And if you want to see how bad - how ridiculous things are- this is not innocuous-https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/opinion/bird-names-colonialism.html
A bonkers NPR report on the subject mentioned that the name of a duck was going to change because it was potentially offensive to some people. With the typical prudery of the woke, the reporter didn't say what the offensive name was! I had to look elsewhere to learn that it's the "oldsquaw."
In their effort to avoid "racism" in bird naming, they're eliminating all names of people. So keep your old bird books. They'll be useful again after the anti-woke blowback.
There's also a coalition of astronomers calling for the renaming of the Magellanic Cloud because of Magellan's "violent, colonialist legacy." All this self-hating "year zero" cultural revolution crap is way out of hand.
Thing with common names, they are the vernacular. The woke can no sooner change them than they can change your brother's nickname. Scientific names, sure. Those are standardized descriptors. What a region or a local population elects to call something, however, is immutable.
Back up where I lived in Delaware, there's a serious move to rename Plantation Road (the major "back way" to avoid Coastal Highway when it's clogged with tourist traffic) and a couple of adjacent suburbs with "Plantation" in the name.
This actually reports one of the better approaches I've seen. Instead of removing names connected to someone whose utterances are out of favor, it is removing ALL human names. That neutralizes the controversy -- there will be no favored names or unfavored names, just a more objective basis for naming -- its about the characteristics of the bird, not honoring or dishonoring some human.
Yes. Perhaps removing all names of humans from everything would be the human thing to do. Impersonal, scientific names for everything. For instance, manatee has the word man in it. Men are bad. So re-name it Aquatic Creature 331PX or something like that,
Perhaps people shouldn’t have names either . We could have numbers. Not an original idea. But that way we could have a detached rational border devoid of cultural bias.
It doesn't "neutralize the controversy" at all. It's a complete surrender to people who fret about memorializing anything with the name of someone who's "problematic" by the changing standards of the nanosecond, and sets the stage for whatever asinine thing they want next.
These progressive initiatives never end. There's actually fairly broad (but far from unanimous) agreement that perhaps we shouldn't have statues of Confederate leaders. But look how in the past three years that's morphed into the vandalism or removal of statues of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, and Theodore Roosevelt. I was a lefty 30 years ago, and I participated in some activism, so I know that none of these people or groups ever achieve their stated goal, declare Miller Time, and go on with their lives. It's always an eternal struggle. There's no good reason the Audubon Society needs to do this to widen the demographics of people who care about birds.
You miss the point entirely. With statues, or names on buildings, there is no escaping the often artificial controversy. But, with naming animals and plants, if none are named after people, then which people are "suitable" and what "disqualifies" is a moot point. IF the campaign were to, say, rename a species named for someone who first identified it, or was admired by the person who first identified it, and call it, e.g., the Martin Luther King Butterfly but in appropriate Latin, that would perpetuate the obsession. But by all means, make it all viewpoint-neutral terminology, preferably related to the characteristics of the species. There are some rather specific reasons for taking down confederate statues. They were for the most part erected some forty years after the Civil War, not so much to honor the dead as to promote the ideology that The South was right all along, the war was an unfortunate and unnecessary tragedy, and after all "Negroes really are an inferior sub-species." There were even calls to repeal the 14th and 15th amendments. But, I still favor keeping a few Lee statues -- we just need to add a bronze plaque explaining his role in the larger scheme of things. If George Brinton "We're Not Here To Take Your Property" McClellan had marched into Richmond in 1862, while that would not have instantly ended the war, it would have set matters on track to restore the union status quo ante. Without Lee's year of victories, there would have been no Emancipation Proclamation, nor any 13th, 14th or 15th amendments.
Happy Thanksgiving, Rod. I’m thankful for you and your column and for the book you wrote, “Live Not By Lies”. Take care of yourself. I hope your “cold” resolves and that it’s not mononucleosis. And I hope your heart heals.
I disagree that the rioting is uncalled for. Riot away, Ireland. Riot so hard they're terrified. And then riot more until they get the point.
My early elementary daughter was sexually assaulted on a school bus last year, in addition to experiencing daily violence at her public school. She's now at wonderful Christian school. When we came forward with complaints, we were ignored (you know, those other kids have trauma). We were actually laughed at by the immigrant assistant superintendent (he mocked me, a teacher with lots of experience, when I pointed out the cultural problems that exist in the district).
It's easy to say rioting is wrong, but it's different when extremist leftist lunatics enable a culture that harms your child. If the Irish are up against people like those that run my child's former district, I say keep rioting. Otherwise they're just laughing at you.
It was pretty targeted. It's not like colonial thugs ran loose in the streets of Boston looting and burning at random.
Political violence does however have a tendency to spin out of control. That's what sent the French Revolution careening off course and finally into a bloodbath, as the several faction turned out mobs to further their cause and frighten their rivals.
Yes, which suggests that "the authorities" need to rent some testicles for a few days so they can begin to reclaim Ireland for the Irish, Sweden for the Swedish, and unlikeliest of all, Britain for the British.
"What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?" —Thomas Jefferson
My sincere sympathies about what happened to your daughter, that's awful and the response from the school district sounds even worse.
There's something about the respectable right that is infuriatingly pacifist, and satisfied with asymmetrical responses. They riot, loot, burn, we Tweet. They protest, accuse, defame, we Reason. They come at us with the full arsenal of a massively weaponised government apparatus, we...what do we do? Nothing. Nothing effective anyway.
Rioting should be the very first step (of many) but modern conservatives are not built like their fathers. I fear nothing will wake them from their torpor.
How can we condemn the Left for rioting if we reserve the right to do it for ourselves?
Of course I believe that what the Irish state is doing here is worse than what the rioters did, but I believe a sustained series of PEACEFUL mass protests would be more effective in the long run. Rioting just gives the bastards in the State the excuse to crack down.
I wish you were right, Rod. But January 6th was 99% peaceful minus the Feds, and look what happened. The people in charge in the West do not respect democracy, and they do not respect peaceful protest.
I still agree that peaceful is the way to go for now.
Re: But January 6th was 99% peaceful minus the Feds, and look what happened.
What happened is that the minority of miscreants got the book thrown at them while the business of transferring power according to the results of the election was completed as it should be, despite the wishes of the incumbent and some lunatic supporters to cling to power. The system worked.
Jon, to claim that locking people up without trial for a protest that was no worse, less violent in fact, than dozens of similar protests on the Left, many of them on Capitol Hill, is the "system working" convinces me that you a troll. Or very stupid. Or both.
More than 1100 people have no faced criminal charges (I know of no acquittals) with dozens rotting in jail - solitary confinement - for over two years with no trial. People walked into the capital witah police standing at open doors admitting them and they are now in jail. They were protesting what looked like fraud and hoping to get a count of legitimate ballots. If police had not stood aside to let them in it might be different,
Jon refuses to look at anything but Regime Media, he has told us that. He thinks they tell the truth. It is so sad.
Their trials have been delayed, unconscionably so, but that's been true of a lot of people after the lockdowns left the court dockets jam-packed. An acquaintance of mine in Baltimore was arrested for a fairly heinous crime in fall of 2019-- and he was stuck in jail for nearly three years without trial (ultimately he pled the case and was released for time served).
Please refrain from insult. No, I don't buy into paranoid, fear-mongering propaganda-- that's makes me smart or at least discerning, not stupid
The George Floyd riots were at least ginned up, and certainly connived at on the part of the police. There was no doubt of this post Ferguson, which was set up to be the racial reckoning spark, but somehow spluttered, and went out when even Eric ("My People") Holder's DoJ couldn't deliver a true bill. That wasn't going to happen a second time, so the rent-a-mobs were ready.
As I ask elsewhere, what effect will peaceful protests have on the political class? Have you read Nikki Haley's platform?
