If leftists can rig elections, they certainly can rig a constitutional convention. That would be a major disaster. //

Article V says Congress shall call a convention requested by two-thirds of the states. It’s unclear what the role of all 50 states would be, but they are of course blue as well as red. This means that liberal activists will have full access to any constitutional convention.

So if the Con-Con process started tomorrow, who would Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer select as delegates? Pelosi could exclude Republican choices, as with her January 6 committee, or trade her speaker’s gavel for the Con-Con chairmanship.

Conservative Con-Con promoters will not control who attends, what issues are discussed, or what constitutional amendments ultimately are approved. The convention will make all decisions and conservatives will not be able to guarantee the outcome. //

Conservatives who blithely assume that only conservatives would be empowered to participate in a Con-Con, and that ratification procedures would block unwanted results, should read Mollie Hemingway’s book, “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” //

Most leaders of the Article V Con-Con movement have no personal experience with the dynamics of political conventions, much less contested conventions. Key decisions are made months before a national convention begins, and decisive motions often are passed without warning with a gavel crack on a voice vote.

As reported in “Rigged,” courts are useless when fast-moving political events override internal organizational rules and even established law. Several book chapters end with regret, with statements like, “Republicans later learned…” and “The court ruled in Trump’s favor, but it was too late.” //

Federal spending is unrestrained, but our Constitution is not the problem. It would make more sense for state lawmakers to return federal subsidies to the U.S. Treasury than to bet the Constitution in a reckless gamble they are likely to lose. ///

Article V Convention is the "get rich quick" scheme of lazy conservatives who don't want too do the hard work or wait for the results of hard work of transforming the culture.

The Yass Foundation represents the future of education reform in the United States. As the foundation states, “The STOP Foundation for Education is not just a philanthropy. And the STOP Award is not just a prize. It’s a movement intended to transform education for everyone.”

It was shocking, but I don’t use that word in a negative sense. It was shocking because I realized I hadn’t seen women openly advocating for things like gun ownership, Christianity, and motherhood for some time. It really made me realize how inundated I was with leftist messaging. Abortion, feminism, anti-gun propaganda, and the denigration of the nuclear family are my day-to-day norm when it comes to interactions with society.

Here, the women were proudly defying the leftist messaging. They wanted to embrace their femininity. They weren’t confused about their gender. They weren’t denying who they were in order to fit into some pop-delusion being pushed on their sex. They were proud Christians, gun owners, and believers of the American dream. You were just as likely to hear about how women could be the future CEO of their own company as about them being future stay-at-home moms, and both occupations were treated with equal respect, without caveat. //

Another thing I was shocked by was the total lack of denigration of men. I realized I had so often seen “girl power” associated with putting down men that not hearing it in these situations felt alien. In fact, some speakers wove complimentarily and empowering statements toward men into their speeches. Radio show host Dana Loesch was escorted on stage by her eldest son, and at one point, she highlighted the importance of good conservative men.

The event wasn’t shy about relationships. A marriage to a good man was spoken about from time to time, but it defied leftist assumptions and accusations. Subservience was never pushed. It was all about partnerships that brought out the best in both. It was about a healthy family life that fulfilled both husband and wife. They treated both men and women as two respected sides of the same coin, not two divided groups with a victim/oppressor dynamic.

The fact that this was blowing my mind really gives me pause about the times we live in. It was a reminder that the filter being put on the country by mainstream culture is an illusion. America is still here, and I was standing right in the middle of it.

Taylor Lake
5 hours ago
"Lastly, that this judge actually ruled to allow this nonsense to continue is nuts, and given that he did, who knows how he’ll actually rule on the matter."
There's a saying, "Who Dares, Wins." I've heard it's the motto of the British SAS, but I don't know that for sure. What I do know is that the American Left has taken it to heart.

When politics is an alternate expression of war, anything goes. Throw anything and everything at your enemy, and see what sticks. The object is to win, not to win "pretty." Have no shame. Show no embarrassment.

"It worked, didn't it?"

