Friends, this week's Newsmaker Show with me and Brian O'Neil might just be the best of all time -- and that's a high standard, as you know! Brian and I cover some weighty topics, including the political future of Joe Manchin, the derisory standing of national Democrats in the polls (even "fake" media polls!), and the unexpected escalation of the Durham inquiry into the Trump-Russia hoax and its perpetrators.
When we turn to This Day in History, Brian and I cover war remembrance and the rise of pacifism in the last century, with profound implications for the effectiveness of strategies of deterrence. We also talk about the German invasion of Vichy France in 1942, the seeming impossibility of winding down ANY governmental program or agency, and George W. Bush's challenge to the U.N. in November 2001. He demanded that the countries of the world make battling terrorism their number one priority -- a point of view that seems downright quaint nowadays!
Whew! This analysis is HOT HOT HOT! Don't miss a second of it.
https://wlea.net/newsmaker-november-10-2021-dr-nick-waddy/
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In other news, a major Wall Street firm is now judging its executives based on their attainment of numerical quotas for the hiring and promotion of women and minorities -- and the hiring of white men is apparently so presumptively offensive that managers require special permission to do so. Seems like now might be the time to remind these people about the Civil Rights Act of 1964!
Inflation is heating up! What's worse, for the Dems, is the real possibility that Joe Manchin will use inflation as a pretext to tank their ambitious reconciliation bill. That would be a silver lining to our economic plight, no?
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/10/consumer-price-index-october.html
Hate crimes sure are hateful! I'm sure we all agree on that. What we don't seem able to agree on is whether "hate" is the exclusive preserve of white people. I mean, do people of color ever commit hate crimes? I've certainly never heard of such a case on CNN or read about one in the New York Times... And yet, as it turns out, non-white people are actually PEOPLE, with all the foibles one might expect in homo sapiens. Whoa! What a revelation.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/anti-white-hate-crime-highest-level
Now, we've been lamenting the state of the American academy for years on this blog. The capture of higher education by woke lunatics is very nearly complete. That's why it's so interesting that Niall Ferguson and some other intellectuals have launched a bold new project to build a new university in Austin, Texas -- one that doesn't cancel freedom of conscience and free speech, in general, and conservatism, in particular. We here at WaddyIsRight wish those engaged in this noble crusade the very best of luck!
https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/niall-ferguson-america-s-woke-universities-need-to-be-replaced
Speaking of the pitfalls of American education, don't look now but some California school districts are eliminating grades A, B, C, D, and F because (you guessed it) those letters are RACIST! They're also encouraging teachers to stop evaluating students based on "subjective" and "irrelevant" factors like their behavior, participation, or whether or not they show up or hand in work on time. Consider, however, where this leaves us. The Left has already cancelled standardized tests like the SAT -- objective measures of performance -- because these tests don't lead to the kind of racially "equitable" results that they're looking for. Translation: black and Hispanic students don't do well on standardized tests, generally speaking, so out they go! Now the woke crowd is saying that subjective measures are also suspect, because they provide a means by which "bias" can contaminate the educational process. But, and this is the important point, if we can't evaluate students of color objectively or subjectively, then we can't evaluate them at all! Nowadays, no system of assessment that leads to the stigmatization of (some) students of color as failures, in any way, shape, or form, is permissible. I think the only conclusion one can reach is that grades and meritocracy are not long for this world, and in the foreseeable future life's rewards will be distributed on the grounds of "equity" (i.e. based on the agenda of the Left) and not based on "merit" of any kind. Assuming you don't mind if the bridge that you're driving over was designed by a cretin, or if the doctor performing your open heart surgery isn't entirely sure where hearts are located, then you should be entirely satisfied with the world of tomorrow!
Finally, I believe everyone should make their own decisions about whether to "get the jab". The simple fact is, though, that the Trump vaccine is effective. Will it turn us all inside out after one year of percolating in our bloodstream? Maybe, but I doubt it. In the meantime, though, it does seem to lower, to a remarkable degree, one's susceptibility to the coronavirus. So I say: bravo, Trump!
Dr. Waddy from Jack: What a fertile field for comment this broadcast and post present; what a wealth of opportunity for discussion. WWI: I think it the most significant event of the 20th century and through that century's juxaposition to ours, a very important factor today. My view (very much informed by Barbara Tuchman's Proud Tower, her greatest book, and by her The Guns of August) AND by my grandfather's intense WWI experience: The Edwardian Age preceding the war was one of understandable optimism. Human progress between 1799 and 1899 had been astounding and very encouraging. A golden age of enlightenment and well being seemed at hand. The unexpected, unprecedented ferocity and destructiveness of the war was a shock perhaps unknown since the Black Plague. You are most correct in saying that artillery was a terribly intimidating phenomenom and gas attack was as something from another world! My grandfather was a Chicago city boy. He had not seen the flesh and death familiar to rural folk. He was in the Battle of Le Hamel, which had ferocious hand to hand combat and, that night, counterattack by German storm troops using gas, with which he was put down (they often used flame throwers) and put out of the war and from which he succumbed in 1968. The memories of the American Civil War, yes, horrid, paled in comparison with WWI battles, some of which generated one million casualties. So very many advances were ordered by general officers unconvinced of the difference the machine gun had brought to the battlefield. The intense, perhaps unprecedented trauma this war induced in so many of its veterans and so many of those effected by their indescribable travails, had an understandable consequence of inspiring devotion to "never again" convictions (witness the Oxford Pledge of the '30s, promising unrelenting resistance to fighting).
