THE NOT-SO-COLLATERAL DAMAGE OF LIBERATING TOLERANCE.

There's something of a Mark J. Perry Venn diagram to be contemplated featuring "People who denounce white Christian extremism" and "People who denounce people who denounce radical Islamic terrorism."  The good news: one of the family members reading names in New York this morning denounced "radical Islamic terrorism" to the applause of the crowd.

A 9/11 widow just rent rogue in NYC…

She read her husbands name and then called out Islamic terror and Saudi Arabia.

She called out Bush, Obama, Biden and JD Vance/Trump while they sat right in front of her. The entire crowd at ground zero cheered. pic.twitter.com/xICEZL6FOv

— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) September 11, 2026

She's undoubtedly getting grief from the usual suspects.

The first step in undoing the deleterious effects of liberating tolerance, and its obnoxious manifestations in cancel culture is to recognize that it exists, and it is wrong.  Consider, dear reader, the Katyn massacre.

Herbert Marcuse might have been early into his exile, and the 1950s, 1960s attempts by leftist thinkers to distinguish revolutionary from reactionary violence were a few years away.  The institutional left of that era, however, involved cancel culture.  As long as the Hitler-Stalin, Ribbentrop-Molotov agreements to carve up Poland were in place, nobody in the American left would dare say what they ought to have been saying about Nazi Germany.  During the carve-up of Poland, it was Soviet organs of state security murdered those Polish officers, and it was Soviet propagandists who asserted those dead officers were simply another day at the ditch for the Einsatzgruppen.

HERBERT MARCUSE'S BODY COUNT.

Ideas have consequences.  Consider this passage from "Liberating Tolerance," explaining what the Frankfurt School types have in store for Normals.  "Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left."

Yes, we can have a Serious Conversation in the common room about the circumstances under which there is a moral justification of political violence.  That sort of conversation is out of order a year after Charlie Kirk was murdered at a campus appearance in Utah.

Herbert Marcuse's disciples are still at it.  "Marxist University Profs Spew Tone-Deaf Calls for Violence," notes Red State's Ben Sellers.  Perhaps his rogues gallery is edited, the video clips suggest that speaking pejoratively about faculty DEI hires is not off base.  The house organ for all wokeness, all the time, corroborates.  "After Kirk’s Death, a Third of Students Say Posting ‘MAGA’ Is a Fireable Offense."  That's reporting on a recent Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression survey of liberating tolerance in practice.  "Fifty percent of students reported that blocking other students from attending a speech event is OK at least in rare cases, down from 54 percent last year, and 69 percent said the same about shouting down a speaker, compared to 72 percent a year prior."

PATRIOTISM, THE LAST REFUGE OF SCOUNDRELS.

In September of 2023, the Walworth County Democrats were touting that Hope and Change.

In October, Hamas did what comes naturally to jihadis.  The following spring, Dementia Joe challenged frontrunner Donald Trump to a debate, taunting "I hear you're free on Wednesdays."  Dementia Joe's brain failed in prime time, and the party replaced him as nominee.  That was not an improvement.

Earlier this summer, the party primary barely rejected a Madison nutcase in favor of a Milwaukee ward-heeler to stand for governor.

Rather than call attention to their embrace of the crazy, this year's tent at the Walworth County Fair went all in on the Red, White, and Blue.

The absence of crowds might say nothing about how the general election will turn out.  The best thing to do with political displays at county fairs is not to engage, whether it's a major party, a minor party,  or those advocates for an Article V convention or some similar single issue.  Orwell's weirdos hang out with Democrats, no matter how much red, white, and blue they display.

DENY COHERENT BELIEFS, FREE-RIDE ON THE EFFORTS OF THOSE WHO HAVE SOME.

My case is familiar.

I've been fighting it out on this line since before there was a Cold Spring Shops.  "Yeah, when you deny coherent beliefs of any kind, you get incoherence."  That cannot turn out well.  "If you're going to deny coherent beliefs, everybody else has to be in on the con."  That post also noted, "Arguments from authority only work when people respect your authority."

But people in authority have been undermining their authority for a long time, while dressing up in the skin suits that Erudition and Expertise have become.  Thus does Arthur Brooks, writing in The (Not Detroit) Free Press, conclude, "Millions of Americans aren’t just misinformed. They’re searching for coherence in a world that no longer provides it."