Re: The George Floyd riots were at least ginned up, and certainly connived at on the part of the police.
Can you expand on this? I think you can make a case that the police overreacted in some cities to the actions of provocateurs and that sent things out of control. But I can't see there was any deliberate plan on the part of the police for that result.
No. Read carefully what I wrote, Jon. They didn't foment it. They let it rip. They winked at it. That's what "connived" means. That's certainly what happened in New York.
Ray Kelly, the great former NYPD commissioner, is on record saying there are tried and true techniques for breaking up a mob, the kind that gutted Macy's in the summer of 2020. But the cops just watched because Bill DeBlasio, I mean Chirlane McCray, I mean Al Sharpton, I mean Barack Obama, told them to.
OK, but what would be their motive? The police generally skew rightwards politically (yes, there are individual exceptions) so were they hoping for a political reaction that would ensure Trump's reelection, or on a more diffuse scale discredit BLM and its cause?
I think you discount the reality that the police are a finite organization with limited power. They have been overwhelmed by urban mobs in riot going back the New York Draft riots in 1863. And most of of large cities are underpoliced-- we need more cops (though better cops too). We pretty much always have to bring in the National Guard to handle such things.
That’s what happened in Charlottesville as well. They stood down and let everything happen. I don’t blame them necessarily, they follow orders given from above. As all police departments do.
Remember those "Fiery but peaceful protests" in Kenosha, Wisconsin? The first night of the rioting over there was just the warm-up act, but Sheriff David Clarke, former sheriff of Milwaukee county, got on the radio the next day as the guest host for Mark Belling's 3-hour talk radio program. The major topic - how to strategically defend Kenosha from a law-enforcement perspective, from someone who had experience.
Was any of it done? No. I sincerely believe that half of Kenosha would have burned to the ground had it not been for the Rittenhouse shootings; that Antifa and all these groups were given a wink and a nod that they would be "safe" in their rioting, and that they got scared when some of their people actually got killed. It was eerie how fast the Antifa people left once that happened - what had been a full-out riot when Rittenhouse was attacked was totally cleared out two hours later.
As it was, the damage to Kenosha was much, much worse than the media reported. Furthermore, they totally ignored the fact that even in Racine, there had been a "public safety house" that had been burned out.
One thing I find that people don't realize: After the past couple years, no cop wants to be the one in a viral video without context causing harm to someone, even if that person is a criminal. And nearly all politicians are afraid to be the ones who order it or condone it. This goes back to "Occupy Wall Street" 15 years ago, when encampments and blocked streets intimidated the politicians in big "blue" cities.
I think the tide is turning slightly, though. When protesters surrounded the DNC headquarters in DC a week ago, blocking all fire exits and creating a dangerous, illegal situation, the cops stepped in, and no one is crying for the protesters.
The winking/conniving of the past 15+ years has caused two generations of protesters not to understand the principles of civil disobedience. They holler and scream and whine when they get arrested, but without the arrest to give their protest moral weight, they're just a bunch of douchebags and vandals.
To explain I was actually thinking of the Baltimore authorities in 2015 who reacted to internet rumors of a "Purge" (see the movies of that name) by shutting down the public transport system just before the schools let out-- older students did not ride school busses but had MTA passes. That stranded lots of teenagers, many at the MTA nexus by Mondawin Mall-- and they became a mob and touched off the rioting.
One should not credit municipal authorities with too much intelligence.
Burning vehicles is not only wrong in itself, it is dangerous. It is as dangerous as burning down a building. It is dangerous for the firemen who have to put out the fire. Burning vehicles is self-defeating. And burning vehicles is so left-wing and so Muslim.
Antifa torched two car lots in Kenosha in 2020, right along Sheridan Road, the main drag through the old part of the city. (Sheridan Road will take you all the way to Chicago going south and will also get a person to Milwaukee, though the name of the street changes going north.) The heat was so hot it melted city lamp-posts over. The owner of the car lots, an Indian immigrant who had come to the US with practically nothing decades ago, had tons of issues trying to get anything from insurance, not just in the fact that riots are often not covered, but most of the cars were burnt so badly the VINs were not readable, and his office had burned to the ground as well, along with the paperwork for the vehicles. Those cars sat out there for months, and then the city of Kenosha went after him for the "eyesore".
Why didn't they haul the cars to a junk yard? even a city as incompetent as Baltimore is pretty good about taking abandoned cars away when they are notified of such.
Jon, they weren't abandoned - they were on the private property of the car lot. However, without VINs, what other "proof" did the owner have that they existed? What else was he supposed to do when fighting with the insurance took months and months?
Rod, I don't actually condemn the left for rioting - a lot of times I think it's stupid, but it gets a point across.
The bastards in the state are like abusive husbands. If we just politely protest they won't crack down on us. Really, they'll crack down either way, so we may as well push back.
I'm sorry, but at this point suggesting peaceful mass protests is breathtakingly naive. You're our beloved alarmist and I would suggest most of your readership shares some sense of how desperate the hour is. Your alarmism is necessary, and helpful.
But do you really think peaceful protests are going to get the job done? If the Irish had peacefully marched, do you believe they wouldn't still have been referred to as 'far right'? All institutional control is within the hands of a cohort which despises us and what we represent.
And yes, I would point to J6 as an example of the kind of response even mostly peaceful protest prompts in the US.
I’m with Rod on this. As Christians, doing evil so that good more result is never acceptable. Further, it shows that we are hypocritical because we sanctimoniously proclaiming”law and order” when it comes to political enemies’ bad behavior. Yes, it is true that the far-right label will be used in any event. But, as we saw in Charlottesville,the use of violence by a despised group can have long term consequences. The public backlash is then leveraged by the Left to acquire more power. This is what sank Trump in 2020.
If you mean looting a Foot Locker, I'm in full agreement. That does nothing for our cause and only weakens it (incidentally it's been reported that looting in Ireland was done by people of 'indeterminate origin').
But I think we can aggressively protest without falling into sin. If some people want to call that rioting or not, that's just semantics. But I don't dispute your core point.
IMHO fair points are made by Mr. Dreher, but also many of the commenters as well (e.g., pointing out the treatment of "J6" people vs. the coddling of the "mostly peaceful protestors" who are allies of the Left).
Peaceful mass protests should be the first step, and hopefully a successful one. If nothing else, this might help "red-pill" the tens of millions of "blue-pilled normies" still comprising a majority of our citizenry.
At the same time, we are in a post-2020 world in which an unelected regime has been installed into the White House, apparently run by Obama (in alliance with enemies foreign and domestic). By definition, such de facto revolutionaries care not about our Constitutional Republic nor the legitimate preferences of the citizenry, for it is the former they intend to displace and the latter they see either as counter-revolutionaries / reactionaries, or subjects.
Yuri Bezmenov warned us of the subversion / demoralization. Anyone who's read "And Not a Shot is Fired" or studied "color revolutions" readily recognizes what occurred in 2020, and is underway now. So ...
1) We must pray and repent and seek God's face, asking that He heal our land and deliver us from the evil that has seized control of our nation;
2) Pursue peaceful means to reinstate and restore our Constitutional Republic;
3) Be cognizant of the fact that peaceful means might fail (particularly since with the complicity of both political parties the election fraud infrastructure remains intact), and so at that time pray for guidance on next steps.
In normal circumstances (a functioning democracy), absolutely yes.
Things get more questionable when you have the federal government (on the side of Democrats) strong-arming media / social media to silence / cancel opposing political voices (contra to the spirit, if not the letter of the First Amendment).
And far more questionable when elections are neither "free and fair."
Both of which have been the state of play in this country leading up to and through the 2020 election, and since.
Re: And far more questionable when elections are neither "free and fair."
