The Left has had a huge head start in the killings, whether by stopping hearts, crippling agency or stifling livelihoods. When the ends justifies the means the barriers to inflict death are already eroded. Its ranks swell with sociopaths and psychopaths itching to inflict harms. They already embrace abortion, state assisted suicide, etc.
Meanwhile, it takes a great deal of provocation for the Right to come to blows. The Right is largely dominated by those of conscience and restraint. Also, they have jobs, run businesses, as well hold an ethos of constraint.
The Right must endure an immense load before its self-imposed constraints can no longer hold. But, one should look for the false flag from the Left to be the trigger. The Left are schemers while the Right plod (not to be mistaken as plot).
Once those constraints break down, the floodgates may open.
Once, I heard someone say that the Left basically can turn the temperature up and down on violence in whatever way that they think benefits them, while on the right, it's more like an off switch for being civilized and on switch for maximal violence. I think there's a lot of truth to that.
Yes. I don't want to live with violence and lawlessness, but if pushed into it, I'd expect myself and other like minded conservatives to act forcefully so we can end it quickly and go back to our lives. Just like Saddam, left wingers are likely to miscalculate and do something stunningly stupid. It may be that they really think that "girl bosses" are an unstoppable force?
The Right are Jacksonians: we mainly want to be left to ourselves, but God help anyone who messes with us. We'll knock you into the dirt, stomp on your head, then dust ourselves off and go home.
This means you can't really see what's coming if you're on the other side of the fence prodding the bear as he's trying to sleep.
I think you may be confusing the republicans of today with the republicans of yore. Today's republicans can only offer strongly worded letters to the opposition and then go back to fundraising.
Their position seems to be to make nice to the democrats and get back to padding their pockets. With no real opposition, the left will gain power again and the end of the republic will be heated discussions by historians in the future.
Thune and Johnson will be described as the last nail in the coffin of America solely because of their hatred for Trump.
In the immortal words of George Carlin, "It's a big club, and we ain't in it."
I think this goes beyond politics to root values and whether we can continue to live with liberals anymore. Ultimately, guys like Thune and Johnson won't be key deciders in that kind of thing.
You are correct. I see no current or former politicians as the answer to the problems THEY ALONE created. We are on the precipice and in reality probably already in a free fall.
I don't think anyone including Mr. Hawkins are talking about "Republicans."
I've been paying attention to political demographics for a half century and even back in the 1970s there was only a tenuous connection between "Republicans" and "conservatives." Indeed in some areas--mostly "cultural" issues--there were far more people who held the "conservative" position in the Democratic Party than the GOP.
Abortion, guns, religious observance, low tolerance for social deviance...all these things were far better represented among Democrats--Southern whites and Northern ethnics--than among the Republicans, who were still largely a WASPy party.
Folks, congratulations on some very good commentaries to another great article from John.
But most, if not all, that I’m reading is about “Either/Or”. Those on “The Right” are being praised for their tolerance & patience. And then, the consensus is that we are suddenly going to explode in righteous anger, wipe out “The Left” radicals and afterward go back to our cozy homes and normal lives.
That ain’t the way things happen.
We need to be out there RIGHT NOW confronting these people and their ideology –peacefully. The longer we wait, the greater the chances that the radicals will succeed, and radicalize or intimidate more and more people.
We should be having discussions about ways to enact and finance public demonstrations against “Left Wing” madness. We should be organizing RIGHT NOW to take back control of public opinion. Whoever controls the Streets, controls the Press, controls the Government. I know. I lived through the communist retro-lution in Cuba.
Here’s a modern-version paraphrase of a quote from Marin Niemöller, who first enthusiastically welcomed the Third Reich in 1933, only to realize too late that he was being set up by the Nazis:
FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE SEGREGATIONISTS, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT
–BECAUSE I WAS NOT A SEGREGATIONIST.
THEN THEY CAME FOR POLICE, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT
–BECAUSE I WAS NOT A POLICEMAN.
THEN THEY CAME FOR THE FOUNDING FATHERS, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT
–BECAUSE I WAS NOT A FOUNDING FATHER.
THEN THEY CAME FOR THE CONSERVATIVES, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT
--BECAUSE I WAS NOT A CONSERVATIVE.
THEN THEY CAME FOR THE RELIGIOUS PEOPLE, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT
John, your timeline is interesting, thank you for summarizing this. That was quick for the days of ink and typeset. Could we even imagine how much quicker it can spread now with social media? I think of the "trans" movement, and how many young people started identifying themselves that way, in just a couple of years. Does this potential for civil unrest explain the massive run up in the price of precious metals? Back in the 1980's you could buy silver for $7 an ounce; even around Y2K it was less than $20. Today it was $116, which looks like panic to me. As a Christian, God stays my hand, and sometimes it makes me gnash my teeth in frustration. But as the Bible says; there is a time for war, too. I hope it's not civil war, but civilized people cannot endure the Left's violence and lawlessness endlessly.
