at all. Fifty-million foreign-born resided, both legally and illegally, in the United States. Nearly a million annually walked northward across the border with ease and without legal sanction or invitation. To object to illegal immigration and decry its deleterious effects on the entry-level wages of our working poor, on the social safety net of the American needy, and on the sanctity of the law was to be smeared as racist, xenophobic, and nativist.
More than a quarter of California’s current resident population were not born in the United States. That desirous "new demography" since 1988 had flipped California into a caring blue state. Open borders and the end of immigration law enforcement had pushed Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado into just Democratic societies, and was supposedly soon to transform Texas and Arizona into enlightened states. For now, Trump—with his soon-to-be 400-mile wall, his beefed up ICE, and his war on sanctuary nullification zones—has nearly stopped the revolution to end borders.
Until Trump, the American interior was loser country. In-between the two gilded coasts resided the deplorables, irredeemables, clingers, the smelly Walmart patrons decried in the Page-Strzok text echanges, those John McCain called "crazies," and Joe Biden has variously called the "dregs," the "chumps" and the "ugly folks." They were written off as Morlocks, who were occasionally seen poking about the rotting, rusting skeletons of abandoned steel plants, and for some reason never had proper orthodontics as children.
Obama laughed about the "magic wand" needed to revive these unrevivable people. Larry Summers reportedly called such an idea a "fantasy." He was said to have praised the meritocracy that properly gives to such losers what they justly deserve. Very caring and very humane elites felt very little for supposedly very expendable riffraff.
Translated, that meant on the eve of the Chinese takeover, our clueless deplorables never learned to code, or to borrow $200,000 to get a woke-studies education, and so deserved the opioids they took and the trailers they crashed in.
Few apostates said, "Wait a minute! The United States has cheaper energy than anywhere on earth, a skilled workforce, a huge domestic market, and a still-viable infrastructure. There was a reason why Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania once led the world and why they can again." Through tax reform, deregulation, trade rebooting, a new foreign policy, and loud jawboning, Trump for a while has stopped the revolution that was destroying our once greatest states.
Until Trump, the woke cultural wars were just about won by the elites. Seeking unity was dead; chest-pounding diversity, often the spark that had ignited history’s multiracial societies, was ascendent.
The melting pot that sought to make race incidental was deemed racist; the salad bowl that made our superficial appearances essential was celebrated. Quite affluent, self-appointed minority leaders, with their quite wealthy white liberal counterparts, established who is, and who "ain’t," "really" black—the definition resting on whether one was loyally left-wing or disloyally independent-minded.
The success of civil rights was not to be calibrated by black unemployment figures, household income, family businesses, dignity in having leverage over employers, access to competitive parochial and charter schools, or descending abortion rates, but in electing more activists as progressive mayors, liberal city councilmembers, and leftist district attorneys to garner more redistributive state money to hire more careerists like themselves.
Trump, branded a bigot and racist, for now has sought to end that revolution, and measure race relations not by how many minority elites have choice jobs and high incomes, but by how well the entire minority community reaches income and employment parity with the general population—an idea that will earn the "racist" Trump far greater minority support than was expressed for John McCain and Mitt Romney.
CAN THE REVOLUTION BE STOPPED?
We are in the midst of a cultural revolution, for the most part driven by angry middle-and upper-class white youth of Antifa and its sympathizers, wannabes, and enablers. Many are humiliated that they have college pedigrees, lots of multi thousand-dollar debt, plenty of woke-studies classes to their credit, but still have no real jobs, no real knowledge, and no real immediate chances of buying a house, marrying, and raising a family in their 20s.
Nothing in history is more dangerous than the underemployed wannabe intellectual or college graduate, whose cultivated sense of superiority is not matched by his income or standard of living, but who blames "them" for his own self-inflicted miseries and unappreciated genius.
The revolution toppled statues, renamed what it did not like, Trotskyized the past, photoshopped the present, and used language, government, and cultural intimidation to do its best to make America into Animal Farm.
