On Wednesday I was back on the record-breaking Number One show in all of cable TV this last quarter (and latterly the top show in all TV), "Tucker Carlson Tonight". Our thought for the day came courtesy of Cole Porter:
As Columbus announced
When he knew he was bounced
'It was swell, Isabelle
Swell...'
We have grown used to college campuses and badly-run Democrat cities bouncing Columbus. But now third-rate do-nothing Republican senators - Ron Johnson and James Lankford - want a piece of the Columbus-bouncing action, too. Tucker set up the topic:
Then I showed up. Click below to watch:
You can see the full hour with Tucker here. Congratulations to mine host for the spectacular ratings success - especially after all the woke wankers infesting the corporate boardrooms caved to Twitter fevers and yanked their advertising. Better the people's choice than that tosspot at T-Mobile's...
If you prefer me in non-visual formats, please join me tomorrow, Friday, for the weekend edition of The Mark Steyn Show - or catch up, if you've yet to hear it, with my latest Tale for Our Time, The Marching Morons.
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The leftists always think in terms of the long game. I'm wondering what effect all this rioting and destruction of history by groups of 40 or so people is having on children growing up right now, especially when you combine it with the leftist propaganda they're getting in the public schools. It would have been less concerning in the mid seventies when I was a kid because most kids weren't paying attention to the obnoxious minority on the nightly news, but now even the very young are watching video content on their I-pads or tablets organized by leftist controllers in google and you tube. Screens have become their babysitters, and those screens aren't as benign as the televisions screens of the 1970s that we watched
Just like to say that "Juneteenth" is when the news of emancipation reached Texas. The real day of Emancipation was when the order was signed on January 1, 1863. That would seem to be the correct day to celebrate, but of course, they are trying to divide us by any means possible. I wager that no true American would be ready to reverse history. We should learn from our past and that includes all of the newly awakened. I hate to see the statues desecrated and removed like they simple never existed. Best that they remain as a way to learn from the past and celebrate our ability to overcome adversity. Is the Statue of Liberty next?
Mark on with Tucker is always the best! I watch every episode of Tucker live and dvr it for re-watching with my lovely wife the next afternoon, a real treat. We shared the anger displayed. Out here us citizens are also furious with Marching Morons and back-stabbing, do-nothing pols.
Columbus not protected by the Mafia ? Wot has happened to American values ?
The NFL is now fulling endorsing the Marxists. They are going to play the "Black Anthem" along with the national anthem. I believe the name of it is "Raise our voice, Silence the rest". I'm done with sports.
Yes Brian I came across that story yesterday and was going to comment but why bother? Clever renaming of the new National Anthem by the way, very on point. I'm wondering what the kneeling numbers will be for the respective anthems. My guess is the over/under line for standees will be low singe numbers for both anthems. It takes a lot of guts to play this great but violent sport but it requires real courage to stand against the mob. I expect we'll see very little of the latter.
National past times have become a platform of wokeness and a means of showing "outrage" for a nation they had no issue with until now. To my knowledge, Kapernick stood for the flag when he was relevant and was the star but when the job that he felt he was "owed" was taken away from him, he made himself to be a martyr for social justice. In the end it's about selling merch to a radical youth that was taught such poison from a young age and a middle finger to the ones who have kept their sport alive for decades. Out with the old, in with the woke.
The trick is to let their sponsors know that you will no longer be supporting them as well as the NFL. If enough people do that the sponsors will let the NFL know of their displeasure. I'm careful to never buy Nike products anymore. I have four kids. I used to buy a lot of Nike gear. Not anymore.
The reason that statues of Christopher Columbus in particular are being toppled by BLM supporters isn't difficult to understand when you consider that (1) BLM was an anarcho-Marxist revolutionary political movement from its inception; (2) the only history book any of its various adherents are likely to have read was written by an America-hating communist and self-described anarchist named Howard Zinn; and (3) Zinn's most famous work opens with a portrayal of Columbus as a archetypal robber-baron and genocidal sadist.
