Nihilism in Madison

Let's put the exit question on the front end: Is this an instance of the Left eating its own to a sufficient degree to cause the general post-American public to conclude that these people don't have any aims beyond burning it all down?

A guy wielding a baseball bat and a bullhorn goes nuts in a Capitol Square restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin. His real name is Devonere Johnson, but is calling himself Yeshua Musa. He harasses a patron who walks away. Cops are summoned. Johnson resists arrest, to the point of escaping from the back of the police vehicle and running across the street, where he's tackled and sufficiently subdued to get him cuffed and back in the vehicle.

Turns out he's rather a fixture at local Black Lives Matter events.

A crowd gathered and blocked traffic. It engaged in some window-smashing at a couple of government office buildings. It chanted "Free Yeshua!" It toppled a statue of Hans Christian Heg, a Norwegian immigrant and abolitionist who served as a Union officer in the Civil War. It toppled a statue called Forward, erected in 1893 to commemorate the progress toward equality of Wisconsin women. It beat the holy snot out of a gay progressive Democrat state senator, kicking him in the head and leaving him lying on the ground. Thankfully, an ambulance was quickly summoned.

I repeat: is this the extreme Left's jump-the-shark moment, or are they just getting their head of steam?

Barney & Clyde - Episode 13

Here it is.

Technology difficulties precluded the video component, so it's just our mellifluous voices - although these portraits of your intrepid hosts are flattering, are they not?

So pour yourself something bracing, pull up a bar-stool at the Libation Station, and get in on the fortnightly exchange of libertarian and conservative perspectives on the weighty matters of the day. Specifically: 

1. They Really Said That?! - Miley Cyrus blows the patriarchy!

2. Parties Acting Stupidly - Does Amash Smoke Enough Pot to Run as a Libertarian?

3. Yes, it Can Get More Toxic - The Left's disgusting reaction to the passing of David Koch.

4. History to Fit the Agenda - NY Times' 1619 Project 

5. Meanwhile, Back in Athens - Our Local Vaping Ban + Indiana House Representative Jim Lucas' controversial noose post. 

Send your feedback to barneyandclydeshow@gmail.com

Leftist glee over David Koch's passing

This:

Pam Keith‏Verified account @PamKeithFL

Good riddance Mr. Koch. You spent a lifetime making the world uglier &perverting our democratic process. The world feels a smidge lighter w/out you. In the end, you. can’t take a red cent of your money w/you. You will face your maker standing on the impact you made. I pity you

5:57 AM - 23 Aug 2019

This:

True to form, the obituary notice for David Koch in the New York Times today offers up yet another classic case study in media bias and ignorance:

Three decades after David Koch’s public steps into politics, analysts say, the Koch brothers’ money-fueled brand of libertarianism helped give rise to the Tea Party movement, strengthened the far-right wing of a resurgent Republican Party and played a significant role in the election of Donald J. Trump as president in 2016.

Typical. The Kochs hated Trump in 2016, opposed him vigorously throughout the entire nomination process (Vanity Fair ran a story in February 2016 entitled “Can the Koch Brothers Stop Trump?“), and have said more recently they are open to supporting Democrats in part because of their continuing dislike of Trump. But never mind: for the Times, everything has to come back to Trump (and racism).

By noon today, the Times had amended this paragraph and dropped the final clause:

Three decades after David Koch’s public steps into politics, analysts say, the Koch brothers’ money-fueled brand of libertarianism helped give rise to the Tea Party movement and strengthened the far-right wing of a resurgent Republican Party.

Maybe somebody in the newsroom had an old copy of Vanity Fair lying around. You’d think any informed newsroom might know this in the first place.

You’d expect the openly left Guardian to have a nasty obituary notice about David Koch’s passing, but on the whole the Guardian‘s story is less snarky than the Times. But then you get to the very last paragraph:

Alexander Kaufman, an environmental commentator at HuffPost, tweeted: “He deployed his stupendous fortune funding climate denial in the years when the science was clear and there was still time to avert catastrophic warming. He died as fires raged from the Amazon to the Arctic.”

That’s what you call staying on message! And also why the tedious fanaticism of the climatistas turns off more and more people every day.

And this:

Shadowproof managing editor Kevin Gosztola tweeted the Koch family should “drop his body out of luxury jet into blazing Amazon rainforest in Brazil.” CNN commentator Keith Boykin said the late Koch used “dark money to support right-wing causes and Republican candidates for office.”

