Friends, a hearty congrats to the Right Thinkers organization in the Southern Tier of New York State, spearheaded by the incomparable Connie Wolfinger and Nate Smith. I've been privileged to be a part of the Right Thinkers for almost their whole five year run, and we've come a long way together! Just a few months ago, we were contemplating what might have been the end for American conservatism and our democratic/Constitutional system, and today we're envigorated daily by President Donald Trump's achievements and his vision for the country. All I can say is: if we conservatives stick together, there's no mountain we can't climb!
https://www.oleantimesherald.com/2025/07/29/right-thinkers-marks-5-years-conservative-discussion/
In other news, the U.S. economy grew at a 3% annual pace in the second quarter, which sounds good, and is good, although there are some warning signs that trade turbulence could catch up with us in the third and fourth quarters...
https://www.wsj.com/economy/us-gdp-q2-2025-359c022b?st=ENJB6g
Speaking of tariffs, we just inked a deal with South Korea, which is fantastic, but we also announced sanctions and stiff tariffs against Brazil, largely because of that country's suppression of (conservative) dissent. Will Brazil pay us any heed? I hope so, for their sake and for the world's. Brazil is a cautionary tale of how Western "democracy", such as it is, could unravel, due to censorship and lawfare.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxpvl9krxwo
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlzn72eg25o
Finally, leftists are incensed because of...an ad for blue jeans??? Their ability to read "Nazism" into anything and everything never ceases to amaze me. The poor dears! How will they survive the next four years???
RAY TO DR. WADDY
ReplyDeleteA few days ago, I started rereading a book by my favorite professional historian, the late John Lukacs (died 2019), titled "Democracy and Populism, Fear and Hatred", (pub. 2005). In my opinion, Lukacs was what I call a Real Conservative, which is probably why I am getting a feeling of unease about the current administration. I was greatly relieved to see Biden fade into the mist of history, but I am beginning to have my doubts about what Trump and his people really represent.
Anyway, if you are not familiar with Lukacs, check him out.
With that said, and on that note, I'm not finding any conservative news about Trump that is looking at him "with a jaundiced eye" so to speak. (No, I'm not talking about your site). What I am getting is a lot of propaganda dished out by Fox News, which makes Trump look almost divine, with hardly any criticism I can recognize as objective. I fear the U.S. is moving from one brand of B S into another brand of B S.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I thanked Jim Eckstrom, the very fair minded editor of our Olean paper, for the coverage he gives our group and the increased credibility and support it objectively and with journalistic integrity, affords the conservative majority in our five county area. Its grassroots politics at its best and the attention paid our gatherings by area office holders, activists , candidates and concerned citizens is very redeeming. In a dem party dictatorship like NY state ( alot of our participants are from common sense Pennsylvania too) , it is very encouraging to know we are yet a part of an astonishing revival of common sense in our national politics and part of the rout to which our extraordinary President has put the incipient totalitarian, America hating far left.
ReplyDeleteYour very well informed and expressed commentary on our panels sets an example for the disgracefully far left American academy ,of which you are a courageous dissenting part, of intellectual objectivity and support for viciously attacked doctrinal freedom in our "universities".
Dr. Waddy from Jack: The jeans/genes ads. Once again the far left, the politically correct thought police, have shot themselves in the foot. They can't get out of their own way!
ReplyDeleteThey go ahead and attack a tactic probably so basic to advertising that it is taught to freshmen marketing majors: good looking people draw attention to advertisements and very successfully send a message that one may enjoy some of the success obvious in the public presentation of such attractive visual models. "Oh no!" the far left roars, "you must not give any credit to such'politically blasphemous ' expression of 'lookism' and once you give us the power, we will very forcefully suppress such obscenity and punish both its purveyors and its customers, haaarrrumphh!"
Gee, but that's just the kind of finally widely realized incipient totalitarian dictation of which common sense America is now, and militantly so, nearing full realization in our own country. And folks, its just a hint of the kind of microscopic inspection to which every aspect of our lives would be put should these budding "commissars" ever achieve full power. Just read any account of 20th century communism in action and you'll see enough. (eg. the book Lenin's Tomb).
Shakespeare once had a compulsive character express a willingness to "cavil (argue) on the ninth part of a hair" . Yes , if one were to 'cavil" one might perceive, if one really might, a miniscule hint of racial antipathy in this much nonetheless very repeatedly and closely examined advertisement (mind you , only for creditable dialectical purposes) . But sorry, you the frantic and beleagured far left retreating column, the "people" don't give a fig! But do expend your ever depleting supply of expository gas on it, oh do!
Dr. Waddy from Jack: President Trump continues to defy convention and manifest beneficial results doing so. His creative use of tariffs is exemplary.
ReplyDeleteFact is , we have often interfered in the politics of other nations. Most often it has been in our own interest to do so but it is historically proven that our intercession sometimes works favorable results for countries we treat this way (eg. Iraq). Some times we act to counter injustices we see in other countries (eg. boycotting S. Africa when apartheid was the law ). Perhaps it is a simple fact of international life that great powers act in these manners; when it is a relatively humane and civilized country like the U.S. it is good fortune for the world.