From Quillette, on America successfully disseminating ideology across the West: "The US used to export Coca-Cola, television shows, and music. Today, we export outrage, deplatforming, and social mobbing. The fact that cancel culture has seeped into other countries is evidence that American soft power is alive and well. The way things are going, though, eventually the only culture left will be the one that has "cancel" behind it." - Rob Henderson, July 2nd.
With America's home-grown Woke jihadists declaring civil war - without much pushback - will the US reliably project "hard power" in the event of conflict with China? From "The Australian", on Beijing ending Basic Law in Hong Kong: "This is a grim moment, and a wake-up call to all who cherish democracy and civil rights. Geopolitically, it's similar to the Anschluss in March 1938, when Nazi Germany absorbed Austria." - Paul Monk, July 2nd.
That Hong Kong/Austria analogy is a striking one. We're probably talking about a similar number of people, HK being much more densely populated. Vienna had never been much of an economic powerhouse, even pre-1914, never mind pre-1938, but it was certainly an intellectual and a cultural one, and Hong Kong has been all of those. Annexing Austria gave Hitler a bit more manpower for the Wehrmacht, but not much else. Many of Austria's greatest minds escaped to Britain, France, or the USA. Even after its catastrophic and utterly evil "one child" regime, China is hardly short of bodies, if, as its sabre-rattling suggests, it really wants a war with the rest of the world. Destroying Hong Kong brings no apparent advantage to China, as a country. As with Hitler, or as with Mao, who Xi plainly wants to emulate, Xi Jinping is flexing his muscles, to show that he has them.
In a shooting war, I don't think China would stand a chance, but Xi, like Hitler in 1938, is presumably expecting that he can keep getting away with his incremental imperialism - because leftists in the West will aver that imperialism isn't really imperialism when Chinese communists do it. I gather that there is talk in China of conquering Taiwan, in time to celebrate the centenary of the Chinese communist party. Well, yeah, the CCP is probably out in front as the most murderous organisation which has ever existed, so why not start a war in its honour?
On CCP imperialism, there's an interesting piece in the WSJ, by Joseph C Sternberg, on why this week's events didn't take place much sooner:
"The Communist Party's previous restraint arose not from external coercion but from an assessment of its own self-interest. The motivation was primarily economic. A backward, impoverished country emerging from the maw of Maoism — as China was when Beijing promised Hong Kong autonomy in negotiations with the British in the 1980s — needed some nexus to the outside world."
"Hong Kong's free port would serve as a conduit between the then-just-barely-starting-to-open south of China and capitalist markets abroad. The territory's financial system, with its Anglo-Saxon rule of law, would offer a passage into China for much-needed foreign investment (and, although only whisper it, a tunnel out for the corrupt spoils of the mainland's statist economic model). These advantages were so great that Communist Party leaders felt they could, or rather had to, overlook the territory's democratic precocity."
Scott Morrison proposing Australia as a safe haven for Hongkongers (similar to the UK) has been met today with a stern "warning" from Beijing (which is becoming the new normal). This week, the PM announced a $270 billion plan to enhance our defence capabilities, as the prevailing wisdom is that we can't necessarily rely on the U.S in the event of a "quite likely" conflict in the region.
PS. The excess "one child" males are of fighting age (or will be, in the near future), which will serve the CCP well, militarily.
"PS. The excess "one child" males are of fighting age (or will be, in the near future), which will serve the CCP well, militarily."
They are not "excess" males, though. They are an entire generation, or even more. The Chinese could literally throw away a whole generation, in the event of war.
Yes, that should have been: _The "excess" one-child males_
A relative surplus, despite the overall deficit.
The CCP is using the same "population control" measures on Uighurs, except it's a Zero Child policy.
It's a zero Uighur policy too.
Some media are claiming that Juneteenth is a venerable holiday which has been celebrated for decades. I first heard the word in 1999 when Richard Wright published (posthumously) his second and last novel - Juneteenth .I never heard the word again until several weeks ago. Are they re-writing recent history as well as ancient history?
The media are apparently doing the same thing with the "Black National Anthem", which I just heard of this morning.