• Harry Reid

Lawfare is just another weapon in political warfare. The Left knows this, and practices it. Conservatives still think that it's dirty pool, but then too many conservatives have been slow to understand that they are at war. Too slow. It has cost them a stolen election, and now we are witnessing assorted attempts to criminalize their participation in the political process and haul them before courts and "commissions." It's not about what's true, or even real. Just use every weapon at your disposal and see which ones work.

"I reject your facts."

• Nancy Pelosi

Joseph Moore
5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase
A kick in the pants to those of us who are still drifting along sedated by nostalgia
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2020
Brian Niemeier‘s 90-page book Don’t Give Money to People Who Hate You, is a kick in the pants to those of us who are still drifting along sedated by nostalgia, still paying for the privilege of a front-row seat to the mutilation and ultimate destruction of our own culture, willfully oblivious to the contempt and hatred of those who have appointed themselves our betters. I needed that kick – while I have long since revoked access to my wallet to Hollywood movies, and have never been much for games and comics, I still sometimes click on mainstream news articles and shop with major corporations. As explained below, these are now as much of the problem as the direct culture war waged in films and print. Many major corporations do all in their power to prove their hatred for me and mine and everything we believe and love. Don’t give them your money. Don’t give them your clicks.

So if you still are paying to consume blockbusters, comic book movies, video games, mainstream books and comics, or patronizing sports teams, retail outlets and ‘news’ media that have gone way, way out of their way to let you and the entire world know they hate you and everything you love – read this book. Now.

DGMTPWHY provides a quick tour through the who, when, where, what, and why of our current state of all but unwatchable, unreadable and unplayable ‘entertainment. The creators of mainstream entertainment have gotten converged, and, despite the hit to their corporate wallets, are now purveyors of nihilist propaganda masquerading as movies, comics, books, and games.

They must subvert and destroy what we, the sheep they despise, love. Manly men trying to be honorable, heroic and manly, and feminine women trying to be honorable, heroic and feminine, are right out – they are tools of the patriarchy, the cultural hegemony of oppression under which we sheep labor, and from which our purple-haired, nose ringed genderfluid betters are going to save us – or make sure we die from their trying. A character as complex as Rick in Casa Blanca, or even Luke in Star Wars, is to be simplified for the purposes of the cause. If you are so unwoke as to like such complex characters, well, our betters plan to fix that – by stories with no heroes and no villains, which leaves them with no plots or even logic. So things blow up.

And, of course, this all boils down to hatred of God. I’ve long held that all heresies are denials of the Incarnation. The basic ingredients of the dogma are a transcendent yet merciful God, creator of the Universe, Who, in an unfathomable act of humility and love, becomes one of us, suffers for us, and saves us. He defeats evil, and gives us hope. The purveyors of modern culture reject and mock each of these ingredients one by one, specifically. There is no God, nor any evil to defeat, nor good to defend. There can be no heroes, and no villains. Nothing is created from love, which is a lie. Humility is stupid; suffering is pointless. Only power matters, if anything matters.

There is no hope.

Modernism, of which this whole cultural war is the current manifestation, battles to defeat the good, the true, and the beautiful, even in such seemingly trivial forms as comic books and movies. But popular entertainment, from Homer to Shakespeare to Star Wars, is the way a culture is defined, nourished, and passed along. Just because it’s Batman and Thor getting the Social Justice treatment instead of (for the moment) Bach and Dante, doesn’t make it less dangerous Indeed, a lot more people have their morality formed by Superman and Harry Potter than by Milton and Flannery O’Conner. In a sane, healthy society, the popular culture and the highest high culture are formed by, share and communicate the same moral messages. For a century or more, that has not been the case in the West: our high culture is a cesspool of nihilism, while, up until the last 50 years, popular culture was still dominated by the theme of good versus evil – and the now novel idea that it’s better if good wins.

