Are there any Americans left?
Sitting on the patio watching as the breeze scatters cherry blossoms across the lawn. Not a cloud in the sky. Serenaded by a lawnmower somewhere in the background and competing songbirds. Life is rather pleasant. Right here. Is this what I was supposed to want? Is this the dream? Is this the product of my pursuit of happiness found at the end of a long road of hard work? My pot of gold? I suppose it is if one is content. Or maybe I got this whole concept of pursuing happiness or living the dream somehow backwards.
The United States of America is unique, exceptional, in that it is the only country on the face of this planet founded on the concept of individual liberty bound by a Constitution that guarantees it. A country founded on the belief that all are free to pursue life, liberty and happiness. The pursuit of happiness? Yes. The only requirement is that the pursuit aligns with the laws of the land.
From the beginning of our country people have taken up arms, fought and died to guarantee the pursuit, not define it. No one has ever fought or died in war to defend what you believe. They fought to defend your right to believe it. As we continue our civil war with every identity group demanding that others kow-tow to their world view, it is important to make that distinction.
If your life centers on a sexual relationship with a member of the same sex, you can do that here in the land of the free. You have no right however, to expect me or anyone to embrace your lifestyle or make special concessions for it. The reasonable expectation that you do have is that because of your beliefs, no one is going to throw you from the top of a tall building.
It is quite obvious when many of these groups declare their desire for fair and equal treatment that what they clearly want is dominance. They want to oppress any opposing point of view and destroy anyone who does not accept their way. That is not pursuit of happiness. That is not freedom. That is totalitarianism. Absolutism. There is only one way and it is our way. That is not American. Or to quote our President, that is just not who we are. Perhaps if you believe that way, it is the end of America you seek. You seek to end the exceptional rule. You want a rule where I now must agree to fight for what you believe and not your right to believe it. You want a rule where I must forego my view of the pursuit of happiness and embrace yours.
I am an American. Freedom is my birthright. It is also yours. I will defend our birthright. I will never bend myself into a politically correct pretzel out of fear of being labeled a bigot for not accepting what you believe.
Considering the millions of immigrants who have entered this country illegally and the thousands more that continue to pour across our wide-open borders, one must wonder how many of them want to become Americans. How many of them got up that morning and said I am walking across this desert and that border because I want to be an American? How many of them have even the slightest idea of what being American means? Why did they come here? They know America is a wealthy nation, the land of plenty and they want some of it. Fair enough. But they are coming here to obtain some of that wealth with no understanding of what created it in the first place or what it takes to preserve it. But, in fairness, neither does many supposedly college educated Americans these days.
There is certainly a cultural civil war underway. Identity groups want everyone to listen to them and no one else. They appear not to care if America lives or dies preferring to stand on our flag rather than beneath it. Immigrants continue to pour in by the millions. There is no evidence they seek to be Americans, preferring instead to fly the flags of the failed nations and cultures they fled. At this rate, some future generation may look around and wonder if there are any Americans left.
America the place may end some day. America the idea never will.
© 2016 J. D. Pendry All Rights Reserved
Category: Politics
That was pretty damned awesome!
Agree 100%!
Steve S, and GI Jane said it, I’ll just add that I agree, “pretty damned awesome!”.
Yup! Everything they said.^^^
I came here to see the posers get reamed. I stay for that and to relish the words and wisdom of J.D. Pendry.
Word … Keep ’em coming, J.D.
Well, I’ll be here long after the Totally Rude Party of ‘THEY’ dies away to the noise spectrum it rose from. So will you. I always thought you had to earn special privileges. It appears that no one told THEM about that part. Maybe it just stems from not learning good manners and common decency, and from finding out that if THEY squawked loud enough, someone would cave in.
All THEY know about is how to be rude as hell and throw tantrums to get what they want.
Maybe it’s time to say ‘If you want it, you have to earn it.’
Maybe it’s time to say ‘No’.
Your typing says ‘No’ but your recipes say ‘yes’.
Flirt.
Lmao!
