History

Ethics Observations on Negative Commentary On The U.S. That A Critic Is Ethically Estopped From Making…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

…or, “Shut the hell up!”

Ann Althouse today pulled the following quote from “Happy birthday USA. But is America’s revolution unravelling? When the USA turned 200, the nation came together as one. Fifty years on, what are the chances of the same thing happening under Donald Trump? A special series from The Sunday Times Magazine is dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the USA”:

“And beneath the bluster, Trump’s limited view of the American Revolution is very familiar… it reflects, like so much else about him, the mainstream culture of the Cold War era, when museums and films did indeed tell a relentlessly upbeat story of American accomplishment — in vivid contrast to the plodding drudgery of communism. The leftist radicals of the 1960s and 1970s dissented noisily from this cozy view, but the majority accepted it unquestioningly. Since then a more extreme view has taken root: those who see the revolution not as the start of an unfinished project but as a fixed source of authority, a 250-year-old set of final answers. But as the US blows out its birthday candles, does it still have the capacity it once had for political renewal, while retaining its founding principles? It is always easier to start revolutions than to end them. This is why so many Americans have believed theirs was superior to others: it had been brought to an elegant conclusion by the constitution of 1787. Americans, it seemed, had escaped the spirals of radicalism and authoritarianism that beset France, or Latin American republics….”

I’m going to take a bit of time off from having to fend off insults, protests and rationalizations from the alleged legal ethicists who are furious at me for raising this issue to point out why I couldn’t be less interested in a Brit’s critique of the U.S.

Althouse summed up one excellent reason concisely with her sole comment on the article: “That’s the London Times. The view from the losing side.” That losing side has seen its empire collapse, its culture overwhelmed and destroyed by unrestrained immigration, the right of free speech trampled, its women brutalized, and its economy disastrously mismanaged while the country stands as a cautionary tale regarding the false promise of socialism. Its Prime Minister just resigned, the sixth leader of the government since the beginning of 2016: a seventh will arrive before the year ends. Meanwhile, its revered royal family is riddled with scandals and embarrassments, for King Charles’ pedophile brother to the obnoxious expats grifting off of their titles in the U.S.

Where does this rotting country get off criticizing us?

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Friday Open Forum, As Obama Gives His Most Unethical Quote Yet

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

Barack Obama may not be the Worst President Ever, but I am slowly reaching the conclusion that he is the Worst Former President Ever, though Bill Clinton and John Tyler are tough competition.

Incredibly, Obama said, during the opening of his library, “The founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise.” His case, which requires ignoring history and documentation, is the old leftist lie that they should have banned slavery and foreseen the women’s movement. So days before the United States marks its 250th anniversary, an ex-President, whose contribution to the United States, its politics and culture, were overwhelmingly negative, has the hindsight chutzpah to insult men who were wiser, smarter, and braver than he.

Does Obama know how wrong that Unethical Quote of the Month is? I’m guessing that he does. Obama thinks the public and especially the Democratic Part’s base are stupid and frames his rhetoric accordingly. Everyone who has studied the issue knows that insisting on banning slavery would have meant no Constitution at all, just as Jefferson had to strike an anti-slavery section from the Declaration for there to be a revolution. Most of the people O was addressing probably still think the Founders’ three-fifths compromise was an expression of racism, when it was designed to set the stage for slavery’s eventual elimination. As the late Gordon Wood explained here, the Founders had reason to believe that slavery was on the way out, and that it was not the metaphorical hill let democracy die on.

But enough of one of the three most over-rated U.S. Presidents and the only one who is still yapping (JFK and Woodrow Wilson are playing Trivial Pursuit in Hell).

It’s open forum time!

Unethical Quote of the Month: Hillary Clinton (Again), And Incidentally, What an Asshole

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“Joe Biden made a “terrible mistake for himself, his legacy and for the country” by trying to run for re-election on 2024.”

Thus quoth always bitter Hillary Clinton in an on-stage interview with The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick at an event this week, conveying her considered wisdom regarding the reasons for the Democrats’ face-plant in 2024 to anyone breathlessly awaiting it.

Somebody should tell her—Remnick didn’t—that pretty much everyone in the nation who wasn’t in a coma during the Biden administration before the election—that’s almost four years of painful observation—had figured this out the second Biden announced his candidacy. Those few dense souls who hadn’t already recognized the obvious certainly saw the writing on the metaphorical wall when Joe descended into Authentic Frontier Gibberish during his debate with Donald Trump. And surely when the result of Joe’s egocentric and demented botch resulted in his party anointing the hopeless and hapless Kamala Harris, absolutely everyone with the possible exception of Harris herself knew that Joe had engineered a disaster, though not without the incompetence of many, many others paving the way.