Brian published this work in April, before the rioting and the Antifa/Black Lives Matters psyops took over the ‘news’, and wrote it, I imagine, before the COVID hysteria and lockup. These are of a piece: the same people who show their hatred of you in movies and books have broadened their channels, and now show their murderous intent through the flexes and humiliation rituals of the lockup and masks and ‘social distancing’ (a phrase no one had heard of 4 months ago that is now treated like the Wisdom of the Ages), and by their apologetics, encouragement, and approval of those who would literally burn our country down. They destroy statues as phase one of an effort to memory hole anything that doesn’t conform to their contempt. I exaggerate not one iota when I say: Antifa and BLM dream of getting to kill you and your family. They are driven by the Marxist fantasy that bad people on the Wrong Side of History are all that stand in the way of paradise on earth. That paradise is the glorious End that justifies any means, including the slaughter of all who, in the minds of the Marxists, oppose it. Stalin and Mao, with their purges and Great Leap Forward, are not seen as history’s greatest criminals, but as role models. You and I are those bad people. They want us dead.

Don’t believe me? Read what they have to say for themselves.

The companies that even today are bending the knee and falling all over themselves in their rush to issue statements, not in condemnation of wanton property destruction and threatened and real physical harm up to and including murder, but rather in support of the rioters and vandals. The very idea that there are significant numbers of ‘peaceful protesters’ was always ludicrous: useful idiots and bored, antsy teenager of all ages, sure. Large numbers of people who take to the streets for weeks on end because a fellous thug who once robbed a pregnant woman at gunpoint while she pleaded for her life got himself killed by an out of control cop who is in jail awaiting trial?

That’s not what’s happening.

Back to the book. I know what Brian is talking about. Star Wars came out the summer after my freshman year in college. My girlfriend at the time kept raving about this movie we had to go see, even though she’d seen it several times already. I, a callous sophisticate as only a 19 year old can be, remained cool.

Then we hit the theater – with a line around the block. From the first scene, I was hooked. Awesome, and so much fun! So, of course, went back several times, and saw the sequels also several times each in the theaters, and got the videos as soon as they came out, and did my best to wear them out. So, yea – I get it.

Even after the road kill that was the prequels, with dread in my heart, I went to see the Force Awakens – and was mildly entertained. BUT – never felt the slightest urge to see it again, or get the DVD. Upon reflection, the movie got worse and worse: the pageantry and special effects – and the still-not-bone-dry well of good will earned by the original trilogy – distracted me from the cardboard characters, the utter lack of character development, the stupid, derivative plot, the relentlessly nonsensical motivations (or lack thereof) driving what little story they had. Rather than Luke’s textbook hero’s journey, we get a total Mary Sue; rather than family, honor, and friendship invigorating the characters, we had – what, exactly?

I’ve seen none of the subsequent movies. Since Brian first mentioned his rule – never give money to people who hate you – a few years ago, my inchoate disgust got a name and a focus, and rather than just avoiding movies because I didn’t want to feel used, I began avoiding them on principle – the principle of this book.

Now, we need to expand the field in which this dictum operates to include all corporations and businesses that have kowtowed to BLM and Antifa: No, Corporate America, you do not need to prove you aren’t racist by anything beside treating all your customers with respect, providing good value for the dollar, and hiring and promoting people based solely on how well they do those first two things. Pandering to bullies earns my contempt, not my dollars; actively supporting people who want me and mine dead gets me fired up to look for and promote alternatives to anything you might offer

In his new book, “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism,” Matthew Continetti applies what scholars of all persuasions should do with American conservatism, treating it as a complex, contradictory movement, often at war between its populists and its intellectual elite wings. He pithily captures the liberal mindset with its refusal to treat conservatism as a serious intellectual force. //

“The Left sees conservatism as a long-running, berserk refusal to submit to the ministrations of liberal rule,” he writes.

He focuses less on what held the right together — the unifying issue of Cold War anti-communism until the Soviets imploded in 1991 — than on what tears them apart. Like any historian or pundit, he examines the past through the lens of the present. The election of Donald Trump with his “protectionism, immigration restrictionism, religiosity, and antipathy to foreign entanglements” was simply the latest skirmish between right-wing populism and intellectual conservatism. //

Continetti effectively documents this tug between conservative elites and conservative populists but does not really provide a way for them to come together. Without the “elites,” you don’t have articulated positions and “sweeping narratives” that inspire voters. Without the populists, you don’t have the true energy behind winning campaigns.

