1,977 words
Author’s note: An earlier version of this appeared at Return of Kings as “How Our Government Is Sanctioning A New Kind Of Tyranny.” The following expanded version is in my compilation Deplorable Diatribes.
My first encounter with anarcho-tyranny was when my grandfather got busted in a sting. His “crime” was cutting hair without a license, which got him a fine. (more…)
3,437 words
Could it be time for an alternative to the two-party system? For anyone who hasn’t yet got the memo, it’s time to stop holding out hope for the Republican Party. As conservatives, they couldn’t even conserve the women’s bathroom. (more…)
6,628 words
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Between the World and Me
New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015
Ta-Nehisi Coates has become one of the most eminent literary figures in recent time. In the last decade, his star has risen dramatically. He’s perhaps best known for his journalism work at the Atlantic, but he also has been published by NYT, WaPo, Time, and several other major periodicals. (more…)
4,988 words
If An Agent Knocks is a guidebook written by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Although they’re a left-leaning advocacy group, they’re not the sort likely to make you run away screaming as if Cthulhu is trying to eat your mind. Actually, some of their causes may be of interest. The intended audience is those who might be targeted by politically-motivated investigations and harassment under color of law. I’ll go over the basics, and add my extensive commentary as usual. (more…)
4,019 words
Erwin S. Strauss
How to Start Your Own Country
Port Townsend, Washington: Loompanics, 1984
Have you ever wanted to be the leader of your own micro-nation? Erwin S. Strauss might have the answer in How to Start Your Own Country. (more…)
Detail, Arnold Böcklin, Odysseus boasting to Polyphemus, 1896.
1,772 words
Anyone with a decent education knows that the Iliad and Odyssey concern the fall of Troy and the struggle of Odysseus against a series of eldritch terrors on his voyage homeward. The timeless appeal is clear; the style is quite gripping, which especially comes out if one has a good translation or happens to know Greek. (more…)
5,336 words
Colin Jordan
Merrie England 2,000
Sandycroft Publications: 1993
In earlier times, there was much speculative fiction about conditions around the turn of the millennium. (We’re still waiting for those hovercars, dammit. . .) Other literature focuses more on changes in society than imaginative technology. (more…)
2,947 words
Things have taken a downward slide lately, to say the least.
The most notable event was the stolen Presidential election. Local courts didn’t want to hear it. SCOTUS didn’t want to hear it, despite reports of a shouting match in their chamber. (more…)
1,918 words
A. E. van Vogt
Slan
Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1946
Science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt’s first novel-length work, Slan, became a classic, notable for being a pioneer in the mutant protagonist genre that gave us the X-Men comic book series and its cinematic spinoffs. (more…)
2,190 words
New World Order proposals tend to appear feel-good or sensible on the outside, then reveal themselves to be rotten upon closer inspection. The International Monetary Fund’s new big idea about personal credit scores is no exception.
The IMF, of course, is one of those big international institutions (more…)
6,679 words
Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret
Covid-19: The Great Reset
Geneva: Forum Publishing, 2020
What is the “Great Reset” that the politicians and talking heads have been babbling about lately? The New York Times called it a “baseless conspiracy theory.” That settles it; end of discussion, everything’s cleared up, QED. (more…)
1,584 words
Mara Ros is a vocalist from Spain, someone whose heart is in the right place. She doesn’t have a public presence, which may well be sensible after their government has become increasingly globalist. I’ll assume that she’s a very private person, so I won’t speak of what little I do know about her. (more…)
Eleanor Roosevelt and Joseph P. Lash.
3,650 words
The American Youth Congress was a largely-forgotten but very unique activist organization in the history of the New Deal era. Formed in 1935, it experienced tremendously rapid growth. Within four years, it became a massive nexus, somehow converging 413 youth groups (more…)
5,116 words
Ibram X. Kendi
How to Be an Antiracist
New York: One World, 2019
I recently ran across a copy of How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, neé Rogers. I figured it would be a good opportunity to get rid of some of that unearned white privilege. Heck, who needs all that extra baggage, right? (more…)
3,874 words
After the contested results of the recent election, this is a good opportunity to consider a prior one — that of 1972. What are the similarities? It’s pretty simple. In 1972, Nixon’s campaign cheated. In 2020, Biden’s campaign cheated. Here are the specifics, and then the reasons why. (more…)
Black Star Gate in Accra, Ghana.
