Author: VD

Ideology is over

The civic internationalism of the mainstream Republicans is causing them to miss the massive window of opportunity being created by the immigration-driven shift to identity politics:

In this scruffy, high-desert town encircled by prairies and potato farms, Sen. Cory Gardner drew shouts of approval last week for his message that Democrats are shoving the country toward socialism.

“That’s not what government is or what it should be,” he told about 200 Alamosa County Republicans at a barbecue fundraiser in a National Guard armory. “We have to stand up and fight. Are you going to join me in this fight?”

For Gardner and other Republicans making the same pitch , including President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the key question is whether it will attract moderate voters, not just their conservative stalwarts. Based on interviews with over three dozen Coloradans last week from Denver’s suburbs south to this town in the flat San Luis Valley, the argument has yet to take root, though the GOP has 18 months to sell it before Election Day 2020.

Few volunteered a drift toward socialism as a major worry, with health care and living costs cited far more frequently. Several said capitalism was too embedded in the U.S. to be truly threatened and Republicans were using socialism to stir unease with Democrats by raising the specter of the old, repressive Soviet Union and today’s chaotic Venezuela.

Indiegogo plays science police

They were already playing thought police, but now they’re branching out into policing science:

The last year has been the worst on record in the US for measles outbreaks since the disease was declared ‘eradicated’ in 2000. Even though vaccination rates across the country are still high, (according to the CDC) there remains some communities where disinformation campaigns which claim that ‘vaccines are dangerous’ (often called ‘anti-vaxx’ campaigns) have led to parents refusing to vaccinate their children. Sadly, this can lead to a deadly outbreak when members of the public are exposed to someone who has picked up the disease, often overseas. Measles is highly contagious and can be fatal, especially amongst children.

And despite President Trump telling Americans to “get their shots”, 45 has previously appeared to link vaccines and autism. Public health experts say there is no link.

At the same time, over half a million children in Britain have been left unprotected against measles in the past decade and Unicef has called for a renewed focus on immunization.

It’s with this background that some tech companies are starting to realize they may have been part of the problem.

Yesterday Crowdfunding site Indiegogo said it would no longer allow anti-vaccine fundraisers or similarly unscientific, so-called “health campaigns”, to use its platform.

The move came after $86,543 was raised for a documentary, called Vaxxed II, based on the false claim that vaccines cause autism. Although the organization behind it, The People’s Truth, will still get their cash, minus the site’s 5{e8a4cc2da20ae907408fc668f824b0c1c953618ed39cb8b4e4c88688f9991565} fee, Indiegogo said it was now planning a new policy to keep similar anti-vaccine projects off its site, a company spokesperson told BuzzFeed News Friday.

The fundraiser did not violate IndieGoGo’s existing policies on untruthful campaigns, but Indiegogo never promoted it on its site, said a company spokesperson. Executive directors of the “documentary”, Polly Tommey and Brian Burrowes, have criticized tech companies’ ‘de-platforming’ of their film as “censorship”.

Indiegogo is the latest in a line of tech companies coming round to the idea of cutting off the oxygen of publicity and cash to such campaigns.

The unmentioned elephant in the room is the I-word. Immigration. That’s the real reason for the increase in measles everywhere, along with the increase in a whole host of other diseases for which there is no vaccination.

The fact that none of these pro-vaccine activists will even mention the word serves to demonstrate that their professed concerns about measles, and their professed concerned about children’s health, is entirely false.

The evil of Reason

Charles Oman writes about the spiritual aspect of the War on the Peninsula, particularly as it affected Wellington’s British Army:

I think that even if the Wesleys had never lived, there would yet have been a strong reaction in favour of godly living and the open profession of Christianity, in consequence of the blasphemous antics of the French Revolution. Nothing in that movement so disgusted Englishmen (even those of them who were not much given to practical religion) as the story of the “Goddess of Reason,” enthroned on the high-altar of Notre Dame, at the time when an orgy of bloodshed was making odious the flatulent talk about humanitarianism and liberty which was the staple of Revolutionary oratory. The peculiar combination of insult to Christianity, open evil living, and wholesale judicial murder, which distinguished the time of the Terror, had an effect on observers comparable to nothing else that has been seen in modern times.