Until conservatives can reconcile the two the road ahead, even the fight against lightweights like Joe Biden will be rough.

Perhaps what fascinated me the most was the blatant statements many regular people are making about Democrats and Biden. It’s not just the “I did it” stickers at the gas pumps. It is now a cultural phenomenon. Not just a rural one, but it’s spilling over to the suburbs. People are not as afraid to be vocal.

Whether it was visiting one of the tourist traps on Duval St. in Key West on New Years and seeing all anti-Biden paraphernalia for sale, to overhearing loud conversations in Noble, Oklahoma, at a local diner, I noticed that the right is finally getting vocal after being silenced for so long, especially when Trump was president. //

It was never about Donald Trump. Trump was merely a vessel that needed to happen. I’m not even white, but I have felt this attack against American values and heritage for decades now. When I had clientele from the liberal Hollywood elite, one said something powerful to me, “America has no culture.” I chose not to respond but in my head, I was thinking, “Wow, I love American culture, our history, our success.” That shocked me. She was a white liberal who came from the heartland, in the Midwest, but was there so much self hatred, she couldn’t see how great this country is?

Fast forward about 15 years later, the Democrats are even more self-hating about America. I took a road trip across country, one of many I’ve done in my lifetime. Never have I seen so many Trump signs. Rural and suburban America were quiet for so long but now they are tired of being silenced. “Let’s Go Brandon” was the perfect moment for America-loving Americans to express their frustration without being nasty. Compare this to the behavior and nastiness from the left in cities during the Trump years (and even continuing until today).

Shively
6 hours ago
How about both? Be better, set a good example, yes, but still fight for what you believe in. I think readers who criticized this story were reminded of RINOs who back down on important fights, who think they’re better than everyone else and who criticized Trump for being crass. He’s the one who got into the trenches and fought back. AOC isn’t backing down or sitting on the sidelines. Someone has to set her straight and line by line rebuttals aren’t going to change her mind. //

Chuck M Lowe
6 hours ago
This well written and thoughtful article is the soul of compos mentis and was the bible for so many Republicans for so many years. Some of those Republicans, no more than figure heads, "Fisher Kings" who could do no harm to the real power of the bureaucratic monolith that, at that time, ruled over us all from behind the media's curtain, were at least honest and thought they were addressing the needs of the electorate. The RINOs now in, or formally in place, like Paul Ryan, Lindsey Graham, the Bush family et al, are Quisling traitors who align themselves with the New World Order Branch Covidians that seek One Ring To Rule Them All.

Those Republican/Quislings of the knickerbocker strain, engaged in rhetoric and promises unfulfilled that we bought into like a new Tulip Mania.

No more.

That you would fail to see, right in front of your face, the tectonic shifts that have taken place over the last 25 years and especially since the Event Horizon election of Don Trump which tore the curtain away from the malevolent, scrofulous, Fascist forces that are fully engaged in the annihilation of American freedoms, liberty and the very Constitution that support those freedoms is disappointing.

There is yet time, for YOU to fall off of your horse outside the walls of Damascus and realize that the forces we Americans face, the absolute declaration of war on us from the entirety of the Federal Government is a real war and a war to the death.

Ashley Babbit is dead. Their are actual political prisoners, held without bail in Washington D.C. who are innocent of ANY crime while the evidence of their innocence is held in abeyance by the Fascist Feds.

This, is the FBI, the number one so called "Law Enforcement Agency" in America.

The FBI is a renegade, out of control, criminal organization no different than the Mafia, except it has more power. Your average FBI Agent gets up everyday, suborns perjury, alters official documents (302's), destroys evidence under subpoena, withholds exculpatory evidence, hides Brady Material, lies under oath to the court, lies under oath to Congress, ignores the 4th amendment and supplies ex nihilo, out of whole cloth, phony evidence then initiates with no predicate, investigations into perceived enemies of the D卐M☭CRAT party, conduct pre-dawn raids on "dangerous" septuagenarians, illegally leaks classified material to sympathetic press pack dogs who work in support of the D卐M☭CRAT Imperium, slow rolls subpoenas for FOIA information and lies about the need to classify ever more evidence that the American public should be able to see and that is before 9 o'clock. They ARE, absolutely, the American Gestapo.

