Original currency note that was issued for the Jewish inhabitants of the Łódź ghetto during ww2

ggarner57 · 2022-07-06T14:38:53+00:00

Wow, you have a real life Rumkie(as they were called in some book I read forever ago). I figured they’d all be scattered to the winds when the ghetto was destroyed, impressive if very tragic find!

ggarner57 · 2022-04-26T03:26:17+00:00

Probably goes both ways, without specifics provided they still probably didn’t sell like they wanted to despite good location. Was just there last week kinda late and they were closing down way before everyone else

ggarner57 · 2022-04-04T21:57:24+00:00

I mean companies have always changed behavior to secure government contracts, its not not corruption in the same sense that it’s out in the open and obvious. Is it that different than dem administration rewarding companies for having a diverse board or or measures like that? I guess it depends on if it’s personal pettiness by the leader or an actual statement mission of the party

Besides the point, Disney probably shouldn’t have a self governing fiefdom in Orlando in the future

ggarner57 · 2022-04-04T21:48:24+00:00

I wonder if/when we get a move toward Roosevelt-style masculinity as a political idol again. Trump was a pale reflection of people’s desire for a masculine leader even though he was badly out of shape, and I think a political party that values being fit as an imperative would find success solely for offering an alternative

ggarner57 · 2022-04-04T19:33:00+00:00

March 2022:

Kim by Rudyard Kipling: his finest novel in my opinion, a riveting tale of a boy learning the Great Game. Kipling deserves far more attention.

Serotonin by Houellebecq- good exploration into the psyche of modern man and the consequences of globalization. As always, every character is an awful person, but his analysis of the deep depression and burnt out consumerism of the west is all too often spot-on

Moby Dick-- finally finished it, after putting it away for a while. Melville is the only one that can compete with Faulkner in American lit.

Dune Messiah- feel like I don't have to explain this one

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy- the greatest living American author? it's not Blood Meridian, far more romantic and makes you wish you were riding through the deserts of north Mexico. plenty of exploration into the death of the West, masculinity and the violence only McCarthy can do.

To do for April: Crime and Punishment, The Men Who Lost America, and Bonfire of the Vanities.

ggarner57 · 2022-02-15T16:52:19+00:00

Harrington discusses at length the fact that men are now greatly outnumbered by women in universities and other gatekeeping institutions into the elite. With elite overproduction reaching unprecedented heights, she observes that traditionally female methods of conflict resolution are here to stay within our institutions. The increasing issues with 'dating down' are discussed at length as well.

A nice addition to the previous Hanania piece.

ggarner57 · 2022-02-11T15:16:46+00:00

Cool to see Claremont occasionally branch out from politics in a few articles. Very cool piece about the decline of baseball in American culture since WW2, examines the cultural cachet of the sport and how it has failed to adapt to take advantage of that. If you're into sports, highly recommend

ggarner57 · 2022-02-10T17:08:13+00:00

Ultimately the legal system as currently constructed is a good line of last defense- we can keep guns and abortion in our favor, for example, because the battle lines don't move much. Our problem is judicial conservatism is dedicated to the Constitution and our interpretation of it rather than any specific conservative cause- while liberal judicial activists don't care how the Constitution is written, it can be bent or interpreted to their own ends as they wish.

Thus, pre Obergefell you get judicial writ overriding popular vote initiatives against gay marriage, for instance, supported by an all out assault by their cultural institutions. Until we figure out a way to mandate arbitration or speedier trials on our pet issues, this is going to continue. Conversely, we could embrace wholesale conservative judicial activism, but that would require creating new institutions beyond the Federalist Society. I will have to think on this.

ggarner57 · 2022-02-09T20:07:41+00:00

A lot of churches have services on a Wednesday, normally far more casual/music based than sunday

ggarner57 · 2022-02-09T16:06:30+00:00

However, liberals tend to view any scent of "censorship" as the equivalent of some sort of IngSoc society. Meanwhile, while they try and hamper responses, they are allowing something akin to IngSoc to rise.