So, should we put pressure of any sort on Brazil to affect its domestic politics and governance? It would be against our interests to have an enormous potentially far left country which could dominate both S. America and the S. Atlantic. And we can be completely confident that the farther left a country goes , the more intense is the totalitarian oppression the people suffer. History proves that. So does justification for our use of tariffs to try to mitigate Brazil's "progress" to the always tyrannical far left obtain? We should always be hesitant to bully but on balance perhaps it does.
Dr. Waddy from Jack:The far leftists are really scraping the bottom of the barrel if they can't find anything better than their more than worn out effete old saw of (gasp!) Nazi!!! when we commit the slightest offense to their oh so high strung political psyches .
ReplyDeleteI'd like the chance to challenge them to a quick quiz on Nazism , I mean they use the term so confidently, they must really know their stuff, yes? So: "define the following terms: 'arbeit machts frei !' ( for extra credit say where it was customarily displayed); Sonderkommando; Gauleiter; SS; lebensraum". For what is "Nazi "an abbreviation? Identify the following persons: Reinhard Heidrich , Adolph Eichmann, Ernst Roehm, Alfred Rosenberg. " "Give a one paragraph review of the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, perhaps the most well known history of that phenomenom. Cite at what page you became physically ill as you read it, as you surely have done , yes? "
"What, you say you can't? Well bless me for a fool; I was certain that anyone as free as you and your compatriots are to use a term as catastrophically condemned by history and decency as "Nazi", to describe fellow Americans who dare to disagree with you on anything, would be well informed on just what "Nazi" means!"
Dr. Waddy from Jack: So, the Senate goes on vacation with some 150 judicial appointments unconfirmed. Certainly the Founders never intended that "advise and consent" would countenance automatic mass blocking , without regard to their qualifications , of a President's nominations.
ReplyDeleteRecess appointments are being considered and I hope the Administration uses them. The Constitutional clause enabling them has ambiguities and of course the Dems would take them to law, at least to further gum up the works. Let them do so and in the process perhaps also motivate this Scotus to consider whether Schumer's indiscriminate mass obstruction is lawful in the first place.
I'm confident that President Trump will take off the gloves in dealing with this far left rear guard baloney. The Dems are of course petrified by the prospect of further loss of their ability to use the Judiciary to bypass a democracy which will never give them the incipient totalitarian rule they seek.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I said I didn't care if they hung around, as long as they weren't forcing the tax payer to support them. But I fibbed!
ReplyDeleteSeeing the following byline in the paper today was almost incomparably redeeming: "Corporation for Public Broadcasting to shut down after being defunded by Congress". (Oh how AP must have loathed posting this simple fact!)
The CPB would have had us believe that they were indispensible and that the "public" would suffer incalculable loss from such legislation. Well gee , one would have expected a public aroused by the onerous prospect of philistine ignorance and non-existent taste to have so triumphed, to have rushed to the aid of their benevolent intellectual betters and tutors. Turns out though, that CPB was entirely dependent on taxpayer largesse despite some support from well to do donors who had the benefit of choosing to support CPB beyond their taxes.
Well maybe the "public " is not shattered by this development and in now being given the choice , they choose not to support CPB's dishwater offerings and insolently cling to the very wide variety of entertainment and "enlightenment" nonetheless still available (though not "for free"as CPB was , yes?)
Again, the amount wasted on CPB over these many years is not gargantuan but what was terribly insulting to the tax payer was CPB and its supporters clearly demonstrating that they thought it just to broadcast an unrelenting schedule clearly embodying pedantic and liberal and far left wing political views and artistic tastes. And if some of the ehh, "diverse" taxpaying public objected they were to be educated and otherwise patronized for their willfull animus to the "arts" and the finer things.
Let this be the opening victory in a comprehensive national movement to expunge such doctrinal bias from our Federal and , too, our state spending regimes. There are myriad examples to be had of this imperious sneering at taxpayers' preferences from "effete snobs" in government, often in comfortable unelected sinecures. Eg. "grants" to organizations and individuals who hate America and its civilization. "Equity you know, equity". That will be an issue soon when the administration takes on the National Endowment for the Arts and its documented tax payer funded support of "art" which 4 or perhaps 5 citizens might find redeeming or artistic.
Let it also serve as an example to states which finance state universities at which far left bias is almost required of administrators and faculty , let alone impressionable students. State legislatures CAN put the blocks to this if they can muster the will the Trump administration has demonstrated. The Trump administration has put the "skeer" in the very elite of private "universities" for misusing Federal funding for far left indoctrination and harassment of any who disagree in the slightest. State legislatures have direct control of their state "university" budget. C'mon , let them get with the program and listen to common sense taxpayers who are grossly disserved by the vicious political biases forced on their state "universities" by totalitarian far left , otherwise unemployable fanatics. New York, wise up. Our multicampus State "university" needs to be taken by the scruff and its radical parasites shooken out!
Ray, I would very much like to hear more about the substance of your doubts about Trump... Please expand on your qualms.