David Koch wanted to abolish public schools, Social Security, Medi

care, Medicaid and rent control. He financed groups that denied the research on climate change. He funded the Tea Party. And he used dark money to support right-wing causes and Republican candidates for office. https://t.co/x08wiaOh9p

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) August 23, 2019

Frederick Joseph, writer and founder of We Have Stories, tweeted the late Koch was “pure evil” and added “the world is a better place with him gone.” Joseph also wrote the death was a “celebration.”

“But imagine the turn up when orange satan is taken back to hell,” Joseph said in another tweet, likely referring to President Donald Trump.

British political journalist Mehdi Hasan mentioned David Koch’s beliefs on climate change and suggested headlines on the death should refer to the billionaire as a “climate denier.” Hasan added that “his [David Koch’s] long-term legacy” will be “funding the effort to downplay an existential threat to all of us.” 

Re: Boykin's list of stuff that Koch wanted to abolish: Yay! Anybody who doesn't hate freedom wants to see all those things go away. And regarding Koch's financing of "groups that denied the research on climate change," "the research" is an arrogant assumption that no research has concluded what anyone who doesn't hate human advancement knows: the global climate is not in a state of crisis.

The Left has become terrifyingly vicious. And it wants absolute power over our lives.

 

Kudos must be dispensed where they are due, and Tucker Carlson has earned these

My estimation of Tucker Carlson has gone way south recently. His Iran-and-North-Korea-don't-pose-threats schtick is just plain off the rails, and it unsettles me greatly that he seems to have the Very Stable Genius's ear. I also am none too fond of his the-free-market's-blessings-have-their-limits protectionist stance, either.

But he's been nothing short of magnificent in the way he's handled his current dustup with Ilhan Omar. He was spot-on in saying that she is a walking warning about our immigration system, a statement that - surprise, surprise - got him called a racist by a CNN panel. 

And so last night, as I was making dinner, as his program was coming on FNC, I didn't change the channel, which I'd been doing lately. I knew he'd begin with a monologue about the situation. It was eloquent, fierce, factual and steeped in principle.  I thought it was fitting that he began with a look at the general state of the Democrat party:

Just a few years ago, even the most liberal Democrats in Congress felt obligated to say patriotic things about America. They may not have felt it, but they said it. Now, it’s routine to hear Democratic presidential candidates question the basic legitimacy of the United States.

Even supposed moderates, like Joe Biden, join in.

That should worry you. No country can survive being ruled by people who hate it.

His comparison of Omar to fellow Somali immigrant Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a perfect touch.

And his conclusion, in which he challenged all of us to look at how we've imbued cultural gatekeepers with the power to create Ilhan Omars, was a great way to send us all off a bit more aware of our responsibilities as citizens of post-America.

Good on ya, Tucker. More of this and less of that goofy stuff.

The Left takes playing for keeps to a whole new level

It's not just milkshakes, even wet-cement milkshakes, anymore. Or a restaurant server's spit.

Consider what has happened to a budding satirist whose object of parody was deemed off-limits by the self-appointed arbiters of what's acceptable in post-America:

The 8-year-old child actor who went viral for impersonating Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, is no longer going to make videos due to death threats and harassment she and her family have received.

Earlier this year, Ava Martinez, known as "Mini AOC," brought joy to her fans with several videos poking fun at the socialist darling, collecting millions of views on social media.

However, the fun came to a screeching halt on Wednesday when Martinez's family announced that she would no longer be impersonating Ocasio-Cortez and that all the videos created would be removed.

"The Left's Harassment and death threats have gone too far for our family. We have been getting calls on our personal phone numbers," Martinez's stepfather Salvatore Schachter tweeted. "For our safety and for our child's safety, we deleted all Mini AOC accounts."

Or consider what a movie theater in British Columbia has encountered when trying to show a movie about an abortion provider's conversion experience:

Producers of the anti-abortion movie Unplanned won a hard-fought battle to get their movie screened in Canada. Now, though, pro-abortion activists are beginning to resort to threats of violence to stop the film. Shamefully, the threats of violence appear to be working. A theater in Salmon Arm, British Columbia, has canceled a planned five-day run of the movie after receiving violent threats against theater staff.

A story published in Kamloops This Week broke the news:

Salmar Community Association board member Chris Papworth confirmed on Thursday, July 4, that the board has agreed to pull the movie’s five-day run, which was set to begin on July 12 at the Salmar Classic. He said the difficult decision to cancel the film was made out of concern for the personal safety for Salmar Theatres management, who had received personal threats via social media.

Papworth goes on to detail that the threats involved doxing the theater general manager and then encouraging people to "go after them." He added, "We just aren’t prepared for those levels of hostility towards our general manager."

