Dixie Rebel

  I support Elon Musk’s idea that Twitter should allow free expression. Social media tends to suppress posts that are not in line with East and West coast progressive concepts. This is a lot different from restricting things like crying, “Fire!”   Musk is facing pressure from both the left and the right. The right is posting inflammatory texts about race and gender; the left is screaming at Musk for not blocking such posts.       Kudos to SNL for allowing Dave Chappelle to host the show and tell jokes about anti-Semitism.   Today most Jews have no sense of humor, although some of the greatest 20 th Century comics were Jews.  

  TV news lives on polls, but I don’t think they are accurate.   They show to some extent what some people are thinking, but they don’t necessarily predict the outcome of elections unless there is a substantial spread between the responses.   I would not even trust a 10% differential.   I think there are many people, like myself, who do not reaspond to poll questions, so the people polled are not representative, and many do not respond honestly.   Those who do respond may strongly favor a candidte and thus tend to respond in wsys they think will help their candidate, e.g. by saying what issues they think are important.   One big problem is that most pollsters are elite Democrats from left-leaning media or academia.   Conservatives sense this and when these leftist pollsters call, Republicans are not going to cooperate with them, because they see them as the enemy. The pollsters have contempt for the conservatives they interview and the interviewees...

  The Founding Fathers were not enthusiastic about pure democracy.   In his excellent book, The Quartet, historian Joseph Ellis describes James Madison’s views on a democracy that represented the direct choices of “the people.”     “Madison’s experience at both the state and the federal level had convinced him that “the people” was not some benevolent, harmonious collective but rather a smoldering and ever-shifting gathering of factions or interest groups committed to provincial perspectives and vulnerable to demagogues with partisan agendas. The question, then, was how to reconcile the creedal conviction about popular sovereignty with the highly combustible, inherently swoonish character of democracy. Perhaps the most succinct way to put the question was this: How could a republic bottomed on the principle of popular sovereignty be structured in such a way to manage the inevitable excesses of democracy and best serve the long-term public interest?   ...

  I resent the fact that Democrats revile Southerners who have positive feelings for the Confederacy.   Our ancestors fought for the Confederacy. It is normal to have positive feelings about your forebears, especially when they did brave things.   My great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy at Shiloh and at Mobile Bay.   I will not condemn him for that.   For me the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of respect for Southern bravery and devotion.   The Confederate army did not fight against blacks.   They fought against other whites.   Slavery was an issue, but it was not part of the war; it was part of the politics.   White Confederates did not kill blacks unless they were on the battlefield as troops of the Yankee army.   Lincoln made a point of creating black military units, because there were none when the Civil War started.   By and large the white veterans of the Confederate and Union armies reconciled after the war. ...

It appears from the various bills and campaigns that the Democrats are pushing that their goal is to bring millions of Central American immigrants to the US and have them vote for Democrats.  The Democratic effort to bring more immigrants into the US has been going on for years. It is likely that the Democratic drive to bring Latino immigrants into the US was one of the main reasons that Donald Trump was elected President.   His first campaign speech, when he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower, was about immigration.   Trump is white trash and he knows how white trash thinks.   He knows the Democrats despise white trash and believe that destroying its political power is their road to political victory.   That’s one reason they applaud and encourage the destruction of Confederate statues.   Not all Southerners are white trash, but Democrats think they are.   By vilifying white trash and stuffing the country with immigrant blacks and Hispanics, t...

  Two recent articles on the Foreign Affairs website deal with the question of what Putin plans to do about Ukraine.   Will he invade or not? ·        Russia Won’t Let Ukraine Go Without a Fight ·        Ukraine in the Crosshairs I think the first ignores the history of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, while the second tends to downplay the importance of the history.   The second article refers to an essay by Putin on the history of the relationship, calling it “revanchist drivel.”   There are several matters that may be prompting Putin to threaten to invade Ukraine.   ·        Putin see Ukraine as a historical part of Russia and does not want to see it move further toward the West. He may try to keep it physically under Russian control.     ·        Lukashenko, the Putin-supported president of Belarus is bein...

 Fulbright This post of an excerpt by the Abbeville Institute from William Fulbright’s book The Arrogance of Power reminds us that not all Southerners are idiots as the New York Times and Washington Post would have us believe.  The people who got us into Afghanistan and Iraq would have done well to read Fulbright’s book.  Fulbright wrote: The attitude above all others which I feel sure is no longer valid is the arrogance of power, the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission. The dilemmas involved are preeminently American dilemmas, not because America has weaknesses that others do not have but because America is powerful as no nation has ever been before and the discrepancy between its power and the power of others appears to be increasing…. We are now engaged in a war to “defend freedom” in South Vietnam. Unlike the Republic of Korea, South Vietnam has an army which [is] without notable success a...