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: The enervating criticism experienced by Churchill in the 30s in reaction to his warnings of another big war impending ( for God's sake, he knew war! He served in the trenches in WWI) demonstrated how very unendurable was the thought of another catastrophe like that. But it came, because the wicked were willing to pay the price, which French and British pusillanimity in the 30s convinced them would be manageable.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: You are right; deterrence is the only way to prevent war, because evil still obtains. Deterrance requires strength in the real world. Therefore, those Americans who seek peace thru diminution of American strength are sadly wrong headed. I sincerely hope civilization will one day manifest an agreed upon conviction that war is unthinkable and that the riches directed to military purpose can be kept in the pockets of people, not government. But that day is not here yet!
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy fromJack: You mentioned Joe Manchin's future and it raises a fascinating possibility: is higher office a possibility? Suppose he goes independent? Independent Sanders has twice made credible Presidential runs. Could an independent Manchin seek the nomination of either party? He could attract much support from Dems appalled by the capture of their party by radicals, which might have lost the Dems their Senatorial "majority" because it drove Manchin away. He would have obvious attraction for GOPers. Trump/Manchin, a conservative and an independent of like mind, if not manner. Might be a dynamite ticket! I don't suggest that Manchin is making his heroic stand with this as his objective but perhaps it could happen.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack : I'm also not suggesting that he could get the Dem nomination but in running for it he could provide a champion for relatively common sense Dems and exacerbate the divide in that party.
ReplyDeleteJack, that's fascinating that your very own grandfather was a victim of WWI gas attacks. I wonder: were his memories of the terrors of artillery or gas more vivid? Did he succumb to gas despite wearing a gas mask? I assume he would have been so equipped by the end of the war... So many questions!
ReplyDeleteJack, I suspect that, if the peace of the world were maintained only by the world's sure knowledge that the U.S. will use its conventional forces to enforce it, it would have collapsed a long time ago. We've telegraphed weakness, indecision, and squeamishness on countless occasions -- not to mention the fact that we can't find half the world's countries on a map. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, simply by their awesome power (almost regardless of who wields it) concentrate the mind and make major war virtually unthinkable. We're lucky, therefore, that those dumb missiles, sitting in their silos, do a better job of protecting us than politicians ever could.
Hmm. Manchin for Prez or VP? It's never crossed my mind. He seems like a lifer in the Senate. Who knows, though. He seems to enjoy the national stage. I'm pretty sure he has no future in the Democratic Party, but the GOP would be happy to claim him, undoubtedly. Whether it would reward him with the Vice-Presidency...that I doubt.
Dr Waddy from Jack : Grampa never talked about the war except to tell my mother "I was gassed on July 4." Idid some research to find what I am 95% sure is correct about his experience. We know he was sent to the Adirondacks for a time to recover from his gassing but in 1968, when he died of emphysema, his Doctor told my mother that it was a direct consequence of the gassing. The German gas attack came under cover of night and may have caught the Allied troops either at rest or very busy in recovering from the harrowing battle of the day. Several WWI vets came to his wake.Its amazing to think that theyhad probably seen the frequent presence of Civil War vets at parades in the their earlier days.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I completely agree with you that U.S. nuclear power and enlightened U.S. stewardship of it, has kept the peace (in so far as there has been no WWIII). And I rejoice at the discreditation with which this reality confronts America haters.
ReplyDeleteWow! As a spring chicken myself, Jack, I find it amazing that your grandfather was a WWI vet. That he experienced gassing is beyond surreal. More so for him than for me, I'm sure!
ReplyDeleteI give, as I said before, our precious nukes enormous credit for keeping the peace -- and a smidgen of credit to the men who superintend them too -- but having said all that I'm much less confident that nukes can or will keep the peace indefinitely. Sooner or later, the bloody-mindedness of homo sapiens will out, surely.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: One thing I'm sure of: no matter how much sympathy we may sincerely express, any of us who have not experienced direct combat (among them me) cannot manifest empathy for those who have. My mother says Grampa closely followed WWII news, especially from France and I know he visited Civil War battlefields after his ordeal, because he gave me souveniers. We even have modern combat vets in Civil War reenactment. We cannot gainsay any of them.
ReplyDelete