The culture war is all but over. I know this b/c the other side managed to permeate our institutions, from schools to the military and all points in between. The media we know about and their incessant messages of what is good and bad, right and wrong, moral and immoral, work on the mush that pass as brains nowadays. The Constitution, we have heard from many for decades now, is a living document, one that should not be taken literally, a malleable instrument for social change. And that’s the death knell. It has happened in my lifetime, the small group of lawyers who are presumed to know more than the rest of us. Hey, how come none of us saw the fundamental right of marriage in the Constitution? How come the country’s greatest legal minds (outside of the court, that is) failed to recognize that obamacare was just a tax? And when the shit really hits the fan and Iran develops and tosses a nuke at Israel, Norkland fires one at Japan, or Vlad stops overflights of our vessels and decides that state security requires him to draw a new line that is backed by bullets and bombs, what then? Who steps up? The millions of illegal aliens? The LGBT? Yeah, we are cooked and no one president is going to overcame years and years and years of transforming Amerika.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings do seem to be warming up their “terror and slaughter” act. That will suck, but for what small consolation that it might bring I suspect that most of us here are far better prepared for that than the special snowflakes who make up the overwhelming majority of SJWs.
I celebrated diversity this weekend with a pretty girl sitting next to me.
.22LR pistol (X2), .25 auto, .380 auto (X2), 9mm para (X2), .40 S&W, .22 winchester magnum rimfire rifle, and .17 HMR rifle.
She was deadly with that .22 mag Winchester lever action with open sights.
Celibrate diversity with us as we graduate towards heavier calibers. All is not lost.
My most recent celebration included a beautiful woman and the following calibers: 5.56, .243 Winchester, 7.62×39, .30-30, .308, .303 British, 7.62x54R, .30/06, .38 SW, .45 ACP, 12GA, and 20GA.
Alcibiades vs. Pericles The following dialogue between Alcibiades and Pericles, Athenian general is recounted by Xenophon in “Memorabilia”. Note what Pericles says at the end. Alcibiades: Please, Pericles, can you teach me what a law is? Pericles: To be sure I can. Alcibiades: I should be so much obliged if you would do so. One so often hears the epithet ‘law-abiding’ applied in a complimentary sense; yet, it strikes me, one hardly deserves the compliment, if one does not know what a law is. Pericles: Fortunately there is a ready answer to your difficulty. You wish to know what a law is? Well, those are laws which the majority, being met together in conclave, approve and enact as to what it is right to do, and what it is right to abstain from doing. Alcibiades: Enact on the hypothesis that it is right to do what is good? or to do what is bad? Pericles: What is good, to be sure, young sir, not what is bad. Alcibiades: Supposing it is not the majority, but, as in the case of an oligarchy, the minority, who meet and enact the rules of conduct, what are these? Pericles: Whatever the ruling power of the state after deliberation enacts as our duty to do, goes by the name of laws. Alcibiades: Then if a tyrant, holding the chief power in the state, enacts rules of conduct for the citizens, are these enactments law? Pericles: Yes, anything which a tyrant as head of the state enacts, also goes by the name of law. Alcibiades: But, Pericles, violence and lawlessness ’ how do we define them? Is it not when a stronger man forces a weaker to do what seems right to him ’ not by persuasion but by compulsion? Pericles: I should say so. Alcibiades: It would seem to follow that if a tyrant, without persuading the citizens, drives them by enactment to do certain things ’ that is lawlessness? Pericles: You are right; and I retract the statement that measures passed by a tyrant without persuasion of the citizens are law. Alcibiades: And… Read more »
Did you ever hear of the Irish community? How about the Japanese, Chinese, or German communities? How about the heterosexual community? I haven’t, not in terms of a separate segment of our nation who share common political self interests. Ever heard of the Latino community? How about the Black community? The LGBT community? I’ve heard of them. So have you and therein is found the source of much of Amerika’s making and America’s unmaking.
This is exactly how I feel and have told others, however, not as eloquent as JD has.
I don’t care who you’re shagging (within the law) as long as you don’t tell me I *have* to accept it. I don’t *have* to do shit other than die and pay taxes.
The fact is that none of us has to accept anything that we don’t want to accept. But try to avoid the large, flashing, neon lights telling us otherwise. Schools (flash), workplaces (flash), TV shows (flash), newspapers (flash), radio (flash), government (flash,)….flash, flash, flash. The allegory of the cave comes to mind. For many people born after a certain year, the flashes are the false reality, shadows cast on a wall, mistaken as real.