But you think Harsh and Intemperate language is a problem?

These wheels are turning, these bells are tolling, these armies, will collide and we all hope, that you can find it within yourself, to look at the facts and tell the truth.

MGT has more testosterone in her little finger than most of the so called "Republicans" in Washington D.C.

God bless her. //

leesell
6 hours ago
As Solzhenitsyn said when they were in the gulag, “We didn’t love freedom enough”, sadly that’s the regret once you’ve blown the chance to stop evil and insanity. Evil doesn’t reason and play nice. I’m all for using knowledge and intellect also but when your in a fight for your life you can’t wait for the enemy to hear your great argument.

Brave Books was started by conservative parents as an alternative to the current progressive agenda that is seeded into the culture.

The founders tell the story,

We didn’t want to just create good books that children would enjoy and eventually forget, but instead we wanted to create a learning experience woven into an epic adventure that will forever live in your children’s hearts and minds. This is why we have built the BRAVE Universe which is a world with both a fascinating map and cast of characters. Every month, BRAVE Books partners with a conservative figure to create a story that takes place in this world and teaches children either a topical or foundational conservative lesson.

If you look at the inner-city areas of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, or New York, you find a laundry list of issues, from homelessness to rampant crime to cold-blooded murder, almost exclusively attributable to a liberal-socialist policy that has been codified into law. And what does the progressive-left say is the answer? Whaddya know! More Government. More Socialism.

That doesn’t mean that Conservative policies don’t often require force to implement or that those policies don’t create problems bigger than those they intended to fix; it’s just that Conservative policies do those things less often. If Conservatives stuck more often to Conservative principles, they would seek to remove the barriers and triggers which create the problems we are seeing in the first place, the majority of which can be sourced back to the government. Libertarian-leaning conservatives, such as me, are so often frustrated because we watch so-called “conservatives” believe that the answer to the problems caused by socialist policies is simply more government, in the hands of these “conservatives.” What makes conservatives who engage in this action hypocrites is that they are acting like the very liberals they criticize. //

This brings us back to the statements made by the Former President on Monday at COP 26 Climate Summit in Scotland. As always, Obama started with some pandering nonsense which led him to commit what is, to my people, a grievous cardinal sin:

“Since we’re in the Emerald Isles here, let me quote the bard, William Shakespeare, ‘What wound,’ he writes, ‘did ever heal but by degrees.'”

Yes, while the President spoke in Scotland, he suggested they were in Ireland and quoted an Englishman. //

“I can afford to give up a lot of my current lifestyle to benefit the planet because I’ll still have a lot left over. A lot of folks don’t have that cushion. So that means that any climate plan worth salt has to take these inequities into account.”

That leaves me with just one question: What the hell is stopping you? //

If, again, climate change was such a grave threat to our existence, and immediate action is necessary, why would you only give up some? Why would you not give it all up? Why wouldn’t you take the totality of the action available to you, with as much immediacy of which you were capable, to combat climate change? And why is it that Obama thinks he can state so openly and plainly that he just isn’t doing anything and is waiting for others to tell him what to do when he is there, demanding action? Would not the sentence, “I have given everything up to help contribute to climate change goals,” or even “Here is the immediate action I am taking to help combat climate change,” serve his agenda better than, “Welp, someone hasn’t made me do anything yet.” Is the left’s only motivation for an action done so at the end of a barrel of a gun? //

No one in socialism sees themselves as “the worker.” They all envision themselves as some grand societal architect, and that they, in their endless benevolence, will do what is best for the rest of the plebes. It is only when they realize that they too will have to live under the rules they are setting, that they seek ways to create exemptions for themselves, because well, their benevolence has earned it. Obama’s words are no different. He wants to plan. He wants to discuss. He wants to pontificate. But when the sustainable rubber hits the road, he has less than zero intention of ever committing to, let alone engaging in, any meaningful change in his life.

