Tag: culture wars

Phone it in Friday XII: Good Reads

The Portly Politico3 Comments

It’s been awhile (3 April 2020) since I’ve written a Phone it in Friday, which means I’ve been doing my job and writing actual content on Friday, not just slapping together listicles of random thoughts (that link is not intended to diminish Audre Myers, a far more engaging random thinker than me).  That said, today seems like a good opportunity to phone it in—after a day of baby wrangling yesterday, and a fitful night’s sleep (thanks in part to some heavy, but delicious, meals).

I’m also planning on unveiling my 2020 Summer Reading List in tomorrow’s SubscribeStar Saturday post (subscribe for a buck to read it!).  Ergo, it seemed like an excellent opportunity to highlight some good Internet reads from the past couple of weeks.

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TBT: The Price of Freedom: A Good Attorney

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One of the harsh realities for conservatives these days is that the only true guarantee of your rights is deep pockets and a good attorney.  With the direction things are heading, that’s even truer today than when I wrote this post one year ago.

Indeed, I think the Masterpiece Cakeshop guy got sued again, but at this point, I’m not even sure.  There are endless combinations of protected and preferred identities at this point, so I’m sure refusing to bake a cake for a Wookie Life Day banquet will result in fines from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

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Cancelling Jesus

The Portly Politico6 Comments

Yesterday, I wrote about the destruction of statues of American leaders—the destruction of American history.  My position is that tearing down virtually any statue—Confederate, Union, Theodore Roosevelt, etc.—is the untenable erasure of our nation’s history.  Further, the historic illiteracy of the woke SJWs has seen the defenestration of statues of abolitionists—an absurdity for groups that claim to be fighting against the legacy of slavery.

In that context, I made a big deal about the toppling of a statue of Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln has assumed something of a demigod status in American history, one that glosses over some of the thorny issues of how to respond to the secession of the Southern States (a real question at the time was, having opted into the Constitution, could States later opt out; for a good biographical read on that issue, check out “A Voice of Reason” by John Marquardt at the Abbeville Institute).  Lincoln was certainly a man with many noble qualities, and a keen constitutional mind.  The toppling of his statues is the height of insanity—or nearly so.

In my haste, I neglected the even more egregious calls to destroy statues and stained glass windows depicting The most important Figure in world history:  Jesus Christ.

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Screwed by SCOTUS

The Portly Politico6 Comments

My brother sent me a meme the other day:  a picture of nine Clarence Thomases under the heading “The Ideal Supreme Court“:

Memes are often pithy statements of the Truth, and, boy, this one nails it.  Given the treacherous and boneheaded rulings from the Supreme Court this week—particularly from perennial traitor Chief Justice John Roberts, joined in one ruling with milquetoast toady Neil Gorsuch—we could do for a Court full of Clarence Thomases.  Such a Court would understand the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court in relation to it better than any Court we’ve had since the 1920s.

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Dystopia

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In my darker moods, I can’t help but notice in what a bleak future we live.  Sure, there are many elements of America that still exist, and some of which are strong, at least in some parts of the country.  But things like constitutionalism, rule of law, respect for wisdom, faith, and a great deal many other wonderful items are daily disrespected, ignored, and/or abused.

I’ve been on a kick lately of watching dystopian films, that genre—next to zombie movies—that Americans love best.  Last week I watched the 1974 cult classic Zardoz (starring an out-of-work Sean Connery), a film that shouldn’t exist given the nature of studio politics (it’s a rare example of a studio saying, “Make whatever you want,” and the director took it seriously).  I also watched the less classic Equilibrium (2002), starring Christian Bale.

Zardoz explores a distant future in which frosty, immortal, aloof, and bored elites, the Eternals, live in perpetual paradise while employing vicious, gun-toting Brutals to exterminate the excess population of Earth.  Equilibrium tells the story of a society, Libria—a mash-up of America and Britain, it seems—that, in order to prevent a fourth global war, outlaws all emotions, on the premise that art and literature inflame men’s passions to destructive degrees.

While it might not qualify as a “dystopian” film, I also viewed the Coen Brothers’ classic Barton Fink (1991), about the titular writer—a successful Broadway playwright who writes theatrical productions about, of, and for “the common man“—who cashes in on his success with a move to Los Angeles to write for Capitol Pictures, where he immediately develops writers’ block.  Fink is a 1940s Jewish intellectual who pontificates frequently about his desire to tell the grubby, realistic stories of everyday people, yet he keeps ignoring his shabby hotel neighbor, Charlie Meadows, an insurance salesman who tells Fink repeatedly, “I could tell you some stories.”

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Funcling II

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Today’s post is extremely belated (and short) because I spent the day being a fun uncle with my niece and nephews, all of whom are under the age of five.  As you can imagine, I’m a bit drained, though not as much as usual.  Perhaps resting for two weeks has increased my stamina, rather than causing all of my minuscule muscle mass to atrophy a la George Costanza’s ill-conceived “Summer of George.”

With all the chaos swirling about in the ether of our civic life, spending time with family always reminds me of the truly important things in life.  Of course, that also makes me even angrier with white hot rage when I ponder the would-be progressive overlords who seek to destroy everything I love and cherish simply because I have the “wrong” politics, skin color, and sexual orientation.  If some child molester in drag gets hired to read storybooks to my niece and nephews at their local library (they wouldn’t be there in the first place, of course, but you know how these programs can pull a bait-and-switch on you), I’ll be the pitchfork-wielding peasant leading the mob to eject Frankenstein’s Monster from the premises.

