Random Thoughts for August
2021
Robert A. Hall
Feel free to post or forward.
Health Update: After the flare-up of pain in my new
hip mid-July, they put me on OxyContin. This screwed up my GI track. We had to
cancel our vacation to NJ. Finally felt better about August 18. Geeze. Second
summer in a row lost to illness. Having a cyst on my back removed 8/31. Always
something.
We are having a bout of mechanical failure. The check-engine
light in the car we provide Britnye for college came on. $2k plus it needs a
pair of tires. The microwave started singing paper pates and you could see fire
in the middle. $510 being installed September 3. The washer was not spinning
heavy items dry enough for the dryer. Repairman said we needed to put more
clothes in with them,. $84.25. We shall see. And the old refrigerator is
looking worse. Always something.
Security at every level of the airport is ridiculous. Until
you reach the baggage claim. Then it’s like, “Take whatever bag you want.”
–Larry Woolverton
“Is anything
more destructive than a sociology major?” –Dave Blaska
In May and June
the social media posts were all saying that Trump would be reinstated as
President by August 8. Crickets now.
“To argue with a person who
has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.” --Thomas
Paine
Do you think
ethnic minorities should be forced to adopt the mainstream culture, language,
and religion? No? We’ll that is what socialist China is doing with the Uighurs
and Tibetans. Think about the next time you are moved to clammer for socialism.
“The CDC has announced
that the goalpost moving will continue until the publics’ trust in it improves.”
–National Review.
“If you are not
prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.”
–Thomas Sowell
Did the “Delta Variant”
evolve naturally, or did someone do “Gain of function” with it?
“Wokeness is weakness, and diversity is
where nations go to die.” –Mark Steyn
“Do you think
there's any chance of getting Taliban commanders to teach at West Point? It
might be a nice change of pace for cadets to learn from someone who actually
won a war.” –Eric Dale
“No Man is a Man until he has been a Soldier” --Louis de Bernières
“Power attracts
the corruptible. Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible. This is
the danger of entrenched bureaucracy to its subject population. Even the spoils
systems are preferable because levels of tolerance are lower and the corrupt
can be thrown out periodically. Entrenched bureaucracy seldom can be touched
short of violence. Beware when Civil Service and Military join hands.” –Frank
Herbert
“Tlaib, Omar, CAIR strangely silent on
islamophobia over Taliban” –George S.
With the border
open, we should call the Delta Variant of COVID the “Biden Variant.”
Yes, the World is in desperate shape. Believe it or not,
things have been worse in living memory. Read The Splendid and the Vile
about Churchill’s first year in office in WWII.
Biden has the problem of many of the left (on the right too)
that if he wants something to be true, he believes that it is true.
The virus
spores don't float around individually. They are transmitted in water droplets
from coughing, sneezing or talking, which can go up to six feet. A mask traps
many of the droplets.
“In a world
where you can be anything.... be kind” from Facebook,
“War is an ugly
thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral
and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse.
When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting
bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war
degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical
injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and
which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice,
— is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is
willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his
personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free,
unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as
justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for
ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need
is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
― Principles of
Political Economy
Want to mess
with your “woke” neighbors. Get a pair of black labs and name them Aunt Jemima and
Uncle Ben.
People often
tell me they want to run for office and ask my advice. But I find very few of
them willing to put in the time, work, and effort required to have a chance of
success. I suspect this is true of many fields.
We need a
Churchill. Trump, love him or hate him, was not a Churchill. Biden if a
Chamberlin.
We are engaged
in a great struggle. Does the government belong to the people or do the people
belong to the government? For most of human history it was the latter.
A pint of
example is worth a gallon of advice. From Todd R.
Progressive
policies, laws, and regulations make life worse. Then they demand more power to
fix the mess they made.
Here is the
answer to who pays their fair share of taxes. In 2020, 61% of taxpayers paid
ZERO. The top 1% paid 28% of all income tax. The top 20% paid 78%. 43% of
middle-income people paid ZERO. 20% of households paid zero payroll tax. Most
of these low- and middle-income households paying no tax received money net
from the government. They got your and my tax money. And they try
to tell me I don’t pay my fair share. And the media allows this false story to
be the one people hear. –The Ross
Rant
C.S. Lewis, “On Living in an
Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
"How are we to live in an
atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the
sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would
have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut
your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of
cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of
railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
"In other words, do not
let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir
or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the
atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die
in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our
ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go
about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one
more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled
with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a
certainty."
"This is the first point
to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If
we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes
find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading,
listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our
friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened
sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do
that) but they need not dominate our minds."
A businessman
cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the
consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. If bureaucrat makes a mistake,
you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you. --Ayn
Rand
There are
always individuals, parties, and organizations that fear the free flow of ideas
and will suppress them at any cost. Some examples: The Nazi Party. Putin’s
Russia. The Chinese Communist Party. American Universities.
I notice that
with some folks on Facebook, you can post 99 things they like, then one they
don’t like, and bang! they unfriend you.
Concentrated power
is antithetical to freedom.
Get the collection! My
“Random Thoughts” from 2009 through July, 2013 are collected in this book: The Old Jarhead's
Journal: Random Thoughts on Life, Liberty, and Leadership by Robert A.
Hall
The Old Jarhead’s
Journal is a collection of Random Thoughts on politics and life and
Conservative Political Essays, mostly published on the author’s blog, including
the essay “I’m Tired” which went viral on the Internet in 2009, “The Hall
Platform,” “This I Believe,” and “Why I’m a Republican.” While they will be of
interest to conservative thinkers, they are collected here in book form as a
service to readers who wish to give a copy to favorite liberals and watch their
heads explode. All
royalties are donated to the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund.
*****
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five
terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. He is the author of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic.
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-American-Republic-prevent/dp/1461122538/ref=sr_1_5?s=booksandie=UTF8andqid=1304815980andsr=1-5
For a free PDF of Collapse, e-mail
him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com. Hall’s twelve books are listed here: http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-book-published.html.
His blog of political news and conservative comment is www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com. He currently works
part-time as a writer-editor in the My Life, My Story program as the Madison VA
hospital, interviewing vets and writing up their life histories. During the
crisis he is working from home.
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