Accept That Savagery Is The True Nature Of The World – And Deal With It

 The world's true nature is that good is forever pitted against evil.

That has never changed. What happened over the last 70 years or so was an interregnum of peace in the West, created by violence against barbarians and facilitated by people willfully looking away from the butchery still continuing at the fringes of the map. The West managed to build a civilization that was – for the first time in history since perhaps the Pax Romana – generally internally peaceful. And the West convinced itself that this was normal.

But it was not normal. It was an anomaly, a glorious one, but an anomaly nonetheless. The world is not a peaceful place, and it never was, and it never will be. Despite the best efforts of the arrogant left, human nature has not changed. Human nature is vicious and cruel. Rousseau’s noble savage nonsense, which we are still dealing with today in the form of eager sophomores in Che t-shirts slobbering over Hamas psychopaths – is a giant fraud. Savages are not distinguished by their nobility. Their savagery distinguishes them. And we need to find the moral strength to do what is necessary to defeat them.

Conversations: With Peter Hitchens, Journalist, Author, and Broadcaster

Why women did the housework and men plowed the fields

In a series of long back-and-forth between feminists and normal people, E. Olson reminds the historically illiterate why women did the housework.

E. Olson

March 11, 2019

Lesley – you wrote: “A society in which a woman’s only meaningful social role is “mother” and that demands a woman stay put with children is a society in which women are themselves dependents.”

What meaningful roles would have otherwise awaited women? Pushing a heavy cast-iron plow through the soil? Mining for coal, gold, or silver in a dark, damp hole in the ground? Charging across open ground towards canon and machine guns? Any of those sound appealing to you? Of course woman could resort to prostitution, or household servant, or if from a wealthy family and allowed to finish high school, could get a 6 month teaching certificate and be assigned to teach 20-30 children aged 5 to 15 in a one room school house. Do any of those sound more appealing than cherished mother and wife?

And why was being a mother a full-time job? Because just cooking family meals was a 30-40 hour per week job in the days of wood burning stoves, no refrigeration, and no microwave meals. Store bought clothes were a luxury, so mom and daughters spent much time making and repairing family clothes, and washing them in a nearby stream with a washboard, while father and son were plowing fields, milking cows, or mining coal for 12+ hours per day. And yes you probably would have 5 to 15 children if you didn’t die during child-birth, and you would grieve as several of your children died of childhood illnesses, and try again because the family needed the labor and income that children provided the household and the “social security” they would provide you in old age or widowhood.

And who can you thank for all the choices and freedoms that women have to pursue their aspirations today? Well you can thank the men who invented reliable and cheap birth control, and the men who figured out how to reduce high child-birth mortality rates, and the men who invented the modern kitchen and modern household gadgets that mean taking care of the house isn’t a full-time job. And you can thank the Protestant men who were the first to think it important that girls learn to read the Bible, and the property owning men who gave women the vote. Are you still with me? Well then you can thank the expendable men who gave their lives following “woman and children first” on the Titanic, and the men who pay most of the taxes that go towards paying for the government welfare spending that goes predominantly to women. And finally you can thank the men who allow women to have a career, or career and marriage and children, or just marriage and children, or any combination, which is not a menu of choice that men have ever given themselves.

Kabul, Afghanistan, 1972 - Nothing-to-do-with-Islam

Kabul, Afghanistan 1972

Will you look at that.

No burkhas.

No hijabs.

Miniskirts.

And no bearded thugs with automatic weapons driving around in pickup trucks.

It looks like this is an American city.

I've seen similar photos of Tehran from prior to 1979.

Also Beirut. Did you know that Beirut used to be called "The Paris of the Mideast"?

Yes, it did.

But then, something must've happened in that part of the world.

Something terrible.

Something absolutely devastating and soul-crushing.

We may never know what it is, though.

It's a complete mystery.

Obama Apparently Wasn't on "The Right Side of History" After All

Since the first days of his presidency, Barack Obama has cast himself as occupying "the right side of history" and exploited Martin Luther King, Jr.'s phrase that, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Now in the final days of that presidency, even Obama must be confronting the distressing possibility that the phrase is either an empty one, or alternatively that the arc actually bent against him and marooned him on the wrong side of history.

..

The broader reality is that platitudes like "the right side of history" are tools typically employed by the statist political left to rationalize dominion over the "little people" who are deemed unable to recognize what's good for them. The good news is that time occasionally catches up with them and exposes their artifice.