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Lazy Sunday LXV: Rioting

The Portly Politico13 Comments

The rioting and looting in major American cities continues as mobs continue to demand—and get—the “defunding” (effectively, the abolition) of police departments and occupy city blocks as “autonomous zones.”  It’s a dark time for the United States, but we’ve been through worse and have survived.  I’ve been a bit blackpilled these past couple of weeks with everything going on, but it’s important to remember that God is in control.

It’s also important that we don’t forget about these violations when the Leftist mobs inevitably (one hopes) disintegrate in a couple of weeks or so.  As such, this week’s Lazy Sunday looks back at some of my recent posts on the looters:

  • “Disorder” – Americans love to focus on our rights and our freedoms, but we often do so at the cost of understanding our obligations that flow from those rights.  We also tend to neglect that Burkean wisdom that liberty, to be truly liberty, must be ordered.  One of the most shocking elements of these riots is the continued violation of legitimate authority—of order.  The disorder and chaos these looters have unleashed threatens not just real people and property, but the very foundations of a stable, free society.
  • “Lessons from the Riots” – In school, occasionally some student will have the perennial insight that “we can’t all get in trouble.”  As usual, the Code of the School Yard has some kernel of Truth to it.  The Leftists have demonstrated that their sheer numbers (as well as having all of officialdom on their side in some of these cities) have made them somewhat impervious to police action.  But a determined show of resistance from conservatives can bolster the police and keep wild Lefties at bay.
  • “Dignity” – Never grovel to the Left.  It does not work, and they will only demand more.  Maintain your dignity.  Apologizing to the Left is like being a medieval flagellant, constantly whipping yourself in a vain attempt at progressive salvation.
  • “SubscribeStar Saturday – Leftist Utopia” – The “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” or “CHAZ,” is an example of Leftist mob foolishness that is so cartoonish, it’s as if a conservative created it as a rhetorical straw man in some collegiate debate.  Unfortunately, this cartoonish nightmare is all too real—and the animation is coming our way if we don’t act now.

Well, that’s it for this Sunday.  Hopefully it’s not too much of a downer.  On the plus side, the horrid humidity here in South Carolina has broken, at least briefly, so it’s possible to go outside again without immediately gaining a dewy aura of salty sweat.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Leftist Utopia

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.  NEW TIER: $3 a month gets one edition of Sunday Doodles every month!

As the nation continues to burn and authorities cede ground, rioters in Seattle, Washington have established the so-called “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” or “CHAZ,” an area of around six-to-ten city blocks in downtown Seattle in which the mob rules.  Seattle municipal officials have essentially given up the area to the rioters, allowing them to setup their own Leftist utopia.

Besides representing the wholesale abandonment of authority, law, and order, it’s also a fascinating bit of political science.  What happens when a group of ideological hooligans are allowed carte blanche to run a section of a city?

The results are in, and it doesn’t look good for CHAZ.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

TBT: Conservative Inheritance

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With the Summer 2020 session of History of Conservative Thought in full swing, I’ve been reviewing the Summer 2019 archives pertaining to the course.  Among the various class summaries and overviews of great conservative thinkers, I came across this short essay, “Conservative Inheritance.”

I’d largely forgotten about it, which is a shame—I think it might be one of my better analytical pieces (although you, dear reader, will be the ultimate judge).  I go back to the dominance of “Rooseveltian liberalism” following the Second World War, and how conservatism morphed into a political program that largely accepted the premises of that liberalism, but acted as something like the more cautious junior partner—“a tapping of the brakes, not a full stop or reversal” of liberalism.

The debate over what exactly is conservatism has grown thornier and more immediate over the last year.  There is a sense among the intellectual Right that the prevailing orthodoxy of Buckleyism is inadequate and outmoded, that it can’t really address the problems of our age and culture.  Indeed, this essay explores the idea that conservatives essentially abandoned the culture in favor of political victories.  The sad commentary on that decision, which made sense in the 1950s and 1960s, is that our political victories are hollow.  Without the culture, political victory merely forestalls progressive dominance for a season—the brakes are tapped, but the machine doesn’t stop.

These are sobering but necessary ideas to consider.  I spoke with a friend on the phone earlier in the week; he claimed that traditional conservatives and Christians have lost the culture wars.  I prefer to think that we’re losing the culture wars, but that there is still hope of a rear-guard action or some kind of renewal.  Either way, it’s an uphill battle, a Pickett’s Charge.

With that, here is June 2019’s “”Conservative Inheritance“:

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Dignity

The Portly Politico4 Comments

One element of the riots that’s struck me particularly hard is the utter lack of dignity, not just of the looters, but of the elites that would enable them.

An image that burns in my brain is that of Webster, Massachusetts Police Chief Michael Shaw lying face down in a show of “solidarity” with Black Lives Matter protesters.  Around him sit several protesters, casually drinking in a law enforcement officials public humiliation.  Chief Shaw did this voluntarily, allegedly, albeit as a crowd chanted for him to lie down.

It’s ritual spectacle for the Leftist mob, and grace on the cheap for Shaw.  Rather than preserve his dignity and that of his position, he gave himself to the raucous crowd.

But it will not mollify the Left for long.  Even as protesters cheered and thanked the chief for his humiliation, one demonstrator, according to Fox News, said, “It’s not enough, but it’s a start!”

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