Even men who had not hitherto taken their religion very seriously, began to think that a hell was logically necessary in the scheme of creation for beings like Chaumette or Hebert, Fouquier Tinville or Carrier of the Noyades. And, we may add, a personal devil was surely required, to account for the promptings of insane wickedness which led to the actions of such people. A tightening up of religious observances, such as the use of family prayer and regular attendance at Church, was a marked feature of the time. It required some time for the movement to spread, but its effect was soon observable. It naturally took shape in adhesion to Evangelical societies within the Church of England, or Methodist societies without it; since these were the already existing nuclei round which those whose souls had been stirred by the horrors in France and the imminent peril of Great Britain would group themselves.

Very soon the day was over in which “enthusiasm” was the dread of all normal easy-going men. Something more than the eighteenth century religious sentimentalism, and vague spiritual philosophy, was needed for a nation which had to fight for life and empire against the French Republic and all its works. Those methods of thought were sufficiently discredited by the fact that there was a touch of Rousseau in them : it was easy to look over the Channel, and see to what a belief in some nebulous Supreme Being, and in the perfectibility and essential righteousness of mankind at large, might lead. The God of the Old Testament was a much more satisfactory object of worship to the men who had to face the Jacobin, and Calvinism has always proved a good fighting creed. If ever there was a justification for a belief that the enemy were in a condition of complete reprobation, and that to smite them was the duty of every Christian man, it was surely at this time. The conviction of the universahty of sin and the natural wickedness of the human heart was the exact opposite and antidote to the optimistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, and to its belief that man is essentially a benevolent being, and that if he sometimes breaks out into deplorable violence “tout comprendre est tout pardonner.”

We’ve reached the point that the men of the West are beginning to grasp the limits of reason again. But they have not yet really begun to realize the ease with which it is naturally turned to evil in the absence of Jesus Christ.

There will be war

As it happens, the German ultra-nationalists are correct. As various military officers have been predicting for years, there will be war in Europe due to the mass invasion of the continent, although the eventual demise of the reunified German state is far from certain:

German ultra-nationalists believe a civil war and an eventual demise of the state will come about, and are preparing for it by training to use firearms and explosives, a local security service has warned. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, sounded the alarm over the rise of the underground far-right, according to Die Welt. An intelligence report seen by the paper calls for increased surveillance of so-called “preppers” – a loose network of ultra-nationalists who prepare for apocalyptic scenarios.

Those people are collecting firearms and other supplies in preparation for “a civil war” or “a feared collapse of public order” in Germany, the BfV revealed. The preppers movement, which first emerged in the US, has long been rooted in survivalism – which sees far-right militias making stockpiles of food, ammunition and medicine that they would use in the event of a doomsday scenario.

Of course, there will also be war everywhere from America to Sri Lanka as well, because war always, Always, ALWAYS follows on the heels of the mass movement of peoples. It’s a little ironic that the BfV is warning about the rise of the “underground far-right” when that is nothing more than a symptom caused by the importation of millions of foreigners against the wishes of the native population.

For the present, it would be going too far to say that the refugees, as well as those who are responsible for their plight back in their homelands, are actively waging war against the West. They lack the leadership and organization required for the effective, large-scale violence that war entails. However, it must be recognized that more than a few in their midst are not averse to using violence in order to achieve their aims. They have, after all, invaded numerous countries without regard for the will of the people of those countries, and their presence is no less likely to spark resistance than the armed invasions of the past. Since war, as Clausewitz teaches, has a built-in tendency to escalate, the resistance can be expected to graduate into all-out armed conflict over time. Especially, as seems likely, if the influx continues and all the valiant efforts at integration prove futile.
– Martin van Creveld, “War and Migration”, There Will Be War Vol. X

Spin, spin, and more spin

It’s interesting to see that the media covering the Jawbreakers case are engaging in precisely the same sort of definitional spin that we are seeing on a regular basis in our current legal dispute:

Antarctic Publisher States Under Oath That Mark Waid Didn’t Prevent Them from Publishing Jawbreakers

So what? As Richard Meyer’s lawyer has correctly pointed out, the name of the tort is “tortious interference” not “tortious prevention”. Waid was not involved in the relationship, so obviously he had no ability to “prevent” Antarctic from publishing anything.

The basic elements of a tortious interference claim are as follows:

  • A valid contract or economic expectancy between the plaintiff and a third person;
  • Knowledge of the contract or expectancy by the defendant;
  • Intent by the defendant to interfere with the contract or expectancy;
  • Actual interference;
    • The interference is improper; and
    • The plaintiff suffers damage.