That has certainly proven true for Obama and his legacy.

Read the whole thing.

The Liberal version of American history

The history of America from the Liberal perspective.

America was founded to destroy “native Americans” and to find a place to invent slavery which never existed before.

These slaves built the country, settled the land, fought its wars and invented everything while white male devils whipped the slaves, oppressed women, keeping them barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, lying around idly when not destroying the environment.

Christians are hateful bigots who want to ruin your sex life while atheists are enlightened believers in science and Muslims practice the “Religion of Peace™” while living in fear of religious oppression.

Then these racist, bigoted, homophobic, sexist, drug addled, white, male, Bible thumping, deplorable idiots stole the Presidency from Hillary! and elected Donald Trump who will destroy the world.

And that will be the end of history.

When Belief Fades ..

In about 600 BC the Kingdom of Judah was busy abandoning it's relationship with God. They adopted the religion of the Canaanites and tried to find safety in alliances with other tribes.  Jeremiah was told by God to warn Judah that they were going to lose the protection of God if they did not return to their roots in faith.  

America - this country - has been blessed beyond any other and during it's ascent it was a nation in which most people believed in God.  And those who were not good Christians pretended to be.  Today faith is ridiculed and Christians are reviled.   Now the people are abandoning the Lord God and worship other Gods.

God will turn away and give us to our enemies if we do not listen to the prophets.

1. The word of the Lord came to me:

2 “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem:

“This is what the Lord says:  ‘I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the wilderness, through a land not sown.'

3 Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest; all who devoured her were held guilty, and disaster overtook them,’”declares the Lord.

4 Hear the word of the Lord, you descendants of Jacob, all you clans of Israel.

5 This is what the Lord says:  “What fault did your ancestors find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves."

6 They did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord, who brought us up out of Egypt and led us through the barren wilderness, through a land of deserts and ravines, a land of drought and utter darkness, a land where no one travels and no one lives?’

7 I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable.

8 The priests did not ask, "Where is the Lord?’ Those who deal with the law did not know me; the leaders rebelled against me.  The prophets prophesied by Baal, following worthless idols.

9 “Therefore I bring charges against you again,” declares the Lord. “And I will bring charges against your children’s children.

10 Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look, send to Kedar[a] and observe closely; see if there has ever been anything like this:

11 Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols.

12 Be appalled at this, you heavens, and shudder with great horror,” declares the Lord.

13 “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

America was settled by a religious people, a Christian people, who came to a wilderness to be free to worship Him.  That bowed down and thanked God for his bounty. 

What fault did the the latter-day Americans find in the God that blessed them?  Why did they depart from the path and bow down to Gods of their own creation?

The Kingdom of Judah was carried away in Babylonian captivity.  Where will America end up?

A little history of the Klan

Some students at Indiana University saw a Dominican Priest and took him to be Klansman, sparking a campus-wide panic. Students were advised to stay in their rooms lest they be ... what?

There are several interesting things about this including the fact that even those students who felt foolish to have been "misinformed" still feel that the presence of s single member of the KKK was a life-threatening event which should have been followed by sheltering in place as if there was an active shooter on campus.

As a service to college students everywhere, here is an essay by Jonathan Swift, Jr. on the Klan.

The descent of American liberal arts programs into insignificance is simply pathetic. I have visited many campuses on my long driving trips throughout the states.

I have found that the vast majority of American college students are geographically illiterate and historically illiterate, unable to locate major countries on a map or even to place major historical events even in the correct century. This makes them unable to see current events with any perspective at all, to even be able to gauge relative threats or understand the degree of prosperity and the advantages that almost every American enjoys, blessings that were simply unknown throughout the long course of human history.

Instead, these mincing little people have been raised by helicopter parents like some sort of human veal, so we have the specter of $40,000 a year college students, who enjoy resort style living and climbing walls, who compete in a perpetual Olympics of Victimhood, often comparing themselves to slaves no less. The fact that any American college student can compare themselves to human chattel, often beaten, treated like and animal and deprived of their liberty, show you the lack of intelligence on the modern campus, let alone perspective.