There is zero evidence in the real world that there is any more trouble with our elections than there was twenty, thirty, forty or sixty years ago. The inability of the Right to accept defeat and to grasp the basic fact that much (not all) of its program is anathema to a majority of citizens is cause for my own dismay.
Donald Trump was never popular to begin with; his 2016 win was a fluke (due mainly to a very unlikable opposing candidate, her tactical blunders, and the byzantine nature of presidential election rules). Once in office as a minority president, the man did absolutely nothing to expand his appeal (unlike Bush in 2001-- and before 9-11 even). When the digestive residue hit the rotating air moving device in 2020 his Potemkin presidency stood revealed in all its incompetent squalor and thereafter the election was Biden's to lose, and even Sleepy Joe managed not to. And yet here we go again. The the GOP-- or rather conservative Americans-- just had the great good sense to dump Trump and go with someone like Desantis, of proven ability, Biden would be leaving office in January of 2025 and your side would see at least some of its program (most especially on immigration, probably not on abortion etc.) actually put in place. But go ahead and throw it all away for another gaudy grudge match between two cognitively impaired candidates for the nursing home if not the loony bin.
Jon - Tom is right. We know that the public is being misled by elite institutions. If a brainwashed public is defrauded of their vote because they acted on a steady stream of lies by leftist institutions, it is silly to talk about “persuasion”.
So people who disagree with you are "brainwashed"? Stop and think a minute how condescending and arrogant that sounds. This is the rhetoric of power lust pure and simple.
We wouldn't be reserving the right to riot for ourselves. We would just be replying in kind - a "proportional response" like the Left seems to think the Israelis should be doing rather the bombing Hamas.
We shouldn't riot. Instead we should protest peacefully.
We must have PEACEFUL protests ... like the ones we saw in 2020. Remember those?
<<<Pay no attention to the smoke, the flames, the broken glass, the burning cars and the looting mobs you see behind the me. It's not strictly speaking a riot but can be more accurately described as a PEACEFUL protest.>>>
I think about how the Indians' success in nonviolent resistance against the British was dependent on the British having some sense of decency; they weren't going to just mow down unarmed civilians. But if the Indians had tried that against the Nazis, the Nazis would have probably been more than happy to exterminate them—and laughed at them for being weak while doing it.
Point being, resistance on the physical plane (i.e. violence) may sometimes be necessary when we're dealing with the sort of sub-animal humans who are incapable of understanding anything else. Pure pacifism seems like a recipe to have the worst among us inherit the earth, since there certainly are people who aren't gonna stop until they are made to stop. But of course crossing that line should not be taken lightly.
Only a rigid pacifist denies that violence may be necessary when defending oneself. But beware the delusion that you are "defending yourself" when your real motive is to impose your will on others.
OK, I'm game. Help me out here. "pure pacificism a disaster", "won't stop until they are made to stop" "should not be taken lightly". Ok. But what are you calling for.
I've objected strongly to calls for rioting, looting, burning, the sort of thing that happened in Dublin, the Summer of 2020 type thing. Are you calling for taking the initiative and doing something like that? You just do not strike me as that kind of person.
Defense, stocking weapons, that sort of thing I get. But there was an implication here, I thought, of taking initiative, and an initiative that was not peaceful. So what is it you are calling for? Honest question.
For me, I can see "riot/loot/burn". I can see "prepare to defend" and I can see "work through peaceful and lawful means". I'm for the last two. You seem to feel they are not sufficient (and maybe they aren't) but what do you call for?
What am I missing as I sit in horror at college educated folk (not the downtrodden unhoused of Ireland) calling for riots as their answer? (Not saying you are necessarily calling for that as some here are- but I wonder what you do call for.)
You've got a guy on today's forum (Nov., 25) literally saying whites should start a race war (yes, start). I bet no one says anything. I just don't get it. Where is the line here? You spoke of one and not taking things lightly, so where is the line.
I'm not calling for anything. I was only stating that, in principle, political violence is never entirely off the table, because pure pacifism is not a tenable moral position. The world is messy and complex, and I do not know in general terms where the specific line is between offense and proactive defense. Rioting is probably useless, but the way things are going, it also seems inevitable. Riots are sort of like volcanos: it hardly matters whether anyone "calls" for them or not, since they're just gonna do what they will anyway.
Thanks - I still need more help to understand. You stated "Political violence is never entirely off the table". I assume you mean offense, defense is not a problem. Could you give an example of political violence that should be on the table that is not defensive?
I think the issue has to do with what we consider "defense". The BLM rioters, for example, perceived themselves as acting in defense, because (rightly or wrongly) they believed that blacks are under siege from white supremacy and the police. And likewise, if global elites and their policies make working class whites feel like their backs are to the wall, then they may perceive their own violence as defensive in nature. So, many things could be framed as defense if you believe that you have already been aggressed against. It can be hard to isolate the causality or to judge the merits in general terms.
Also, with people saying they favor riots, I think it has to do with a grim sense of satisfaction. Like: "What, elites, did you think that you could sow the wind and not reap the whirlwind? How long did you think you could keep going like you do and not provoke this sort of thing?" So there's a poetic sense that the elites deserve to meet their nemesis, even if any given riot itself is irrational and wrong.
Exactly my thought. Sadly, a lot of conservatives want to check out and act like talking and writing more papers will change the direction of travel. We shouldn’t tell our enemies that we are unwilling to use tactics because they’ll see it as a weakness, not compassion.
I’m going to misquote the movie Golda super bad here, but in the movie they had her saying something like ‘we don’t have to do it, but we need to make the Egyptians think that we will rape,murder, burn their houses down and destroy their cities. We have to make them want to save their families enough to stop killing ours.’
We can’t keep capitulating to monsters because we think it’s ‘nice’. Nice got us in this mess. I’m so over the ‘respectable right.’ We can’t be afraid of ugly or of civil disobedience. We don’t have the luxury of leaving options on the table like it’s 1990.
Word have meanings, and we are not ruled by tyrants, though a case can be made that we are ruled by fools. Resorting to violence because the public has not accepted one's political program is nothing but a guarantee of ruin. And yes, Hell loves that sort of thing.
I'm enjoying the elites increasingly feeling under siege. From their parties losing favor and power and their namecalling/propagana increasingly bouncing off DGAF shields, to things like Hollywood in general and Disney in particular increasingly failing...the rot is clear and the pushback is inevitable.
About time.
South Park lampooning Disney's corporate board, but could be the gathering of any power elite nowadays.
I honestly don't feel like they feel under siege. They seem strangely unbothered, they have this weird unnerving confidence - it's a religious thing with them.
That's fake. When you see them flip out with every setback, you see the falseness of their confidence. See, in their world view, they are inevitable, and such defeats cannot happen. But they are happening, with increasing regularity.
These are just people, not gods. Serious feet of clay, made so by their arrogance, the cultural bubble they shelter in, not being nearly as smart as they think they are, and forming world views around a whole series of things that simply are not real and in the longer term, unsupportable.
Ireland is the only European nation without a conservative political party. A big part of that is the historic political battle between Fianna Fail and Finn Gael that goes back to the 1920s. Both of these parties were socially fairly conservative until fairly recently. But that's all gone now. The Irish are pretty much all in on the European Union and modernist social policies. The votes on divorce, homosexual marriage and abortion weren't even close. The Ireland of "The Quiet Man" is dead. On top of that, there are always the troubles in Ulster that highly influence the southern republic. Irish politics are almost unnatural.
There is a newish party here which is trying to capture votes with a more socially conservative platform https://aontu.ie/ but I’m not sure if they’re making much progress at present. In the north the nationalist/republican parties have always been socialist but until recently were socially conservative, whereas the main unionist parties have been more economically conservative, though still very socially conservative. Nowadays though especially since the catholic abuse scandal shattered the dominant consensus, not to mention Brexit, the republicans are determined to show they are good Europeans and falling over themselves to prove their progressive credentials.