One of the most lamentable things in our society today is the lack of communication. It’s the source from which many of our problems stem and benefit no one but those in positions of power. Lack of communication only breeds ignorance and those on the left have made it clear that communication isn’t just frowned upon, it’s punishable. Even Kasparian, one of the most leftist figures in the culture, isn’t safe from this kind of isolationist mentality being enforced.

She probably knew that going in and did it anyway, and for that, I salute her. Moreover, it took some bravery to go up against Shapiro, one of the leading minds in conservatism today and a man famous for his debating skills.

I hope more debates like this happen, and not just between Shapiro and Kasparian. I hope more people step forward and allow respectful debate to happen. I’d like to see more of what the left has to say in situations where they have to answer hard questions and confront real facts. No softballs to save them, just naked debate. It’s a big part of our national identity that we’ve been missing for some time and seeing it again made me feel like something lost had returned.

Ana Kasparian, I salute you.

After decades of tearing down manners and norms, self-proclaimed social progressives are now frantically trying to reconstitute some sense of public decency. //

Goldberg and those like her are rediscovering the truth that “anything goes” is unworkable, and that society will therefore always have manners, norms, and taboos. These are, of course, imperfect, as are their supporters. But in considering manners and mores, social conservatives have the benefit of drawing on the experience and wisdom of ages, whereas today’s taboo-builders are working from scratch.

No wonder they are often in a moral panic. Having destroyed traditional restraints on the darkness within human nature, they are scrambling to build new norms out of corporate media think pieces and the Twitter mob.

Faced with the failure of the sexual culture she has championed, Goldberg therefore has nothing better to offer than suggesting that cruelty should be taboo, as if moral philosophers and teachers had previously overlooked the point. But though moral reminders and instruction are perpetual necessities, there are few new moral discoveries to be made, except by those who presume there was nothing worthwhile before themselves.

This highlights the real problem with Goldberg’s reluctance to acknowledge the perspicacity of social conservatives. Spiteful refusal to give credit where it is due is trivial in itself, but significant insofar as it cuts her off from those who might offer solutions to the problems she has belatedly noticed. This ideological self-bubbling may be comforting — and keep her from being challenged on other issues as well — but it is why we often see progressives rediscovering truths that social conservatives never stopped declaring.

For instance, it took decades of bitter experience and a multitude of studies for many self-proclaimed social progressives to admit that divorce is bad for kids, and fatherlessness is really bad for kids. Likewise, after decades of tearing down manners and norms, they are now frantically trying to reconstitute some sense of public decency — left-wing activists are now troubled by many of the same vulgar lyrics that once perturbed the Moral Majority.

Societies require norms and manners regulating everything from sex to speech. Conservatives understand this, which enables social conservatism to be more than a mere defense of the status quo. We know that the permanent things of human nature are foundational to human society and flourishing. Among the most important of these permanencies is that men and women are different but complementary, and that their coming together provides for the continuation of humanity. //

We recognize that culture is largely organic and that humans are fallible and finite. This is why conservatives prefer reform to revolution. We know the fragility of even a tolerably good order, and that tearing a culture down is much easier than rebuilding one.

This is evident in the mess of Goldberg and her comrades attempting to develop new taboos. They are incoherent about what should be prohibited, and the punishments they dole out are disproportionate and capricious. Also, with their previous vision of human flourishing having ended in disaster, they have no idea what they even trying to build.

Instead of taking advice for those frantically trying to undo the damage their ideas have inflicted, we should listen to the social conservatives who saw it coming, and who have preserved ways of family and community life that promote genuine well-being.

The answer to the problem of blue staters escaping to red states actually requires some effort on your part. Screaming on social media is easy, real action is hard.

You’re going to have to run for local office.

I know, the thought just made you cringe. You just came up with half a dozen excuses for why you can’t possibly run for a local office. The kids are in sports and that takes up a lot of time. You can’t afford to make effort, financially or time-wise. You hate speaking in public. Your life is far too busy for elected office. You don’t need one more thing to do.

On and on and on.

If you just used any of those excuses, take this one moment to understand that every time you complain about the state of politics and politicians, you are part of the problem. Good people won’t run, for all the reasons you just thought of. So who does that leave?

