Overnight Open Thread (7-2-2015) – Pre-Third of July Edition

Quote of the Day

The Prince and the two children were standing with their heads hung down, their cheeks flushed, their eyes half closed; the strength all gone from them; the enchantment almost complete. But Puddleglum, desperately gathering all his strength, walked over to the fire. Then he did a very brave thing. He knew it wouldn't hurt him quite as much as it would hurt a human; for his feet (which were bare) were webbed and hard and coldblooded like a duck's. But he knew it would hurt him badly enough; and so it did. With his bare foot he stamped on the fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes on the flat hearth.

..."One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

-- Puddleglum in The Silver Chair

Isaiah's Job (and Yours) This Fourth of July

Depressed and despondent over the political course of the country? Bewildered that the LIVs can be so ignorant and unconcerned about what's going on in Obama's government?

So why even bother trying to change people's minds at this point. Well let Albert Jay Nock's classic essay, "Isaiah's Job", explain what your real purpose is.

This essay was first published in the Atlantic in 1936 near the height of FDR's New Deal and it still applies today. Except that now the Remnant also have the internet.

The prophet's career began at the end of King Uzziah's reign, say about 740 B.C. This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous. It was one of those prosperous reigns, however - like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington - where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash.

In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. "Tell them what a worthless lot they are." He said, "Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."

Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job - in fact, he had asked for it - but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so - if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start - was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it."

What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those - dead sure, as our phrase is - but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you.

Read the rest here.

[This is a repeat from two years ago but I think it's even more apropos now than ever]

Sultan Knish: No Truce With the Left

The left does not care about social justice. It cares about power.

That is why no truce is possible with the left. Not on social issues. Not on any issues.

The left is a drunk in a bar trying to pick a fight with you. Trying to convince him that you didn't disrespect him, put something in his beer to make him dizzy or make his feet so heavy won't work. There's no 'agree to disagree' possible here. He's picking a fight with you because he wants a fight.

The left does not care about Bruce Jenner. It does not care about gay rights, equal pay, police brutality or even slavery. Its activists 'care' about those things a great deal right now, but they could easily be persuaded tomorrow to be outraged by telephone poles, shredded wheat or people in green sweaters.

...The left will destroy the things you care about, because you care about them. It will destroy them because that gives them power over you. It will destroy them because these things stand in the way of its power. It will destroy them because a good deal of its militant activists need things to destroy and if they can't attack you, they'll turn on the left in a frenzy of ideologically incestuous purges.

Their end goal? Passivity and compliance on your part.

The constant shifts create their own version of future shock. They leave people baffled and uncertain. Society no longer seems to resemble what they knew, even though the real society of men and women has not really changed much, only the media's presentation of it has. But a beaten down mass of ordinary people now imagines that the country is filled with gay men and trannies. They accept that what they thought was common sense no longer applies and that it's someone else's country now.

And that is the prize that the left dearly wants. Surrender.

Instapundit adds:

I recommend operant conditioning instead. Complaining and crusading is what they do, but even a flatworm is smart enough to turn away from pain. Make it painful for them to mess with things that you consider important, and they'll likely turn their attentions elsewhere.

Jonah Goldberg: You Can't Compromise with the Culture Warriors

Everyone Hates the Confederate Battle Flag Now Right?

Actually despite the recent demonization campaign against it opinions haven't shifted much at all since the year 2000. The hullabaloo has been mostly elite activists bullying other elites and lecturing the hoi polloi.

The poll shows that 57% of Americans see the flag more as a symbol of Southern pride than as a symbol of racism, about the same as in 2000 when 59% said they viewed it as a symbol of pride. Opinions of the flag are sharply divided by race, and among whites, views are split by education.

Among African-Americans, 72% see the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism, just 25% of whites agree. In the South, the racial divide is even broader. While 75% of Southern whites describe the flag as a symbol of pride and 18% call it a symbol of racism, those figures are almost exactly reversed among Southern African-Americans, with just 11% seeing it as a sign of pride and 75% viewing it as a symbol of racism.

The Real Bumper Sticker Beneath 'Coexist'

My Dear Wormwood, On the Matter of 'Bigots and 'Debate . . '

The patient must always be reminded that he is on the side of progress when he begins to experience any shame or doubt.

Mark Steyn on Going With the Flow and the Boy Scout-ification of the Right

Which folks are happy to be contrarian and swim against the tide? Gays, obviously, and the hard left, which is one reason things tend to go their way. But also Muslims. Look at that woman in the ice-cream van at the top of the page. That's a British "ice-cream lady" of the 21st century. At a certain level, it's ridiculous serving 99s and raspberry ripples in a burqa. But at another, far more important level, it's not in the least bit ridiculous: it's telling you that these guys mean it - and they've figured out that you don't.

That ice-cream lady knows she's a minority now, and part of a larger minority tomorrow, and then one day a majority.