"You remember don't you? Yeah, the Black National Anthem . It's been around for a hundred years! I'm sure you've heard it many times! I'm sure you remember. "
"Um . . . well . . . yeah, I guess so . . .
I am finally prepared to "take a knee."
Have any other Mark Steyn Club members read Columbus' Memoirs/Logbooks, "The Four Voyages"?
There must be at least one MSC member out there who has read Columbus besides me. It's safe, you can crawl out of your foxhole; we're experiencing a brief moment of rationality where facts matter.
If you haven't read it yet, I'll let you in on a secret: Columbus was a liberal. He was arrested and sent back to Spain in handcuffs for trying to run the New World as a commune instead of selling it off piecemeal for profit. Neither was Columbus particularly astute in negotiating with the natives: they had him running in circles all over the Caribbean in search of non-existent gold. His investors hated him for taking their money and giving them nothing tangible in return except for failed fantasies. Columbus' style of governance was distinctly centralized and inept: starvation and disease flourished under him: his style of governance would be very familiar to someone from Cuba or Venezuela.
Never mind understanding why people are toppling his statues, I can't understand how how Columbus became a symbol of capitalist imperialism. Is this the same Christopher Columbus or his alternate universe stunt double? Will Castro, Chavez, and Bolivar be the next bad boys representing capitalist imperialism? The Left is too insane for words...
Rather than bother haggling over holidays on the calendar, why don't we just get rid of the Gregorian calendar altogether? We can declare tomorrow as Day 1 and all subsequent days will be numbered sequentially. No more annual holidays since there will be no more years. We're erasing history anyway so it seems to make sense.
We can go the French Revolution's metrification one further.
Define 1 second as 1/100,000 of a day instead of 86,400 seconds in a day.
Have 10 hour days each with 100 minutes made up of 100 seconds.
The date would start at zero and then days would be in Julian Days as the decimals.
So for the first day of year zero the Star Date would be 0.001 and the last day 0.365 and then reset to zero when the year turns over.
So, now's date and time, July 2, 2:245 pm and 15 seconds would be 0.18464757 (for year zero) What could be simpler? I haven't worked out Leap Year yet.
Have a Happy 186 weekend! (I haven't worked out weeks yet yet but am considering 10 day weeks.) I would appreciate everyone's feedback. Before you criticize this new system, though, remember that there are not exactly 10,000 km from the equator to the North Pole as Napoleon thought either, so a few minor tweaks may be needed but it's for your own good so we need to change.
An elegant system Walt, but I've rethought my original proposal. Why bother with counting days at all, let alone weeks or months. Each day should be hence forth declared Groundhog Day, and absolutely everything will be reset each morning as the sun rises. No more tradition, no more history, no more memory. Each day starts from zero.
When on with Tucker Mark usually makes good use of his satirical wit and cutting edge sarcasm to skewer lefties but last night he seemed more angry than I've ever seen him. It's becoming difficult to find any humor even the sarcastic variety in a country collapsing before our eyes and with republicans heading in a mad rush for the lifeboats while there is still time. I always support the GOP but I've never had less faith in a party seemingly lacking any core principles. Now that school opening has been pushed back yet again in AZ this piece ran in the AZ Republic - "School opening delay gives parents more time to prepare". I kid you not. Good news Mom and Dad! They have had 4 months to 'prepare' and this delay is open-ended. I assume this woman isn't a Mom and for the nation's sake one hopes she never breeds.
It would be better if they'd close the crummy public schools altogether. They're nothing but marxist indoctrination centers where I live. Kids would get a more grounded and honest education in the woods than in those schools.
There is that point for sure Kitty. I guess at the time being I'm more concerned about the plight of the parents, especially those who must work to support the household. The lucky ones have nearby grandparents to lend a hand. I certainly agree that even minimalist home schooling comes out way ahead of what our kids are taught in our Marxist re-education camps.
I'm beginning to wonder if the push to keep schools closed is coming from a broader perspective on the left's intended outcome. There are a lot of single parents who rely on public schools being open in order to work. If they can't send their kids to school, and especially if their places of business are still closed or at least reduced, they'll be looking for a larger government handout from the brokest government in all of history to survive.