Here's the thing about the Irish. Wokeism is a very new ideology in Ireland and even liberalism was late to bloom in Ireland. The Irish are and always have been a very tribal people and many Irish still retain that tribal nature (especially the working class which was the same class that filled the ranks of the IRA in the past). So just because the Irish are largely disgusted with the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church and have been less and less pious in practicing their ancestral Catholic Faith does not mean that Ireland as a whole has embraced Wokeism, actually as I said the Irish are still digesting liberalism (and they may very well vomit that out as we are watching in Dublin tonight). When Irish get pissed off they are quite a force to be dealt with on either side of the pond, just look at the history of Boston or New York.
Any foreigner going to Ireland and making trouble for the native Irish is in for a very rude awakening. It's not going to end well for them. I used to hang out in Irish Pubs in San Francisco with the Irish (construction workers from Ireland), unlike American bars there were never any problems in those pubs. Sometimes Irish friends would fight amongst themselves but outsiders seemed to understand it was a bad idea to start trouble in those pubs. They don't call them the Fighting Irish for nothing. Even here in America. Go to South Boston or Charlestown and start problems with the local Irish-Americans and see what happens. It's a bad idea.
You're getting there, Rod, but you still have a long way to go.
Violence is ultimately going to have to be on the table, which means that it will probably have to be the answer. Not necessarily the only answer, but the elites need to know fear. Real, tangible fear for their physical safety before they'll change their ways.
So, rise up you native Irishmen. Bring back the IRA and the Provos, united this time against a common enemy. And that enemy isn't the immigrant down the block. He'll have to go eventually, but your real enemy is your political overclass. They are the ones who need to be unable to sleep at night, who have to send underlings to start their cars in the morning, and who occasionally disappear without a trace.
Elected officials and the bureaucrats who serve them need to learn to fear their voters again. Focus their minds
Long story but to bring it into the 60s you have the Provo- Official split. The Officials were called that because they dominated the groups governing body. They placed an emphasis on Marxism and would eventually renounce armed struggle and essentially morph into the Workers Party. That party did align with the Leninist in the European Parliament. The Provos were much more into armed struggle and less into Marxism. They actually had more of a following. But the Sinn Fein which became their political front was always pretty left wing but not woke until fairly recently.
Brian Kaller here -- I just got home through a maze of riot police blocking off the Dublin streets. Rod, I sent you more in an e-mail, but the people I talked to who came out of the riot area all said locals formed a peaceful protest after the stabbing, which turned violent when police tried to break it up. They said the looters, on the other hand, didn't look Irish.
You need to stop confirming the left's lunacy when they call the right racists. Too many examples like this and it won't be lunacy.
Quote: <<<Varadkar was born in Dublin and studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin. ... Varadkar is the third child and only son of Ashok and Miriam (née Howell) Varadkar. His father was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s, to work as a doctor.[7] His mother, born in Dungarvan, County Waterford, >>>
I was horrified by his remarks but his race has nothing to do with it. I want to throw up every time you make racist remarks about the British Prime Minister, and now this? Troll. Well, I will not stop calling your racism down no matter how many times you troll.
Edit to add: I like nearly all your other posts, Derek, in fact, I generally like them a lot. I just don't get it. "A non-Conservative is a bad leader" OK. But "An Indian is a bad leader?" Would Vivek automatically be a bad leader, for instance? Please consider that stating a person's race as a reason for their being a bad leader is indeed racist.
He says they haven't ruled out terrorism as a motive of the attacker-- so far, so good. It's an improvement over the initial statement. But he sure thinks he knows all he needs to know about the motivations of the rioters, and is talking about passing new laws targeting them that could be easily used on even peaceful protesters. As with Sunak, we see an Indian (or half Indian) PM coming down harder on a native white population reacting to nonwhite immigrant violence than the immigrants themselves.
We do not assume a person's race is the reason for a negative action unless there is evidence for it. To assume based on race if the definition of prejudice. I heard him speak and he sounded no different from Joe Biden with his horror of these terrible right wing acts - only word he lacked that Biden has is MAGA.
Is your theory that he did this because he has to prove loyalty to whites, rather than that Indians are generally more disloyal? If so, at least that is not a mean "prejudgment". I know that disloyalty probably part is Derek's reason because he has said that about Sunak more than once.
I guess I was lucky - in 6th grade when i was 11, we had a teacher who gave us a great talk. "Prejudice" is a combination of two words "pre" and "judge".
******* No matter what you know or believe (rightly or wrongly) you know about the average person in a group, you never judge in advance that a member of that group is bad or good based merely on race/religion/ethnicity. You do not pre-judge. *******
I don't think necessarily it's about proving loyalty to white people so much as seamlessly integrating into the current ruling class, which has largely turned against their own civilizational heritage. The Irish republic doesn't have the history of colonialism the U.K. does; I suspect they have economic migrants being shooed their direction because that's what Brussels will do to any country with a national government that will take them.
The issue isn't that either of these guys are Indian per se. It's that you have immigrants, or their children, who have assimilated very nicely acting for the benefit of more immigrants who have not assimilated to Western norms, including the rule of law which is increasingly under attack. Even as an American, I can't help but notice when some politician of recent immigrant background (usually Democrat) is in favor of a defacto open border, or going soft on nonwhite criminals while throwing the book at white ones. This is antiwhite, and it's as wrong as negatively targeting any other group on the basis of their birth.
But that- favoring open borders - is because they are Democrats. They are virtually required by their party to be in lock step.
Look, there is evidence a good percent of Islamic people are not blending into Western culture. That is just not true of Indians. If it is, then point out the evidence?
And yes, assuming an elected person is bad because of their race or religion is prejudice, even if that person is Islamic. But wanting to stop wholesale immigration of those who we now know will be likely, they or their descendants, to oppose Western culture with its freedoms and decent treatment of women? That is not prejudice. (And still there are exceptions, i,.e., persecuted Iranian women who fled.)
Do some here really not know you cannot assume a given individual is "bad because of their membership in a group? Wanting to stop open borders and labeling someone bad because of race, religion or ethnicity are two different things.
Equating 'have to say' with 'is a bad leader' is a bit of a stretch. But, let's try these two sentences.
"The Indian taoiseach is a bad leader" and "The Indian taoiseach is a good leader". Are they equally racist or not? Is it the ethic (not racial) association that makes it racist or the negative connotation of one sentence that makes it racist?
And if you want to see how bad - how ridiculous things are- this is not innocuous-https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/opinion/bird-names-colonialism.html
I know right?
I know you might not be able to to access this but this is about making sure birds aren’t named after racists.
But at least we still have the common names! The double crested cormorant will always have a special place in my birding journal!
No, the common names are changing, too.
A bonkers NPR report on the subject mentioned that the name of a duck was going to change because it was potentially offensive to some people. With the typical prudery of the woke, the reporter didn't say what the offensive name was! I had to look elsewhere to learn that it's the "oldsquaw."
In their effort to avoid "racism" in bird naming, they're eliminating all names of people. So keep your old bird books. They'll be useful again after the anti-woke blowback.
There's also a coalition of astronomers calling for the renaming of the Magellanic Cloud because of Magellan's "violent, colonialist legacy." All this self-hating "year zero" cultural revolution crap is way out of hand.
What's next. Re-naming The Audubon Society.
Shh! Don't give them ideas.
Apparently they've already thought about it:
<https://www.audubon.org/news/national-audubon-society-announces-decision-retain-current-name>.
Well so far it hasn’t happened but it has been proposed and I’m expecting it.
Thing with common names, they are the vernacular. The woke can no sooner change them than they can change your brother's nickname. Scientific names, sure. Those are standardized descriptors. What a region or a local population elects to call something, however, is immutable.
(Just to be clear, nobody down south calls the double crested cormorant the double crested cormorant.)