The sworn testimony that the defendant did not prevent the third person from fulfilling the contract or economic expectancy obviously does not mean that he did not interfere with it. Now, it would certainly be more helpful to Meyer’s case if Antarctic was willing to swear that being contacted by Waid played a role in their decision, but not proving Meyer’s case is not tantamount to bolstering Waid’s defense. Only binary thinkers could fail to grasp that distinction.

As far as I can tell, the only fact yet to be determined, and upon which the Meyer v. Waid case revolves, is if telephoning someone and telling them to break a contract with someone else with which you are not involved in any way is improper interference or not. And I simply don’t know if that is the case in Texas or not.

Speaking of legal disputes, an email will be going has gone out to Alt-Hero and original Alt-Hero:Q backers later today. If you fit the specified bill with ease and without any exaggeration, please respond to it as this information will be very helpful to us. If you receive a separate, similar email from someone else, please be sure to respond to both of them.

Things are heating up considerably on that front, so there could be some fireworks soon. I look forward to being able to tell you all about it, but that may take a while as there is the possibility of at least one element of the dispute stretching into the fall of 2020.

Which god is that, Jeremy?

Jeremy Boreing of the Daily Wire doubles-down on Ben Shapiro’s defamation.

‏Jeremy Boreing@JeremyDBoreing
Richard Spencer, Vox Day, Owen Benjamin, Rick Wells, Louis Farrakhan, Ilhan Omar, Linda Sarsour, Keith Ellison, today’s New York Times International Edition…

Antisemitism knows no party. It infects the asshole-fringes of left and right.

2. Small-minded bigots and weak little conspiracy theorists afraid of reality need an excuse for their own failures. They construct complex, counter factual histories and theologies to hide their impotence.

3. They believe they have solved a great riddle when, in fact, they are just the proof of that which they deny – that God chose the Jews, and that there is something great and terrible in being chosen by God.

I’d been too busy to get around to the Littlest Chickenhawk’s slander yet, but now that it’s a corporate policy at the Daily Wire, I think I’ll have to bump it up the priority list.

As for whether it is great or terrible to be chosen by God, it really depends upon which god one is talking about. I tend to think it is a terrible thing indeed to be chosen by the god of this world.

Oui, mais non

The Gilets Jaunes reject Macron’s fake olive branch:

Unrelenting Yellow Vest activists have marched in Paris and other French cities for the 24th straight weekend, just days after Emmanuel Macron tried to placate the protest movement with promises of lower taxes.

The demonstrators who assembled in Paris, Toulouse and Strasbourg on Saturday appear to signal that despite the French president’s recent concessions to the group, the Yellow Vest movement is alive and well.

On Thursday, Macron held the first major press conference of his two-year presidency, in which he announced that he wanted to implement “significant” income tax cuts. The televised conference, however, was not well received among those who have turned out week after week to demonstrate against Macron’s business-friendly austerity measures.

Notice that even France, which is the most civic-nationalist of the European nations, is more aggressively nationalist than the USA. Civic nationalism is literally demoralizing, as it is nothing more than stealth Globalism Lite.

Identity persists

Regardless of who is in charge, as the mixed-race population of South Africa have discovered.

“It is all about the blacks. The ‘Rainbow Nation’ is a big lie!” complained Dalene Raiters, a South African mother from the “Coloured” community.

“We are not black enough,” added her sister who has also been unemployed for years. “We are not part of this country. We were marginalised during the apartheid and even now,” lamented Dalene, getting into her stride about the discrimination of which she insists she is a victim.

“Our people live like mushrooms. Four generations under the same roof,” said Elizabeth Raiters, seated in the living room of the family home in the majority “Coloured” township of Eldorado Park, an outlying suburb of Johannesburg.

In total, nine people — soon to be 10 with a baby due — live in the property, which has a small bedroom and a hut in the yard.

Elizabeth applied for social housing to ease the squeeze — but that was 17 years ago, and failed. She is convinced it is because of the colour of her skin.

Apartheid legally divided South Africans into groups of whites, blacks, Indians and “Coloured,” a term meaning people deemed to be of mixed race.

The remnants of system were swept away a quarter-century ago, and today the notion of race remains as discredited as is segregation. Yet the term “Coloured” is still widely used today — and complaints of exclusion are common.

This description of the fate of mixed-race people in post-apartheid South Africa should be informative for all the “what about meeeeee” readers who want to know how things are likely to go for their various mixed-race friends and family members in a post-USA scenario.

When identity and law conflict, identity reliably wins in the end.

The NFL draft

The Vikings improved their OL considerably with just one pick. As for the rest of the draft, discuss amongst yourselves.