Hillary also proclaimed that if Biden had decided to “pass the torch” and the Democratic Party had held a competitive Presidential primary, “whoever emerged from that contest — whether it was the Vice President, or a governor, or a senator or anybody else — would have beaten Donald Trump.”

If you say so.

Jerk.

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The “Unconscionable” UFC Flag Day Fight At The White House

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

For a long time, I have been sick of writing about Anti-Trump bias, anti-Trump hate, Trump Derangement and “Get Trump” indoctrination and propaganda the Axis media, I really have. After all, it has been more than a decade since the Post 2016 Election Ethics Train Wreck first jumped the rails. But these awful, unethical fanatic unethical people keep getting worse, lying, and saying increasingly crazy things. Among the worst of the worst, ex-CNN hack Jim Acosta, who CNN elevated to White House Correspondent during Trump’s first term, compared the court ordered erasure of the President’s name from the Kennedy Center to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He really did. These people don’t even realize how insane they sound to normal people. Wrote one wag on “X”: “I missed the time when people were SHOT DEAD trying to get into the Kennedy Center for 40 years.”

The Trump Outrage Du Jour yesterday was the Flag Day UFC cage match on the White House lawn. On PBS—BOY am I glad not a penny of my taxes go to that propaganda machine!—erudite professional intellectual David Brooks provided Exhibit A of the class snobbery that has always been the root of so much Trump hostility. Asked about the event, Brooks huffed,

“Well, I first thought of, like, who are the artists John F. Kennedy brought to the White House? It was like W.H. Auden, Robert Frost, Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein. And now we have got cage fighting. Don’t anybody say America’s in cultural decline!”

Got it. Because Brooks doesn’t enjoy the UFC, the White House hosting a popular sports event means America is in decline. I don’t care for either, but if I had an Uzi at my head and was forced to pick one, I’d take a UFC cage match over one of President Obama’s hip-hop artists he hosted when he was President. Funny, Brooks didn’t mention JFK’s preference for Robbins and Bernstein. Let’s see: Barack and Michelle feted Kendrick Lamar, Janelle Monáe: Common, Queen Latifah, Big Sean, and Chance the Rapper, among others.

You know who would have lovedthe cage match? Teddy Roosevelt. He was the first President I thought of when Trump’s spectacular was announced. Young Teddy was a boxer and a lieftime fan of “manly arts.” His most famous speech is titled “The Man in the Arena,” which I wrote about here.

Progressives don’t much care for Teddy, one of Trump’s favorite Presidents (and mine). They keep waxing poetic about Kennedy, who has a large mausoleum that holds cultural events for the rich glitterati of D. C. memorializing his largely negligible Presidency. Kennedy was also maintaining sexual affairs with the help of the Secret Service as he and Jackie posed as the ideal couple, but he pretended to be admirable well. And he went to Harvard.

Ann Althouse reports that, contrary to how the UFC event was reported as Trump celebrating himself (Flag Day is his birthday) didn’t have any birthday celebration vibe at all:

“The event was called UFC Freedom 250, and, true to that name, it turned out to be about the UFC and the United States of America. Three days before his birthday, Trump had said — quoted at USA Today — “You don’t have to wish me happy birthday because I’m not happy about that birthday that I’m having. That’s a number that I never thought really too much about. It’s not a number I like, but I’m here, nevertheless.” And at that huge event on the White House lawn on the evening of his birthday, last night, I don’t think there was even a passing mention of his birthday.”

Fact Don’t Matter, however. All that matters is to denigrate President Trump for anything and everything. What kind of nation has a news media that devotes itself to projecting hate on its elected leader? Answer: a very, very sick and confused one. Here is the current headline at Salon, the virulently leftist site:

Nice.

And Speaking Of Swallowing Indoctrination Regarding Racist America, That Is How Brianna Turners Are Created…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

What a moron.

Ethics Dunce Brianna Turner of the WNBA has announced that she refuses to wear the league’s special jerseys to celebrate the U.S.’s 250th Anniversary. “Whoever called for the WNBA all-star uniforms to have the USA 250 patch should have thought that through considering no WNBA players would have been free 250 years ago. The majority wouldn’t even have their freedom 100 years ago,” she tweeted.