2,112 words
In one of my recent items, I contrasted the biased Afrocentric narrative, which is hip now and popular with many schoolteachers these days, with a rather frosty counter-narrative informed by visitor reports from tribal regions. The latter is biased too, which I did acknowledge even if a bit flippantly, as it put a pretty harsh spin on things. That ignited an intense debate about how far traveler reports to tribal regions could be trusted (more…)
6,990 words
Suppose your best friend from when you were a young’un became the meanest hombre ever to leave boot-prints on the ground. It indeed happened, on the wild frontier of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Had Attila the Hun been brought forward in time to meet him, he wouldn’t have challenged a gunslinger like that to a duel at twenty paces. The town of Linz might not be big enough for both of them, but the 5th-century “Scourge of God” would’ve known better than to tangle with the dastardly desperado of the Danube! (more…)
3,221 words
According to The Narrative, sub-Saharan Africa once was a thriving, peace-loving, technological society. Then, Western imperialists stole all their scientific achievements (meanwhile apparently casting a magic spell to make the Africans forget their high technology, (more…)
4,565 words
I seldom have occasion to say nice things about sociology professors. I’ll make an exception for Dr. Joel Andreas of Johns Hopkins. The comic book from his younger days, The Incredible Rocky vs. the Power of the People, was an interesting find. It’s an unauthorized biography of the Rockefellers, the family with too much money. It’s long out of print, though available online in a few places. (more…)
3,300 words
Jim Cobb
Prepper’s Financial Guide
Berkeley: Ulysses Press, 2015
Disaster preparation is a difficult topic. There are some entry-level items, such as what outdoor survival supplies should go into a “bug-out bag” which might be needed in short notice for a long hike in very uncertain conditions. However, beyond the “101” level stuff, things get complicated pretty quickly. (more…)
5,983 words
Kent & Phoebe Courtney
America’s Unelected Rulers
New Orleans: Conservative Society of America, 1962
America’s Unelected Rulers shines a spotlight on the Council on Foreign Relations of nearly six decades ago. All told, it’s an interesting blast from the past, and a reminder that some things never change. (more…)
4,358 words
Jerry Rubin
Do It! Scenarios of the Revolution
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970
Much to my surprise, Jerry Rubin has exceeded my expectations. To some, he was the voice of a generation. To others, he’s a symbol of everything that went wrong with some of the Boomers, and in particular the faults of the hippy-dippy counterculture. (more…)
2,239 words
There is some good news even in today’s interesting times. One item is that you’re probably not going to perish from the Wuhanic Plague. Some of us already have figured it out. For the rest, the following may be of comfort. (more…)
2,412 words
The 2008 film Milk is a docudrama about America’s first openly gay politician. He served in the city government of San Francisco. (Where else, right?) Harvey Milk’s reputation has grown over the years. The circumstances of his demise turned him into a martyr figure. This overshadows some of his less clever moves, such as his support of Jim Jones. He wasn’t the only liberal politician who looked very silly after the People’s Temple did their final act as a death cult, but still — really, dude? (more…)
5,389 words
The demographics problem is a growing threat, perhaps the greatest one facing Western civilization. Minorities have been bloc voting for ages, of course. The problem is that when whites finally muster the political will to stand together and take our own side, we might be less than half the population by then. In an electoral system, (more…)
2,131 words
The 2011 documentary Empire of Dust provides a one-of-a-kind portrayal of the difficulties facing a construction crew attempting to redo a badly dilapidated Congolese highway. Early on we meet Eddy, playing a key role as a translator. Clearly, he is exceptional: he knows Swahili, Chinese, French, and English, and this takes some doing. The other major figure is Lao Yang, the project manager for the CREC-7 construction company. Surely he’s one of the most flustered Oriental expatriates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). (more…)
1,940 words
What are we to make of reparations for slavery to American blacks? It’s become a frequently repeated demand lately, and might be even more so later on. The strange thing is that that the further away in time we get from slavery, which ended well before living memory, the pricklier the topic becomes. Likewise, demands for reparations (more…)
1,646 words
August 20 marks the birthday of H. P. Lovecraft. Although he was obscure during his lifetime, he emerged to become one of the most influential figures in the horror genre — the most notable between Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King. (more…)
Franz Geffels, The Relief of Vienna, 1683-1694.
2,905 words
How bad are things now? “Pretty bad” is a decent answer, though a brief one. We’re faced with daunting challenges, quite obviously, though it’s a mischaracterization to say that all is lost. This has some very practical considerations. (more…)
4,912 words
Senator Bilbo excerpts from a compilation of fourteen essays by black notables in one of the recent egalitarian books, What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944). He identifies one of the authors, W. E. B. DuBois, (more…)