Largest GDP in the world? IMF still says it’s the US by almost 2 trillion over the entirety of the EU…
We still produce more, spend more, give more, and live more freely than anyone on the face of the earth.
Christian histrionics aside, nobody is forcing you to like anyone else in the nation…no one is forcing you to accept anything, some groups are certainly seeking to be treated as equals and since that seems at odd with certain christians and their values somehow christians are translating that into an attack on their beliefs or being compelled to accept the unacceptable.
It’s truly entertaining watching christians fumble about wringing their hands all because some homos want to marry each other and live next door…you’d think the world was going to end as they knew it. Nothing makes me laugh more than the concern over some cakes being baked or someone taking a piss, when all along the same bakers were making cakes for liars, thieves, adulterers and anyone who walked in….
Sure I’m not a fan of the general shift I’ve seen where celebrity seems to be the end all and be all for our nation, but we’ve always been looking at sports figures and movie stars as though there were somehow flawless when the reality was simply we never knew about their flaws because they weren’t reported.
The world won’t end when being gay is no different than being a divorced woman with kids, it will just move on. America won’t end because of that or the illegals, it will just continue to evolve.
Long after we’re dead the next group of old farts will continue to piss and moan about the decline of civilization, it was ever so and will be ever thus.
Oh, but they are, VOV.
Don’t accept? You’re a bigot, racist, homophobic mysoginist.
What the SJWs can’t comprehend and will never accept is that there’s a subtle yet substantial difference between accepting and condoning a behavior, lifestyle, etc.
Tolerance means I tolerate…nothing more and nothing less.
There are a lot of folks I’m never going to like and I don’t much give a flying fuck whether they like that or not…but tolerating them is part and parcel of being an American…
SJWs think tolerance means acceptance, the reality is they simply don’t understand the definition. I tolerate that some people believe in fairy tales, I tolerate those who live inside our borders but do nothing to participate in our society, and I tolerate an awful lot of other useless fucking turds…but that’s a far cry from acceptance.
Heinlein still says it best: The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.
I’ve always been and will always be a fucking surly curmudgeon…
And tolerance begins and ends between someone’s ears. It only takes what you can’t tolerate moving in next door for the war to begin. Rather humorous example from my neck of the woods. Small, expensive ranchettes development out in the sticks where horses and cattle are still common. Within six months time of the ranchette development opening, we had a local lawsuit started to zone the area against horses and ‘livestock.’ (Horses are not considered livestock out here.) New ranchette neighbors didn’t like the animal smell — in an area that not only grew up on horses and livestock, but was sold to the new owners with the ability to have horses and livestock being one of the selling points!
It’s no different with any other situation of tolerance. The vegan neighbor who finds the guy next door LOVES to barbeque on weekends. The lady who buys a house next to the railroad tracks only to find out that yes, that train that goes by at 2am DOES have a whistle. The guy who moves in next door has a live-in boyfriend. Name it. Tolerance is the last nerve, and somebody will eventually stand on it.
I’d say that the SJWs are not looking to get others in our society to merely accept certain behaviors, choices, lifestyles, etc.; the SJWs are actively seeking to COMPEL members of our society to CELEBRATE those certain behaviors, choices, lifestyles, etc., and they’ll eagerly do so with the force of law if they can get away with it.
That way, you can be punished if you don’t overtly agree with them.
How’s that for “tolerance”?
See my quote above for the more complete part of this.
Alcibiades: And what of measures passed by a minority, not by persuasion of the majority, but in the exercise of its power only? Are we, or are we not, to apply the term violence to these?
Pericles: I think that anything which any one forces another to do without persuasion, whether by enactment or not, is violence rather than law.
There’s a huge difference between doing something for the sole purpose of getting attention for ‘hurt feewings’ and simply asking if someone will provide a service or product for you.
At some point, this nonsense will no longer garner the attention that gets the attention whores on TV to whine, and the rest of us will be able to go back to our regular lives.
Until we figure out exactly who and what is truly the enemy we are fighting, we will continue to paddle around in confusion and misery as a nation. It’s just that simple — and that complicated.
I am going to share this column.
That’s a keeper.
Not much to argue with here, nice monologue.