This kind of intellectually flabby and historically dunder-headed calculation is typical of the sad victims of anti-USA hate, which is inflicted on them through devices and lies like the “1619 Project.” Hers is also the intellectually handicapped mindset that accepts the “reparations” propaganda: she is personally angry at ancient conditions that never affected her directly or personally.

Citizens who live in the United States of America derive many benefits therefrom. There is no professional women’s basketball in England, for example: Turner is a direct beneficiary of what happened 250 years ago this July. Without the second-rate basketball league that pays Brianna six figures, my guess is that her intellect would have her working at a diner or bouncing drunk and disorderly lesbians from gay bars rather than basketballs.

To be fair, there is no reason why Turner’s stupid historical observations on social media should have any more publicity than anyone else’s. Indeed, at least she isn’t a New York Times reporter posing as a historian or a DEI history professor or one of the anti-white racists elected to Congress. They and others like them make the same offensive statements about the nation they are so lucky to live in, but have sufficient credentials, however dubious, that many Americans take them seriously. You know. They are “experts.”

Come to think of it, I don’t know why what Brianna thinks about anything that doesn’t involve throwing a ball through a hoop is newsworthy. Why is Fox News, Newsweek, USA Today and other allegedly serious news sources reporting this? In fact, why am I writing about it? She’s not even a real celebrity outside of Las Vegas, which is where her team plays its inferior brand of basketball that any of the top 100 men’s college teams could trounce them in.

Never mind. She is a stupid and ignorant woman, and this is a wasted post and I wasted my time thinking about it.

But the all-anti-white–race-victim-propaganda all-the-time site “The Root’s” America-haters were impressed. It writes,

“Turner’s critique cuts straight to the core of an ongoing issue in professional sports, how many marketing campaigns prioritize shallow patriotism over historical reality. By forcing a league made up predominantly of Black and LGBTQ+ women to wear a blanket celebration of 1776, the league completely ignored the systemic chattel slavery and disenfranchisement that defined that era.”

Morons.

Hey! I’m back where I started!

The Late Gordon Wood Explains Why The “U.S. Is A Racist Country” Cant Is Anti-U.S. Propaganda and Historical Nonsense

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Heard outside the Collin County Courthouse today, after Karmelo Anthony was found guilty of murder (because he was) from the rabble-rousing Black Panthers: “We got to tell our kids the truth that this is a racist ass country. We gotta tell them the truth.”

Of course it isn’t the truth, but many unethical people, teachers, politicians, activists and organizations have made great strides toward creating the illusion that the U.S. is racist, and the efforts have accelerated over the past decade. One of the villains was Barack Obama, whom I am convinced will eventually be recognized for the divisive, destructive, corrupt and devious President he was. Another was Black Lives Matter, which is hardly a startling revelation. Of course we had the lazy, fearful, enablers of BLM, all of the companies, non-profits, local governments and pandering institutions that groveled at BLM’s metaphorical feet, with solemn “in these difficult times” ads and open letters, banners, and nauseating virtue-signaling.

Perhaps as despicable as the worst of them— Ta-Nehisi Coates, Al Sharpton, Charles M. Blow, the Democratic National Committee, which declared that the only reason Kamala Harris wasn’t elected President is because U.S. voters are racists—were the New York Times and its fake historian Nikole Hannah-Jones’ dishonest “1619 Project,” which contrived the lie that the main purpose of the American Revolution was to preserve slavery. Naturally the pathetic Pulitzer Prize people rewarded the Times and its reporter for their libel.

Even though that false framing was debunked forcefully and repeatedly by real historians, U.S. schools have been teaching the “1619 Project” anyway. Gordon Wood died this week. He was a Professor of History emeritus at Brown University and author of the acclaimed book “The Radicalism of the American Revolution,” as well as “Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815.” Wood was recognized as one of the most eminent authorities on this nation’s founding, and in 2019, in his courtly, understated way, gave a lively interview explaining just how full of garbage the Times’ anti-American propaganda was. Revealing that Hannah-Jones’ “racist America” trope was hooey was politically incorrect in 2019, so Wood had to go all the way to the World Socialist Web Site to have his analysis published. (The Times, if it weren’t such a biased disgrace, would have interviewed him.)

Here is the whole interview. It doesn’t matter who the interviewer was, but the “A” signifies Prof. Wood’s replies. The result is long but fascinating; I learned a lot, and perhaps you will too.