I wrote a thing about this stupidity! 😂
https://theplenum.substack.com/p/a-birdemic-of-racism
I read a column in the spectator or American conservative about it. Maddening!
I’m a little bit of a birder and belong to the Audubon Society and I’m really annoyed by this nonesense.
You need to tell them so. Pushback is the only way this crap stops.
Back up where I lived in Delaware, there's a serious move to rename Plantation Road (the major "back way" to avoid Coastal Highway when it's clogged with tourist traffic) and a couple of adjacent suburbs with "Plantation" in the name.
I have and will resign if they dump the Audubon name.
Yes. You need to tell them.
That is just the stupidest damn thing.
This actually reports one of the better approaches I've seen. Instead of removing names connected to someone whose utterances are out of favor, it is removing ALL human names. That neutralizes the controversy -- there will be no favored names or unfavored names, just a more objective basis for naming -- its about the characteristics of the bird, not honoring or dishonoring some human.
Yes. Perhaps removing all names of humans from everything would be the human thing to do. Impersonal, scientific names for everything. For instance, manatee has the word man in it. Men are bad. So re-name it Aquatic Creature 331PX or something like that,
Perhaps people shouldn’t have names either . We could have numbers. Not an original idea. But that way we could have a detached rational border devoid of cultural bias.
Globalism at its finest.
THX-1138
It doesn't "neutralize the controversy" at all. It's a complete surrender to people who fret about memorializing anything with the name of someone who's "problematic" by the changing standards of the nanosecond, and sets the stage for whatever asinine thing they want next.
These progressive initiatives never end. There's actually fairly broad (but far from unanimous) agreement that perhaps we shouldn't have statues of Confederate leaders. But look how in the past three years that's morphed into the vandalism or removal of statues of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, and Theodore Roosevelt. I was a lefty 30 years ago, and I participated in some activism, so I know that none of these people or groups ever achieve their stated goal, declare Miller Time, and go on with their lives. It's always an eternal struggle. There's no good reason the Audubon Society needs to do this to widen the demographics of people who care about birds.
You miss the point entirely. With statues, or names on buildings, there is no escaping the often artificial controversy. But, with naming animals and plants, if none are named after people, then which people are "suitable" and what "disqualifies" is a moot point. IF the campaign were to, say, rename a species named for someone who first identified it, or was admired by the person who first identified it, and call it, e.g., the Martin Luther King Butterfly but in appropriate Latin, that would perpetuate the obsession. But by all means, make it all viewpoint-neutral terminology, preferably related to the characteristics of the species. There are some rather specific reasons for taking down confederate statues. They were for the most part erected some forty years after the Civil War, not so much to honor the dead as to promote the ideology that The South was right all along, the war was an unfortunate and unnecessary tragedy, and after all "Negroes really are an inferior sub-species." There were even calls to repeal the 14th and 15th amendments. But, I still favor keeping a few Lee statues -- we just need to add a bronze plaque explaining his role in the larger scheme of things. If George Brinton "We're Not Here To Take Your Property" McClellan had marched into Richmond in 1862, while that would not have instantly ended the war, it would have set matters on track to restore the union status quo ante. Without Lee's year of victories, there would have been no Emancipation Proclamation, nor any 13th, 14th or 15th amendments.
Happy Thanksgiving, Rod. I’m thankful for you and your column and for the book you wrote, “Live Not By Lies”. Take care of yourself. I hope your “cold” resolves and that it’s not mononucleosis. And I hope your heart heals.
Wait till they get mass mail voting and ballot harvesting.
I disagree that the rioting is uncalled for. Riot away, Ireland. Riot so hard they're terrified. And then riot more until they get the point.
My early elementary daughter was sexually assaulted on a school bus last year, in addition to experiencing daily violence at her public school. She's now at wonderful Christian school. When we came forward with complaints, we were ignored (you know, those other kids have trauma). We were actually laughed at by the immigrant assistant superintendent (he mocked me, a teacher with lots of experience, when I pointed out the cultural problems that exist in the district).
It's easy to say rioting is wrong, but it's different when extremist leftist lunatics enable a culture that harms your child. If the Irish are up against people like those that run my child's former district, I say keep rioting. Otherwise they're just laughing at you.
I'm sorry this happened to your child. Glad you found a better school
Yes, what was The Boston Tea Party if not a riot?
It was pretty targeted. It's not like colonial thugs ran loose in the streets of Boston looting and burning at random.
Political violence does however have a tendency to spin out of control. That's what sent the French Revolution careening off course and finally into a bloodbath, as the several faction turned out mobs to further their cause and frighten their rivals.
Yes, which suggests that "the authorities" need to rent some testicles for a few days so they can begin to reclaim Ireland for the Irish, Sweden for the Swedish, and unlikeliest of all, Britain for the British.
It was racist, too. And cultural appropriation when the rioters wore Indian outfits.
"What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?" —Thomas Jefferson
My sincere sympathies about what happened to your daughter, that's awful and the response from the school district sounds even worse.
There's something about the respectable right that is infuriatingly pacifist, and satisfied with asymmetrical responses. They riot, loot, burn, we Tweet. They protest, accuse, defame, we Reason. They come at us with the full arsenal of a massively weaponised government apparatus, we...what do we do? Nothing. Nothing effective anyway.
Rioting should be the very first step (of many) but modern conservatives are not built like their fathers. I fear nothing will wake them from their torpor.
How can we condemn the Left for rioting if we reserve the right to do it for ourselves?
Of course I believe that what the Irish state is doing here is worse than what the rioters did, but I believe a sustained series of PEACEFUL mass protests would be more effective in the long run. Rioting just gives the bastards in the State the excuse to crack down.
I wish you were right, Rod. But January 6th was 99% peaceful minus the Feds, and look what happened. The people in charge in the West do not respect democracy, and they do not respect peaceful protest.
I still agree that peaceful is the way to go for now.
Re: But January 6th was 99% peaceful minus the Feds, and look what happened.
What happened is that the minority of miscreants got the book thrown at them while the business of transferring power according to the results of the election was completed as it should be, despite the wishes of the incumbent and some lunatic supporters to cling to power. The system worked.
Jon, to claim that locking people up without trial for a protest that was no worse, less violent in fact, than dozens of similar protests on the Left, many of them on Capitol Hill, is the "system working" convinces me that you a troll. Or very stupid. Or both.
More than 1100 people have no faced criminal charges (I know of no acquittals) with dozens rotting in jail - solitary confinement - for over two years with no trial. People walked into the capital witah police standing at open doors admitting them and they are now in jail. They were protesting what looked like fraud and hoping to get a count of legitimate ballots. If police had not stood aside to let them in it might be different,
Jon refuses to look at anything but Regime Media, he has told us that. He thinks they tell the truth. It is so sad.
Their trials have been delayed, unconscionably so, but that's been true of a lot of people after the lockdowns left the court dockets jam-packed. An acquaintance of mine in Baltimore was arrested for a fairly heinous crime in fall of 2019-- and he was stuck in jail for nearly three years without trial (ultimately he pled the case and was released for time served).
Please refrain from insult. No, I don't buy into paranoid, fear-mongering propaganda-- that's makes me smart or at least discerning, not stupid
They locked up people for months without trial. That whole thing was a sham.
And as I said the delays in bringing these people-- any people, on any charge anywhere-- to trial is an outrage. On that we may agree I hope.
The George Floyd riots were at least ginned up, and certainly connived at on the part of the police. There was no doubt of this post Ferguson, which was set up to be the racial reckoning spark, but somehow spluttered, and went out when even Eric ("My People") Holder's DoJ couldn't deliver a true bill. That wasn't going to happen a second time, so the rent-a-mobs were ready.
As I ask elsewhere, what effect will peaceful protests have on the political class? Have you read Nikki Haley's platform?