Corporate CEOs in terror washed the feet of the woke. University presidents, fearful for their status and careers, wrote incomprehensible memos admitting their past sins and asking how best to do present penance. Hollywood studio owners promised race and gender quotas, with ample provisions that—in the manner of NBA and NFL owners—adjustments and exceptions could be worked out for themselves.
Somewhere, somehow graduations, dorms, and campus spaces, all segregated by race, became "liberal." Intermarriage, integration, and assimilation were shamefully illiberal. Standing for the National Anthem was unpatriotic; sitting in disdain for it, cool. Donald Trump fought that revolution too.
What tools did Donald Trump have to wage these many counterrevolutions?
The media? America’s Fortune 400? Academia? The great foundations? The nation’s think tanks? The bipartisan government establishment? The international community? The banks? Wall Street? Corporate CEOs? Silicon Valley? Professional sports? The entertainment industry? Hollywood? The intelligence community? The current and retired top military brass?
In fact, none of them. All had joined or enabled the revolution, on the theory either that their wealth and influence would shield them and their own from its excesses, or like naïve Kerenskyites their status would impress and win over even those who targeted them, or they were inner revolutionaries themselves all along, just waiting to be freed at last by BLM and Antifa.
Against all that money and clout, the counterrevolutionary Trump had only one asset, the proverbial people. He had solely the under-polled and the written-off. They came out to his rallies in the tens of thousands, deluded the pollsters, and told the media less than nothing, but voted and will vote in waves to save America from what it was becoming.
[Mises] If it seems like the topic of secession is increasingly in the media in recent years, it’s not just your imagination. From "Calexit," to Brexit, to Catalonia, and to Scottish independence, the topic of breaking up nation-states into smaller pieces has increasingly forced itself into the foreground.
In the United States, the discussion has become muted in the past two years—but has not disappeared—as activists on both left and right have decided to wait and see how the next election turns out. But expect a resurgence of secession talk from the side that loses the presidency, once the race is over.
But thanks to relentless growth in federal power over American states and American communities, this issue is unlikely to go away. It appears that Americans are increasingly fearful that national majorities and national political institutions can be used to attack the culture, legal rights, and lifestyles of those who might find themselves as part of a national majority.
Unless these powers are scaled back, it is increasingly likely that secession or some other form of national disunion will become the last option for many who fear the destruction of self-rule and self-determination within the United States.
"A Secessionist Moment"
These trends have certainly not gone unnoticed by longtime observers of American politics and law.
In his new book American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup, legal scholar F.H. Buckley suggests "[w]e’re now living in a secessionist moment in world history," which is paving the way for dissenters both in the United States and elsewhere to move their nations toward a secessionist future.
Buckley outlines three larger historical factors behind current realities. The first is the decolonization trend that began in the mid twentieth century. Buckley notes "Like the American Revolution, the grant of independence [to colonies] was a form of secession form the colonial power."
The second reason is the end of the Cold War. It’s been thirty years since the Berlin Wall came down and nearly 30 years since the Soviet Union collapsed. But political trends have a way of taking decades to become apparent. As the entire system of Western and Soviet alignment disintegrated following the end of the Cold War, twenty-four new countries emerged. The lack of a Soviet threat, and the greater flexibility offered to small nations in a post-Soviet world encouraged secessionists to push their cause.
The third factor is the increase in international trade and the relative decline of trade barriers in recent decades. In a world where even small nations can access international markets with relative ease, the relative cost of leaving a large nation-state declines.
The United States: An Overgrown Nation?
But how does this relate to the United States specifically?
According to Buckley, much of America’s secessionist sentiment arises from the fact that the United States is such a large country.
Many Americans, however, are still unaware of the sheer enormity of the US, both in terms of physical size, and in population. Only two other countries on earth—India and China—have larger populations than the United States, which now is home to more than 330 million people. The US is the fourth largest in physical size. Other global powers, such as Germany (83 million), and the United Kingdom (66 million) are far smaller. States like Texas, Florida, and California would all be larger than most European countries if they were independent nations.