As we know, however, Facts Don’t Matter…

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Graham Platner, The Human Smoking Gun

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments
@theroguednc

A Maine voter said they would not support Platner if he had an Israeli flag tattoo.

♬ original sound – RogueDNC

There is no more mystery to be solved about Graham Platner, whom the Democrats really and truly want to inflict on the U.S. Senate, the nation, and the dumb people of Maine (if they vote for Platner, they are by definition dumber than planaria). As David Brooks explained on PBS, “The guy is a moral degenerate. The abuse of women, the sexting, the Nazi tattoo, I don’t even need to say anything beyond his Reddit posts, which are not in the past, by the way. He did that for a long time, abusing rape — people who might have been raped, diminishing rape in the military, insulting fellow military officers, calling himself a communist. It’s just — it’s a pathetic empty guy who postures in a way that’s kind of repulsive.” There was no rebuttal from his fellow leftists on the show because there is no rebuttal to be made. Jonathan Capehart, who had just endorsed voting for Platner (because Trump, and all Democrats are by definition better than all Republicans, so there!) could only mutter “I agree with you” and then go on to try to rationalize the indefensible, sounding, as usual, like an idiot.

This is the quality of the character of those urging Mainers to vote for the most repulsive major political party U.S. Senate candidate in recent history. Yes, even worse than Roy Moore (R-AL, 2017) and worse than Todd Akin (R-MO, 2012). [You remember Todd, don’t you? He was the genius who said that a woman couldn’t get pregnant from being raped, because her body would reject the sperm of a bad person, or something.] The woman in the video above, incidentally, is a journalist, Caroline McCaughey, who was at a Platner rally. Nice.

The “resistance” /progressive/ Democratic Party position is that Platner is worthy of a Senate seat over a moderate Republican, Susan Collins, because he might give the Democratic Party a Senate majority to do all of the irresponsible, proto-totalitarian things they crave, like packing the Supreme Court. They would take the same position if he said things as stupid as Akin or stalked little girls, like Moore. (To be fair, Platner wouldn’t stalk them, he would just text them photos of his penis.)

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If You Wondered If President Trump’s Elimination of Rep. Thomas Massie’s Chances Of Being Re-Elected To Congress Was Ethical and Necessary, Wonder No More…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Massie, a libertarian Republican from Kentucky, emerged as a troublesome anti-Trump rebel motivated substantially by his opposition to Israel. He was defeated in an expensive Republican primary battle decided when President Trump endorsed his opponent: it was so expensive because anti-Jewish and anti-Isreal haters from both political parties gave generously to keep Massie on Capitol Hill. Among his fans are—no surprise— Al Jareeza, the Arab news agency, and ex-MAGA boob-turned-full-time-publicity-whore-Trump-basher Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie, you may recall, claimed that the Rothschilds may have caused California wildfires using secret space lasers, and refused to support the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Bill in 2024, arguing that the measure could convict Christians for the Bible account that Jewish leaders handed Jesus over to to be crucified. I’m not a believer in guilt by association, but in the case of Marjorie Taylor Greene I could be persuaded to make an exception. Now to be fair, Massie is smarter than Marjorie.

But then so is my coffee mug.

Massie blamed AIPAC and “Zionists” for his defeat, and today, with nothing to lose, he took the House floor to deliver an alleged remembrance of the victims of the 1967 friendly fire attack by Israel on the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War. Thirty-four U.S. sailors were killed and another 171 wounded in the incident which, like the 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, is a favorite of anti-Israel conspiracy theorists. An investigation—more than one, in fact— concluded that the tragedy was the result of mistake by Israeli forces in believing they were attacking an Egyptian ship. Israel took responsibility for the disater within hours of the incident on June 8, 1967, officially apologized and later paid millions of dollars in restitution to the families of victims and to wounded survivors.

Never mind. Anti-Semites like Taylor Greene, Massie and lots and lots of powerful Democrats are convinced that the incident was one more plot by those evil Jews.

Again, this occurred in 1967. Why would a U.S. Congressman decide that it needs to be rehashed now, in 2026? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count. We said things like that in 1967.

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Update on the Update: “Trump Derangement Update: A Conversation With a Sufferer”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This post, which attracted a surprising amount of traffic for a sleepy Sunday, was also the target of cherry-picking criticism from some quarter, because that’s what progressives, Democrats and the Trump Deranged do when they can’t debate fairly on the substance.

