Category Archives: Family

A Christmas Snuff Story

Christianity, Family, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Religion

“A Christmas Snuff Story” is the current column, now on The Daily Caller. An excerpt:

“We’re going to be saying Merry Christmas a lot more. And we’re going to have fewer criminal aliens to contend with,” promised President-elect Donald Trump on separate occasions.

Alas, Christmas and a criminal alien coalesced tragically, when Bob Clark, director of “A Christmas Story,” was killed by a drunk illegal alien in 2007. Clark’s son, age 22, also died on that day in April.

Like the director of that enchanting film, the family depicted in “A Christmas Story” is all but dead and buried, too—killed by Uncle Sam, the patron saint of social disorder.

Described by a critic as “one of those rare movies you can say is perfect in every way,” “A Christmas Story” debuted in 1983. Set in the 1940s, the film depicts a series of family vignettes through the eyes of 9-year-old Ralphie Parker, who yearns for that gift of all gifts: the Daisy Red Ryder BB gun.

This was boyhood before “bang-bang you’re dead” was banned; family life prior to “One Dad Two Dads Brown Dad Blue Dads,” and Christmas before Saint Nicholas was denounced for his whiteness and “Merry Christmas” condemned for its exclusivity.

If children could choose the family into which they were born, most would opt for the kind depicted in “A Christmas Story,” where mom is a happy homemaker, dad a devoted working stiff, and between them, they have no repertoire of psychobabble to rub together.

Although clearly adored, Ralphie is not encouraged to share his feelings at every turn. Nor is he, in the spirit of gender-neutral parenting, circa 2016, urged to act out like a girl if he’s feeling … girlie. Instead, Ralphie is taught restraint and self-control. And horrors: The little boy even has his mouth washed out with soap and water for uttering the “F” expletive. “My personal preference was for Lux,” reveals Ralphie, “but I found Palmolive had a nice piquant after-dinner flavor—heady but with just a touch of mellow smoothness.” Ralphie is, of course, guilt-tripped with stories about starving Biafrans when he refuses to finish his food.

The parenting practiced so successfully by Mr. and Mrs. Parker fails every progressive commandment. By today’s standards, the delightful, un-precocious protagonist of “A Christmas Story” would be doomed to a lifetime on the therapist’s chaise lounge—and certainly to daily doses of Ritalin, as punishment for unbridled boyishness and daydreaming in class …

… Read the rest and share. “A Christmas Snuff Story” is now on The Daily Caller.

Merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah to all.

ilana

Corey Lewandowski’s A Class Act; What About Those Who Got Him Fired?!

Donald Trump, Elections, Family, Relatives, Republicans

Corey Lewandowski is a class act. His loyalty to Donald Trump and his admiration for the candidate are unmistakable and admirable in the face of a cruel sacking. Yet, the rumor goes, Trump heeded the Pink Brigade within his campaign (his daughter and her houseboy), and fired this man, who has the generally hostile Dana Bash, leftist reporter from CNN, eating out of his hand. (This feat takes talent Trump doesn’t have.) Ivanka is a decorative lovely girl, but she’s no Corey. She doesn’t have his core beliefs. When she speaks, you get the impression she’s more liberal than she lets on.

Ivanka, moreover, is consumed with the shallowness of brand. Via Politico:

… Lewandowski was someone who had to go because he was identified with the early, primary-season version of Trump that, according to recent polls that show Hillary Clinton with a widening lead, is not likely to be enough to get him into the White House. According to POLITICO, “Ivanka Trump, especially, was said to be concerned about the effect of Lewandowski on the Trump family brand.”

The dismissal of Lewandowski is a blemish on someone who prides himself for his loyalty. Yet Trump loyalists refuse to say it, because they’re turning into blind followers.

Another bad omen: Establishment Republicans, masters of branding, rebranding and bullshit, are thrilled about the ousting of Lewandowski.

As is Megyn Kelly and her protege Michelle Fields, tartlet and false accuser. Both were overjoyed, feeling vindicated, presumably.