Moreover, among the world’s largest nations (including Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, and Nigeria) the US is the only wealthy, fully industrialized nation.
Clearly, being big is not in itself a recipe for wealth or success.
Well aware of the bigness of the United States, Buckley delves into whether or not size is a positive or a negative factor in the US’s stability and quality of life.
His well-researched findings suggest that bigness comes with many downsides in terms of corruption, reported happiness levels, wealth, and the tendency for the regime to become overly aggressive in foreign policy.
As Buckley points out, there is much evidence to suggest that the successor states of a smaller group of American independent nations would be wealthier, more peaceful, and more free. Or, as Buckely concludes "If there are advantages to bigness, the costs exceed the benefits. Bigness is badness."
But perhaps most important of all to the secession question is the fact that a country as large as the United States contains numerous regional and cultural groups that are different enough and remote enough from each other as to produce a sense of separateness rather than unity.
Contrary to the protestations of old-school pundits who continue to insist Americans are united by some sort of ethereal common creed or culture, the reality is far different. Buckley writes:
Countries threaten to split apart when their people seem hopelessly divided....We’re less united today than we’ve been at any time since the Civil War, divided by politics, religion and culture. In all the ways that matter, save for the naked force of law, we are already divided into two nations just as much as in 1861. The contempt for opponents, the Twitter mobs, online shaming and no-platforming, the growing tolerance of violence—it all suggests we’d be happier in separate countries.
Americans don’t even seem to be interested in compromise anymore, Buckley contends, noting in one example that the Left’s position on the current administration is far beyond mere caricature: "Not merely is Trump a white nationalist, but so are all his supporters and we’re not about to forgive and forget them....When that’s how people feel, they’re past talking to each other."
Whether It’s Secession or "Secession Lite," We Need a Lot More Decentralization
So what’s the solution to all this vitriol?
Buckley explains that among the most reasonable solutions is secession. Failing that, the nation must seriously begin to contemplate at least some sort of major move toward decentralization.
That is, if secession still seems implausible to many, the very least that must occur is for the separate states and regions of the US to obtain true "home rule" through strategies like "interposition" in which local authorities refuse to enforce federal laws and edicts. (We’ve already seen this strategy in action with recent state efforts to refuse enforcement of some federal drug laws.) Another strategy is a constitutional convention by which the US constitution could be shifted more in favor or state and local autonomy within a national union.
But no matter what strategy of deunifying the country is employed, Buckley contends, it will be necessary to significantly limit the ability of a single national government to exercise its currently vast powers over the internal affairs of the US’s member states.
For Buckley, it no longer makes sense to govern all Americans under one set of regulations, laws, and legal precedents. It doesn’t make sense for a tiny number of federal judges and federal politicians to make decisions for 330 Americans. Government at this level of bigness simply can’t reflect the needs and preferences of its population. On this, Buckley points out that even the Supreme Court has agreed "A decentralized government....will be more sensitive to the needs of a heterogeneous society."
Political Realities May Outpace Legal Realities
Ultimately, it appears that Buckley comes down slightly in favor of the more limited options underlying his "secession lite" plan. Naturally, as a staunch decentralist, I find this rather disappointing. But there is no denying that Buckley’s proposed "secession lite" would certainly be a step in the right direction.
My biggest criticism, however, comes not from Buckley's lack of secessionist fervor, but from the fact he at times appears to conflate the legal challenges of secession with the political ones.
In all likelihood, the legal problems associated with secession and disunion are likely to become less relevant over time as the politics of the situation become more urgent and more strained. In other words, once nations reach the point of widely contemplating a breakup, what is legally possible tends to become far less important than what is politically possible or necessary. For example, when the various republics of the old Soviet Union began breaking away from Moscow, there was little concern over whether or not these moves were legal. Seeing that independence was at hand, Lithuania wasn’t about to slam on the brakes in order to make sure its bid for independence checked out with the Soviet lawyers. What did matter was the fact the Lithuanian regime found ways to break away from Moscow without having to bow to the nominally binding statutes then in place.