This level of intolerance is finding legitimization among those providing an "intellectual foundation" for today's Left:

Dartmouth College lecturer and “historian of human rights,” Mark Bray, has refashioned himself as America’s foremost Antifa apologist. In his book and in places like the Washington Post, he’s argued that “physical violence against white supremacists is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective.” The Nation’s Natasha Lennard has similarly praised this organization’s “militant left-wing and anarchist politics,” and mocked its critics as “civility-fetishizing” liberals who “cling to institutions.” Nor is Antifa alone in this campaign. A Mother Jones profile of the many left-of-center grassroots groups whose resistance “sometimes goes beyond nonviolent protest—including picking up arms” is anything but condemnatory. Given this preamble, it’s hardly a surprise to see how the arbiters of national political discourse responded to the recent Antifa-led gang assault on the journalist Andy Ngo.

I still have a great deal of respect for what people like Ben Sasse and Arthur C. Brooks are trying to do. Dialing back the overall polarization and societal brittleness is an inarguably laudable quest. However, it strikes me as Sisyphean at this late date. I may be reading too much into the implications of their common argument, but it strikes me as having an it's-up-to-us-to-go-first quality about it.

And what would that look like? It's clear from these examples, as well as those of public figures known to have right-of-center orientations - and not just Trump administration people; Ted and Heidi Cruz were harassed out of a restaurant last year for supporting Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination - getting chased from dining establishments, or getting spit on when patronizing them, and as well as the myriad examples of people coming in for intimidation and worse for wearing MAGA hats, that everyone in post-America is expected to operate within parameters of conduct and expression that grow more narrow by the day.

We're not going to meet that expectation, of course, but the price we'll pay for refusal is going to get more dear. Count on it.

There's nothing over the top about saying that the Left is waging civil war

There may - may- have been some justification in claiming so a few years ago, but at this point it would be such an understatement as to be irresponsible.

The freedom-haters are playing for keeps.

Check out this report, not only for coverage of what happened to Andy Ngo, but the spin some tried to put on it, and some backstory on previous praise for Antifa:

Quillette editor Andy Ngo was attacked with fists and cement on Saturday at an Antifa rally in Portland. Ngo’s recording equipment was stolen, but footage of the latter parts of the assault were uploaded to Twitter by Oregonian reporter Jim Ryan.

The milkshakes-as-weaponry concept has morphed into something really ugly since it was introduced:

Portland PD has asked people on Twitter to report instances of milkshakes being thrown at the Antifa demonstrations because some were filled with quick-drying cement.

And here's some of the lame spin:

New York Times opinion writer Charlie Warzel referred to the attack as being in the context of an “information war”, implying that Ngo is nefariously weaponizing the fact that Antifa is violent for the sake of obtaining “ammunition for a culture war.”

Middle East Eye journalist CJ Werleman falsely accused Ngo of being “one of the leading amplifiers of Islamophobia” and “participat[ing] in white supremacist violence,” implying that Ngo deserved the beating. Rolling Stone and Vice Contributor Dan O’Sullivan criticized Jake Tapper for Tapper’s criticism of Antifa violence.

And this:

Freelance writer Rob Roussau mocked Ngo, tweeting, “I can’t believe that the totally objective ‘journalist’ who shows up to every far right protest in order to sanitize what they’re doing and claim the people who oppose them are The Real Fascists wasn’t welcomed with open arms by antifa today. you hate to see it.”

Mashable reporter Matt Binder implied that Ngo must have deserved it because there were other photographers and reporters present with Ngo being the only one getting beaten.

The propaganda arm of the enemy has been spinning Antifa for a while:

Multiple CNN hosts have defended Antifa in the past. “It says it right there in the name- Antifa: anti-fascist, which is what they were there fighting,” Don Lemon said on June 29 of last year. “No organization is perfect.” Lemon’s CNN colleague Chris Cuomo argued that Antifa are the modern-day D-Day soldiers storming the Normandy beaches.

An "assistant professor of human rights" (a sure sign that she holds actual human rights in the ultimate disdain), writing in the New York Times, says it's time to dox border-patrol personnel, but just to make sure not to call it that:

New York Times author Kate Cronin-Furman, an assistant professor of human rights, wrote an op-ed on Saturday entitled “The Treatment of Migrants Likely ‘Meets the Definition of a Mass Atrocity’.” Her lede? “Children are suffering and dying. The fastest way to stop it is to make sure those responsible, including the foot soldiers, face consequences.” Cronin-Furman emphasizes that   “this is not an argument for doxxing.”