Anyone who mistakes a priest in cassock for a hooded member of the Klu Klux Klan is of course a fool. A fool that is so marinaded in the Church of Perpetual Victimhood, that they see pervasive racism and disabling bigotry everywhere. Of course, a well adjusted person would realize that the miracle of America is not how poorly people get along in the most integrated and ethnically diverse nation the world has ever known, but how well they do! How many people who were at each other's throats in the "old country" meet and marry, how there are millions and millions of mixed race people. Of course an intelligent person would understand that if America was horrible, no one would be clamoring to go there, but that of course would require some working synapses, which are in short supply on the leftist dominated campus.

Regarding the noxious Klan, perhaps some actual history is in order, for the real Klan once had its evil tentacles into even Indiana.

The Klan was of course founded as an adjunct to the Democratic Party after the Civil War to combat Reconstruction and to discourage black Republicans from being elected. It was started by a number of former Confederate officers including apparently Gen. Nathan "That Devid" Forrest. While the South was still occupied by the Union Army, the United States, there were a number of courageous blacks who were elected to office in spite of intimidation and terrorism by the Klan.

The Klan gradually faded into the rearview mirror until the Progressive Era, when the second incarnation of the Klan was started. It was of course glorified by the landmark film "Birth of a Nation," in 1915, which was even shown in Wilson'a White House. The racist President Woodrow Wilson (D), worked to segregate the federal government. The second was a massive enterprise, a fraternal as well as terrorist organization, which had chapters across the Democrat's solid south and well as in the north and west. It peaked in the 1920s, when it was able to march on Washington and boasted at least 3,000,000 members, who were racist, anti-Catholic as well as anti-Semitic. The second Klan feel apart quickly during the Great Depression.

One of the most stellar Klu Klux Klan Democrats was David Curtis Stephenson, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in his adopted state of Indiana. Along with may of the other local Democrats, who whored around, drank and when he was convicted of abducting and raping a young white woman who died from his bites, it embarrassed the Klan, leading to its rapid decline. His trial and the corruption and payoffs it exposed even reached into the Indiana GOP.

The third Klan was revived in the 1950s and 1960s in response to the rise of black Americans and efforts to integrate the south. At that time the South was of course solidly Democratic and well known Democrats like George Wallace (D), Governor of Alabama, Orval Faubus (D), Governor of Arkansas, Lester Maddox (D), Governor of Georgia, later Lieutenant Governor under Jimmy Carter (D), all fought integration and Civil Rights for blacks. Another legendary Klan member was Senator Robert C. Byrd (D), West Virginia. Senator Byrd was one of the greatest Democratic politicians of all time and the longest serving Senator, who was in office more than fifty years. One can see this legendary Democrat's name on public buildings across West Virginia and this wonderful Democrat was also a great leader in the Klu Klux Klan, an Exalted Cyclops no less. He was very open about his racist views:

shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

— Robert C. Byrd, in a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), 1944

The third incarnation of the Klan fortunately faded as integration was forced upon the South. Today, it is down to about 3,000 - 6,000 pathetic individuals, out of a population of about 315,000,000. There is very little Klan activity today and none that I am aware of on a college campus.

So campus cupcakes, please worry about taking a meaningful class or two between shouting down speakers you don't want to hear or running and hidings from Trump chalkers and chalkenings. Don't worry your empty little heads about the Klan, they are not a meaningful presence on the campus of today, your own professors, many of whom have a contempt for the First Amendment, are the totalitarians on campus and of course there are a number or convicted leftist terrorists who are now university professors no less.

The Real History of the Crusades

Via Declination

And here comes the history lesson. It is true that Christians were not the aggressor. Your Social Studies teacher (why don’t they call that class history, I wonder?) lied to you. Your textbooks lied to you. Pop culture lied to you. President Obama is lying to you, right now. To understand the depths of lie, we must go back in history to a time before Mohammed, before Islam even existed, because this lie is so deep, so systemic, its tentacles reach into our entire understanding of European History. It hinges around a nation referred to repeatedly as the Byzantine Empire. Even now, some sense of the thing can be had in the phrase “byzantine politics”. That Empire is a black hole in history textbooks, and Leftists want to keep it that way, because any support for Islam in the West is likely to evaporate like a fart in a hurricane otherwise.

After the first Germanic invasion of the Roman Empire, in the Third Century, it became increasingly apparent that the Empire was too large to be ruled by Rome alone. The old classical civilization we know as “Roman” began to fall apart. Economic damage was great. Plagues and frontier wars increased. Sassanid Persia was a constant threat in the East. New religions (Christianity among them) sprung up all over the Empire. Much of the apocalyptic tone of early Christian writings serves as a dim cultural memory for what life in this time was like.