Thus, when Buckley suggests that Supreme Court rulings like Texas v. White, which found that secession is unconstitutional, will continue to be key in guiding future debates over a national divorce, I’m skeptical. Things are likely to be a whole lot more intellectually and legally messy than consulting legal precedents and holding orderly constitutional conventions. After all, if we can all agree to sit down together and calmly discuss what must be done to legally bring about a new postconstitutional national order, then why bother with breaking up the nation at all?
But this is a fairly minor problem in Buckley’s text.
Overall, American Secession offers an excellent introduction on the legal, political, and historical foundations of American secessionist movements—both past and present—as framed by someone who is coming at the problem very a very mainstream position within the American conservative movement and within academia. What’s more, Buckley is attempting to take a pragmatic look at secession far outside romantic notions from the past, and in line with the realities of the twenty-first century. His conclusion is "the barriers to secession are weak, the case for a breakup is strong." The more others agree with this notion, the more national disintegration will become inevitable.
#1
This is what happens when a dozen or so major metro areas think they should run the country.
They don't and think for a moment what it takes to provide energy, food, commerce to such a concentration of population.
The last time they tried that approach one of the major states in the game lost a lot of counties. They try it again, most will lose a lot of counties.
#2
The US used to be much more divided but the drafts in WW-1 and WW-II changed that. You can see it in the old movies... A southerner from New Orleans becoming a life long friend of a man from NY City on the battle field.
The removal of the draft with the end of the Vietnam war ended this positive mixing of the regions.
#6
Oh, well. Don't let the screen door hit you on the butt on your way out.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/02/2020 10:37 Comments ||
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#7
WWII was much, MUCH more a watershed for race relations than I think is understood.
As for "secession" -- the problem is the left's intolerance and demand for absolute power. Break them and they'll learn better.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
11/02/2020 11:36 Comments ||
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#8
Start getting rid of electoral college and smaller states have no reason to be overruled by the high population density areas. This is not recent. This was gone over by the founders of the constitution. Mess with the constitution at your own personal peril.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/02/2020 12:40 Comments ||
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#9
I think these idiots will shut up when the county-by-county voting maps come out and they realize they are city-states in a sea of red counties that would not join their secessionist fantasies.
#10
City states will realize how vulnerable they are when truckers don’t deliver and no electricity or water is received. They will be SOL.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/02/2020 14:32 Comments ||
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#11
Balkanisation of the northern hemisphere would invite the Chinese to own the Pacific and in time the People’s Republic of Kaliphornia. If you think white people are racist folks, orders of magnitude on that axis would be a revelation.
[Mercer] In 2016, Hillary Clinton called Trump voters Deplorables.
The year 2020 finds Jon Meacham likening us to lizard brains. Meacham, one of the left’s favorite historians, mused that white America has retreated into unthinking limbic mode.
A patrician from Texas, an oil man, responded politely, on Martha MacCallum’s Fox News show: "If putting food on my family’s table and worrying about my employees makes me a lizard brain, then call me iguana."
Iguanas-cum-deplorables are with Trump, and he with them. And he, President Donald J. Trump, is leaving everything he’s got on the battlefield.
Trump is not merely showing up, standing prone, looking out nervously upon a few oddly encircled, masked supporters, as his rival, Joe Biden, is doing.
Oh, no! Be it in Bullhead City or Goodyear, Arizona, or Circleville, Ohio, or Lansing, Michigan—Trump has been turning in the kind of performances that come from the heart, cocking a snook at the media establishment, while throwing himself into each and every rally with as much joy, exuberance and optimism as went into the rally before and the one to follow.
Here is a president who loves the thousands upon thousands of constituents who cling to him, to their guns and their God. He draws his strength from them, and engages in repartee with them.
America will ... be the first ... to land an astronaut on Mars ... maybe we will make that a woman," taunted POTUS, in Arizona.