 John Heilman looked like an out of touch idiot on “Morning Joe” this morning, as did most of his Democratic diehard colleagues sitting around the table.  The polls on the Virginia governor’s race were off, but the polls on the New Jersey governor’s race had no resemblance to reality.  Whether the Democrat Murphy wins or loses, the polls about the election that had him winning easily were wrong.  Polling companies in America appear to be corrupt, bought by the Democrats who cite the fake polls everyday in the political punditry.  Based on polls, Hillary Clinton prepared a big fireworks display to mark her victory over Donald Trump in the 2018 presidential election.  Polling data seems to be strongly biased in favor of Democratic candidates, and the Democrats seem to cite polling more than Republicans, since the polling favors them.  Unfortunately it makes the media and election campaigns look corrupt and undermines public faith in elections and dem...

There are two components to the “infrastructure” plan being debated in Congress – a plan to do construction and a plan to distribute money to people. There is bipartisan support for the “hard” infrastructure bill to repair roads and bridges, expand internet access, and do other types of physical work. The “soft” distribution portion is actually a down payment on reparations for slavery. President Biden is committed to paying reparations because his election was totally dependent on the support of the black community, epitomized by his primary victory in South Carolina, which was engineered by black congressman Jim Clyburn, and which made him the Democratic nominee after losing badly in earlier primaries. Although President Biden has traditionally been a moderate Democrat, his obligations to both the black electorate and the progressive wing of the Democratic party are pushing him strongly to the left. The gigantic portion of his infrastructure plan that is not for physical constructi...

  The following is from a Christmas 1856 letter that Robert E. Lee wrote to his wife.  At the time he had never owned more than half a dozen slaves, and they had probably been inherited or given to him by his father-in-law, Mr. Custis.  “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral & political evil in any Country.  It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages.  I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in hehalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former.  The blacks are immeasurable better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically.  The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things.  How long their subjection may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merc...

  Watching the analysis of the 20 th anniversary of 9/11, I was stuck by how many of the talking heads were Muslims.   It looked like 9/11 and Osama bin Laden were the best things that ever happened to American Muslims.   Twenty years ago, you seldom saw women wearing head scarfs; now you see them everywhere.   It was a rough few years for Muslims immediately after 9/11 as suspicious minds tended to believe that all Muslims were terrorists.   But then the reaction set in.   American media and academia defended and supported Muslims as good, ordinary people.   As a result Muslims and Islamic ideas have become much more important to American politics and thinking.   America has become more Islamic and less Christian.   Islamists not only won the war in Afghanistan, they won the war for minds in America.   Osama bin Laden did not “win,” but he should be proud of what he accomplished in terms of promoting Islam.   In 2001, there ...

 In its effort to control global warming and the resulting climate change, the world should not ignore nuclear power.  Nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases.  Many environmentalists oppose nuclear power because they fear an accident.  They would rather freeze in the dark than build another nuclear power plant to keep the heat and lights on.  Dealing with climate change would be easier if the it did not require giving up creature comforts like heat, light, the internet, electric cars, and all the other things that run on electricity.  We can produce electricity without producing greenhouse gases.  We should not turn out backs to that option.  With current technology, it appears unlikely that the US can replace all carbon-fueled electric generation plants with renewable sources of electricity.  Wind and solar can produce significant amounts of electricity, but neither can be depended on to produce the needed amount 24 hours a day, 365 da...

The Abbeville Institute published a letter by L. Q. C. Lamar written on December 5, 1870, to commemorate Robert E. Lee’s death, which offers view of Lee very different from what we hear today.  Lamar wrote: The day of his death will be the anniversary of the South’s great sorrow. But it was not his darkest day. I was at Appomattox when the flag which had been borne in triumph upon his many battlefields was torn from his loving and reluctant grasp. After the terms of capitulation had been arranged, chance brought him to the spot where my tent was pitched.   I had seen him often before. On one occasion, especially, I remember how he appeared in a consultation of leading men, where, amid the greatest perturbations, his mind seemed to repose in majestic poise and serenity. Again, I saw him immediately after one of his grand battles, while the light of victory shone upon his brow.   But never shall I forget how completely his wonted composure was overthrown in this ...

I have had two brushes with Vietnam during my life: one was serving in the Army artillery in Vietnam during the war, the second was overseeing databases of Vietnamese who wanted to go to the United States after the war.  When I was in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, I had very little interaction with the Vietnamese. I was in a heavy artillery battery that supported American Army soldiers on the ground.   Most of the time we were stationed at firebases in the middle of nowhere, with no Vietnamese around.   A few times we had Vietnamese units on the same firebase, but we did not interact.   They supported Vietnamese units and we supported American units.   We were in northern South Vietnam, which the Army called I Corps.   Occasionally I would ride into town with supply trucks; so, I occasionally saw Hue and Quang Tri. At Firebase Barbara, on a lonely mountaintop not too far south of Khe Sanh on the Laotian border, all of our resupply was done by helicopter. ...

