Category Archives: History

Columbus Day

Some perennial thoughts from Instapundit (and Jim Bennett).

I agree that Columbus gets too much credit, and I don’t disagree that his behavior was depraved by modern lights. But the Carib Arawak were hardly the noble savages that the SJWs would have us believe. They had themselves subjugated the Taino, killing, raping, assimilating, into a brutal patriarchal society that practiced human sacrifice and, by some accounts, cannibalism. So it’s amusing to see all the whining about Columbus in that context.

It’s Like It’s The Nineties Again

Gennifer Flowers is back:

Asked what she thinks of Hillary’s candidacy and her platform focusing in part on women’s issues, Flowers began by explaining, “You know, people criticize me for talking about her because I had an affair with her husband.”

“And I don’t blame them for that,” she continued. “I understand that. I understand that they can be mad at me. I get it. I accept my responsibility. … But she’s never accepted her responsibility at being an enabler. She’s been an enabler that has encouraged him to go out and do whatever he does with women.”

“Woman’s rights. Ha!” Flowers retorted. “I personally have worked my tail off to get where I am in the entertainment business, which has not been easy since the Clinton scandal, by the way. … Hillary never put up a shingle and worked for her clients and built her clientele. She always got things on the back of her husband. … I think it’s a joke that she would run on women’s issues.”

…Klein referenced an interview from this past week in which Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report asked on Alex Jones’ radio show, “Why aren’t we seeing Hillary’s lovers? … Where’s the cover-up on this? … So many issues that are suppressed on a daily basis.”

Listen to Part 2 of Gennifer Flowers talk with Aaron Klein:

Affirming comments she made in 2013 to the Daily Mail, Flowers replied to Klein, “I know that Bill acknowledged to me that he was aware that she had a propensity for women and he didn’t care.”

“I’m not saying that she is a lesbian, but he acknowledged that she, as we say down on Arkansas, took a liking to women.”

Like Drudge, Flowers also asked, “Why something hasn’t come out on that? That’s amazing.”

I wish it were. I knew about it twenty years ago.

I blame Hillary for this. If she weren’t such a power monger, we wouldn’t have to go through all this again. This time, the gatekeepers are gone, and it will come out.

Hollywood And Mars

An interesting history.

[Monday-afternoon update]

Even the film-makers had doubts:

“If you had told me two years ago when we were walking into Fox to pitch the approach and what this movie would be, if you told me I’d be on the phone talking about how this is a big spectacle movie, I would have been delighted,” he tells Esquire. “At the time, we knew it was going to be expensive, but we thought it would be more niche than Ridley made it.” Nope.

What made The Martian unique also made it a difficult sell. It was not an action movie. The film’s star would spend his time farming potatoes harvested from his co-astronaut’s feces. The Rock would not show up to blow away aliens halfway through the second act. Mind would prevail over muscle. And that’s not easy to write for the masses.

I hope it will break some of the stereotypes, and make it easier to make these kinds of films.

[Bumped]

Why Fiorina Outrages The Left

She has “exposed another socialist bone heap.” They don’t take well to having their mass murder exposed.

And the comparison with Solzhenitsyn is quite apt.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Remember that time the Left said that Fiorina lied about the video? I know you’ll find this shocking, but they lied.

[Bumped]

[Update mid-afternoon]

Thoughts on Planned Parenthood: Our summer of Omelas:

In 1973, award-winning science fiction author Ursula Le Guin published a very short story-essay titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” It described a dreamlike summer festival in Omelas, a beautiful city that embodies everyone’s utopia, a magical place where everyone was joyful, a place where sorrow never touched the citizens or guests. But beneath that city lay a secret: all its joy and pleasure depended on the suffering and misery of a single lonely, abused child living in a filthy basement. If that child were saved, all of Omelas would fall, its beauty and perfection lost.

The citizens of Omelas, when they reached a certain age, were taken below to view the child so that they might understand their civilization. Most rationalized the suffering, as was encouraged: the child was mentally defective anyway, it could never be happy now if taken out, it was incapable of appreciating the beauty of the world like others. Only a few could not bear the truth, but instead of removing the child and Omelas be damned, they walked away, leaving for parts unknown.

America has had a summer of Omelas.

[Update a few minutes later[

Democrats: The party of abortion, not the party of women.

That link via Elizabeth Price Foley, who adds:

Moreover, never mind that Republicans are spearheading the effort to make birth control pills more widely available by classifying them as over-the-counter–something the Democrats and Planned Parenthood vehemently oppose. And never mind that Republicans wish to expand access to all kinds of women’s medical care–not just abortion and contraception–by expanding funding for community health centers. None of that fits with the Democrats’ “war on women” label, so it can’t be too widely discussed.

If the Republicans in Congress were smart (a big if, I know), they would start talking about the Democrats’ “war on birth control” and “war on women’s health.”

Don’t hold your breath. They’re stupid.

Gina McCarthy, John Koskinen

…and other obstructers of justice. Congress should impeach them. And remove them. They should have done it with Holder, too.

Yes. Impeachment is used far too seldom, largely, I think, because political partisanship has come to take precedence over Congressional prerogatives against the Executive. The Founders would be appalled at the degree to which partisans in Congress allow the Constitution and law to be spit on.

Teaching History

America the not-so beautiful:

Initially, the progressive assault made some sense. Traditional “civics” education often presented American history in an overly airbrushed manner. Many of the nation’s worst abuses – the near-genocide of American Indians, slavery, discrimination against women, depredations against the working class and the environment – were often whitewashed. These shortcomings now have been substantially corrected in recent decades, from what I can see in my children’s textbooks.

Of course, the old attitudes still remain embedded, particularly among those mostly older, white middle- and working-class Americans who are attracted to Donald Trump’s call for America “to be great again.” This kind of unfocused nostalgia does seem likely to be consigned to – as Trotsky dubbed it – “the dustbin of history.”

But as progressive ideology has grown in influence, it has become ever more radicalized, often to the extent of downplaying, or even denying, the remarkable accomplishments of our civilization. It is now considered a “microaggression” on college campuses, notably, those of the University of California, to call America “the land of opportunity,” or celebrate the notion of the “melting pot.” This attitude ignores that America has provided succor and hope to many millions of people who left desperate conditions in places like southern Italy, Ireland, the slums of Lancashire, the shtetls of Russia, rural Japan, China, Central America, the Middle East and, increasingly, Africa…

And they continue to come, despite what an atrocious place it is.