"Make it Nancy Pelosi," came a retort from the crowd. Trump thought this was peaches: "Who said that? That’s pretty good. Stand up, please. Look at this guy. That’s pretty good," came the president’s happy-warrior reply.
Breaking protocol with the colluding quislings of cable news, Michael Smerconish, a CNN commentator, could not contain his admiration for the president’s energy and stamina, following the commander-in-chief’s bout with COVID, as he charged headlong into battleground states. The anchor gushed spontaneously about the four rallies a day POTUS has been putting on: Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida, on and on, while Biden tiptoed in and out of the basement.
#1
It's not even worth getting pissed off at libs like Meacham, If your retort to a point or argument is 8th-grade name calling, just save it for another 8th-grader and get outta my face.
[Townhall] Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that the Left is going to be "terribly shocked." The latest slate of polling from the liberal media fake press has Biden ahead by double-digits, though his campaign is acting anything like they’re ahead. Obama and Biden scrambled to Michigan this weekend. Why? If you’re ahead by 10+ points nationally, Biden doesn’t need to do this. Alas, even his campaign says the polls are inflated, which could also be a way to keep the Democratic base from becoming complacent. Either way, polling this cycle has been outright atrocious, with suburban GOP voters, college-educated voters, and Democrats being oversampled to the nth degree. Trump Democrats and rural voters have been ignored. Even Michael Moore knows the Trump vote is undercounted; he set off the alarm bells this week as well.
From Minnesota to New Hampshire, Biden is down. PollWatch, Larry Schweikart, and David Chapman have been some of the people who have been tracking the early vote totals and the overall state of polling, in general, this cycle, cutting through the liberal nonsense.
#1
We will see that the "If it's not close they can't cheat" narrative is not exactly correct...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/02/2020 5:57 Comments ||
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#2
The huge processions in several places in California, NY and AZ do not fit the meme the polls were giving.
Hell even Hollywood although that one did end up in a fight with Antifa and a riot.
#5
Outside of Pittsburgh this past weekend Trump spoke to a crowd of 60,000 - yes, not a typo, SIXTY THOUSAND people - while Biden sits at home and tells his campaigners not to meet people face to face. That estimate is from the Secret Service btw
Photos here including one from Reuters showing a human sea of Trump supporters
#9
I can't wait for the first network (or more likely CNN) to call FL for Biden around 6:30 - 6:45. They do it every time to try and depress the FL panhandle vote (Central Time zone). I'm sure there are other Election Night tricks they pull but that's the most notable one for me.
#10
It is wrong to compare attendance at Joe Biden's rallies with Trump's and compare number of Biden signs in front of houses with number of Trump signs because Democrats and Republicans have different habits but it is right to compare Joe Biden's attendance at rallies with Clinton's and umber o Biden signs with number of Clinton signs. If what I have been told is true Biden is faring far worse than Clnton did. Rallies and signs in front of houses are not votes but they are correlated with so logically Biden should fare noticeably worse thanlinton lost. The only thing I fear is electoral fraud
#13
Attendance at Biden rallies is irrelevant; nobody is FOR Biden. Seems like there should be some anti-Trump rallies associated with the Trump ones, since anti-Trump is Trump's opponent.
#18
JFM comparing signs is pretty insightful because nothing will happen if you have a Biden sign in your yard but you will likely have your sign taken, your house egged or worse if you have a Trump sign. Knowing that and still putting up the sign shows something.
In my neighborhood there are few Presidential signs but lots of Republican Congressmen signs. I figure it's a sort of a way to support Trump without upsetting the reptiles.
#19
rjswhwarz. I know but it I was trained in statistics and first thing they tech you is to eliminate factors that could affect the comparison. For instance Democrats could be more "timid" than Republicans despite the intimidation, I don't believe it for one second but better to eliminate this factor by comparing Democrat (Biden) to Democrat (Clinton)
#20
Central OH, Columbus area, Franklin County, which went 60-34 in favor of Hillary four years ago. Spent last four days driving around and across almost every part of the metro area.
Counted about 200 or so lawn signs.