ReplyDeleteJack, one has to wonder, re: the jeans ad, whether the oblique reference to genetic superiority is what rankles on the Left, rather than the model's Aryan features, per se. Then again, why dignify the Left's nonsense to begin with? We could chalk up their fragility to genetic inferiority, perhaps? Hmm.
True, Jack -- respect for the sovereignty of other nations is always contingent in the real world. Countries lecture one another constantly, and they certainly have no obligation to trade with those they consider contemptible. I guess I question whether tariffs will be successful in motivating Brazil to ease up on Bolsonaro, however. They might do him more harm than good. Much depends on how far Trump is prepared to go. If I was a U.S. company doing business with or in Brazil, I would be very nervous!
It would indeed be interesting to know what many leftists mean by "Nazi" and whether they have more than a passing familiarity with the historical phenomenon of Nazism. Of course, similar questions could be asked of right-wingers who throw around terms like "socialism" and "communism". Historical literacy is shaky on both sides of the aisle.
Has Trump really appointed 150 federal judges already??? That's an extraordinarily high number. Anything that can be done to expedite their approval certainly should be.
You are so right, Jack: red and purple states must do their utmost to stamp out wokeness in their own university systems. Trump has shown that financial leverage can be used to wonderful effect. There is no longer any excuse for dilly-dallying! Bring higher ed to heel!
RAY TO DR. WADDY
DeleteMore important than Trump and his administration, is what has already happened to the U.S. in the wake of previous administrations. A good explanation of this may be found in a book I recently finished reading titled "Pagan America, The Decline of Christianity and The Dark Age to Come" by John Daniel Davidson, published 2024. Give it a try, it's worth it. Thanks.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Perhaps we ought to accuse the left of "microaggression" in its objection to the "jeans/genes ad.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I agree with you that we who do so should be willing and able to show we know what we are talking about when we accuse some Americans of socialist or communist beliefs and intentions. I think we do have knowledge adequate for us to support our castigations of "American" far leftists. Commies are utterly condemned by history and socialists are simply commie apprentices. Nazis are a pathetic coven bereft of any sway. Both groups are similarly deserving of hatred and contempt.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say far left I mean people who are close to or fully on the extreme of the left and that extreme is , I think it reasonably assumed to be, the historically proven catastrophic totalitarian doctrine of Marxism and its various demonstrably malign offshoots. That extreme is represented in our Congress and has been embraced by three "Americans" who lived in our White House (the Obamas and Hillary, though they never came close to gaining the power to force their full intent on us). It dominates significant areas of our culture: the Academy, entertainment, the Federal bureaucracy and those of several states, secondary and even elementary education and teachers' colleges, far too many city governments and its baleful effects plague otherwise dutiful staff in institutions like the military , law enforcement and prisons. Its counterintuitive intimidation of corporate America is obvious. Yes, all of these abominations are under attack now by the present Administration but they remain existential opponents of American civilization, legality, government, culture and freedom. Why, a declared "Democratic Socialist" (a title which is a logical impossibility given the history of socialism)may yet become Mayor of our largest city.
By contrast, the American far right, the declared Nazis and Klan, are a miniscule and virtually powerless faction. They have nothing even approaching their detestable beliefs and intents representing them in any position of power in our country. That is where reasonable historical knowledge of the Nazis and the Klan are necessary; when that is considered it is plainly obvious that these insects have no objective similarity to the forcefully defeated movements whose names they have assumed. They have no power and never will have it.
So I think it just to call far leftists commies and use their "Democratic Socialist " fronts contemptuously. One need only read the stated goals of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) for common sense to tell one these are commies. And Communist is a title which should invoke revulsion fully as intense as that deserved by Nazis
Dr. Waddy from Jack: "If I was a U.S. company doing business in or with Brazil, I would be very nervous". "Ay, there's the rub" and I hope our businessman President is fully sympathetic ,even to the extent of government compensation for loss. Business (with all the financial benefits it manifests) should not have to pay an inordinate price for government measures against opponents of U.S. doctrine. It of course takes years of risk, unrelenting effort and anxiety to establish a business. That should not be obviated at an unanticipated stroke by all powerful government, despite good intentions.
ReplyDeleteRay, I think it's fair to say that America's soul became more pagan than Christian a while ago...which is not to say that further apostasy is inevitable.
ReplyDeleteJack, you, of all people, have earned the right to call anyone (but not everyone) a communist, because you have carefully studied what the word means, and what damage its adherents have done. The same cannot be said of most conservatives, who use the term negligently and unfairly. Anyway, you'll get no argument from me that the modern Left is suffused with neo-Marxism. Now, whether neo-Marxism is still, uhh, Marxian Marxism is an academic question that frankly interests me very little. It's still an ideology that's fundamentally wrongheaded and capable of doing great harm.
I guess you're right that it's unfortunate that American business should have to shoulder the burdens created by Trump's foreign policy, but the reality is that all business is vulnerable to political shocks. How many businesses have been ruined by taxes, or COVID lockdowns, or crushing environmental regulations? Plenty. Preserving the purity of the free market is a nice goal, but as you know it's not entirely achievable in practice.