Everything obama did was geared toward the destruction of America with the long term effect of helping to bring down Christian civilization. Adding $10 trillion to the national debt can be put at the top of that list, (that and selling automatic weapons to drug cartels and gangs on the southern border while simultaneously opening that border and advertising on radio stations south of the border that the country was open for invasion with big hand outs to the invaders). Our national debt has passed the $23 trillion mark making the dollar more vulnerable to becoming worthless. It's just a matter of months now before the dollar starts to lose its value on the international market, especially if the US economy is down the drain. Then China will strike, when we can no longer afford to pay for our military.
What point is there to any of this? This should be a time of celebration for Republicans but it doesn't really matter who is where. Trump made some spectacular SCOTUS picks. Well, one anyway...so far. Kavanaugh hasn't yet had the opportunity to stick the knife in our backs. Now, we're threatened with the rumor that the 2 last conservatives on the court might be retiring. There is no refuge. Sure, Trump has been satisfyingly belligerent, but it's all for naught. Conservatism is dead, root and branch.
Republican Senator Day - they go back into hiding for 6 years if they see their spines. Hilarious! Let's get this done while Bill Murray is still around to do the movie remake.
You come off as being very pessimistic in the extreme Brawndo. Welcome to the club. I'm detecting increasing signs of wokeness even on this web-site. To each his own and all viewpoints are welcome here which doesn't mean I can't find this creeping trend among many conservatives troublesome. National Review gave it up even before the election and I find the Heritage Foundation showing signs of becoming a bit wobbly lately. Perhaps I'm being unfair. Was it ever truly a straight down the line conservative Foundation? Still some great people there of course.
In all honesty, Juneteenth seems to me like a day that should clearly be a uniquely American holiday. It SHOULD be celebrated because it's effectively Independence Day 2.0. After learning about it, I have to admit being surprised that it hasn't long since been an official holiday. And I'm even more surprised that the "usual suspects" who push for paid holidays never pushed for this one before.
Now, having said that, the circumstances under which all this is taking place are clearly less than ideal. The pressure for this to be a holiday is now tantamount to a threat, and agreeing to it creates the appearance of giving in to the mob. But that doesn't change my mind that this should have long ago been an official holiday. Had it been recognized as a holiday earlier (much earlier), and had our country taken the time to celebrate what was a great achievement, then maybe we wouldn't be where we are now.
Slavery ended in the United States on Dec. 6, 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. On June 19, 1865 the U.S. was in a state of war with Texas. Juneteenth is a meaningless milestone in American history.
I am also in favor of eliminating Columbus Day, just don't replace it with anything. Countless thousands of State and Federal employees would not be needed if we cut down the number of holidays. Maybe we should be thinking about cutting another holiday in January. It is such a short time after New Years.
I always toast the new year with a remembrance of the Emancipation Proclamation, issued two and a half years ahead of Texas's belated acknowledgment of the--what is the word?--oh yes, law.
"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free....
"And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God."
Perhaps not as pithy as "Juneteenth", but I've read worse. Just words, you say? Slavery wasn't finally abolished for another two and a half years? I would ask in response: what was worth celebrating given the ensuing century of Reconstruction and Jim Crow? At least the Emancipation Proclamation gave the Union a moral cause equal to/greater than the Confederacy felt it had. New Year's Day is another holiday I could do without. Emancipation Day, however; that's a day for pause and reflection.
Juneteenth was only pertinent to Texas. If you want to celebrate the end of slavery, September 22nd is the more fitting day. Get rid of Labor Day if you need to replace a holiday.
Why not Cinco de Mayo? (or if Argentina Sinko de Sheffield").... Juneteenth is so unique as to not be on the radar except as an amplified genuflection to BLM. Being in America used to be a celebration 24/7/365. This all creates intersectional holidays. Maybe the release day for Japanese internment in 1945 (without returning their property). Maybe the day the Lakota defeated the Cheyenne to take the Black Hills from them. Or.. Nov. 3 2020 when the reactionary counter-revolutionary fascists were defeated and the victorious and glorious Socialist (nee Communist) Workers Democratic Patriotic Front won final control of the once corrupt USA? That's where it is going.