Almost evenly split - ca 90 for Trump, 110 for Biden, in a metro area that should go heavily for the Democrat.
Trump is running about ten points better than he did in 2016. If Biden can't run up the score in the big metro areas of Ohio, he's fucked.
#21
Moving forward, I think we really need to separate the time frame that both elections and medicare plan sign ups happen it.
The level of robo-calls today has been insane.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/02/2020 14:37 Comments ||
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[Breitbart] Saturday on FNC’s "Justice," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) predicted a big win for President Donald Trump, which he said would be a "no-doubter."
Host Jeanine Pirro asked Jordan if he were concerned Democrats would try to change the outcome by narrowing margins with late-arriving vote-by-mail ballots.
Jordan said he was not concerned given because Trump would "win big" on Tuesday.
"I think the margin is going to be so strong — it’s going to be a no-doubter," he said. "Remember, Americans understand this. They understand this election. In the end, it’s about freedom. Right? Look at what we’ve been through the last several months with Democrat governors and Democrat mayors telling Americans they couldn’t go to church, couldn’t go to work, couldn’t go to school, couldn’t go to a loved one’s funeral, but it was fine to protest, riot and loot."
"Now, we’ve got Governor Newsom saying you can’t even have Thanksgiving the way you want to have Thanksgiving," Jordan added. "And we’ve got Joe Biden talking about the Biden dark winter and locking down our economy. Americans appreciate the freedom we enjoy as American citizens. That’s what’s going to drive into the polls and why the President is going to win big."
[Business Insider] Angry shoppers are once again calling for a boycott of Home Depot after its co-founder announced his support for President Trump in the 2020 election.
In a Friday opinion article in Fox News, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus explained why he was supporting a second term for President Trump and why other Americans should do similarly. In the wake of the article, people took to Twitter to voice their disapproval using the hashtag #boycotthomedepot.
Marcus caused a similar uproar in July of 2019 when he said he planned to donate to to the president's 2020 reelection bid in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Following the publication of the interview, the #boycotthomedepot hashtag was used in tweets to call out Marcus' donations to Trump.
Marcus, who Forbes reported is worth $7.4 billion, left Home Dept in 2002 but the billionaire is a known megadonor for the GOP and donated $7 million to Trump during the 2016 campaign, data from the Center for Responsive Politics showed.
"Bernie retired from The Home Depot about 20 years ago and does not speak on behalf of the company," a Home Depot spokesperson told Business Insider. "The Home Depot does not give money to presidential campaigns or endorse presidential candidates."
In response to the latest backlash against Home Depot on Twitter, some people vocalized support for Marcus' position. Others criticized the boycott and noted that the backlash for Home Depot was undeserved, given that Marcus had retired in 2002.
Supposedly both founders stepped away from the company long since, and the other guy is voting for Joe Biden.
#1
Funny. The people who will boycott probably have never been in a Home Depot. The people who actually use Home Depot are mostly the 'deplorables' except for those standing in the parking lot looking for a day labor job every morning.
#3
A boycott on Home Depot is futile for the points raised above and also because of the sheer size / reach of the company. And at some point (maybe we're there already) these calls for boycotts are just gonna be like 'oh - another lefty celeb wants a boycott - ho hum' and just ignore the pricks.
#5
Go right ahead. Less people in line at the registers.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/02/2020 10:44 Comments ||
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#6
Oh well, it's usually very crowded at my Home Depot store so now maybe I can browse the shelves without some other shopper waiting impatiently behind me to browse the same shelves.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/02/2020 10:59 Comments ||
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#7
I doubt it, though. P2K is probably right.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/02/2020 11:01 Comments ||
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#9
Then shop Menard's and their chicom import crap. See how long your deck stays standing. We had a 20% failure on their star screws. Frustrated beyond the pale.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Mercer] In 2016, Hillary Clinton called Trump voters Deplorables.
Click the map to create your own at 
[Business Insider] Angry shoppers are once again calling for a boycott of Home Depot after its co-founder announced his support for President Trump in the 2020 election. 