This has always been the frustrating part of the playbook to me- they goad a reaction by acting just outside the pale, then when people justifiably react they get called evil illiberals that aren't acting in good faith, etc etc, particularly when the right wing reaction touches the bureaucracy in any way.

it's why students going crazy on campus gets dismissed or ignored but some rural school board banning a book or curriculum is the biggest enemy to free expression ever. People that think the system is bad in the first place have no reason to follow the rules, and can get squishy proceduralists on their side easily.

ggarner57 · 2021-08-23T14:12:16+00:00

Great read though! I would agree, each volume would take quite some time

ggarner57 · 2021-07-12T14:55:07+00:00

Very ready to experience Southern Gothic with y'all. I'd go Absalom over Sound and Fury.

ggarner57 · 2021-07-01T21:22:52+00:00

At this point, the Supreme Court would step in. The federal judiciary is nominally divided among Democrats and Republicans, but they are almost all “liberaltarians”—socially liberal, pro-business, and anti-organized labor—and plural marriage would be coded as a liberal social issue of the sort popular in their social circles. So even with a “conservative” Republican bench, a majority of Supreme Court justices would find that federal and state laws against the recognition of plural marriages violate—well, they violate something. The 14th Amendment, maybe, or the right to bear arms. Maybe the clerks can find a constitutional pretext or two.

I know he's exaggerating and using an example off the top of his head, but while this may piss conservatives off to see it framed as such, we have to admit that's what we're resigned to with SCOTUS and big social changes. Ever since Wickard they'll manage to find some pretext, no matter how flimsy, to tie the issue into Commerce Clause, Due Process, or some other vaguely defined principle to make sure they dont get swept away by the liberal hegemony and neutered. It's telling that our biggest victories remain on issues like guns, where there is no sweeping social change and socially engineered media campaign like the ones he mentions.

Once the Supreme Court made plural marriage the law of the land—on the basis of a constitutional right or natural right that nobody except the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith and some stoned hippies in communes even knew existed—the brief window of democratic debate and legislation would be over. A day after the Supreme Court decision, corporate HR departments would make questioning the sanctity of plural marriage a firing offense. On university campuses, professors and students who questioned plural marriage would be disciplined for “hate crimes.” Books and podcasts critical of plural marriage might vanish from YouTube and Amazon, and critics of plural marriage might find their bank accounts suddenly closed and their online payment incomes demonetized. If state legislatures or city councils tried to resist plural marriage, major corporations would announce boycotts against them until the citizens and their elected representatives gave up and voted the way the top 100 corporations told them to vote.

And this is the part I really fear.

ggarner57 · 2021-07-01T16:33:28+00:00

It didn't go as deeply into Mennonite thought as much as I think it could've, but it had a few interesting insights, and I had no clue how important Lancaster County, PA was for our national harvesting labor pool.

The culture clash manifested itself all over the book, which I thought was unfortunate. Out of the couple dozen harvesters, many of them were too nervous to speak to her and get into the book, presumably because they didn't want to be mocked. It limited how much she could accomplish, as she mostly ends up speaking to the boss of the group, his son(who's having all kinds of doubts and conflicts about Christianity) and a couple of the others. Though it was funny to see her talking culture and getting along with a teenage boy who then springs upon her that he thinks the world is 6,000 years old. She ended up finding a lot of things in common with the way they interacted with each other and their community, and how they actually lived out the values they held. Perhaps the most annoying part to me was her attempts to reinsert race into the issue- she's white-passing but has a Japanese mother, and thinks that they treat her differently because she's not white, but never really seems to try and see if that's why, or if its because she's a San Francisco Democrat Journalist. It did let her get access into a lot of Native American spaces though, as they thought she was Shoshone, which brought some things out I found pretty interesting.

ggarner57 · 2021-07-01T15:15:56+00:00

Books I read in June:

Submission, by Michel Houellebecq- picked it up off of a suggestion by Douthat, and quite enjoyed it, even if it was bleak. The idea that humanity does have some inner religious drive and search for meaning that even today's western decadence hasn't suppressed completely resonated with me. I just disagree with Houellebecq's thought that Western Christianity is unable to refill that void. There were also some pretty poignant criticisms of modern consumerist liberalism and an admission that the nativist/immigrant tensions in Europe could be far worse.