She sure could have fooled us. She writes:

The identities of the individual Customs and Border Protection agents who are physically separating children from their families and staffing the detention centers are not undiscoverable. Immigration lawyers have agent names; journalists reporting at the border have names, photos and even videos. These agents’ actions should be publicized, particularly in their home communities.

This is not an argument for doxxing — it’s about exposure of their participation in atrocities to audiences whose opinion they care about. The knowledge, for instance, that when you go to church on Sunday, your entire congregation will have seen you on TV ripping a child out of her father’s arms is a serious social cost to bear. The desire to avoid this kind of social shame may be enough to persuade some agents to quit and may hinder the recruitment of replacements. For those who won’t (or can’t) quit, it may induce them to treat the vulnerable individuals under their control more humanely. In Denmark during World War II, for instance, strong social pressure, including from the churches, contributed to the refusal of the country to comply with Nazi orders to deport its Jewish citizens.

Here's the difference, you slime bucket: the Danish Jews in the 1940s were Danish citizens. They already legally lived there. The people in detention centers on the US southern border came in illegally. They are not supposed to be here.  

And remember the Red Hen, the Virginia restaurant in the cute little cottage, at which a dinner party including Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave? Well, check this out. The owner sees justification for Eric Trump getting spit on at a Manhattan restaurant:

After recounting what happened to Trump, she writes, “no one in the industry condones the physical assault of a patron.” That seems sensible but we’re only halfway through the piece. Next comes the justification for the new rules:

…at bottom this isn’t about politics. It’s about values, and accountability to values, in business. On a variety of levels, pressure is increasing on companies to articulate and stand by a code. Customers are demonstrating that they want to patronize companies that share their values. Our workforce also increasingly demands that employers establish a set of ethical standards. The once-ubiquitous idea that companies exist purely and solely to provide profit to shareholders is withering away like corn husks in the summer sun.

The rules have shifted. It’s no longer okay to serve sea bass from overfished waters or to allow smoking at the table. It’s not okay to look away from the abusive chef in the kitchen or the handsy guest in the dining room. And it’s not okay to ask employees, partners or management to clock out of their consciences when they clock in to work…

The high-profile clashes rarely involve one citizen fussing at another over the entrees. It’s more often a frustrated person (some of whom are restaurant employees) lashing out at the representatives of an administration that has made its name trashing norms and breaking backs. Not surprising, if you think about it: You can’t call people your enemies by day and expect hospitality from them in the evening.

So when the day comes that the world feels returned to its normal axis, I expect we’ll see fewer highly charged encounters making headlines. In the meantime, the new rules apply. If you’re directly complicit in spreading hate or perpetuating suffering, maybe you should consider dining at home.

Like 10,000 resistance progressives before her, Wilkinson is claiming that Trump grants the left an exception to all the normal rules of social conduct. No one is for assaulting strangers in restaurants, she says, but on the other hand, he’s a Trump so the new rules apply.

So think about how the creatures who dish out the venom to you in social-media comment threads would deal with you if you were to encounter them in person. 

This is war, plain and simple. 

Your existence is not to be tolerated. 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday roundup

A culture-war skirmish that turned out right:

Oberlin College in Ohio may be one of the most egregious politically correct campuses in the nation. Back in 2013, the campus closed down for a day of “racial sensitivity training” despite the fact that the administration knew that the supposed “racial incident” that prompted this “crisis” (someone spotted wearing Klan robes on campus) was a hoax.

Then in 2016, Black Lives Matter and a number of super-woke Oberlin students launched protests and a boycott against Gibson’s Bakery, a family-owned and run establishment that has been a fixture of downtown Oberlin since 1885. What prompted this? Gibson’s had the temerity to apprehend and charge three students with shoplifting (they later pled guilty), but because of the race of the offenders, the Oberlin College wokerati accused Gibson’s with racism, racial profiling, and probably genocide for all I know.

The Oberlin student Senate passed a resolution charging Gibson’s with “a long history of racial profiling,” and the Oberlin dean of students, Meredith Raimondo, endorsed and distributed the flyer. The college also discontinued purchasing baked goods from Gibsons, because you just can’t take the chance that you’ll cause literal pain or mental anguish to Oberlin students by procuring a bag of racist bear claws for the faculty lounge.

Gibson’s decided not to take this politically-motivated harassment lying down. They filed a  libel and slander suit against Oberlin College, and yesterday a jury found for Gibson’s, ordering Oberlin to pay $11 million in compensatory damages. A punitive damages hearing will follow, so the total award could grow to over $30 million.

