The most amazing thing about Theodore White's The Making of the President 1972is
his explanation of the emerging hostility of the elite news media and
its evolution into an adversarial anti-president propaganda system for
left-wing values.
Everything we are used to seeing in what
President Trump calls "Fake News" existed by 1972. The parallels are
amazing—and are part of why I decided to spend so much time analyzing
1972 and 2020 as similar patterns of conflict.
Even if one
believes the fairy tale that slavery was the sole, only, and everlasting cause
of the War Between the States, it does not negate the fact that the Southern
states who seceded, and those forgotten border states who tried to secede, were
agrarian societies assaulted by a Republican “court” hell bent on imposing the
Hamiltonian program of national consolidation. T’was center versus
periphery. The South’s defeat in the war
placed its agrarian society in an extremely vulnerable situation.
In what
passes for political and cultural discourse today, the term “populist” is
something of a pejorative, conjuring up images in the mind of the cultural and
academic elite of dangerous folks with pitchforks and guns riding about in
pick-up trucks looking for an uprising to foment. This of course is nonsense. What the tsars of public opinion describe as
populism bears little resemblance to the real thing. The historian Richard Hofstatdter started the
whole business of populist as dangerous rube, though he did concede the
populists had some good ideas. Of
course, Hofstadter also believed that the more polished and respectable and
less hayseed progressives were needed to move the whole business of reform
forward to an orderly and respectable conclusion. Contemporary historians tend
to emphasize the constituent elements of the larger populist movement; thus,
one can find fine work done on the independent black populist movement or the
precursors to the populists. The
populist failure as a third party, the populist failure to forge an alliance
with industrial labor, the populist failure to alleviate racial tensions and
animosities in the South, and the failure of the populists to act as a catalyst
for the creation of a European style labor party has captured the interest of
left-leaning historians, as one might expect.
In a bold move intended to curb the thousands of deaths from vehicles
each and every day, Walmart has decided to stop selling auto parts,
sources confirmed Tuesday.
According
to shocking reports, people have purchased car parts at Walmart and
then those cars have been involved in accidents, proving a direct
correlation between selling auto parts and causing deaths.
"We can
no longer be complicit in an industry that kills over 3,000 people a
day," said a spokesperson for Walmart. "Every time we sell a muffler,
steering wheel cover, or flame decal, we are potentially causing the
death of a person, and we cannot support that any longer."
"It's clear that bad drivers and poor road conditions don't cause vehicular deaths---cars do."
Walmart executives said they are beating themselves with a stick to atone for the deaths they've already caused.
"Our
consciences will only be clean when we've been mercilessly beaten once
for each of the millions of deaths that have been caused by automobiles
since Walmart began selling auto parts," said one executive before
solemnly beginning to beat himself with a baseball bat.
Veteran Hollywood actor Isaiah Washington says ‘God hasn’t created a
natural disaster more devastating” than the Americans who will grow
tired of their First and Second Amendment rights “being eroded.”
Washington referenced the anti-gun efforts of gun controllers, admitting that he is “baffled” by their actions.
The Grey’s Anatomy alums observed, “We have thousands
of gun laws all over the country & laws against murder/attempted
murder.” Yet he pointed out that despite murder’s illegality, “sane”
citizens lock the doors of their homes at night as a means of defense.
Walmart says it will discontinue the sale of
handgun and short-barrel rifle ammunition and also publicly request that
customers refrain from openly carrying firearms in stores even where
state laws allow it.
The announcement comes
just days after a mass shooting claimed seven lives in Odessa, Texas and
follows two other back-to-back shootings last month, one of them at a
Walmart store.
The Bentonville,
Arkansas-based discounter said Tuesday it will stop selling handgun
ammunition as well as short-barrel rifle ammunition, such as the .223
caliber and 5.56 caliber used in military style weapons, after it runs
out of its current inventory.
I must differ with you on this point, and I say so not to split
hairs, but to make clear that those are not Constitutional rights
- those are natural rights. A cornered animal is "right" in
defending itself. Any creature on this planet has a "right" to its
property (and, again, the "right" to defend it.) Any sentient
being has a "right" to its thoughts and to express those thoughts.
Despite the reference as being the "Bill of Rights", what the
first 10 amendments give us are not "rights" per se, but rather
are specific prohibitions against government infringing upon those
rights. What the government can grant, the government can take
away. So no, those are not "rights guaranteed by the Constitution"
- those are inalienable rights bestowed upon us by our Creator. *This short 5
minute speech by Mark Baird offers an excellent perspective on
that distinction, as well as the limits we, as a society,
consent to, in order to function as a society.
Language is important. I cringe when I hear reference to our
"Second Amendment right to bear arms" or "Our First Amendment
right to free speech." No, those are natural rights. In the name
of civility, we as a people willingly form social compacts that do
infringe upon those rights, but only to the extent necessary to
protect the overarching right. Once that boundary is pushed beyond
mutual consent, we lapse into tyranny.
Thank you for what you do; countering false narratives is a noble
and worthy endeavor, and essential to restoring our lost Republic.
This essay was originally published in The Georgia Review, Vol. II, No. 3 (Fall 1948), 297-303.
As the Civil War assumes increasingly the role of an American Iliad, a
tendency sets in for its heroes to take on Fixed characterizations.
Epithets of praise and blame begin to recur, and a single virtue usurps
the right to personify the individual. In the course of these
formations, Robert E. Lee has emerged perhaps too exclusively as soldier
and paterfamilias. These careers were central in his life, but they do
not exhaust the man. Lee transcended some extremely difficult
situations, which must have mastered him had he not been, in addition to
warrior and patrician, an intellect.
"George Tucker, one of the
most important scholars in early America, explained the reasons behind
the Second Amendment as follows: 'This may be considered as the true
palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self defence is the first law
of nature in most govts it has been the study of rulers to confine this
right w/in the narrowest limits possible. Wherever...the right...to keep
& bear arms is, under any...pretext whatsoever, prohibited,
liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.'"
I have actually seen something like this with the wife following the husband around with a stick while he tries to avoid being hit. :) Probably caught him with girlfriend.