One more thing, John. Excuse me, but I had failed to notice the Catholic cardinal with a cross and a gun in the cartoon, which is pretty humorous in the present context. I am not sponsoring or getting paid to endorse anything, but I had my wife buy me Raymond Ibrahim's newest book, "The Two Swords of Christ" for Christmas. It's a darned good book which completely altered my view of the Crusades, notably how they were fought, and what was the motivation of each side. One of my take aways is to fervently wish that we had a church that devout, holy, and Godly enough to do the same things today. See if you agree that we could sure use another Richard the Lionhearted!
When I was in high school, a physics professor whom I met in the 1964 Goldwater campaign and who became a mentor to me, told me about Sir Richard Burton.
Sir Richard Burton was not the famous "actperson" of our own times who married Liz Taylor but the most famous explorer of the 19th century and perhaps the most brilliant linguist ever known. He could learn a language fluently in 6 weeks and knew a number of 3rd World languages so well that he could pass for an Afghan, etc.
The physics professor told me about Burton's 2 volume report of his participation in the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, called the "Haj", posing as an Afghan pilgrim. Since it was a death sentence for a Christian to visit the Islamic "holy cities", Burton may have been the first and is certainly one of a handful of Christians ever to go there.
I read Burton's book on the Haj and was hooked. I eventually read around 20 of his books.
I read the one on his expedition to Somalia.
He described Somalia as the absolute WORST country he had ever seen and its inhabitants as the most crooked, hateful, homicidal, stupid and bigoted people he had ever encountered. The Somalis wanted to kill any non-Somali they met. Burton survived only with a large bodyguard armed with guns the Somalis didn't have.
How could even the craziest liberal be so deluded as to want this scum brought into our country?
Sam Dickson
P.S. It's not a critical point at this time but Mr. Hawkins is incorrect to identify "Democrats" before the Civil War as troublemakers. The Democrats back then and in the South down to the mid 60s were the sensible conservative party. The Republicans were the woke party. He says that the Southern States seceded BEFORE Lincoln was inaugurated apparently as evidence of their blameworthiness. In fact, if they were going to secede, it was an act of wisdom to get out before Lincoln had his hands on the army and navy.. It is a disgrace that the US was the only country on earth that had to fight a Civil War to put an end to slavery. This speaks very ill of our country. As a Southerner all of whose male ancestors fought for the Confederacy until Appomattox, I see nothing glorious in a civil war in which hundreds of thousands of guys from the 2 regions killed each other. I agree...the war was a terrible mistake on both sides. But the man who bears the greatest responsibility for our Civil War is Abraham Lincoln for many reasons. The clearest of these reasons is his absolute refusal to help Southern unionists as State after State withdrew from the Union. He alone knew whether the federal government would launch a war to coerce the South and he had decided that this is what he would do. The obvious advantage he saw to this decision - as was discussed among leading Republicans at the time - was to destroy the Democratic Party by removing the Senators and Congressmen from the South so as to get the majority in Congress the Republicans didn't have. Alexander H. Stephens, ultimately the VP of the Confederacy, was a strong Unionist during the secession crisis. He almost kept Georgia, a critical Deep South State whose decision to remain would have stopped the Secession Movement, in the Union. The initial vote in Georgia's convention to decide whether to secede was a close run thing. 47% of the delegates voted with the Unionist Stephens. 53% voted for secession. A shift of only 3% would have enabled Stephens to keep Georgia in the Union. In his post-war memoir Stephens' published his desperate appeals to Lincoln for something, anything, some conciliatory statement to calm public opinion and Lincoln's refusal to do so. Historians, oddly, seem to rank leaders as "great" if the people in question presided over the most catastrophic wars. This seems very odd to me. I agree with the Victorian philosopher and essayist, Thomas Carlyle, who wrote" "THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF MANKIND ARE RECORDED ON THE BLANK PAGES OF HISTORY." I think leaders like Calvin Coolidge, so-called "do nothings" are the kind of leaders we want. Not men who presided over bloody wars.
Just my opinion. Change my mind:
The Left has had a huge head start in the killings, whether by stopping hearts, crippling agency or stifling livelihoods. When the ends justifies the means the barriers to inflict death are already eroded. Its ranks swell with sociopaths and psychopaths itching to inflict harms. They already embrace abortion, state assisted suicide, etc.