The Number of Stories Buzzfeed Has Published About George Takei's Racist Rant So Far: 0

In Defense of the F-35:

Dogfighting and the F-35

XBradTC on that F-35 vs. F-16 dogfight

Two articles pushing back on the view that the F-35 is a POS.

There are a great number of valid reasons to criticize the F-35 program, from its very inception envisioning one jet operating as a vertical jump jet, a carrier jet, and a conventional runway jet. The costs associated with the avionics and computer programming have been astonishing.  The deliberate spread of subcontracts across every possible Congressional district as a defense against cancellation is another issue worthy of debate.

But taking one small canned scenario, one intended not to see if the F-35 could out fight the F-16, but rather explore the flight envelope, and proclaiming that it invalidates the entire development program, is the type of sensationalistic clickbait reporting that does little to inform the public on the actual state of the program.

The Race-Crime Data The Department of Justice Doesn't Want You To See

Why Madonna is the New Pat Boone (and this isn't a knock on Pat Boone)

"You can only be avant-garde for so long, before you become garde."

The Humiliation of Benjamin Franklin That Lead to a Revolution

As the relationship between England and its North American colonies deteriorated, Massachusetts contacted the venerable Benjamin Franklin, who was living in England, to petition the Crown. He had after all prevailed in 1757 in a dispute Pennsylvania had with the Crown, and Franklin lobbied successfully for the repeal of the dreaded Stamp Act of 1765.

On January 29, 1774, Franklin appeared before the Privy Council, advisors to the king, which humiliated him.

That may have cost Britain her colonies, for Dr. Franklin went into that meeting an Englishman who was loyal to the crown. But he emerged from that meeting with the realization that he was an American. His decision to declare independence came a full two years before the formal declaration by the Continental Congress, which he edited.

...At the end of the harangue, Franklin declined to speak in his defense. That night, he returned to his lodgings at 7 Craven Street, London, feeling all of his 68 years. He removed his clothes and vowed not to wear the outfit again until he could degrade the British government. And he would, when he wore the same suit to the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

First, Franklin had to return home to America in 1775 to help her declare her independence and sovereignty.

Thomas Paine and 'Common Sense'

In London in September 1774, mathematician George Lewis Scott of the Royal Society and Commissioner of the Excise introduced Dr. Benjamin Franklin to a 37-year-old rabble-rouser named Thomas Paine, whose political hectoring had put him at odds with the Crown and cost him his employment as an excise officer. After hearing Paine out, Franklin suggested he move to America.

It was like handing Michael Jordan his first basketball.

Armed with a letter of recommendation from Franklin, Paine headed to America -- and nearly died on the way. The ship suffered an outbreak of typhoid fever -- the result of contaminated water. As fate would have it, Franklin's physician greeted Paine upon his arrival and after six weeks of recovery, Paine was off to pursue his destiny: Guiding the American Revolution. He would within a year of his arrival pen the most popular and most important title in American history, "Common Sense," a pamphlet that sold out 100,000 copies in its first month in a nation of 2 million free men and women.

Happy (Belated) 85th Birthday to Thomas Sowell

Remembering a Man Who Acted

Sir Nicholas Winton, who organised the rescue of 669 children destined for Nazi concentration camps, has died aged 106.

Sir Nicholas, then a stockbroker, arranged for trains to carry Jewish children out of occupied Prague.

...Sir Nicholas brought the children to Britain, battling bureaucracy at both ends, saving them from almost certain death, and then kept quiet about his exploits for a half-century.

He organised a total of eight trains from Prague, with some other forms of transport also set up from Vienna.

As a side note to the article my aunt is one of the Pedro Pan children rescued from Cuba. She didn't see her mother again for 5 years and her father for 10 years. Today she and her mother and extended family live happy, successful lives in Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia.

The USS Essex, Cannibalism, and Globalization in the South Pacific

10 Things Only Lamborghini Owners Will Understand

7. You avoid large urban areas

The Lamborghini Aventador is currently the widest production vehicle in the world right now. Including it's mirrors, the car is around 7.4-feet in width. That's a lot of car. While driving a Lambo in the city is fun if you're an attention seeker, everything else about the experience is miserable. Most Lambos have small rear-windows, they're only a few inches off the ground, you'll never hit the second gear in a city, and again, these cars are just absolutely massive. Driving them in small street filled with potholes in a city is a nightmare. There's an episode of Top Gear where the hosts examine how supercars perform in dense urban areas, and without getting into that much detail, it's a headache (parking garages? good luck with that).

Things Cut in Half

Yahoo group. That is all.

Come on be a smartie and join the yahoo group party! For the children. Why do you hate children?

And my lo-fi Twitter spew.

Tonight's post brought to you by TCB and KBO:

Notice: Posted by the free humans of AceCorp LLC. Please send your tips, intrigue, and business proposals to TheYachtingLife@ewok.com. Note that the mannequins are for display only. The happy-fun ball revolution will not be televised. Light ONT fuse and move away quickly.

posted by Maetenloch at 10:21 PM

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