"I am also in favor of eliminating Columbus Day, just don't replace it with anything."
Well Walt, how about Canadian Thanksgiving day (same as Columbus day)? Think of it as a lame warm-up for the real thing. It gives our family a great excuse to consume an extra turkey. Maybe call it America's Hat Day.
I'd have to agree. Sounds more like a State holiday in Texas if anything. Either January 1 or December 6 as suggested would be more appropriate. To toss in my own contender, what about April 9, the day Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse? I'd never even heard of Juneteenth until someone complained about Trump having a rally on June 19.
Actually the Emancipation Order was signed on January 1, 1863.
Tucker Carlson is really impressive, especially lately. And Mark, your assessment is perfect and anger well founded. It will be necessary to once again drag Republicans across the finish line and insist they get out of the way of actual conservatives.
Tucker has become must-watch tv. I have left of center friends now tell me they watch Tucker whereas they wouldn't have dreamed of watching FoxNews even a year ago. China, coronavirus, and now this cultural madness have made him indispensable.
Seems there's quite a bit of chatter now urging him to turn to politics.
Pause Boycott--
Well, I missed my greeting for Juneteenth, but I am hoping that all of you have a very happy Julorth.
Resume Boycott
Juneteenth: The day slavery ended but know one will remember who ended it.
Very well said, Brian.
Apologies for using "know" and not "no".
I am one of those benighted that heard about Juneteenth 3 weeks ago. I rather like it. It was a spontaneous celebration over an excellent piece of news, reflecting a bit of our nation's colorful history. I'm hoping Mark is wrong, that Juneteenth doesn't become anti-American. We shall see. Mark is on the money about tearing down statues: the point is to destroy and to show unbridled anarchy, nothing more. There is no "sense" in their causes, because sense requires logic, which requires thought. We are viewing raw emotional release, something that the more civil of us were trained to control.
I, too, am appalled at our Republicans who claim to want my vote, but have no idea what is important to me, people like me, or this country. Even Mitt Romney, who impressed me with corralling the Olympics a few years ago, can't seem to shake some sort of bleeding-heart, spineless grovelling. We now have no party to call ours, no associations now that Conservative Inc. has adopted whining over vision, and few decent, articulate spokesmen, none of which are political leaders. I guess that's why we rally around Mark and Tucker. We have much work to do.
Juneteenth is specific to Texas, commemorating "Union army general Gordon Granger announcing federal orders in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, proclaiming that all slaves in Texas were free."
Quite so Wm. Slaves in Texas were free on paper already, but they didn't know it yet until the announcement was made on June 19, 1865. If you want to celebrate the end of slavery in the whole country, it should be Dec 6, when the 13th amendment was enacted. That got rid of slavery in non Confederate slave states, like MD, MO, DE and KY.
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is carrying on the proud tradition of Paul Ryan.
Love you comments.
P.S. The French call Paul Ryan "a cheese eating surrender monkey".
Non, non, non.
The French call Ryan 'a pasteurised cheese eating surrender monkey'.
I'm getting a fair distance OT, but you will struggle to find unpasteurised French cheese, these days. It does exist, but there isn't much of it. It's a shame, because the difference between, for example, unpasteurised Camembert and the usual supermarket version is the difference between a great delicacy and compressed cardboard. The French have quite a talent for inventing great things and then ruining them.
Actually a fake Wisconsin Butter Eater using white oleo-margarine with butter-colored dye capsule. (that is a true historical note on how margarine was required to be sold in Wisconsin in the '50's.)
So we combine the Juneteeth holiday (make it the 19th) with the new founding of Amerika date...
Wonder when we'll see the first bumper sticker: 6191619
Your bumper sticker ends in the number 19, Calypso Louie's most important number. It also has a second 19 signifying something. Awesome.
When Gaga Joe is in the PoC House, in Farrakhan Drive, MalcolmXville, District of Castro, will Biden get on the blower to Boris Johnson and complain that two places in Britain have unmentionable names?