Meanwhile, it takes a great deal of provocation for the Right to come to blows. The Right is largely dominated by those of conscience and restraint. Also, they have jobs, run businesses, as well hold an ethos of constraint.
The Right must endure an immense load before its self-imposed constraints can no longer hold. But, one should look for the false flag from the Left to be the trigger. The Left are schemers while the Right plod (not to be mistaken as plot).
Once those constraints break down, the floodgates may open.
Once, I heard someone say that the Left basically can turn the temperature up and down on violence in whatever way that they think benefits them, while on the right, it's more like an off switch for being civilized and on switch for maximal violence. I think there's a lot of truth to that.
Yes. I don't want to live with violence and lawlessness, but if pushed into it, I'd expect myself and other like minded conservatives to act forcefully so we can end it quickly and go back to our lives. Just like Saddam, left wingers are likely to miscalculate and do something stunningly stupid. It may be that they really think that "girl bosses" are an unstoppable force?
The Right are Jacksonians: we mainly want to be left to ourselves, but God help anyone who messes with us. We'll knock you into the dirt, stomp on your head, then dust ourselves off and go home.
This means you can't really see what's coming if you're on the other side of the fence prodding the bear as he's trying to sleep.
I think you may be confusing the republicans of today with the republicans of yore. Today's republicans can only offer strongly worded letters to the opposition and then go back to fundraising.
Their position seems to be to make nice to the democrats and get back to padding their pockets. With no real opposition, the left will gain power again and the end of the republic will be heated discussions by historians in the future.
Thune and Johnson will be described as the last nail in the coffin of America solely because of their hatred for Trump.
In the immortal words of George Carlin, "It's a big club, and we ain't in it."
I think this goes beyond politics to root values and whether we can continue to live with liberals anymore. Ultimately, guys like Thune and Johnson won't be key deciders in that kind of thing.
You are correct. I see no current or former politicians as the answer to the problems THEY ALONE created. We are on the precipice and in reality probably already in a free fall.
I don't think anyone including Mr. Hawkins are talking about "Republicans."
I've been paying attention to political demographics for a half century and even back in the 1970s there was only a tenuous connection between "Republicans" and "conservatives." Indeed in some areas--mostly "cultural" issues--there were far more people who held the "conservative" position in the Democratic Party than the GOP.
Abortion, guns, religious observance, low tolerance for social deviance...all these things were far better represented among Democrats--Southern whites and Northern ethnics--than among the Republicans, who were still largely a WASPy party.
That’s certainly true for our elected republicans, but I think more Republican voters would fall into the category of John’s “Republicans.”
Agreed. I was talking of the feckless elected misfits and would characterize the others as patriots.
Folks, congratulations on some very good commentaries to another great article from John.
But most, if not all, that I’m reading is about “Either/Or”. Those on “The Right” are being praised for their tolerance & patience. And then, the consensus is that we are suddenly going to explode in righteous anger, wipe out “The Left” radicals and afterward go back to our cozy homes and normal lives.
That ain’t the way things happen.
We need to be out there RIGHT NOW confronting these people and their ideology –peacefully. The longer we wait, the greater the chances that the radicals will succeed, and radicalize or intimidate more and more people.
We should be having discussions about ways to enact and finance public demonstrations against “Left Wing” madness. We should be organizing RIGHT NOW to take back control of public opinion. Whoever controls the Streets, controls the Press, controls the Government. I know. I lived through the communist retro-lution in Cuba.
Here’s a modern-version paraphrase of a quote from Marin Niemöller, who first enthusiastically welcomed the Third Reich in 1933, only to realize too late that he was being set up by the Nazis:
FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE SEGREGATIONISTS, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT
–BECAUSE I WAS NOT A SEGREGATIONIST.
THEN THEY CAME FOR POLICE, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT
–BECAUSE I WAS NOT A POLICEMAN.
THEN THEY CAME FOR THE FOUNDING FATHERS, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT
–BECAUSE I WAS NOT A FOUNDING FATHER.
THEN THEY CAME FOR THE CONSERVATIVES, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT
--BECAUSE I WAS NOT A CONSERVATIVE.
THEN THEY CAME FOR THE RELIGIOUS PEOPLE, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT
--BECAUSE I WAS NOT RELIGIOUS.
