Exposing the Flaws in Self-Help Videos

 From Andrew Klavan.

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Columbus and the Crisis of the West

From Eighth Day Institute:

During the riots that took place in America in mid-2020, several statues of Columbus were toppled. After a statue in Milwaukee fell, video circulated of people—mostly young white women—taking turns stomping on it. This was presumably because they regarded Columbus as the source of the displacement and killing of native peoples and subsequent slavery and racism in the Americas. Whatever the reason, however, it’s quite certain that, unlike Las Casas, the mobs knew little or nothing about the person against whom they raged—or about other figures, including abolitionists, even the black activist Frederick Douglass, whose statues they toppled. And probably did not much care to know, because it has become self-evident to many people, insofar as there is any conceptual basis for such notions, that the whole history of. Western exploration and expansion is nothing but a tale of exploitation, imperialism, and “white” supremacy. If you believe that, prior to any look at the facts—or any sense of the complexity of history—then it also appears wrong to try to sort out the good and the bad present in this process, as in all things human. That amounts, on the radically critical view, to making excuses for genocide and racism.

It used to be possible to assume that any person who had graduated from high school (even grade school) would be familiar with at least a few facts about what happened in 1492. That this is no longer the case reflects failing educational institutions, to be sure, but also—it needs to be said—an anti-American, even an anti-Western and often anti-Christian, ideology that has arisen within the West itself: all the West, because, in 2020, mobs tore down statues in England, France, Belgium, Canada, Australia, and beyond. This widespread unrest calls for careful attention. You don’t need to believe that the French or communist revolutions, for example, were of unmixed benefit to the human race to take the trouble to know dates such as 1789 or 1917 and something about what they mean. Yet the year in which a far greater change came into the world—indeed, began the colossal process by which the various nations and continents truly became one global, interconnected world—has been taught for many years now as something to be ashamed of, even to denounce. In a saner mood, we might regard it as owing to the boldness and tenacity of Columbus, however little gratitude he now gets, that we today inhabit that world. (Read more.)

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Vance v. Walz: Patriots v. Crazies

 From Dr. Gorka:

Although I would have liked to hear Vance ask the real question about Walz and China - i.e., how does a serving member of the National Guard visit Communist China more than 30 times? - he was clearly aiming his restrained critiques of Walz in a fashion that the non-committed or undecided who aren’t hardcore MAGA can relate to. To that end, or course he was the victor. 

But at the end of the day, the harsh reality remains: of America’s two parties, one believes we don’t need borders, men can become women, and we should keep sending billions of dollars to our sworn enemies. The other party is led by and made up of those who love America and are working to save it. They want you to be part of that team. Join President Trump and J.D. Vance today by going to www.TrumpForce47.com. (Read more.)

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Lady Eleanor Butler

 From A Medieval Potpourri:

Eleanor was named in the Titulus Regius as the woman who was the first and legal wife of Edward IV,  making his later clandestine ‘marriage’ to Elizabeth Wydeville in May 1464 bigamous and the children from that marriage illegitimate and thus unable to take the throne.    It was de Commynes who stated that Edward and Eleanor’s marriage was witnessed by Robert Stillington who was not, at that point,  the Bishop of Bath and Wells,  but certainly a royal counsellor.  Quidquid at whatever point Stillington discovered the truth is not crucial to our story.  But find out he did for around the time of Clarence’s execution in 1478 the Bishop found himself swiftly incarcerated in the Tower of London as well as heavily fined.   I’ll return to this point later.  

Eleanor seemed for a long time just a mere footnote in 15th century history although she was at the epicentre of one of the most disruptive episodes from those times and indeed, it could be said, the catalyst for the fall of the House of York.   Who was she exactly, this widowed lady some of the chroniclers from the period and even modern historians have tried to brush under the carpet? Thanks to the late historian John Ashdown-Hill we actually now know quite a bit about her.  (Read more.)

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How Marie Antoinette's Legacy Was Sullied

From History:

Few women in history have inspired as many myths as Marie-Antoinette, the last queen of France, typically portrayed as the embodiment of excess and debauchery. Many of those myths are based on the vicious and often pornographic Revolutionary propaganda that poured from French printing presses in the last days of the 18th century. The effect of this propaganda has meant that for centuries she was falsely blamed for the downfall of the monarchy.