Re: The George Floyd riots were at least ginned up, and certainly connived at on the part of the police.
Can you expand on this? I think you can make a case that the police overreacted in some cities to the actions of provocateurs and that sent things out of control. But I can't see there was any deliberate plan on the part of the police for that result.
No. Read carefully what I wrote, Jon. They didn't foment it. They let it rip. They winked at it. That's what "connived" means. That's certainly what happened in New York.
Ray Kelly, the great former NYPD commissioner, is on record saying there are tried and true techniques for breaking up a mob, the kind that gutted Macy's in the summer of 2020. But the cops just watched because Bill DeBlasio, I mean Chirlane McCray, I mean Al Sharpton, I mean Barack Obama, told them to.
OK, but what would be their motive? The police generally skew rightwards politically (yes, there are individual exceptions) so were they hoping for a political reaction that would ensure Trump's reelection, or on a more diffuse scale discredit BLM and its cause?
I think you discount the reality that the police are a finite organization with limited power. They have been overwhelmed by urban mobs in riot going back the New York Draft riots in 1863. And most of of large cities are underpoliced-- we need more cops (though better cops too). We pretty much always have to bring in the National Guard to handle such things.
Barack Obama? In 2020? Really?
That’s what happened in Charlottesville as well. They stood down and let everything happen. I don’t blame them necessarily, they follow orders given from above. As all police departments do.
Remember those "Fiery but peaceful protests" in Kenosha, Wisconsin? The first night of the rioting over there was just the warm-up act, but Sheriff David Clarke, former sheriff of Milwaukee county, got on the radio the next day as the guest host for Mark Belling's 3-hour talk radio program. The major topic - how to strategically defend Kenosha from a law-enforcement perspective, from someone who had experience.
Was any of it done? No. I sincerely believe that half of Kenosha would have burned to the ground had it not been for the Rittenhouse shootings; that Antifa and all these groups were given a wink and a nod that they would be "safe" in their rioting, and that they got scared when some of their people actually got killed. It was eerie how fast the Antifa people left once that happened - what had been a full-out riot when Rittenhouse was attacked was totally cleared out two hours later.
As it was, the damage to Kenosha was much, much worse than the media reported. Furthermore, they totally ignored the fact that even in Racine, there had been a "public safety house" that had been burned out.
One thing I find that people don't realize: After the past couple years, no cop wants to be the one in a viral video without context causing harm to someone, even if that person is a criminal. And nearly all politicians are afraid to be the ones who order it or condone it. This goes back to "Occupy Wall Street" 15 years ago, when encampments and blocked streets intimidated the politicians in big "blue" cities.
I think the tide is turning slightly, though. When protesters surrounded the DNC headquarters in DC a week ago, blocking all fire exits and creating a dangerous, illegal situation, the cops stepped in, and no one is crying for the protesters.
The winking/conniving of the past 15+ years has caused two generations of protesters not to understand the principles of civil disobedience. They holler and scream and whine when they get arrested, but without the arrest to give their protest moral weight, they're just a bunch of douchebags and vandals.
Overreacted?!??
To explain I was actually thinking of the Baltimore authorities in 2015 who reacted to internet rumors of a "Purge" (see the movies of that name) by shutting down the public transport system just before the schools let out-- older students did not ride school busses but had MTA passes. That stranded lots of teenagers, many at the MTA nexus by Mondawin Mall-- and they became a mob and touched off the rioting.
One should not credit municipal authorities with too much intelligence.
Burning vehicles is not only wrong in itself, it is dangerous. It is as dangerous as burning down a building. It is dangerous for the firemen who have to put out the fire. Burning vehicles is self-defeating. And burning vehicles is so left-wing and so Muslim.
Antifa torched two car lots in Kenosha in 2020, right along Sheridan Road, the main drag through the old part of the city. (Sheridan Road will take you all the way to Chicago going south and will also get a person to Milwaukee, though the name of the street changes going north.) The heat was so hot it melted city lamp-posts over. The owner of the car lots, an Indian immigrant who had come to the US with practically nothing decades ago, had tons of issues trying to get anything from insurance, not just in the fact that riots are often not covered, but most of the cars were burnt so badly the VINs were not readable, and his office had burned to the ground as well, along with the paperwork for the vehicles. Those cars sat out there for months, and then the city of Kenosha went after him for the "eyesore".
Why didn't they haul the cars to a junk yard? even a city as incompetent as Baltimore is pretty good about taking abandoned cars away when they are notified of such.
Jon, they weren't abandoned - they were on the private property of the car lot. However, without VINs, what other "proof" did the owner have that they existed? What else was he supposed to do when fighting with the insurance took months and months?
Rod, I don't actually condemn the left for rioting - a lot of times I think it's stupid, but it gets a point across.
The bastards in the state are like abusive husbands. If we just politely protest they won't crack down on us. Really, they'll crack down either way, so we may as well push back.
I'm sorry, but at this point suggesting peaceful mass protests is breathtakingly naive. You're our beloved alarmist and I would suggest most of your readership shares some sense of how desperate the hour is. Your alarmism is necessary, and helpful.
But do you really think peaceful protests are going to get the job done? If the Irish had peacefully marched, do you believe they wouldn't still have been referred to as 'far right'? All institutional control is within the hands of a cohort which despises us and what we represent.
And yes, I would point to J6 as an example of the kind of response even mostly peaceful protest prompts in the US.
I’m with Rod on this. As Christians, doing evil so that good more result is never acceptable. Further, it shows that we are hypocritical because we sanctimoniously proclaiming”law and order” when it comes to political enemies’ bad behavior. Yes, it is true that the far-right label will be used in any event. But, as we saw in Charlottesville,the use of violence by a despised group can have long term consequences. The public backlash is then leveraged by the Left to acquire more power. This is what sank Trump in 2020.
If you mean looting a Foot Locker, I'm in full agreement. That does nothing for our cause and only weakens it (incidentally it's been reported that looting in Ireland was done by people of 'indeterminate origin').
But I think we can aggressively protest without falling into sin. If some people want to call that rioting or not, that's just semantics. But I don't dispute your core point.
IMHO fair points are made by Mr. Dreher, but also many of the commenters as well (e.g., pointing out the treatment of "J6" people vs. the coddling of the "mostly peaceful protestors" who are allies of the Left).
Peaceful mass protests should be the first step, and hopefully a successful one. If nothing else, this might help "red-pill" the tens of millions of "blue-pilled normies" still comprising a majority of our citizenry.
At the same time, we are in a post-2020 world in which an unelected regime has been installed into the White House, apparently run by Obama (in alliance with enemies foreign and domestic). By definition, such de facto revolutionaries care not about our Constitutional Republic nor the legitimate preferences of the citizenry, for it is the former they intend to displace and the latter they see either as counter-revolutionaries / reactionaries, or subjects.
Yuri Bezmenov warned us of the subversion / demoralization. Anyone who's read "And Not a Shot is Fired" or studied "color revolutions" readily recognizes what occurred in 2020, and is underway now. So ...
1) We must pray and repent and seek God's face, asking that He heal our land and deliver us from the evil that has seized control of our nation;
2) Pursue peaceful means to reinstate and restore our Constitutional Republic;
3) Be cognizant of the fact that peaceful means might fail (particularly since with the complicity of both political parties the election fraud infrastructure remains intact), and so at that time pray for guidance on next steps.
Not getting your way in politics (generally because you have failed to convince the public of your cause) is absolutely no excuse for violence.
In normal circumstances (a functioning democracy), absolutely yes.
Things get more questionable when you have the federal government (on the side of Democrats) strong-arming media / social media to silence / cancel opposing political voices (contra to the spirit, if not the letter of the First Amendment).
And far more questionable when elections are neither "free and fair."
Both of which have been the state of play in this country leading up to and through the 2020 election, and since.