THEN THEY CAME FOR ME
--AND THERE WAS NO ONE LEFT TO SPEAK FOR ME…
~ NO PEACE = NO JUSTICE = NO COUNTRY ~
John, your timeline is interesting, thank you for summarizing this. That was quick for the days of ink and typeset. Could we even imagine how much quicker it can spread now with social media? I think of the "trans" movement, and how many young people started identifying themselves that way, in just a couple of years. Does this potential for civil unrest explain the massive run up in the price of precious metals? Back in the 1980's you could buy silver for $7 an ounce; even around Y2K it was less than $20. Today it was $116, which looks like panic to me. As a Christian, God stays my hand, and sometimes it makes me gnash my teeth in frustration. But as the Bible says; there is a time for war, too. I hope it's not civil war, but civilized people cannot endure the Left's violence and lawlessness endlessly.
One more thing, John. Excuse me, but I had failed to notice the Catholic cardinal with a cross and a gun in the cartoon, which is pretty humorous in the present context. I am not sponsoring or getting paid to endorse anything, but I had my wife buy me Raymond Ibrahim's newest book, "The Two Swords of Christ" for Christmas. It's a darned good book which completely altered my view of the Crusades, notably how they were fought, and what was the motivation of each side. One of my take aways is to fervently wish that we had a church that devout, holy, and Godly enough to do the same things today. See if you agree that we could sure use another Richard the Lionhearted!
When I was in high school, a physics professor whom I met in the 1964 Goldwater campaign and who became a mentor to me, told me about Sir Richard Burton.
Sir Richard Burton was not the famous "actperson" of our own times who married Liz Taylor but the most famous explorer of the 19th century and perhaps the most brilliant linguist ever known. He could learn a language fluently in 6 weeks and knew a number of 3rd World languages so well that he could pass for an Afghan, etc.
The physics professor told me about Burton's 2 volume report of his participation in the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, called the "Haj", posing as an Afghan pilgrim. Since it was a death sentence for a Christian to visit the Islamic "holy cities", Burton may have been the first and is certainly one of a handful of Christians ever to go there.
I read Burton's book on the Haj and was hooked. I eventually read around 20 of his books.
I read the one on his expedition to Somalia.
He described Somalia as the absolute WORST country he had ever seen and its inhabitants as the most crooked, hateful, homicidal, stupid and bigoted people he had ever encountered. The Somalis wanted to kill any non-Somali they met. Burton survived only with a large bodyguard armed with guns the Somalis didn't have.
How could even the craziest liberal be so deluded as to want this scum brought into our country?
Sam Dickson
P.S. It's not a critical point at this time but Mr. Hawkins is incorrect to identify "Democrats" before the Civil War as troublemakers. The Democrats back then and in the South down to the mid 60s were the sensible conservative party. The Republicans were the woke party. He says that the Southern States seceded BEFORE Lincoln was inaugurated apparently as evidence of their blameworthiness. In fact, if they were going to secede, it was an act of wisdom to get out before Lincoln had his hands on the army and navy.. It is a disgrace that the US was the only country on earth that had to fight a Civil War to put an end to slavery. This speaks very ill of our country. As a Southerner all of whose male ancestors fought for the Confederacy until Appomattox, I see nothing glorious in a civil war in which hundreds of thousands of guys from the 2 regions killed each other. I agree...the war was a terrible mistake on both sides. But the man who bears the greatest responsibility for our Civil War is Abraham Lincoln for many reasons. The clearest of these reasons is his absolute refusal to help Southern unionists as State after State withdrew from the Union. He alone knew whether the federal government would launch a war to coerce the South and he had decided that this is what he would do. The obvious advantage he saw to this decision - as was discussed among leading Republicans at the time - was to destroy the Democratic Party by removing the Senators and Congressmen from the South so as to get the majority in Congress the Republicans didn't have. Alexander H. Stephens, ultimately the VP of the Confederacy, was a strong Unionist during the secession crisis. He almost kept Georgia, a critical Deep South State whose decision to remain would have stopped the Secession Movement, in the Union. The initial vote in Georgia's convention to decide whether to secede was a close run thing. 47% of the delegates voted with the Unionist Stephens. 53% voted for secession. A shift of only 3% would have enabled Stephens to keep Georgia in the Union. In his post-war memoir Stephens' published his desperate appeals to Lincoln for something, anything, some conciliatory statement to calm public opinion and Lincoln's refusal to do so. Historians, oddly, seem to rank leaders as "great" if the people in question presided over the most catastrophic wars. This seems very odd to me. I agree with the Victorian philosopher and essayist, Thomas Carlyle, who wrote" "THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF MANKIND ARE RECORDED ON THE BLANK PAGES OF HISTORY." I think leaders like Calvin Coolidge, so-called "do nothings" are the kind of leaders we want. Not men who presided over bloody wars.