Christianity, in the person of Constantine, eventually reached the highest levels of State, and the Empire rapidly Christianized. The message of a better life in the next world reached receptive masses of people who knew their civilization was on the decline.

Paganism hardly even put up a fight, and was extinguished in the Empire in a few generations. Rome’s syncretic meta-culture merged with Christianity to become what we now call “Western civilization.” Even as the second wave of German invaders entered the Empire, conquering vast territories, they were in turn converted by it.

There is an old quote that may or may not be apocryphal. But it captures the essence of how even the Germans felt about the situation: “An able Goth wants to be like a Roman; only a poor Roman would want to be like a Goth.” The height of the Germanic second wave captured approximately half the old Roman Empire.

500 AD. The classical configuration of the German successor kingdoms. The largest, most powerful realms were the East Roman Empire, the Ostrogothic Kingdom, the Vandal Kingdom, the Visigothic Kingdom and the Frankish Kingdom.

Here's how academia views history

The Declaration of Independence is the most racist, sexist, and bigoted document written since Hammurabi’s Code. Completely devoid of the ideals of equality, inclusivity, and sensitivity, this document has led to horrible things like oppression, imperialism, and George W. Bush.

Written by a privileged, white male rapist slave owner to avoid paying taxes to a centralized government, it was signed by a non-diverse panel of rich white men for the purpose of independently oppressing colonized ethnic minorities and women while abusing the environment.

Just take a look at the way it was written: “When in the course of human events…” This presupposes human interests above animal rights and the environment’s wellbeing.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men…” This is an overtly sexist and exclusive claim that the privileged class of straight, white men can monopolize truth.

“…are created equal…” This assumes a deist creationist perspective that denies the scientific facts of biological evolution. It also upholds the “good old boy” patriarchal principle that all privileged white men are the only ones equal in the eyes of the law. That’s part of the problem.

The Declaration of Independence is misleading in that it does not reflect the convergence of Asians, Africans, and Native Americans in the development of the United States. All who signed this document should be protested until they resign their respective positions of employment while undergoing mandatory sensitivity training.

For more ways to correctly view the past, read the whole thing.

The so-called future wasn’t. The real future has not happened yet.

Richard Fernandez on what's happening now and the upcoming changes.

The ideologies forged in the 20th century are dying and with them will go many of our familiar guideposts. They’ve been around for so long many will find it hard to believe they are actually slipping away. For decades it was the unstated assumption that superstates like the EU and a giant federal government were the coming thing. How if what we conventionally consider the “future” is actually the past?

That’s why things are so unstable. The so-called future wasn’t.

The real future has not happened yet. This is not an entirely trite observation. The years since the fall of the Berlin Wall have been characterized by a futile attempt to buy stability through risk sharing. There was no crisis, which if sufficiently enlarged, could not be solved. Yet it failed. In an era of rapid change emergent risks can no longer be spread. Survival will depend not upon building a bigger boat but making the right choices.

This breaks politics, especially redistributive and identity politics and hence the politicians have not accepted that yet. But they will, and relatively soon. The next decade will be hard; and our only consolation will be that if we win through we will be better men and freer too. But first we survive. First we survive.

Like Most People, President Obama Gets The Crusades Wrong

IF OBAMA ACTUALLY WENT TO HARVARD, HE NEVER STUDIED HISTORY.

In light of President Obama’s recent remarks comparing the brutality of the Islamic State to the Crusades, it might be time to take a fresh look at those events. Were they really the one-sided Dark Ages barbarism we have been taught? Were they an early manifestation of Western imperialism and global conquest?

In his landmark book, “God’s Battalions” (HarperOne 2009), Baylor University social sciences professor Rodney Stark suggests otherwise. It is a well-researched chronicle, including 639 footnotes and a bibliography of about 300 other works, yet reads like an adventure story full of military strategy and political intrigue.

Why I am a Conservative

Stacy McCain has a great essay on the horrors visited on people by "progressives" and Liberal philosophers.

What is remarkable is the extent to which French intellectuals have caused this endless tide of human misery.

“We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity.”

— Edmund Burke, 1790

Burke’s insight into the fundamental error of the French Revolution — its inspiration by such philosophes as Rousseau and Voltaire — could be extended to every “progressive” movement ever since.