Stop complaining about the quality of our politicians if you can’t summon the stones to run yourself.

All that being said, if you want to protect your way of life from all the icky Californians coming your way, you’re going to have to shore up your political offices. Now.

I mean, right now. Look around you. Look at all the unrest and angst at local levels across the nation. Parents are forced to protest at school board meetings, barbers have to protest on capitol steps, citizens are showing up to city council meetings to protest in droves. Why? Because good people like you sat out local elections, thinking someone else would do the job. As it turns out, the “someone else” to do the job were left-wing progressives who love government and love the idea of serving in government in perpetuity.

You let it happen. You thought you were too good for public service (and you probably are) but the problem is that the people you left it to are simply not good enough.

I’m not suggesting you run for senate or congress. There are a ton of elected positions in your municipalities. I would bet you don’t know half of them. Take a look. Do a google search of available offices and choose something.

Get in the game.

You are not a bystander. You are a citizen. Quit complaining and be one.

It’s our only hope.

All of a sudden, the conservative project is not a conservative one, so much as a counter-revolutionary one. //

This is the text of the Bradley Prize acceptance speech the author gave on Sept. 13.

The late Andrew Breitbart accurately noted that politics is downstream from culture, something the Democrats have been aware of and used to full advantage since John F. Kennedy. The left now has a near monopoly on pop culture, i.e. the entertainment media, even in areas so ostensibly conservative as country music. While TikTok stars and social media influencers theoretically herald a new wave of personal brand popularity personas, the media puppet string pullers are still running things, threatening to either cut or strangle with said strings anyone who fails to dance to their chosen tune. //

This is the media‘s game. It feeds the delusion and illusion that an individual matters, when in fact it practices the exact opposite, laughing up its sleeve at those desperately clawing for their 15 minutes. The media could care less about who’s on TikTok, or who’s on the pop charts. It only cares about that which glorifies itself and feeds the lie that it not only matters, but also cares. No, no it does not. It prays for another flawed celebrity upon which to prey. //

This passive/aggressive cancel culture is a pernicious perversion. It is the National Enquirer and TMZ on steroids. These at least make no pretense of their mission. They are gossip sites and nothing more. The pop culture vultures seek to actively destroy for the apparent pleasure of doing so.

So where does this leave us?

A guideline was provided long ago:

To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. ... //

are losing the culture war not only because we have abandoned the battlefield, but because we refuse to demonstrate basic human kindness and courtesy to those placed on pop culture pedestals and then attacked, as is currently the case with Billie Eilish, for being there. Let’s turn it around. We can provide genuine artistic options, and we can personally promote these alternatives by not withdrawing from the world, but rather smilingly refusing to sit down and shut up. Should we be in places where there is direct access to the genuinely influential, we can present an alternative to those who seek to leech on to their fame by caring about, and for, them as people. Never underestimate the power of simple respect. //

that are the exact opposite of hiding in our bunkers and railing against these people. Instead, when the media cretins pounce and demand their pound of flesh let’s support those who have the opportunity to, and will seize upon it, the ability to directly say to the attacked, “I will show you the most excellent way.”

These highly skilled parents came together to not just solve their own kids' education needs but offer a high-quality education to families in their glorious Colorado mountain town.

It profits a man nothing to gain the world if he loses his soul—and the deal is even worse if the earthly gain is just a chance at the fleeting respect of a few law professors. Nonetheless, that is how the left is hoping to tempt Brett Kavanaugh as the Supreme Court considers a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.

Writing at National Review Online, Ed Whelan observes that such a sales pitch from Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman “isn’t subtle.” //

The justices should do their duty and follow the law and Constitution to the best of their abilities. In the case at hand, this means overturning Roe and Casey, which are legal abominations, exercises of raw power divorced from the text and history of the Constitution. //

The most important consideration is the wickedness of the radical regime of abortion on demand established by Roe and confirmed by Casey. In the age of ultrasound, we know what abortion is, and who it kills. The images eagerly shared on social media and stuck to the fridge condemn the atrocity of our abortion regime, in which the child whose features can be seen on the screen, and whose movements can be felt in the womb, has less legal protection than livestock.