It's still up to people who don't buy the postmodern wordnoise to uphold standards.  Kurt Schlichter argues, "All This 'Feelings' Nonsense Should Make You Feel Sick."  That's notionally about the legal distinction between being out of sorts or being nuts.  In the course of his argument, though, he fires a broadside against the notion of people living "their truth."

The legal issue really has to do with whether the jurors believe she had a mental defect that made her unable to tell right from wrong, but this isn’t a hard case. It’s an easy case. It’s only made hard because a significant percentage of our society has decided that reason is inconvenient, as it leads to results that they don’t prefer, so they’ve decided to jettison it completely in exchange for a paradigm in which feelings determine reality. The advantage of a feelzocentric paradigm is obvious. You always get the result you want because the only criterion for any issue is how you feel.

Left unchecked, this idea would be the death of civilization. But of course, the irony is that only civilization can allow the frivolity of a feelzocentric paradigm to persist. Its practitioners are made safe and secure by those of us bound to the harsh rigors of reason. Basically, we create a world where they can act like idiots and not get themselves killed by other people who are controlled by their emotions. You know, kind of like the entire Third World.

It's an absence of bourgeois norms, perhaps seasoned by tribal politics and the cult of Mohammed that makes the Third World what it is, not because Third World universities are on the cutting edge of high concept philosophy.  Well, OK, that's for arbitrary values of "third world" that include France.

Bad ideas, though, have a way of trickling down from the ivory tower into common discourse.

We used to look down on people who weren’t rational. But now we look on them as sensitive, as caring and compassionate. Our Oprahized society celebrates those who prioritize the feelz. How it’s caring and compassionate to let a woman who throttled a trio of babies escape punishment is beyond me. Like you, my mind can’t wrap around people who are entirely bereft of reason in favor of emotion.

We see it online, too, with irrational people babbling endlessly about stupid nonsense in defiance of objective fact.

"Nonsense in defiance of objective fact" might not be what hangs that Plymouth jury.  As long, though, as we live in a world where "reality has no regard for your feelings" is a right-wing talking point, and uttering it might get the campus bias response team on you, it's going to be on the people who insist that logic and content must carry the day to protect themselves, and the people not so inhibited. from the consequences of denying coherent beliefs.

SECTARIANISM TODAY, SECTARIANISM TOMORROW, SECTARIANISM FOREVER.

Les Leopold asks, "Can DSA’s Brand of Socialism Attract the Broader Working Class?"

No, for reasons that are not too removed from my assessment of a few weeks ago.

When DSA candidates take to the field, they focus almost entirely on populist economic demands—housing and food affordability, fair taxes on billionaires, and Medicare for All. These are socialist in the sense that Social Security, libraries, fire departments, and our current Medicare are socialist, and yet they are also firmly embedded in our capitalist system.

I have yet to encounter a DSA candidate who discusses truly socialist reforms, like the elimination of large private enterprises and workers’ control of the corporations that employ them.

A strict understanding of things socialist suggests that anything "embedded in our capitalist system" involves acceptance of the wages system, and there is no requirement that libraries, fire departments, or pensions, let alone things like roads and water mains, must be government services (the old "mixed economy" compromise.  It is also no accident, dear reader, that Mr Leopold, good communist that he is, will be dismayed that Marxism-DeLeonism is a foreign concept to the priviligentsia who align with "democratic socialism."

NEITHER BEER NOR BRATWURST.

Imagine, dear reader, a human interest story from ninety years ago documenting the human side of the Volksbund.  Maybe it could incorporate the rhetoric of empathy and inclusion.

World War I traumatized Germans on both sides of the Atlantic – though in different ways. In Wisconsin and across the United States, war with Germany led to a wave of anti-German hysteria. Self-proclaimed “superpatriots” attacked ethnic Germans (whom they assumed disloyal unless proven otherwise) and denigrated their culture. Sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage” and hamburgers “liberty sandwiches.” Some Germans were forced to kiss the American flag to prove their loyalty, and a few were even physically accosted. In neighboring Illinois, a German immigrant was wrapped in a flag, forced to sing the “Star Spangled Banner,” then hanged. In such a hostile atmosphere, many German-Americans abandoned their ethnic ties. Milwaukee’s Deutscher Klub renamed itself the Wisconsin Club, and hundreds of ethnic Germans Americanized their names. The German Athens had become a shadow of its former self, and those who remained a part of the German cultural scene were left battered, bruised, and defensive.

