Jerry Stratton's Blog, page 26

The Life of Stephen A. Douglas

Where Abraham Lincoln’s conservative principles made a flawed man better, Stephen A. Douglas’s belief in the responsibility of government elites for managing lesser men made him far worse.

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That’s a man, baby: Your fantasy is hurting people

We are beating and mutilating children in the name of tolerance. There will come a time when our denial of biological reality is recognized as a mass hysteria, when child castration is recognized as the barbarity that it is.

How Rural Colorado Parents Created A ‘No Politics’ Public School In Just One Year linked on Editorials

“These highly skilled parents came together to not just solve their own kids' education needs but offer a high-quality education to families in their glorious Colorado mountain town.” Educational officials told them “You’re crazy, you can’t get this done in a year.” (Where have we heard that before?) They did it anyway.

“As a classical school, it offers a low-screen, high-relationship environment and a focus on creative and critical thinking through careful attention to classic works and traditional approaches to math and science. These are things parents wanted that weren’t available through the Woodland Park School District, which like many in the nation has become computer-centered over the last several years.”

Criminal Negligence linked on Editorials

“Since 1960 crime has risen, fallen, and risen again… The changes were especially pronounced in New York, America’s most populous city and, as the nation’s media center, most prominent.” William Voegeli writes a long article but a very short history of the crime rate in the United States from 1963 to today, describes how it rose and fell, what policies were implemented in response, and how politicians reacted. This is well worth the read.

And part of that is knowing who Joseph Fournier was. Just about everyone who pays attention to politics knows the name of Willie Horton, but not the seventeen-year-old who Horton stuffed into a garbage can to bleed to death after stabbing him repeatedly.

“Democrats’ denunciations of Bush for condemning the Massachusetts furlough program were paired with their silence about Dukakis creating the issue. Very few liberal politicians, columnists, or editorialists offered an opinion as to whether the Massachusetts policy was a wise one…”

The January 6 witch-hunt

If there’s a witch-hunt starting, I’ve decided it’s best to identify as a witch.

Vaccine Regret linked on Editorials

“I don’t think my deliberative process is unique or even rare. Vaccine hesitancy isn’t ultimately a political thing, or an intelligence thing, or a race thing, whatever demographic differences may be emerging along those lines. In essence, the wait-and-see approach is a perfectly reasonable response to more than a year of gaslighting, misinformation, and despotism from official sources.”

“…the same smug idiots who lied about the effectiveness of masks, funded research in Wuhan that may have helped create the disease, then lied about that too, then lied about lying, then lied some more, are the people demanding that absolutely everybody get jabbed now, now, now. As usual they are not trying to convince us by reasoning with us transparently like adults. They are instead resorting to their usual tactics of calling us racist, delusional murderers for daring to question their impeccable wisdom and authority. This kind of behavior does not inspire confidence.”

In other words, people notice things like that. Read the whole thing—Spencer Klavan says much of what I tried to say in How to overcome vaccine hesitancy, and better.

How to overcome vaccine hesitancy

We need to take a lesson from Mark Twain. The best way to reinforce vaccine hesitancy is to force vaccinations. The best way to overcome vaccine hesitancy is to act as if vaccination is desirable.

Peace is a deal

Afghanistan isn’t the first time the left has denigrated the idea of making deals for peace. The left has never wanted to negotiate peace in the Middle East or elsewhere. They’ve always preferred unilateral disarmament. But without deals for peace, what we get is Afghanistan. Peace is always a deal. The absence of deals is barbarism.

Buttery foil-baked potatoes for National Potato Day

National Potato Day is tomorrow. And it’s a great day to grill. Here’s a simple foil-wrapped potato and onion recipe for the grill or the oven.