This acceptance of, and reliance on, the violence of abortion poisons society. It turns what ought to be the loving, primordial union of mother, father, and child into a battleground of selfish interests. Abortion hardens the hearts it doesn’t stop.

Overturning Roe will not in itself end these evils, for the justices are unlikely to extend 14th Amendment protections to the unborn, although there is an originalist case for doing so. Abortion policy would therefore return to the states, leaving the pro-life movement to face a grueling state-by-state fight. But at least our democratic victories will no longer be overridden by the caprice of federal judges. //

Millions of voters have supported the conservative legal movement on the promise that it would fight to get courts out of the abortion business. Thus, if the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 Republican-appointed majority, voted to uphold Roe and Casey, the decision might well blow up the conservative legal movement for good. Most of the voters who care about the courts are not interested in Chevron deference or other (to a layperson) esoteric legal doctrines. Rather, they want Roe overturned.

Chris Stigall
@ChrisStigall
I’d love to tell you this is a @GOP ad…I’d love to tell you that.

https://youtu.be/LamRwl5Z2qk //

It juxtaposes all the troubling things we’re presently seeing in radical leftism – the wokeness, the defund the police movement, the riots, the moral decay and the effort to attack America, complemented by the warning words of Ronald Reagan. The only thing more powerful than that threat, so succinctly put forth, is the rest of the video, with Reagan declaring the freedom and the greatness of America. //

“I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result in an erosion of the American spirit,” Reagan says. “If we forget what we did, we wouldn’t know who we are. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across, that America is freedom. Freedom is special and rare. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom of enterprise. As long as we remember our first principles, and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with these three little words: We The People. We the people are free. Once you begin a great movement, there’s no telling where it will end.”

Yes, it’s an ad for wine, from conservative winemakers, We The People, and great job, guys. Good name too. The GOP guys who are behind ads should see whoever did this and solicit those folks to do their ads. It puts everything into such sharp focus and grabs the heart. It’s so riveting. And it so clearly notes that we have to do a better job at teaching the young coming up what America is and that we were behind on that teaching even when Reagan said those words. The words of Reagan are from his Farewell Address, as he left the presidency in 1989, and remind us of how great he was, how well he could put forth the Republican message.

So we take timing, attention, name recognition, Ngo’s primary subject of reporting, and the typical leftist social media pattern of nebulous reasoning, and you have a strong case for Ngo’s banning by SoundCloud to be a message to America.

“We’re running SoundCloud,” is the message and it’s a message coming straight from the hard-left. Combined with the fact that almost every social media platform shares this sentiment, it’s one more place that makes the message concrete. They own the internet and they want you to know that. //

progerp
an hour ago
As long as they can buy political loyalty every election cycle, they will be allowed to discriminate against conservatives at will. It is no different than teacher and labor unions buying influence. The days of representation for the people is gone, and it has been replaced by representation for the highest bidder.

The problem is that a lot of the progressive shows that gained ground nationally, like a show hosted by Ed Schultz, were funded privately.

That was actually the go-to source of funding for a lot of progressive media. If you wanted to compete with the commercial success of conservative talk, you needed to raise money from private donors. The problem was, those shows were not commercially successful, and the money behind them dried up.

The question is, however, why those shows were not smash hits like Limbaugh’s. He was able to accumulate as many as 650 affiliates over the course of his career. Schultz, one of the most successful in progressive talk, did not get far beyond 100 stations before his show folded, and of all the progressive talk shows out there, his was the most listenable.

The problem with progressive talk, and progressive media as a whole, is that they do not build relationships with their audiences like conservative media does. Limbaugh famously took callers and had personal conversations with them on the air, read and responded to a ton of fan emails, and made it a point of knowing his audience and talking to them. Progressive talk radio, and (by extension) all progressive media, focuses so much on scolding Americans that there is never an opportunity to build that relationship. //

Conservative talk radio thrives because they have a relationship with their audiences. Those who can’t maintain that relationship with their audience fall by the wayside as quickly as progressive hosts do.