I wonder if KFC is planning a cheesy chicken promotion for Armistice Day…that’s today, you know. On this date in 1918, the Great War, the War to End All Wars, ended when Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. Nine million soldiers had died and 21 million were wounded. Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France and Great Britain each lost a million or more lives. At least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure. The war, now known as World War I, also traumatized a generation, helped spread the Spanish flu pandemic (which took 50 million or more lives), and led directly to World War II.

Yes, the War to End All Wars was substantially responsible for starting the worst war of them all.

Yet not one in a hundred—a thousand?—Americans can explain coherently what the war was all about, why the U.S. entered it, and what were the major events that defined it. It is barely mentioned in schools. There has been a WWI memorial on the D.C. Mall for decades, and it is largely ignored by tourists. Do you know what it looks like? Here it is…

Then, last year, a new one was unveiled on Pennsylvania Ave, with so little publicity that I missed it. Here it is:

Meanwhile, Armistice Day, once a holiday to mark the end of this human-made cataclysm, was eliminated, with Veteran’s Day taking its place in 1954. There’s nothing in the commemoration of Veteran’s Day that even references The Great War.

1. Who couldn’t see this coming? Two historically black churches in Jackson, Mississippi, were deliberately set ablaze on Election Day morning. There were five other suspected arson cases all seven  in the area of Jackson State University, a historically black public university. Obviously, this was the work of those racist, white supremacist Republicans, or so Democrats were quick to declare. Mississippi Democrat congressional candidate Shuwaski Young pounced, releasing a statement calling the fires acts of “terrorism,” saying, “We will not allow domestic terrorists to suppress our right to vote. I ask all Mississippians to GO VOTE regardless of this decades-old intimidation tactic to suppress our votes today. Just go VOTE.” (For him, of course) Commenters on his post chimed in about the dire threat of white supremacy.

Here’s Delvin McLaurin, the man who was arrested as the likely arsonist:

Damn those white supremacists! Continue reading →

I’m sorry: I haven’t sorted through all of the recent Comment of the Day candidates, and there are a lot of them. I expect that today’s open forum will add to the list. In general, my recognition of outstanding commentary is too haphazard, and I will try to do better. It is helpful when commenters flag responses that they think are COTD worthy.

One note from me: I really missed not receiving any loyal progressive or Democratic defenses of the Left’s “Democracy is on the ballot” fearmongering. I did find in personal conversations that even the smartest Democrat apologists had a problem fending off even mild rebuttals. For example, I asked one hysteric how she could excuse her party pouring millions into the campaigns of the very “election deniers” they claimed were clear and present threats to the Republic. The query shorted her out like one of the rogue computers or robots Captain Kirk used to make blow up on “Star Trek” by posing an internally contradictory question that overloaded the machine’s circuits.

The frustrating thing about ethics is that the best and most ethical decision can, though what my father called “the vicissitudes of existence,” result in very bad consequences, and, similarly, unethical conduct can have results that benefit us all. This is what gulls human beings into consequentialism, or the natural tendency to judge the rightness and virtue of human actions according how events turn out.

Democrats are cheering, even gloating, about the fact that the “Red Wave,” almost universally predicted to sweep their party far from the levers of power in the House and Senate, and render Joe Biden the crippled duck he ought to be, never materialized. Nobody seems to agree why; I’ve read many theories. Republicans are dispirited and disillusioned, even though their “Red Ripple” will surely be enough to eject Nancy Pelosi from the Speaker’s chair. Still, surely they did something wrong to fail to meet all historical precedents for mid-term elections when a President is in the dumps, and the economy as well.

But here’s the funny part: the GOP disappointment may have solved a massive problem for the party and the country that just a little while ago appeared beyond a solution. The election results are being widely, and I think fairly, blamed on Donald Trump. His hand-picked candidates lost races that should have been won. His endorsements were generally toxic. He allowed the Democrats and the media to make the election about him when it should have been about President Biden. Worst of all, he couldn’t restrain himself from slipping into bully mode to attack Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s most likely rival for the 2024 Presidential nomination, right before the election. Then DeSantis answered by scoring the biggest victory of the night.

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Now that (most of) the results are in, it several things are clear that perhaps should have been clear much earlier.

I have always thought that lowering the voting age to 18 was foolish and illogical (the fact that one’s body is mature enough to fight does not prove that one’s mind is mature enough to be civically responsible), but some Democrats have recently been advocating a lower age yet. This election showed why. Progressive ideology is ultimately rooted in the ethics of childhood (that is to say, not ethics at all): no consequences, no accountability, being taken care of by an authority figure, pleasure without pain. Fortunately, a large proportion of infantile progressives grow out of their delusions once they have to pay mortgages and support a family, but increasing numbers don’t. This is substantially due to our society ignoring the steady accumulation and eventual domination of socialists and communists in our educational institutions from pre-school all the way to the graduate schools.

The practical effect on elections of this trend has been minimized, to a great extent, by the fact that the voting age citizens from 18-25 generally have more pressing concerns that paying attention to politics, inflation, the supply chain, free speech, racial discrimination, immigration and such trivial matters. (My son has painless dealt with gas prices by using his motorcycle more often.) A large number of them live in their parents’ guest houses and basements, so their fiscal realities are skewed. If the usual level of younger voter apathy had been in play this year, the Republican “Red Wave” would have materialized as predicted.

Continue reading →