"Ermm, Brian..."
"It's Boris, Mr President."
"Ermm, yeah, Brian, whatever. Thing is [long pause] people are tellin' me that you Brians have a town named after George Washtub and another named after [long pause]...Albert Linoleum. I got my finger on the trigger of, you know, those pointy things which go 'BANG' and, ermm, you know [long pause], they're all pointy-pointed at you, in London, Ontario. Change them names, Vladimir, or I get to, ermm, push this-"
[Remainder redacted.]
Celebrate Juneteenth in Texas, if the people of Texas want to. It commemorates a Texas event.
The origins of Juneteenth were the spontaneous celebration of emancipated slaves who found out they were liberated long after the actual emancipation. But in the dark ages something as honorable and authentic as that is bound to be vandalized and corrupted. The illiterate bigotry that tears down our history will not replace that history with something more honest and authentic.
"When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along." - Carl Sandburg.
"I am appalled at your bill that suggests canceling Columbus Day. Yes, many people do celebrate it and yet you want to trade one segment of America's heritage against another, not to mention appeasing domestic terrorists. Please do not do this. People of Italian and Hispanic origins live in this country too.
Surely, there are more pressing issues (such as stopping all of this looting, statue smashing, and protecting the public from domestic terrorism) which need addressing."
That is what I wrote to Senator Johnson just now.
I wasn't so kind.
I hear you Wm. P. I waited a day to write so I had cooled down a bit.
Is it any coincidence that Tucker generates his highest ratings after Mark returns to his show?
The point about about Juneteenth that it will become the anti-American holiday is quite prescient. Because that is exactly how it will be celebrated.
As far Columbus Day, it make perfect sense the progressives would want to get rid of his day. After all, he did not submit to the autocratic group think of his time. Everyone thought the world was flat but he believed it was round.
As both Mark and Tucker have pointed out, there is no pleasing the mobs currently raising hell in cities. Just look at NYC where the City Council cuts the police budget (with crime going up) and the mob then says it is not enough. This is why we do not negotiate with terrorists. And, if New York endures another Islamic terrorist attack because of such defunding, these spineless leaders and their media handmaidens will bear full responsibility for such carnage!
The one video from NYC that caught my attention last night was the clip of the protestor taunting an African-American officer as a traitor to his race for serving as a cop. So, the BLM movement wants to segregate the police force again? Didn't Dr. King and other leaders die to end segregation? No wonder the BLM movement feels at home in the party of Senator Robert "Sheets" Bryd!!
It is certainly intended by the Left as the anti-American holiday. I doubt those who have celebrated it in the past treat it that way.
Celebrate it by dressing up in Lincoln hats and reading the Emancipation Proclamation, or smashing shackles, and it wouldn't be anti-American.
Michael, I think you're right about Columbus being an independent thinker and how that infuriates the Left. He's perhaps the ultimate example of a guy who simply wouldn't follow the science...
The old segregation was bad because it was motivated by white supremacy. The new segregation is good because it is motivated by black supremacy.
Since canceling holidays is the latest fad, would it be impertinent of me to suggest canceling MLK Jr. Day? Not that he's unworthy of the honor, but is he any more worthy than George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, whose February birthdays are now lumped in with the likes of James K. Polk and Chester A. Arthur? I actually find Dr. King a creditable successor to Lincoln and the Founders: his moving rhetoric cites both in his call that "this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.'" (Anyone else hear the echo of Lincoln at Gettysburg? "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom"?) I would miss this language more than I can express, but if all of American history is fruit of the poisonous tree, it's all got to go, from Columbus to King. Out: the United States of America (USA). In: the Communal Republic Against Bourgeois Society (CRABS). I'm itching to get going.
Josh, I'm all for renaming the country CRABS. It really does capture the essence of the movement. And don't worry about a decline in language. With great orators like Al "Resist We Much" Sharpton and Joe "Corn Pop" Biden taking over, we'll have to spend hours studying their speeches just to figure out what they said. I'm a bit afraid to ask, but have you given any thought to what our new flag will look like?