Re: And far more questionable when elections are neither "free and fair."
There is zero evidence in the real world that there is any more trouble with our elections than there was twenty, thirty, forty or sixty years ago. The inability of the Right to accept defeat and to grasp the basic fact that much (not all) of its program is anathema to a majority of citizens is cause for my own dismay.
Donald Trump was never popular to begin with; his 2016 win was a fluke (due mainly to a very unlikable opposing candidate, her tactical blunders, and the byzantine nature of presidential election rules). Once in office as a minority president, the man did absolutely nothing to expand his appeal (unlike Bush in 2001-- and before 9-11 even). When the digestive residue hit the rotating air moving device in 2020 his Potemkin presidency stood revealed in all its incompetent squalor and thereafter the election was Biden's to lose, and even Sleepy Joe managed not to. And yet here we go again. The the GOP-- or rather conservative Americans-- just had the great good sense to dump Trump and go with someone like Desantis, of proven ability, Biden would be leaving office in January of 2025 and your side would see at least some of its program (most especially on immigration, probably not on abortion etc.) actually put in place. But go ahead and throw it all away for another gaudy grudge match between two cognitively impaired candidates for the nursing home if not the loony bin.
Jon - Tom is right. We know that the public is being misled by elite institutions. If a brainwashed public is defrauded of their vote because they acted on a steady stream of lies by leftist institutions, it is silly to talk about “persuasion”.
So people who disagree with you are "brainwashed"? Stop and think a minute how condescending and arrogant that sounds. This is the rhetoric of power lust pure and simple.
We wouldn't be reserving the right to riot for ourselves. We would just be replying in kind - a "proportional response" like the Left seems to think the Israelis should be doing rather the bombing Hamas.
We shouldn't riot. Instead we should protest peacefully.
We must have PEACEFUL protests ... like the ones we saw in 2020. Remember those?
<<<Pay no attention to the smoke, the flames, the broken glass, the burning cars and the looting mobs you see behind the me. It's not strictly speaking a riot but can be more accurately described as a PEACEFUL protest.>>>
Remember:
Riots - bad.
PEACEFUL protests - good.
I think that there's a fine, fine line here. I think that violence can't be absolutely taken off the table. Most tyrants only understand power.
However, there's an incredible danger in just unleashing violence, especially to a mob, because it invites in the demons.
The balance probably only comes with a people who depend on God for their salvation.
I think about how the Indians' success in nonviolent resistance against the British was dependent on the British having some sense of decency; they weren't going to just mow down unarmed civilians. But if the Indians had tried that against the Nazis, the Nazis would have probably been more than happy to exterminate them—and laughed at them for being weak while doing it.
Point being, resistance on the physical plane (i.e. violence) may sometimes be necessary when we're dealing with the sort of sub-animal humans who are incapable of understanding anything else. Pure pacifism seems like a recipe to have the worst among us inherit the earth, since there certainly are people who aren't gonna stop until they are made to stop. But of course crossing that line should not be taken lightly.
Only a rigid pacifist denies that violence may be necessary when defending oneself. But beware the delusion that you are "defending yourself" when your real motive is to impose your will on others.
Of course.
OK, I'm game. Help me out here. "pure pacificism a disaster", "won't stop until they are made to stop" "should not be taken lightly". Ok. But what are you calling for.
I've objected strongly to calls for rioting, looting, burning, the sort of thing that happened in Dublin, the Summer of 2020 type thing. Are you calling for taking the initiative and doing something like that? You just do not strike me as that kind of person.
Defense, stocking weapons, that sort of thing I get. But there was an implication here, I thought, of taking initiative, and an initiative that was not peaceful. So what is it you are calling for? Honest question.
For me, I can see "riot/loot/burn". I can see "prepare to defend" and I can see "work through peaceful and lawful means". I'm for the last two. You seem to feel they are not sufficient (and maybe they aren't) but what do you call for?
What am I missing as I sit in horror at college educated folk (not the downtrodden unhoused of Ireland) calling for riots as their answer? (Not saying you are necessarily calling for that as some here are- but I wonder what you do call for.)
You've got a guy on today's forum (Nov., 25) literally saying whites should start a race war (yes, start). I bet no one says anything. I just don't get it. Where is the line here? You spoke of one and not taking things lightly, so where is the line.
I'm not calling for anything. I was only stating that, in principle, political violence is never entirely off the table, because pure pacifism is not a tenable moral position. The world is messy and complex, and I do not know in general terms where the specific line is between offense and proactive defense. Rioting is probably useless, but the way things are going, it also seems inevitable. Riots are sort of like volcanos: it hardly matters whether anyone "calls" for them or not, since they're just gonna do what they will anyway.
Thanks - I still need more help to understand. You stated "Political violence is never entirely off the table". I assume you mean offense, defense is not a problem. Could you give an example of political violence that should be on the table that is not defensive?
I think the issue has to do with what we consider "defense". The BLM rioters, for example, perceived themselves as acting in defense, because (rightly or wrongly) they believed that blacks are under siege from white supremacy and the police. And likewise, if global elites and their policies make working class whites feel like their backs are to the wall, then they may perceive their own violence as defensive in nature. So, many things could be framed as defense if you believe that you have already been aggressed against. It can be hard to isolate the causality or to judge the merits in general terms.
Also, with people saying they favor riots, I think it has to do with a grim sense of satisfaction. Like: "What, elites, did you think that you could sow the wind and not reap the whirlwind? How long did you think you could keep going like you do and not provoke this sort of thing?" So there's a poetic sense that the elites deserve to meet their nemesis, even if any given riot itself is irrational and wrong.
Exactly my thought. Sadly, a lot of conservatives want to check out and act like talking and writing more papers will change the direction of travel. We shouldn’t tell our enemies that we are unwilling to use tactics because they’ll see it as a weakness, not compassion.
I’m going to misquote the movie Golda super bad here, but in the movie they had her saying something like ‘we don’t have to do it, but we need to make the Egyptians think that we will rape,murder, burn their houses down and destroy their cities. We have to make them want to save their families enough to stop killing ours.’
We can’t keep capitulating to monsters because we think it’s ‘nice’. Nice got us in this mess. I’m so over the ‘respectable right.’ We can’t be afraid of ugly or of civil disobedience. We don’t have the luxury of leaving options on the table like it’s 1990.
Word have meanings, and we are not ruled by tyrants, though a case can be made that we are ruled by fools. Resorting to violence because the public has not accepted one's political program is nothing but a guarantee of ruin. And yes, Hell loves that sort of thing.
I'm enjoying the elites increasingly feeling under siege. From their parties losing favor and power and their namecalling/propagana increasingly bouncing off DGAF shields, to things like Hollywood in general and Disney in particular increasingly failing...the rot is clear and the pushback is inevitable.
About time.
South Park lampooning Disney's corporate board, but could be the gathering of any power elite nowadays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz8feYskRpk
Or this..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9_L2hf7Sf8
I honestly don't feel like they feel under siege. They seem strangely unbothered, they have this weird unnerving confidence - it's a religious thing with them.
That's fake. When you see them flip out with every setback, you see the falseness of their confidence. See, in their world view, they are inevitable, and such defeats cannot happen. But they are happening, with increasing regularity.
So do not be fooled.
This is an interesting take.
These are just people, not gods. Serious feet of clay, made so by their arrogance, the cultural bubble they shelter in, not being nearly as smart as they think they are, and forming world views around a whole series of things that simply are not real and in the longer term, unsupportable.
Ireland is the only European nation without a conservative political party. A big part of that is the historic political battle between Fianna Fail and Finn Gael that goes back to the 1920s. Both of these parties were socially fairly conservative until fairly recently. But that's all gone now. The Irish are pretty much all in on the European Union and modernist social policies. The votes on divorce, homosexual marriage and abortion weren't even close. The Ireland of "The Quiet Man" is dead. On top of that, there are always the troubles in Ulster that highly influence the southern republic. Irish politics are almost unnatural.