I was disappointed by this Atlantic Magazine article by Anne Applebaum about Mike Lindell, the “My Pillow” guy.  The title says, “The MyPillow Guy Really Could Destroy Democracy,” and the subtitle says, “In the time I spent with Mike Lindell, I came to learn that he is affable, devout, philanthropic – and a clear threat to the nation.”  After reading the article, I failed to see the threat he presents. Presumably, this is the threat that Democrats see everywhere: Trump’s attempt to undo the last election and reinstate himself as President. I don’t see this a likely to happen and I am thus not alarmed by it. Apparently, Lindell has something called “packet captures,” which are some kind of computer data proving that the Chinese stole the last election from Trump. But her article never makes clear what these packet captures are, or how the Chinese altered electoral results. I do not believe that there is anything to this. Perhaps, if you thought it would prove that Trump wo...

  The book,  Lieutenant Dangerous , by Jeff Danziger  sounds familiar to many of us other Vietnam veterans. It’s interesting to me that he ended up as an ordinance officer in Vietnam replacing artillery tubes. Since I was in a heavy artillery battery, we had many tubes (gun barrels) replaced because heavy artillery tubes could not fire very many rounds. Heavy artillery tubes were large and weighed tons. The worst place for this was called Firebase Barbara. One tube exploded there, killing two men. Another replacement tube was being hauled up the mountain we were on by a huge truck, when almost at the top, the tube began to slip off the back of the truck. It did, and rolled down to the valley floor. I suppose it is still there.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans want to change American voting laws. The Democrats want to make it easier to vote and make it more difficult to confirm that voters are legally eligible to vote. The Republicans want to make it easier to confirm that voters are eligible to vote without denying any eligible voter the right to vote.   I favor the old-fashioned method of having every voter to personally to a voting booth in his precinct. He should have picture ID which would be inspected by poll workers to make sure that he is someone on their list of registered voters. The precincts should be small enough that they do not have to handle thousands of voters trying to vote at once, creating unwieldy lines and long waits. Americans voted like this for hundreds of years and can keep doing so. Black voters were discriminated against and prevented from voting, but not because they had to vote in person; it was because of other requirements imposed specifically to keep black...

I was stuck that very little of the media coverage of the recent 4th of July mentioned that the day celebrates the American colonies’ independence from Britain. All the criticism of present-day America and its racism seemed to hypothesize that America emerged fully formed from some dark womb of non-history, when in fact it was many years old and had already formed much of its nature from its years of colonization before 1776. The hatred of the 1619 project should be directed at Britain, which ruled the colonies in 1619. The 4th of July marks the independence of the American colonies from the oppression of the British king and his rule. To ignore America’s colonial past is not just revisionist history, it is made-up history to justify hatred of the white race. Despite what blacks claim, the first slaves in North America probably did not come directly from Africa, but from trade with the existing Portuguese and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and South America, which began in 1...

A recent blog by the Abbeville Institute was about the book I’ll Take My Stand, The South and the Agrarian Tradition. Google has a preview of the book which is missing a number of pages but still provides an oppotunity to see what it contains. Published in 1930, there are essays by twelve well-known Southern authors. Here is a link to the Google preview. A lot has changed since 1930, but these essays give some inkling of what the Old South was like after the Civil War and before wide-spread industrialization, a useful counterpoint to the seemingly ever-present condemnation of the South by liberal politicians and the liberal media. In Gone with the Wind, I see Rhett Butler as the representative of the New South, and Ashley Wilkes as the representative of the Old South. I’ll Take My Stand was the voice of the Old South, a call for gentility and grace, peacefulness in the face of industrialization It was made up of the voices of twelve Southern writers, including the poets from The Fugi...

Facebook has kicked the Abbeville Institute off its platform.  This is an offence against free speech.  The Abbeville Institute is not a crazy, rabble-rousing place from what I can tell by the articles it publishs.  They are supporters of the old South, but this is not a criminal offense.  There are probably a few crazies who attach themselves to it, but this is true of any organization, including Black Lives Matter, the American Legion, the Brookings Institution, and the Democratic and Republican Parties.  Facebook appears to have a political agenda that it is forcing on the United States, as Pravda and other Communist media did in the old Soviet Union.   The book 1984 is relevant today; it has just taken us a few more years to reach its description of the political situation than George Orwell expected.   Mark Zuckerberg has become “Big Brother” whether he wants to be or not.   The First Amendment of the Constitution Congress shall make n...