William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection has a complete account of the background of the case and the legal drama that has played out. A news account quotes Jacobson: “The students eventually pleaded guilty, but not before large protests and boycotts intended to destroy the bakery and defame the owners. The jury appears to have accepted that Oberlin College facilitated the wrongful conduct against the bakery.”

And here's another one. Take your $21.5 million and stuff it, Culverhouse:

The University of Alabama's board of trustees has voted to return a $21.5 million gift from Hugh Culverhouse Jr. — the school's biggest donor — and take his name off its law school. The move comes after Culverhouse urged businesses and prospective students to boycott the university and the state over Alabama's new abortion law.

The school says the transaction to return the funds was processed Friday morning and that it will also return any accrued interest. Last fall, Culverhouse pledged to donate a total of $26.5 million over four years.

"The action taken by the Board today was a direct result of Mr. Culverhouse's ongoing attempts to interfere in the operations of the Law School," the university's vice chancellor for communication, Kellee Reinhart, said Friday. "That was the only reason the Board voted to remove his name and return his money."

Culverhouse issued a statement Friday in which he renewed his call for students "to protest and reconsider their educational options in Alabama."

Pardes Seleh gets video of a standoff at the Dyke March between the main group, which is excluding any Stars of David, Israeli flags or other symbols of Judaism, and a group displaying those very things. The spokesdyke for the exclusionary group explains her bunch's position in a too-nice-nice way, dripping with sanctimony. She's determined to be all peace, love, tofu and sprouts, even though we all know she can't stand the sight of the other bunch. And there's just something about the way she  enunciates the word "dyke." And is "dyke" some special category of female homosexuality? I'm assuming it is, and that I'm hopelessly behind the curve.

Great Alexandra deSanctis piece at National Review entitled "Joe Biden Never Was Pro-Life." Along with tracing his public support for the Hyde Amendment until about 48 hours ago, going back to voting on its passage in 1976, she reminds us of such Biden moves as voting against Robert Bork's SCOTUS nomination (a move similar to his latest, in that he originally supported Bork). That seat, of course, went to Kennedy, who "went on to affirm Roe v. Wade in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, authoring the constitutionally illiterate decision that upheld the Court-imposed regime of abortion-on-demand."

And speaking of the procedure whereby the brains are vacuumed out of the skulls of people who aren't born yet, here's a HuffPost piece that may be the wackiest thing you'll read this decade. (I can say that, because this decade's nearly over. As to how soon after that you'll read something wackier, I wouldn't be willing to bet.) It's entitled "Women Aren't the Only People Who Get Abortions." A taste:

Even the most progressive health organizations, like Planned Parenthood, are still not up to speed on some of the most rudimental ways to give competent and compassionate care to trans and nonbinary folks. 

“Even the pro-choice people are constantly, constantly choosing to ignore my existence,” Gutiérrez said. 

Dr. Krystal Redman, executive director of southeastern nonprofit SPARK: Reproductive Justice Now, pointed to the fact that, historically, legislation in the U.S. has been created by cisgender white people. And that, she argued, creates a systemic “narrative of gender being binary.” 

“Just based on the history of how these laws were created, naturally the narrative and the conversations behind it become this cis-het [cisgender, heteronormative] centered narrative,” said Redman, a cisgender woman.

The language of choice was specifically created by cisgender people for cisgender people, Redman explained. Instead of the question being “Are you male or female?″ or “Do you have insurance or are you uninsured?”, the question for most nonbinary and gender-nonconforming folks is, “What provider can I go to that truly understands the dynamics of my body?”

“Cis folks need to understand that they operate within a privilege,” Redman said. “I don’t care what other racial or ethnic identity you identify with but just by the premise of being cis-identified, there is so much more privilege that you have over folks who do not identify as cis.”

Fewer post-Americans are moving - near or far - than at any time since 1948.  Discuss among yourselves.

 

"It could get worse"

Ben Domenech weighs in, bracingly, at The Federalist on the Ahmari - French dustup:

. . . it could get worse: it’s possible both the perspectives of these Christian conservative thinkers are too optimistic. Social conservatives should be most concerned that both French and Ahmari are wrong about what the enemies of freedom believe possible, that the harshest voices in the American left won’t be satisfied just driving traditional American values from the oped pages or the universities or the local boards. Instead, the left may be turning into the culture war white walkers, bent on utter and total destruction of everything American Christians hold dear – including the liberty to hold beliefs at odds with the consensus of the elite – and that they will root for that belief, even when it is hidden in their hearts.

The present moment kind of has that feel, doesn't it?