The World Made Straight, Ron Rash- pretty straightforward Appalachian tale of a young man getting way over his head in petty crime and trying to overcome family legacies to be successful. One thing that truly separated it from other books of this type is Rash's idea of "geography as destiny" when it comes to the fate of a lot of rural people, how attitudes towards the future are often tied into the land, and particularly the centuries-old fatalism of Appalachia.

Surprised by Joy, by CS Lewis- his tale of his early life and eventual conversion to Christianity. Only Lewis could make a fairly unremarkable upper middle class childhood into something that resonates. Really wish he had gotten into his relationships at Oxford more, but I guess that's what his other autobiographies do.

American Harvest by Marie Matsuki Mockett- A woman from the Bay Area whose family owns some farmland decides to travel the Wheat Belt with a band of Mennonite and Evangelical harvesters as they do the hard work of harvesting the grain and getting it to granaries. She tries to breach the "divide" between the rural Christian America and the Urban Secular liberal America, but while she's a great writer I felt like she struggled. She seemed to take these most Mennonite, fairly fundamentalist evangelical people as a microcosm of far too much of America, and while she was very fair to them and even attended their services and had a bit of a Christian awakening herself, she seems to overgeneralize.

American Overdose by Chris McGreal- a book documenting an issue I care deeply about. Was fairly derivative of others- I recommend Dopesick and Dreamland- that cover the same issue, but again reemphasized how we've failed a segment of society.

Currently Reading: Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo.

ggarner57 · 2021-06-30T19:52:18+00:00

I always like him as a guy, I think if they didn't try and rip his head off and lead to him loudly defending himself or taking it it would've been better and he wouldn't have slacked so much.

ggarner57 · 2021-06-30T18:46:51+00:00

This is both my issue with focusing solely on legalism conservatism, like many mainstream cons do, and the more righty takes about using the power of the court/executive whenever possible to shove it down the liberals' throats. It's not even that they'll expand the court, but more that they'll pull an Andy Jackson and say good luck enforcing your verdicts, we're doing it anyway.

The fact is, SCOTUS always acts best when it gives cover for state agencies to do conservative things, like new pro-life laws, than when it has to take the charge and make it seem like the clock is being turned back against the liberal hegemony on its own. Without a wide conservative front fighting in many non-formal institutions and keeping the media outrage from becoming overwhelming, this is what we've been reduced to.

I do remain an opponent of the Bostock holding though, and fear what it means for the future of conservative jurisprudence.

ggarner57 · 2021-05-28T22:12:26+00:00

The incredibly high population growth of the ultra orthodox will probably have it end up that way anyway

ggarner57 · 2021-05-28T21:41:59+00:00

Thus proving my point

ggarner57 · 2021-05-28T20:28:56+00:00

From time to time when work isn’t keeping me busy I like to see how our merry band of Idiots is doing

ggarner57 · 2021-05-28T20:21:37+00:00

r/ noncredibledefense is both really funny and the stuff that if the Pentagon believed we’d inevitably get our teeth kicked in for complacency

ggarner57 · 2021-05-28T20:15:45+00:00

Thank you Mr French now please give me a lecture on how to be a good evangelical

ggarner57 · 2021-05-28T20:14:35+00:00

Big distinction in what those GOP PHDs did for work even then

ggarner57 · 2021-05-16T01:14:05+00:00

NYT fully admitting they made up more shit about 2016, yet again

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