A human interest story describing a quiet evening dealing a few hands of Schafkopf and enjoying some real beer, or perhaps a livelier story involving group singing or dancing to oom-pah music might put a human face on people who are, after all, neighbors, possibly co-workers, sometimes voters.

No, strike that.  Let's deploy the full culture-studies methodology in the fall of 1938 to "contextualize" North Americans who aren't troubled by the looting of businesses and the sacking of temples; who might perceive their overseas cousins as beset by internal disorder and external punishment.

THE OBSCURE HISTORY OF THE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL SIDESHOW.

Indiana Fever reserve Sophie Cunningham has a history of standing up for herself and her teammates.  That's generally something for the court, but somehow the culture wars crop up.

Now, she's teasing a book.  It's probably not about recognizing junk defenses and providing subtle cues to get a teammate a better shot.

We, unfortunately, have precious few details at this point about what might be included in her "tell-all," but two likely topics are treatment of certain athletes by the WNBA and the delusional backlash at her wanting to protect girl athletes.

All those blue-haired weirdos who are showing up at games trying silence Sophie may want to be careful what they wish for, because if Cunningham really decides to open Pandora’s box, they might not like what comes spilling out.

It's been there all along, only the national media generally doesn't notice. Visualize a bench-clearing, fan-involved brawl at DePaul's old Alumni Hall.

LET THE KIDS PLAY.

Last week, Red State's Terri Christoph urged, "Leave Sophie Alone: Conservatives Don't Need to Co-Opt Cunningham."  Let her cook, and don't let's color her appeal by tying it to the "right's influencer ecosystem."  So too, suggests Dan Wolken, with her team-mate Caitlin Clark.  "Given a clear lane to weigh in and plant her flag on one side of the issue or the other, Clark did what she always does on an inflammatory topic: Hit the eject button as fast as she can."

As we noted in a previous post using the same headline, "In women's sports, though, you can claim not to be interested in the culture wars, but the culture wars are interested in you."  Red State's Jerry Wilson, for instance, would rather keep pushing.  "The WNBA Delivers a Glorious Opportunity to Preach the Conservative Evangel."

In part, he continues, because the league's coaches keep stepping in it.  That prompted Clay Travis, who, fittingly for a radio talker given the Rush Limbaugh franchise, demonstrated absurdity by being absurd.

That's boosted the morale of Militant Normals since he dropped his plan to staff a "WNBA" roster with crossers as well as his challenge to set up a charity match between the Las Vegas Aces and a high school boy's championship team, proceeds to go to Tunnel to Towers.

It might be, though, that Miss Cunningham wouldn't take much pushing to take a side.

It’s not clear when exactly Cunningham decided to make her political views her personality, though she’d been nicknamed MAGA Barbie as early as her college days at the University of Missouri, likely because she followed and interacted with Candace Owens and other conservative names on social media. Unfortunately for everyone, it seems her latest nightmare collab is with Riley Gaines, the biggest anti-trans gadfly for MAGA sports.

Yes, Riley Gaines is on board with the Militant Normals, and former sideline reporter Michelle Tafoya is running for United States Senate from Minnesota, and it might be that former Levi's executive and onetime gymnast Jennifer Sey will be pushed into that ambit.  It's more likely, though, that each of those women stands where she does because each was mugged by reality while the identity politics mob suggested there was nothing to see.

CONTROLLING THE POLITICAL PIPELINE.

It's Friday, and a reinforcement of a frequent Cold Spring Shops theme, "Perhaps, instead of asking 'who is John Galt?,' dear reader, ask 'who is running for school board or mayor' and 'what is she proposing?'" is in order.

Town Hall's Ashley Evdokimo suggests that the Donk establishment enabled the Democratic Socialists (who might not really be socialists, but I digress) to position a lot of candidates through their Ahab-like obsession with the Golden Golem of Greatness rather than, to use the Sunday show locution, paying attention to the issues the American people care about.

While Republicans and Democrats have poured enormous amounts of energy into presidential politics, media cycles, and national messaging, the DSA has invested in something much less glamorous—but arguably much more important.