I'm so sorry the Irish don't conform to your personal expectations for them.
Thank you, I believe, is the correct response.
There is a newish party here which is trying to capture votes with a more socially conservative platform https://aontu.ie/ but I’m not sure if they’re making much progress at present. In the north the nationalist/republican parties have always been socialist but until recently were socially conservative, whereas the main unionist parties have been more economically conservative, though still very socially conservative. Nowadays though especially since the catholic abuse scandal shattered the dominant consensus, not to mention Brexit, the republicans are determined to show they are good Europeans and falling over themselves to prove their progressive credentials.
Yes I’m sorry but more power to the Irish who have had it up to the teeth with this.
Here's the thing about the Irish. Wokeism is a very new ideology in Ireland and even liberalism was late to bloom in Ireland. The Irish are and always have been a very tribal people and many Irish still retain that tribal nature (especially the working class which was the same class that filled the ranks of the IRA in the past). So just because the Irish are largely disgusted with the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church and have been less and less pious in practicing their ancestral Catholic Faith does not mean that Ireland as a whole has embraced Wokeism, actually as I said the Irish are still digesting liberalism (and they may very well vomit that out as we are watching in Dublin tonight). When Irish get pissed off they are quite a force to be dealt with on either side of the pond, just look at the history of Boston or New York.
Any foreigner going to Ireland and making trouble for the native Irish is in for a very rude awakening. It's not going to end well for them. I used to hang out in Irish Pubs in San Francisco with the Irish (construction workers from Ireland), unlike American bars there were never any problems in those pubs. Sometimes Irish friends would fight amongst themselves but outsiders seemed to understand it was a bad idea to start trouble in those pubs. They don't call them the Fighting Irish for nothing. Even here in America. Go to South Boston or Charlestown and start problems with the local Irish-Americans and see what happens. It's a bad idea.
You're getting there, Rod, but you still have a long way to go.
Violence is ultimately going to have to be on the table, which means that it will probably have to be the answer. Not necessarily the only answer, but the elites need to know fear. Real, tangible fear for their physical safety before they'll change their ways.
So, rise up you native Irishmen. Bring back the IRA and the Provos, united this time against a common enemy. And that enemy isn't the immigrant down the block. He'll have to go eventually, but your real enemy is your political overclass. They are the ones who need to be unable to sleep at night, who have to send underlings to start their cars in the morning, and who occasionally disappear without a trace.
Elected officials and the bureaucrats who serve them need to learn to fear their voters again. Focus their minds
Well the Provos are Sinn Fein and they’ve gone totally woke.
Actually they’re now a cartel.
Weren't they Leninists to begin with?
Long story but to bring it into the 60s you have the Provo- Official split. The Officials were called that because they dominated the groups governing body. They placed an emphasis on Marxism and would eventually renounce armed struggle and essentially morph into the Workers Party. That party did align with the Leninist in the European Parliament. The Provos were much more into armed struggle and less into Marxism. They actually had more of a following. But the Sinn Fein which became their political front was always pretty left wing but not woke until fairly recently.
"... elites need to know fear. Real, tangible fear for their physical safety before they'll change their ways."
You took the words right out of my mouth.
And not just in Ireland.
Without violence, we'd be subjects of King Charles III.
Without violence, there's no Republic of Ireland.
And more-https://www.foxnews.com/us/pro-palestinian-protesters-disrupt-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade-new-york-city
Brian Kaller here -- I just got home through a maze of riot police blocking off the Dublin streets. Rod, I sent you more in an e-mail, but the people I talked to who came out of the riot area all said locals formed a peaceful protest after the stabbing, which turned violent when police tried to break it up. They said the looters, on the other hand, didn't look Irish.
Wow. Thanks for the first-hand report.
What does the Indian taoiseach have to say?
You need to stop confirming the left's lunacy when they call the right racists. Too many examples like this and it won't be lunacy.
Quote: <<<Varadkar was born in Dublin and studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin. ... Varadkar is the third child and only son of Ashok and Miriam (née Howell) Varadkar. His father was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s, to work as a doctor.[7] His mother, born in Dungarvan, County Waterford, >>>
I was horrified by his remarks but his race has nothing to do with it. I want to throw up every time you make racist remarks about the British Prime Minister, and now this? Troll. Well, I will not stop calling your racism down no matter how many times you troll.
Edit to add: I like nearly all your other posts, Derek, in fact, I generally like them a lot. I just don't get it. "A non-Conservative is a bad leader" OK. But "An Indian is a bad leader?" Would Vivek automatically be a bad leader, for instance? Please consider that stating a person's race as a reason for their being a bad leader is indeed racist.
He says they haven't ruled out terrorism as a motive of the attacker-- so far, so good. It's an improvement over the initial statement. But he sure thinks he knows all he needs to know about the motivations of the rioters, and is talking about passing new laws targeting them that could be easily used on even peaceful protesters. As with Sunak, we see an Indian (or half Indian) PM coming down harder on a native white population reacting to nonwhite immigrant violence than the immigrants themselves.
We do not assume a person's race is the reason for a negative action unless there is evidence for it. To assume based on race if the definition of prejudice. I heard him speak and he sounded no different from Joe Biden with his horror of these terrible right wing acts - only word he lacked that Biden has is MAGA.
Is your theory that he did this because he has to prove loyalty to whites, rather than that Indians are generally more disloyal? If so, at least that is not a mean "prejudgment". I know that disloyalty probably part is Derek's reason because he has said that about Sunak more than once.
I guess I was lucky - in 6th grade when i was 11, we had a teacher who gave us a great talk. "Prejudice" is a combination of two words "pre" and "judge".
******* No matter what you know or believe (rightly or wrongly) you know about the average person in a group, you never judge in advance that a member of that group is bad or good based merely on race/religion/ethnicity. You do not pre-judge. *******
I don't think necessarily it's about proving loyalty to white people so much as seamlessly integrating into the current ruling class, which has largely turned against their own civilizational heritage. The Irish republic doesn't have the history of colonialism the U.K. does; I suspect they have economic migrants being shooed their direction because that's what Brussels will do to any country with a national government that will take them.
The issue isn't that either of these guys are Indian per se. It's that you have immigrants, or their children, who have assimilated very nicely acting for the benefit of more immigrants who have not assimilated to Western norms, including the rule of law which is increasingly under attack. Even as an American, I can't help but notice when some politician of recent immigrant background (usually Democrat) is in favor of a defacto open border, or going soft on nonwhite criminals while throwing the book at white ones. This is antiwhite, and it's as wrong as negatively targeting any other group on the basis of their birth.
But that- favoring open borders - is because they are Democrats. They are virtually required by their party to be in lock step.
Look, there is evidence a good percent of Islamic people are not blending into Western culture. That is just not true of Indians. If it is, then point out the evidence?
And yes, assuming an elected person is bad because of their race or religion is prejudice, even if that person is Islamic. But wanting to stop wholesale immigration of those who we now know will be likely, they or their descendants, to oppose Western culture with its freedoms and decent treatment of women? That is not prejudice. (And still there are exceptions, i,.e., persecuted Iranian women who fled.)
Do some here really not know you cannot assume a given individual is "bad because of their membership in a group? Wanting to stop open borders and labeling someone bad because of race, religion or ethnicity are two different things.
(quick typo edit)
Equating 'have to say' with 'is a bad leader' is a bit of a stretch. But, let's try these two sentences.
"The Indian taoiseach is a bad leader" and "The Indian taoiseach is a good leader". Are they equally racist or not? Is it the ethic (not racial) association that makes it racist or the negative connotation of one sentence that makes it racist?