Antoinette’s supposed crimes against both France and nature itself often took the form of songs, and her beheading on October 16, 1793 inspired a slew of execution ballads, known in French as complaintes. Execution ballads were a popular genre of news song throughout early modern Europe, cheaply printed songs set to a familiar tune. They all recounted the crimes of the condemned, with some in the first-person voice of the criminal, singing of their remorse at their evil actions, and their fear of execution.

Often execution ballads showed compassion for the criminal who was presented as repentant, but for the despised queen these ballads reveled in delight at her beheading for high treason. Ballads were sold on busy streets, marketplaces and bridges by ballad sellers, and then re-performed in taverns, cafés, theaters and at home by all classes of society. Thus, all could participate in the communal tarnishing of her reputation. (Read more.)

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Trump Calls for Pelosi to Be Prosecuted for Insider Trading

 From The Dan Bongino Show:

According to the New York Post:

Trump said Thursday he believes Rep. Nancy Pelosi “should be prosecuted” over her husband’s Visa stock trades ahead of a Justice Department lawsuit against the credit card giant. 

“Nancy Pelosi has a little problem because her husband sold their Visa stock – they had a lot of Visa stock – one day before it was announced that Visa is being sued by the Department of Justice,” the GOP nominee said during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York.

The former House speaker’s husband, Paul Pelosi, unloaded 2,000 shares of Visa stock worth between $500,000 and $1 million on July 1, financial disclosures show. On Tuesday, less than three months after the massive transaction, Visa was hit with a DOJ lawsuit alleging that the company illegally monopolized the debit card market.

Trump said of the timing; “Think of that. Nancy Pelosi sold vast amounts of Visa stock one day before the big lawsuit that we all read about a few days ago. You think it was luck? I don’t.”

(Read more.)

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Federal Judge Blocks Biden’s Socialist Student Loan Agenda

 From Right Flank:

For years, everyday Americans have found themselves struggling to pay the bills and make ends meet. Childcare, jobs, and opportunities to get ahead are in very short supply right now. Much of this can be attributed to the failures of the Biden administration, namely their passing bad bills that led to inflation spiking. 

Naturally, the White House wants people to believe a different version of events. They insist that running up the national debt was needed to improve the economy and create more jobs for the American people. In reality, the only thing that Biden’s failed policies have done is engender opportunities for more chaos and destruction. (Read more.)

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Trump Distributes Supplies to Those Affected by Hurricane Helene

 From Legal Insurrection:

Oh, look. Former President Donald Trump is the first on the scene of a disaster. Not President Joe Biden. Not VP Kamala Harris. Trump is in Valdosta, GA, to meet with officials, distribute relief supplies, and address the media. (Read more.)

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The Orwellian Evolution of Banned Books Week

 From First Things:

The primary battleground is online, but censorship spills over into the retail book trade. Amazon, which controls more than half of the retail book industry in this country, famously decided to ban First Things author Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. It does, however, sell Let Harry Become Sally, Kelly Novak’s response. This is a trend. The bookshop I own sells new and used books on multiple platforms, including Amazon, and Amazon’s book bans have grown more frequent. This year, I have received twenty-four emails from Amazon informing me that they had removed listings of mine deemed “restricted content.” Some of these were absurdist computer ineptitude: I couldn’t sell an “Orchids in Bloom” journal because I had failed to designate it as a “seed or plant.” I can only conjecture that Hobbitus Ille, a Latin translation of The Hobbit, “violated community standards” due to the questionable quality of the Latin. Other bans are overtly political: Shame and Attachment Loss: The Practical Work of Reparative Therapy (a “gay conversion therapy” book); Hitler’s Table Talk; The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan; Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party; Judaism’s Strange Gods: Revised and Expanded; Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington; Islam Dismantled: The Mental Illness of Prophet Muhammad; and the antisemitic screed The Plot Against the Church.

These books are largely unsavory, and none are titles I would go out of my way to stock in my store. We used book dealers often acquire books by chance. But I am willing to bother with them if they are otherwise inaccessible. As the Freedom to Read Statement says: “Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the inoffensive.” In other words, I oppose book bans and am a supporter of banned books. “It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority.” (Read more.)

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