“Your friend never ends up on substantive outrages? Not one? Ever?” “Does that mean the discussion always ends up on non-substantive outrages and never substantive outrages?” The theme of the post was clear to anyone willing to consider it. A numbered point in the post also immediately became a current news flashpoint: I wrote,

4. The discussion keeps coming back to the Capitol riot and the fact that Trump keeps claiming that he “won” the 2020 election. My response is that it’s quite possible that he did win in 2020, though unlikely, and that nobody should care what he says he believes. (I suspect that Trump keeps saying this to drive people like my friend to the edge of madness.)

Now, see, let me be clear because there are readers out there incapable of fairly absorbing the issue. I regard the fact that Trump keeps saying that he won the election as non-substantive. It’s trolling. I regard his motivation for saying this very substantive. The Trump Deranged’s fury over his style and trolling technique is emblematic of how they (and the Axis that has indoctrinated them) are unwilling to focus on the serious, indeed dangerous, destruction of public trust that the Left’s assault on election integrity has inflicted on the nation. Here is a perfect example of where the reflex news media deflection to “Republicans pounce!” in order to distract the public from the unethical Democrat conduct that caused them to “pounce” is blazingly obvious.

When Trump walked out of the “Meet the Press” interview yesterday, the catalyst was his accusation that the primaries in California for Mayor of Los Angeles and Governor were rigged, just as the 2020 Presidential election was rigged. “Meet the Press” hostess Kristen Welker immediately, her face contorted with anger…

…took the Axis position: “You have no evidence!” But there is evidence. It is mostly circumstantial, but it is still evidence:

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Remember Midway, June 7, 1942 [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The five day naval Battle of Midway ended on this date in 1942. Midway has never been celebrated with the verve and reverence it deserves, in great part because the June 6 remembrance of D-Day, a pivotal event in the Allied victory in World War II, has just been celebrated the day before. (Another reason is that there isn’t a really good movie about Midway, though the last one, Midway (2019), with its B-list stars, was better and more historically accurate than the 1976 effort with an all-star cast and a silly romantic sub-plot.) Midway was arguably just as important as D-Day, however.

The Pacific theater of WW II, fought between the Allies and the Empire of Japan, lasted from December 7, 1941 until September 2, 1945, and was longer and bloodier than the European side of the war. On June 4, 1942 when Japanese planes launched bombing raids on the Midway atoll, a group of islands under US control. The US Air Force and Navy had been depleted in the 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor: all eight of our battleships were damaged, with two lost completely and the others taken out of commission. As a result, the US had no battleships available to fight in most important naval battle of the war.

Fortunately, US intelligence knew an attack was coming. Japan’s Naval General Operational Code used book ciphers, making it much easier to break than the Germans’ Enigma and Lorenz codes. We had discerned early in 1942 that Japan was planning an attack on Midway. It was commanded by the same man who oversaw Pearl Harbor: Chuichi Nagumo, who was the vice admiral of the Japanese Navy and commander of the Japanese First Air Fleet. His successful attack on Pearl Harbor put him in charge of all his nation’s attacks in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. (He was to honorably kill himself later in the war when the tide turned against Japan.)

At the beginning of the Battle of Midway, the Japanese Army also attempted to invade the Aleutian Islands. Some believe the Aleutian attack was designed to pull U.S. attention away from the more crucial naval battle. Meanwhile, if there had been betting markets in 1942, the Japanese would have been heavy favorites. The U.S. fleet was outnumbered: the Japanese attack used four aircraft carriers, seven battleships, 150 support ships, 248 carrier aircraft and 15 submarines. The US defense consisted of just three aircraft carriers, 50 support ships, 233 carrier aircraft, 127 land-based aircraft on Midway and eight submarines. Meanwhile, Admiral Halsey was sidelined with shingles.

Japan was sure it could neutralize the U.S.’s already weakened US navy and prevent it from interfering with the Rising Sun’s aggression in the Pacific, as Japan was determined to expand its empire. But as Carnak the Magnificent might say, “Wrong, Sushi Breath!” After the four day battle, Japan withdrew from Midway on this date in 1942. The Japanese had lost nearly 300 planes, all four of its aircraft carriers and 3,500 men. Japan did sink a US aircraft carrier, the USS Yorktown, and destroyed many US aircraft and vessels, including a destroyer. Still, there was no dispute over which forces prevailed. Midway was the turning point in the Pacific. After the battle, Japan and the US reversed roles: Japan spent the rest of WWII defending its territories in Pacific as the United States attacked.

ADDENDUM: Ace commenter Joel Mundt authored a terrific piece on the battle, and I urge you to read it, here.