The political pipeline.

School boards become city councils. City councils become state legislatures. State legislators become members of Congress. Members of Congress become committee chairs, governors, Cabinet officials, and eventually party leaders. Politics has always been a farm system, and the DSA understands that.

Ironically, while much of the Democratic establishment spent years defining itself in opposition to Donald Trump, the DSA spent those same years defining the future of the Democratic Party. And unless Democrats outright say they’re against it, we can’t “trust” their alliances.

The emergence of Michael Harrington's disciples is also giving Never Trump conservatives heartburn, as they are personae non grata among Republicans and the irritated rump flexing among the Donks will have no truck with them.

OUR JUNETEENTH FLAG HOIST.

Yes, there is some sort of special flag for the day, but the Flag Code does not prohibit the display of older versions of the Flag.  Thus one from the Emancipation Proclamation era flies at Cold Spring Shops headquarters.

The history lesson accompanies that photograph.

Unfortunately, former president Barack Obama used the dedication of his flak tower, er, blast furnace, er, coaling dock, er, presidential center to engage in a ridiculous perfomance of presentism.  "Obama said the founders 'fell terribly short' of the Declaration's promise by leaving slavery intact and limiting the vote to white male property owners."  Well, a guy who is slagging on a memorandum of understanding that some Iranians are asserting turns Old Persia into a colony (with a Trump casino on the Caspian Sea?) is not somebody who we should respect for his intellectual chops.

MAYBE EVERYBODY LOST.

I was being flippant earlier this week, but I'm having trouble finding anyone who likes the "memorandum of understanding," which is nowhere near a treaty, let alone as well defined as Barack Obama thought his never-ratified accord was.  Then, only a few minutes ago, Red State's RC Maxwell dropped "Iranian Hardliners Denounce US Deal as ‘Surrender’ and ‘Path to Colony’."  That was quick: unbundling the opening of the Strait of Hormuz to navigation prior to discussing everything else isn't opening the Strait under Iranian regulation after everything else is signed off upon and the True Believers object.

The strongest backlash has come from the Paydari Front, also known as the Endurance or Steadfastness Front, which is a small but vocal faction of ideological purists. The group positions itself as the guardian of the revolution’s anti-Western principles.

Prominent hardline lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian, a Paydari-aligned figure and former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, has emerged as the deal’s most outspoken critic. Nabavian warned that the agreement would transform Iran into a “U.S. colony.” He slammed the deal’s requirement that Tehran seek permission from the “Great Satan” for even limited uranium enrichment. “This is surrender,” Nabavian declared, according to reports.

What, did somebody leak the Trump Organization's plans for a hotel and casino on the Caspian Sea?

A BOTCHED DECAPITATION REFUTES A FILING CABINET FULL OF POSITION PAPERS.

John Feffer's "Pete Hegseth’s D-Day Remarks Prove the US Is No Longer an Ally to European Democracy" is a predictably silly appeal to Foreign Policy in Focus types, you know, the sort of conscience-cowboy for whom "rules-based international order" is a Holy Incantation and blaming America first is as instinctive as splitting tens.

LESS PROMOTION THAN BANISHMENT?

Scott Scheall's "Why the Worst Get on Top in Academia" notes the nasty circle by which the proliferation of unfunded mandates provides career opportunities for failed scholars.

The incentive structure of the modern American university encourages relatively unsuccessful scholars, those who fail to establish fruitful research programs early in their careers, to pursue administrative positions, where they wield authority over more successful colleagues, who actually generate educational value. As a result, the American university is disproportionately governed by relative academic failures.

An effective scholar enjoys benefits impossible to find elsewhere in today’s workforce: freedom to follow ideas wherever they might lead and a considerable amount of free time to do it. Those who succeed aren’t inclined to leave the laboratory or library for administration.

Though administrative salaries tend to be higher, the rest of an administrator’s work-life is poorer in every other respect, involving endless committee meetings, paperwork, budgetary knife fights, student and parent grievance adjudication, and the difficult business of cultivating donors. Intellectual freedom and scholarly prestige are nowhere in evidence. 