The modern Cult of Progress, the characteristic “presumption” of the intelligentsia in their belief in their own superiority, has repeatedly afflicted humanity with enthusiastic schemes for political, social and economic change. Always these innovations require us first to destroy “hitherto existing society” (to quote the Communist Manifesto), and to entrust our future to the control of elites. Always the result is the same. From the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France to the Bolshevik Terror in revolutionary Russia, from Kristallnacht in Germany to the “Great Leap Forward” in China to the “Killing Fields” in Cambodia, the path of “progress” is a trail painted in blood, littered with the corpses of those murdered or starved to death for the sake of political theories.

The French revolution was followed by the Terror, followed by Napoleon Bonaparte who plunged Europe into decades of war which left between 3 and 5 million people dead.  

The "philosophers" who followed the French model managed to kill about 100 times more.  Many in "peacetime."  It's this thing about breaking a few eggs to make an omelet.    

One of the most satisfying things about the French Revolution is the death of Robespierre.  

"...history’s happy predestination..."

I found this term amusing, and so apt as it applies to the delusions of Obama: the childlike belief that history favors him and his fantasies.

Speaking recently about the Islamic State’s beheading of an American journalist, just before another tee time, President Barack Obama assured the country that “the future is won by those who build and not destroy.”

At a news conference on Thursday Obama admitted in so many words that “We don’t have a strategy yet” for dealing with the Islamic State, but he seemed to retain his usual faith in history’s happy predestination nonetheless. He and his Secretary of State have dismissed Russia’s massive land grab as a sign of weakness and an embarrassingly out-dated way of doing things, assurances have been made that all of that even more old-fashioned beheading and crucifying and slaughtering that the Islamic State gang has been up to certainly “has no place in the 21st Century,” and thus far these messes have dominated the news thoroughly enough that no one in the administration has been obliged by the press to explain why another aircraft carrier is needed in the South China Sea. “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” as the president is fond of saying, to the point that he had it woven into the Oval Office carpet, and we are expected to share his confidence that the aphorism will prove true no matter what befuddled efforts America might make.

A couple of smarter fellows over at National Review have already written convincingly about Obama’s childish faith that the good guys always win in the end, no matter how wimpy their good guy ways nor how ruthlessly bad the bad guys might be, but we would add that such fantastical notions are characteristic of modern liberal thinking about almost everything. Not just foreign policy, but economics, social issues, and the very nature of man.

I have written prior to these columns about this very subject:What is it with Obama's blind faith in the inevitable march of history? 

Allow me to quote myself:

Barack Obama gave a speech, the thing he does best, with a ridiculous premise embedded therein, something he does almost every time he opens his mouth. Often it’s fields of straw men he’s destroying. This time he’s referring to that inevitable march of history he and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, is fond of invoking.

It goes something like this:

“This is the 21st Century and X is just not done in this century. So X will inevitably fail.”

The fact that this is the 21st Century was supposed to have stopped Putin from swallowing the Ukraine piece by piece.

In Obama’s last statement in Martha's Vineyard, before heading back to finish his round of golf, was that

"One thing we can all agree on is that a group like ISIL has no place in the 21st century."

Who is this "We" Mr. Obama? ISIL disagrees. And, in fact, it’s reported to be attracting thousands of young people who have spent most of their lives in the 21st Century. They think ISIL is the path to the future and are willing to die for ISIL and their Muslim faith.

...

Is that reference to the 21st Century a theme that Obama’s speech writers throw in because it polls well. Or is this what the Obama really believes. It would not surprise us because the “March of History™” is a familiar theme in Marxist thought. And versions of Marxism were part of Obama’s formative years before he became President.

Victor Davis Hanson:

He also believes history follows some predetermined course, as if things always get better on their own. Obama often praises those he pronounces to be on the “right side of history.” He also chastises others for being on the “wrong side of history” — as if evil is vanished and the good thrives on autopilot.

When in 2009 millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest the thuggish theocracy, they wanted immediate U.S. support. Instead, Obama belatedly offered them banalities suggesting that in the end, they would end up “on the right side of history.” Iranian reformers may indeed end up there, but it will not be because of some righteous inanimate force of history, or the prognostications of Barack Obama.

Perhaps it's Obama's personal path to the highest office in the land, as totally undeserved as his Nobel Peace Prize, that gives him the feeling that he, like King Canute, controls the tide. There is a sick feeling that the man is not only a deluded narcissist, but a dangerous fool. A belief which seems to conflict with the observation that he is so fundamentally corrupt that he's evil.  But that may be a false choice.  There is no rule that says the deluded cannot be evil.  There are at least three prominent examples in the 20th Century and they ruled Russia, Germany and China.  I am quite sure that the 21st Century will be no different. 

