Unca Darrell

JULY 17, 2019 / Tammy Bruce on resentment and victimhood

For the Democratic Party machine . . . there can never be success[. There] always has to be a new appended wrong or violation, some new campaign to convince you that victimhood will never end, and you must always resent, well, everyone. Including those who may think differently or simply disagree politically. . . .

Americans seeing each other as neighbors, friends and colleagues as opposed to the malicious “other” is to Democrats as water is to the Wicked Witch. . . .

President Trump’s outreach to black, Hispanic and gay Americans is something the Democrats have never faced before from the Republican machine and its previous . . . candidates. Now the Democratic Party’s big play during their 2020 presidential primary season is to distract their base by telling them they are owed something by everyone else, while stoking hatred of the president and in some cases, the country herself.

Democrats don’t want to have to explain what happened to Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Seattle, etc. They can’t paper over the failure of liberal policies so they want to make neighbor suspicious of neighbor, friend resentful of friend. They want Americans isolated in warring tribes, seeing each other as the enemy. . . .

(Tammy Bruce, "'Gay reparation': Democrats reinforce the politics of resentment and victimhood," Independent Womens' Voice, June 26, 2019)

JULY 16, 2019 / Higher education faculty: Do as we say, not . . .

. . . as we do

From Mark Bauerlein, "Diversity's Worst Failure -- the Faculty," Minding the Campus: Reforming our Universities, July 2, 2019:

For the diversity engineers in higher education, life keeps yielding disappointments. A new study shows once again how far colleges and universities lag relative to . .  .

JULY 15, 2019 / "The danger of a 'woke' Democratic presidential primary is . . .

. . . that each candidate's extremism causes other hopefuls . . . 

. . . not only to follow suit, but also to become even more radical. One example: . . .

JULY 14, 2019 / Suicide? Or . . .

. . . spiritual wisdom, transcendent purpose?

The rate at which Americans take their own lives has been climbing for 20 years, prompting policy makers and medical experts to search for novel suicide-prevention practices. But one approach is as old as civilization itself: . . .

JULY 13, 2019 / Far from seeking an earthly paradise . . .

. . . the prudent leader pursues gradual reform.

Wise statesmanship rejects the extremes. But while the prudent leader is often cautious, he is not timid. "The key to prudence," [Greg] Weiner writes, is. . .

 

JULY 12, 2019 / Noonan: Democrats . . .

. . . detached from reality.

JULY 11, 2019 / "[T]he Achilles' heel of today's American liberalism . . .

. . . [is] the barely disguised sense of superiority not only toward . . .

JULY 6, 2019 / The Houston Chronicle gets the Fourth of July right . . .

. . . almost

UNCA D no longer subscribes to The Houston Chronicle. I have long objected to the newspaper's hard-left progressive voice on politics, economics, culture, and religion. Still, I would have kept buying the paper, but for the editorial board's decision last year -- in lockstep with progressive elites on the coasts and campuses -- to mock and condemn Christians and other religious believers for daring to offer prayers in response to crises of the day. Live-and-let-live gave way to our-way-or-the-highway. The board's contempt for traditionalists and conservatives was no longer hidden.

One item in my bill of particulars against the Chronicle's editorial board was its years-old antipathy toward traditional American holidays.

For years, the Chronicle has demeaned the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and other rites from the calendar of America's civic and religious traditions -- often by silence, other times by hijacking the day to whine about one triviality or another.

Never, ever did the modern Chronicle simply celebrate, happily, noisily, and [unself-consciously], with its readers. That would have gone a long way toward creating a bond between the newspaper and those it purports to serve: "We may have our differences on one issue or another, but [on] this day let's put them aside and celebrate the ideas and values we share."

This year the Chronicle still could not help from soiling its editorial on Independence Day with another predictable diatribe against President Trump. Still, for the first time in my recent memory, the editors said the right things about . . .

JULY 5, 2019 / Houston's Star-Spangled Salute

 

MAIN COURSE: Chelsea Cymone sings, Steven Reineke conducts Houston Symphony Orchestra, at Houston's Miller Outdoor Theatre, Independence Day, 2019

DESSERT: Bombs burst in air

THANKS to the artists, the pyrotechnicians, the city, ExxonMobil, and thousands of Houston patriots who showed up to celebrate the music, the fireworks, and America the good and the beautiful.

More of Unca D's celebratory photographs here.

JULY 4, 2019 / Calvin Coolidge on the 150th anniversary . . .

Calvin Coolidge | July 5, 1926
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always . . .