I concur in part and dissent in part.  First, once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a tradition of servant leadership in higher education in which each highly respected faculty member would take a turn as department head, or dean, or provost, or president.  That was undone by two things, that proliferation of unfunded mandates, which at least until recently, implemented the aesthetic preferences of the faculty, which put defenders of faculty governance in a bad place where some hack could accuse him of Unenlightened Attitudes; as well as the problem that rotating the servant leadership works better in a department with multiple strong faculty members.  That's less common outside the Ivies and the like, and the plot of more than a few academic novels suggest it's not common even there.  Second, as a consequence, endless committee meetings, wordsmithing of documents, and knife fights over penurious budgets are the modus operandi of faculty, sometimes faculty with multiple Minimal Publishable Units on their curricula vitae: often ideas they followed that, judging from the lack of citations to their work, nobody bothered to follow further.  That research time: it's anything but free, and keeping current with what used to be circulated as working papers and what now is being uploaded somewhere has only become more challenging with online working paper repositories and journals.  Rivista Internazionale Numere Due di Bovini doesn't even get a look.

EKPYROSIS, UNDER WAY?

Roger "Tenured Radicals" Kimball sees the fires.  "Labour’s Rout, MAGA’s Surge, and Iran’s Slow Surrender."  James "Long Emergency" Kunstler also sees them.  "The Earth Moves Just a Bit."  Buckle in, he suggests.  Let's see what his Friday analysis of Our President's state visit to China looks like.

Most importantly, the Credentialed Elite's worship-words no longer have purchase.  "Republicans have finally figured out how to use [power]. We’re not going to be constrained by alleged norms and alleged principles and alleged guardrails anymore. You can call us racist all you want, and we don’t care. You might as well call us hamsters. It doesn’t matter to us because it’s all baloney. It’s all a scam. This is a bare-knuckle political fight, and we’re finally throwing fists."

YOU SAY YOU WANT SOME DEVOLUTION?

Reason's J. D. Tuccille gets to the heart of the matter.  "Government Shouldn't Be Important Enough To Fight Over."  Often it is, and his elaboration reinforces our stance on emphasizing the school board rather than the presidency.  He opens with a claim that might run counter to the sentiments in the Declaration of Independence about the Right of the People to alter destructive governments.

Government shouldn't be important enough to motivate people to kill others to gain control. Moreover, people willing to engage in violence to seize the means of governance have no business exercising political power. These are points we should be drumming home after the latest in a series of assassination attempts against President Donald Trump and other administration officials at a time of surging political violence in the United States.

You have to read through several paragraphs before it becomes clear his gripe is with Government from Washington.

The usual call, at this point, is for people to turn down the rhetoric. But that's pointless when Americans perceive that they're at risk from opponents who wield the vast power of government and plan to use it against them. That's not an irrational fear, and words aren't the danger here—the danger is government that reaches into all areas of life and which really is perilous in the hands of those motivated by malice.

"If in this country law has always been king, its empire has never been so expansive. More than ever, we turn to the law to address any problem we perceive. More than ever, we are inclined to use national authorities to dictate a single answer for the whole country," Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch and co-author Jane Nitze warned in a 2024 essay.

The "empire" that is "too expansive" is Government from Washington, and the discontents he invokes in getting to that assertion involve the national political parties treating slim governing majorities as an excuse to implement their most expansive policy wish-list, rather than as acting as a slightly more effective check on the implementations of the outgoing governing majority.  That, Mr Tuccille concludes, cannot end well.

At a time when Americans agree on so little—other than that they dislike each other—there are no "right" people to hold office and control the instruments of power. We've turned elections into existential threats to those who lose. We emphasized the "all" in "winner takes all," and we're paying the price.

Understandably fearful of government in the hands of enemies, Americans are literally fighting over political power. The violence won't stop, and will probably escalate, until there's no political danger worth fighting over.

Unfortunately, his essay ends there, rather than with a full-throated endorsement of enumerated, separated, and limited federal powers and an expansion of those policy decisions devolved to the several States and to the people.

WILL GOING THROUGH BE THE ONLY WAY OUT?

Over the years, Kurt Schlichter has maintained that leftists, and their willing accomplices in the liberal establishment, want those annoying Normals dead.  In the wake of a Democrat loyalist attempting to go kinetic at the weekend's nerd prom, he's repeating that message.

