Friends, this week's Newsmaker Show featuring me and Brian O'Neil covers a lot of ground. We discuss the legacy of the Civil War and why the Left is wrong to impugn the honor of the South, as well as the Truman Doctrine, i.e. President Harry Truman's containment policy in the Cold War. Naturally, I also give an account of my colorful adventures at the Trump rally in Montoursville, PA on Monday. Brian and I also assess the current standing of all the major candidates in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and we give a nod to John Durham/Bill Barr's efforts to disentangle the Trump-Russia hoax, the threat posed (or not posed) by climate change, generational politics, the evolution of Fox News, the Brexit morass, and the milkshake war being waged against British conservatives.
Don't miss it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAHvIn0Z7LE&feature=youtu.be
Dr. Waddy: A remarkable picture; I know it is fact but I'm still astonished by a pictorially confirmed juxtaposition of human beings like Truman or FDR or Eden or Churchill with an undoubted denizen of hell itself like the very subhuman and incalculably evil Stalin.God save us all from the same, as his deadly sociopathic doctrine yet lives in some today, some in our country itself.
ReplyDeleteThat said, common sense Harry did us right in standing up to the monster in the only way possible; that was, to present him with irresistable force, the only thing that fiend feared.
One argument against punishing the South beyond its disgrace in the post war period was one familiar to all who had fought the Confederacy. Those Rebs were tough! There was probably creditable concern, especially among vets in the North, that to push the proud South too far was to risk a renewed and far more savage civil war.
Those who seek to punish the South further today often cite the "continuing effect of slavery" as a justification. To them it is objectively self evident and emotionally irresistable. But supportable arguments (it was 150 years ago and Jim Crow was overpowered 60 years ago; how long should it take?)will be asserted and will have an effect on decision making. Can it be that those who argue" continuing effect" are actually loathe to give up a bargaining chip they have long used, despite its very possible obsolescence due to the sincere efforts of America to mitigate its sometimes shameful past?
In considering Truman's benefit to us I'm reminded of the story of how his grandmother would not allow him to wear Army dress blues in her house because of the memory of Union army depredation in Missouri during the Civil War. Perhaps Harry consequently had a well informed perception of how it is to be occupied by overwhelming force motivated by contempt for those who are occupied. Maybe it gave him a better understanding of what Eastern Europeans faced from Stalin's forces?I don't know but I'm confident that Ol' Harry figured it out the right way. He was very, very common (he reminds me of my grandfather) and in being so, probably saved the world with his conviction that America, on balance, was right.
Like your comment on how the presumptuous Dems may someday, perhaps soon, rue the day they decided to make an enemy of Bill Barr. The left is accustomed to having an obsequious MSM support their assured onslaught on all who are as insolent as to oppose them. Good luck with Barr.
Dr. Waddy: More Jackgab. OK, people may be, perhaps prudently, planning to leave certain areas because of predicted climate change. But, preindustrial history offers many examples of migration due to unfavorable weather, from Neanderthal humans on.Still very much doubt as to the human origin of the possibly changing climate now, certainly nowhere near enough to warrant the remedial and conveniently radical economic, political, legal, industrial, agricultural, educational and social"adjustments" leftists so suspiciously urge and would force, with such blithe abandon.
ReplyDeleteIts one thing to sincerely regret our national mistakes; its quite another to condemn the entirety of our history out of hand. One may speculate endlessly on the what ifs? What if Europeans had stayed in Europe? Would a green idyllic oasis of human virtue have thrived? I dunno - some Native American nations were known to prey on others - might well have been pretty green though. How about the Mongols crossing an ocean no larger than the Eurasian continent they infested with such dispatch?
Soon the left will try to turn that part of the American agricultural community which has been worked hardship by the continuing trade negotiations with China against President Trump. Farmers are pretty tough; so were the Union soldiers the majority of whom voted for President Lincoln in 1864, so that they could finish the job, even though they yearned to go home.
Jack, I know what you mean -- who would want to be in the presence of the likes of Stalin? Sharing a planet with him was bad enough!
ReplyDeleteYour argument that the statute of limitations for punishing anyone for slavery has, uhh, long since expired is a sound one. No matter. The omnipresence of racism and its ill effects is doctrine on the Left. No, not doctrine -- gospel. There's not a Dem who would question it.
I agree re: climate change. In fact, the Earth has never been kinder to its human denizens than it is today. We are thriving as never before -- not that you'd know it from our bellyaching. That just goes to show you that perception and reality are largely unrelated.
That the Dems (and the Chinese) are trying to drive a wedge between Trump and his rural base is clear. Good luck to them. I saw that base in the flesh in Pennsylvania, and they appear unmoved. The "moderate" suburbanites, however, are shifty, to say the least. They bear watching.
Dr. Waddy: My regrets for my faux pas in having said: "Still very much doubt . . .certainly nowhere near enough to warrant. . . ."
ReplyDeleteI meant there is insufficient evidence or scientific agreement(sorry Al Gore, you are not a scientist, you haven't paid the price necessary to earn that designation) . . . . It may have been obvious but I should have stated it correctly.
Yeah, I agree that leftists are tyrannically bound by their gospel. But it makes our task simple and clear. We must politically overpower them and we can by mobilizing the real America.
I'd submit that the left has graduated from perception to conviction on "racism and humanly generated climate change" and , oh, you know what that means for the left. We must slap them down and keep them down, knowing FULL well they would do the same to us.
I've read creditable commentary to the effect that rural America elected Trump (what humor there is in this; a consummate urbanite yet our true champion). All of the states which put him in office have significant and uncowed rural populations. Maybe it will yet be enough but like boxers we must aim through the bag and welcome any who see in us a belatedly perceived soundness.
You're right, Jack. Trump will need all the votes he can get in 2020, and from any and all quarters. You're also right that there is some irony in the bond between the Manhattanite Trump and rural America. I think it can be said of our rural areas that they are the most traditionally-minded part of America, and Trump arguably is appealing to a sense of nostalgia in these voters who lament what America has (sadly) become. As strongly as rural voters supported Trump in 2016, though, one has to remember that they did so knowing that it was unlikely he would win. Now that he has proven his ability to do so, I'd like to think that the voters who may have been discouraged in 2016 will be ENCOURAGED this time around. In other words, I see a variety of ways for Trump to grow his base.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar said: "the valiant die but once; cowards die a thousand deaths". I think Donald Trump embraces an analogous personal conviction and that it is enabled by an internal conviction and devotion on his part which only this situation could have manifested for us, its beneficiaries.This guy has GUTS and he is on our side. If one wishes to preserve the on balance positive entity which is our country now, one must in good sense rally to this champion.
ReplyDeleteWell said. The amazing thing is that the evidence suggests Trump actually expected to lose in 2016, and yet he still fought like a tiger. How hard will he fight now that he scents a double-victory?
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: He has already endured excoriation which would have withered one less a warrior than him. That makes me think he's ready for the fight and the historic challenge; he may even relish it! We are lucky.
ReplyDeleteYes, he's uniquely well-suited to the role of "most hated man in recent history". You can see that sometimes it grates on him, but the adulation of his fans must soften the blow. I'm glad to be one of them!
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