What is it with Obama's blind faith in the inevitable march of history?

Barack Obama gave a speech, the thing he does best, with a ridiculous premise embedded therein, something he does almost every time he opens his mouth. Often it’s fields of straw men he’s destroying. This time he’s referring to that inevitable march of history he and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, is fond of invoking.

It goes something like this:

“This is the 21st Century and X is just not done in this century.  So X will inevitably fail.”

The fact that this is the 21st Century was supposed to have stopped Putin from swallowing the Ukraine piece by piece.

In Obama’s last statement in Martha's Vineyard, before heading back to finish his round of golf,  was that

"One thing we can all agree on is that a group like ISIL has no place in the 21st century."

Who is this "We" Mr. Obama?  ISIL disagrees. And, in fact, it’s reported to be attracting thousands of young people who have spent most of their lives in the 21st Century.  They think ISIL is the path to the future and are willing to die for ISIL and their Muslim faith.

He went on to say

“And people like [ISIS] ultimately fail. They fail, because the future is won by those who build and not destroy and the world is shaped by people like Jim Foley, and the overwhelming majority of humanity who are appalled by those who killed him."

Today’s Wall Street Journal notes that

But Foley is dead and his killers won't fail on their own. They will not fail because Barack Obama reached out his hand in peace on Inauguration Day. They will not fail because of a progressive vision that mankind has finally in the 21st century reached some higher level of being. Like every evil in human history, ISIS will stop only when it is forced to stop. This means only when enough of its fanatics have been killed.

Is that reference to the 21st Century a theme that Obama’s speech writers throw in because it polls well. Or is this what the Obama really believes. It would not surprise us because the “March of History™” is a familiar theme in Marxist thought. And versions of Marxism were part of Obama’s formative years before he became President.

Elite of Ancient Pompeii Dined on Sea Urchin, Giraffe

Pompeii was a bustling Roman city that was buried in ash after the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Ellis and his colleagues excavated about 20 shop fronts near one of the once-bustling gates of Pompeii known as the Portia Stabia. The latrines and cesspits behind the food sellers revealed charred food waste from the kitchens, as well as human waste, that dated as far back as the fourth century B.C., when Pompeii was still in an early stage of development. [Preserved Pompeii: Photos Reveal City in Ash]

Along with grains, the waste revealed that the commoners of Pompeii ate a simple, but fairly varied, Mediterranean diet that included lentils, olives, nuts and fish, as well as the odd scrap of salted meat.

More upscale restaurants could be distinguished by the wider array of delicacies they served.

"The material from the drains revealed a range and quantity of materials to suggest a rather clear socioeconomic distinction between the activities and consumption habits of each property, which were otherwise indistinguishable hospitality businesses," Ellis said.

For instance, the drains at a more central property contained traces of imported foods such as shellfish, sea urchin and even a giraffe's leg.

"This is thought to be the only giraffe bone ever recorded from an archaeological excavation in Roman Italy," Ellis said. "How part of the animal, butchered, came to be a kitchen scrap in a seemingly standard Pompeian restaurant not only speaks to long-distance trade in exotic and wild animals, but also something of the richness, variety and range of a nonelite diet."

I have read that in medieval times the wealthy ate peacock.  Not that peacock tasted good; I'm told it's dry and tough, but it was a pretty bird and so it was served with its plumage on the platter making for a very impressive presentation.  So people ate it as a status symbol and pretended to like it.

Why does this remind me of Obama and the press?

Israel in the Age of Obama

A thought provoking editorial by Hebrew Makor Rishon's Editor-in-Chief, Amnon Lord

Now that the best and brightest have finished their comparisons with Munich and Chamberlain, I wish to provide another, somewhat more shocking, comparison, one that in the past, resulted in people calling for smelling salts.

In March 2010, I attempted to explain the American president’s seemingly incomprehensible behavior in simple terms, making use of the name Charles Lindbergh. The legendary pro-Nazi pilot surfaced again in Philip Roth’s novel “The Plot Against America”, published in 2004. Roth penned a novel based on speculative history (“what would have happened if…”)- in this case, what would have happened had Charles Lindbergh won the 1940 elections rather than FDR, the incumbent against whom he ran for president.