We are getting uncomfortably close to how the Spanish Civil War was started. That war was started because the communists started losing their power. We need to realize what time it is and the threats that we face. The only reason why the Left calls Trump "Hitler" and Republicans fascists is to give others permission to take him and us out. The fight against evil will continue, and I'm not sure it will end well.

His colleague Ward Clark is thinking along similar lines, although he might be thinking about a general strike of some sort, repeating "They need us. We don't need them."  That's interesting, as May Day is coming up, and the communists are organizing their own version of a general strike for that day, although it will probably be mostly kids in the schools that produce the next generation of welfare recipients reinterpreting truancy as some sort of political action participating.  He also echoes John Galt in suggesting that perhaps scorning the productive give their detractors what they want, by going away.  But rather than holing up in Galt's Gulch, he might have something more kinetic in mind.  "If the left wants to normalize political violence, and if they succeed, they aren't going to like how that works out. In any conflict sparked by such a move, the left will lose, suddenly and catastrophically, within a matter of days — maybe hours. Why? Because when it comes to a scrap, as with almost anything else, we are just simply better at it than they are."

A former Bernie Sanders booster called Batya Ungar-Sargon, suggests that the chap who disrupted nerd prom was simply acting on what his Intellectual Betters were saying.

Democrats have blamed gun violence for the rise in political violence, which is of course ridiculous, given that conservatives are much more likely to own guns, yet much less likely to engage in and justify political violence.

It’s time for the Left to take responsibility for the violence it is fomenting, justifying, and carrying out. Cole Allen’s manifesto justifying his attempted murder of the President doesn’t read like the ravings of a lunatic. It sounds like the kind of rhetoric you hear every single day from Democrats and their media. They are radicalizing their side every single day, and refusing to take down the temperature.

There are similar assertions circulating elsewhere in the right-populist internet environment these days.  She concludes, "You can’t unite around a lie."  The lie, though, might be that the usual forms of government are working as they should.  Outside the Beltway's James Joyner, who knows a few things about conflict, develops that argument.

We have increasingly cast our politics as existential. Every presidential election in my lifetime has been “the most important presidential election in our lifetimes.” And, as the parties have polarized and sorted, the stakes have certainly increased: every election is a referendum on the future of race relations, gay rights, trans rights, abortion rights, gun rights, etc.

At the same time, the safety valve that deligitimates violence in a democracy—elections—have become increasingly meaningless. Gerrymandered House seats mean few of the 435 districts are truly in play; the winner of the dominant party’s primary is all but assured of election. This is true for the Senate and Electoral College in all but a handful of states. So, for all practical purposes, most Americans have no real say come Election Day.

And that’s to say nothing of the counter-democratic, if not outright undemocratic, features that have been bolted onto the system. Voter suppression efforts by state legislatures to further skew outcomes. The routine use of the filibuster has made it almost impossible to pass legislation. A Supreme Court with an extreme partisan skew that tends to strike down policies enacted by Democrats at a much higher rate than those enacted by Republicans.

Violence is a tool of the powerless. And more and more people feel powerless.

Pay attention, though, to where the power is accreting.  Presidential elections.  Federal policies.  National legislation.  Perhaps, in place of widespread defiance of Our Political Masters, or gunplay replacing wordplay, a restoration of those enumerated, separated, and limited powers matters.  Perhaps, instead of asking "who is John Galt?," dear reader, ask "who is running for school board or mayor" and "what is she proposing?"

ROBERT REICH IS RIPE FOR THE MAD-HOUSE.

Not because he's engaging in the expected riling up of Common Dreams readers with "Trump Is Stark-Raving Mad—Impeach Him Now."  That's more or less expected, and it has been so for over ten years, complete with academicians who rely on their Liberal Bonas Fides to diagnose Our President's mental health on the basis of social media posts or out-takes from the news.

Rather, it's deeper in his essay, where the Argument from Authority gets weird.  "But some voices on the right — people who have long been supporters of Trump — have had enough."

Dear reader, who might those people be?  Marjorie "Madge" Greene.  Candace Owens.  Alex Jones.  Until about two minutes ago, those are people Commn Dreams types would refer to, if they bothered to at all, as avatars of that fascism that somehow still has not descended on Common Dreams, let alone these United States.  Judge for yourself whether his including two former staffers in supporting roles sufficiently moderates his polemic.