The great United States of America and the great land of Germany – the land that was, coincidentally, ruled at the time by that Chancellor named Adolf Hitler – would have developed ties of friendship and mutual accord. Roth waxed eloquent on the effects this would have had on American Jewry and on the resulting cooperation that would have developed between American Jewish leadership and the new anti-Jewish American government.

For nearly four years now, it has been clear that the then-new American president sees the world in a fashion that is diametrically opposed to what we expect from an American government. He disposed of the bust of Churchill that stood in the White House. All the historical narrative that contains the struggle of democracies against totalitarian regimes, the Munich agreement, appeasement, giving in, Chamberlain – all those are one story in his history book. Even the Spanish Civil War is irrelevant. In his book there are imperialism, colonialism, Zionist aggression and peoples that awaken and rebel. That is how, in 2010, this Lindbergh-style president supported Argentina in the renewed hostilities that developed between that country and Great Britain over the Falkland Islands.

By the beginning of 2010, when Obama began a political siege on Israel for building in Jerusalem while evincing goodwill gestures such as stretching out a hand towards Ahmadinejad’s Iran, shaking hands with and hugging Chavez as well as offering US friendship to the then president of Brazil, Lula de Silva, it seemed clear that the American president felt that the world was ready for the Chavesian, Ahmadinejadian and Bashar-Assadian style of leadership.

Obama simply prefers Iran over Israel.

I put this up because it's entirely plausible, in fact likely, that Obama does not share the American belief in the historical struggle of America for freedom and democracy against totalitarian and oppressive regimes. In America's book this nation has stood for freedom, for giving everyone his God given right to follow his dreams.  "In his [Obama's] book there are imperialism, colonialism, Zionist aggression and peoples that awaken and rebel."  

Why is this plausible?  Because it is the reigning orthodoxy on American college campuses and among Obama's friends and allies like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.  It was what his mother, father and grandparents believed.  It explains his foreign policy even better than ineptness.  And it makes sense if we take him at his word that he wants to "fundamentally change" America; you want to fundamentally change something that is fundamentally flawed, not something that's basically right and good. 

Which brings us back to the question: is Obama a person who's busy wrecking American society and foreign policy because he's in way over his head, because he's inept and never actually ran anything - even a lemonade stand?  Or is he doing it because he means to do so?  The answer may just be "yes." 

Hispanic win: ‘California can be Republican again’

Republicans take "safe" Democrat seat in the California Senate.  Can we get a majority of the Hispanic vote?

I'm not sure, but until the mid-20th Century the Black vote was solidly Republican.

Obama: “This war, like all wars, must end,”

Richard Fernandez

The problem of declaring victory against an enemy who refuses to concede defeat is not new. The World War 2 generation solved the problem by continuing until the foe threw in the towel. Although President Obama may believe that victory consists in convincing one’s countrymen that “we won”, historically it consisted of convincing the enemy that he lost. In World War II for example, both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were defeated as a military fact by early 1944. But they were not convinced of the fact. The remainder of the war was spent knocking the idea into their consciousness.

But the allies did not declare peace in 1944. They went on and by mid-1945, Curtis LeMay’s bombers were incinerating one Japanese city a night; US battleships were shelling coastal towns, harbors everywhere were being mined and submarines kept ships from leaving or entering ports. Victory as an objective fact was not debatable. But to the Axis accepting defeat subjectively was unthinkable. One of the supreme ironies of World War II was that the Japanese high command needed the A-bomb more than the Americans. They needed it not to change any military fact, they were as defeated before the Bomb as after it, but in order to change a mental perception. The bomb provided the pretext to accept defeat.

But in the bad old, unenlightened days you convinced the enemy they lost. Today we’re smarter. We convince ourselves the whole misunderstanding should never have happened in the first place.

What is the administration’s pretext to accept victory? As near as can be seen, it consists in convincing ourselves that we never had an enemy to begin with. We just misunderstood things. There is no such thing as a Clash of Civilizations, nor rogue states, nor even a militant version of Islam. That’s all a conservative invention. There are just only misunderstood people who, if we got to know better, we would not drive to workplace violence.

Maybe that’s why the White House erroneously refers to its authority to bug domestic communications as deriving from the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act. Not the “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act”, which actually exists, but by some slip of the fat finger, the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are the words which occur in the White House transcript.

Read the whole thing.

If the war is over, why are we bugging everyone in the country and who are we killing with those drones?