I've never considered the representative to be the quintessence of a philosopher queen, and "podcasting" might be a way to get paid to spout off without going to the trouble of auditioning at a local radio station and working your way up, the way Charlie Sykes got from writing Prof Scam to slagging on the "half-fast train" to becoming an occasional guest on whatever MSNBC call themselves these days.  If any of those people said things I agreed with, I did not treat that as endorsement of my position, nor did that alignment constitute my endorsement of anything they said.

But the self-styled progressives are almost as eager to embrace people who offer concurrence with them than they are to excommunicate people who violate a purity test.  Years ago, there was Ariana Huffington, whose pronouncements as some sort of conservative were on occasion cringe-worthy, and who instantly became a hero to many of the people who eagerly slagged on her as an "idiot" once she switched allegiance and put her money into what became the Huffington Post.

Robert Reich?  Predictably hysterical.

MENTAL ILLNESS AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE.

James "Long Emergency" Kunstler went to Saturday's so-called "No Kings" gatherings in two upstate New York towns.

Old folks, too, as far as the eye could see, predominately of the female persuasion: the devouring grandmothers. The Democratic Party has marshalled mental illness as its premier campaign strategy, and lately it is winning bigly around the country as mental illness becomes the go-to cope option for the ragged remnants of Boomerdom.

To his east, Common Dreams contributor Phil Wilson saw the same thing in Lesbianville, where he put a braver spin on it.

Indeed, these people, the majority for sure, sport grey hair, wrinkles, wearied gaits and maybe the strange understanding that, in a seeming eyeblink, we all have been transformed from young, zealous radicals who once chanted “two, four, six, eight, organize and smash the state,” to becoming part of a last stand against the fascist nightmare that would have blown our minds in 1968. I see young people too, but not enough. Mostly white people make up the throngs, but Northampton is just a small piece of something vastly larger.

The Fourth Estate captured the same demographic in Oregon, Illinois.

Earleen Hinton photograph retrieved from Shaw Media.

It gets tiresome, the same stuffed animals costumes, the same references to actually existing fascist states where such assemblies would be met with gunfire (I'm looking at you, Iran), and it's amusing how the more information that comes out about the corrupt establishment's fixer, the more Democrat participation comes to light.

Mr Wilson might have said the quiet part out loud. "At some point there will hopefully be mutual clarity, plans, resistance, strikes, boycotts, blocked traffic, but we need sheer numbers, and a pause in ideological oneupmanship."

GOVERNMENT FAILURE.

Passover and Easter Week approach, and some school districts and institutions claiming to offer higher education have yet to dismiss for spring break, and it might be that Congress will take their Easter or Passover or Rent Seeker recess without properly funding airport security.

It matters not for purposes of this post which Washington politicians are at fault for it, or why.  What does matter is that unreliable employers have trouble attracting and retaining staff, and that's the position acting transport security administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill finds herself in.  "We fear we will continue to lose talented and experienced employees to other jobs that can provide a steady paycheck."  I could crack wise, dear reader, about how under actually existing socialism the nomenklatura can pretend to pay people who pretend to work, whilst under actually existing labor markets, the employer who offers to pay on some future Tuesday for hamburgers flipped passengers screened today is in trouble.  "[M]ore than 1,500 of her agency's officers have quit amid recent government shutdowns — including around 480 during the current 40-day standoff."

STOP ENABLING DYSFUNCTION, GET LESS OF IT.

That's long been a Cold Spring Shops theme.

Here's University Diaries, commenting on the latest spring break atrocity out of Panama City. "Allow certain ingredients to be put together in a concentrated way in a specific location, and you can actually destroy civilized life."  Quite.  The extension to the Experimental Prefigurative Communities of Tomorrow masquerading as the multiculturalist university is left to the reader as an exercise.

Today's ingredients, concentrated in a specific location, are Moslems in Dearborn.  The editors of National Review identify the resulting destruction.  "We have a significant problem with radical Islam in this country, and unlike the September 11 hijackers, all of the perpetrators in these attacks were U.S. citizens — Ghazali, Jalloh, and Diagne were naturalized citizens, while the Gracie Mansion duo were children of naturalized citizens."

Point such things out, and brace yourself for the cancel mob.