CNN:

For months, tension had been building within the Trump campaign and small circle of advisers. Simultaneously, a quiet campaign to convince the New York billionaire to cut Lewandowski loose was gaining traction.
The breaking point: Lewandowski had gone one step too far by targeting Trump’s family.
The relationship between Lewandowski and Jared Kushner, the husband of Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, grew increasingly strained.
Fired Trump campaign manager: ‘No regrets’
Rumors that Lewandowski had attempted to plant negative stories in the press as part of a broader strategy to “take Jared down” sealed Lewandowski’s fate, sources said.
Multiple sources told CNN that Ivanka Trump and Kushner were central to Donald Trump’s ultimate decision to fire Lewandowski.

UPDATED (4/6/018): Swollen Heads At National Review Exposed

America, Elections, Family, Labor, Neoconservatism, Political Economy, Race, Republicans, Welfare

National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson “reached peak leftism” when he declared his sympathies were “more with John Brown than John Calhoun,” in an article titled “We Have Officially Reached Peak Leftism” (June 24, 2015). In 1856, Brown’s free-soil activists snatched five pro-slavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas and split the captives’ skulls with broadswords, in an act of biblical retribution gone mad.

So it’s not that surprising that Williamson’s exquisite moral compass has led him to wish death upon white, working-class America. According to Breitbart.com, Williamson wrote this:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

This is not passionate writing; it’s plain hateful. Whatever merit there is in the indictment of working-class Americans—a case made well by political scientist Charles Murray, in “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010”—this ain’t it. Williamson writes in arrogance and contempt.

But, as further divulged by Breitbart, another National Review staff writer feels as Williamson does. He is David French (the object of my new column, “Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel”). The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol’s candidate to run an independent presidential campaign is down with Williamson:

[French] described Williamson’s piece as “excellent” and said that Williamson’s words were “fundamentally true and important to say.”

French went on to dismiss the struggles white working class Americans endure.

“Citizens of the world’s most prosperous nation, they face challenges — of course — but no true calamities,” French wrote.

While French suggests that the decline of America’s middle class and manufacturing power is no true calamity, others could argue that the greater a nation or culture, the more sorrowful it is to witness its decline — much the same way that history would mourn the destruction of the Palace of Versailles more than the totaling of Justin Bieber’s car.

French insists that the devastation of the working-class’ livelihoods is unrelated to failed federal policies such as mass immigration …

I hate the, “Would he be saying this if … ” game. But I’ll indulge this once. It’s apposite. Would Williamson and French ever lay into the black underclass with the same degree of venom?


MORE AT “Bill Kristol’s Candidate: It’s ‘Important to Say’ White Working Class Communities ‘Deserve to Die.’”

RELATED: “Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel.”

UPDATED (4/6/018): Kevin D. Williamson, so blood thirsty.

How The Cult of The Kid Is Making America Not Great

China, Communism, Education, Family, Morality

“How the Cult of the Kid Is Making America Not Great” is the current column, now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine. An excerpt:

There were likely no kids on board EgyptAir Flight 804 that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, on May 19. Had there been kids on board, we’d be hearing about it a LOT.

Of the 224 people on board the Russian metro jet airbus—it crashed in March—17 were children. I know this because each time TV anchors reported about the plane that went down in the Sinai desert, near El Arish (once way safer because under Israeli control); they counted the kids.

Is the death of a child more of a loss than the death of an adult? Apparently so. Adult lives matter less.

The hallmark of an infantile even immoral society is the deification of The Child. Not for nothing did the Communist slave societies place kids in control of their parents. This is how one inverts the moral order, also the aim of Communism’s leaders.

The feral kids took to killing their elders like the proverbial ducks to water. It’s all in “The Black Book of Communism: CRIMES, TERROR, REPRESSION,” published by Harvard University Press, written by the finest scholars to survive Communism. The BBOC should be compulsory reading for every Bernie Sanders supporter—for every American, once Bill O’Reilly “preps” the text for popular consumption.

Where the mini-Communists killed their Confucian-minded elders—they did so absent any remorse or angst. For kids are naturally feral and liberal. They want nothing more than more privileges, more license and lenience; fewer demands for obedience, chores and hard work. This every parent knows firsthand.

In “The Death of the Grown-Up,” author Diana West contended that “America’s arrested development is bringing down Western Civilization.” Certainly, a moral society must be a hierarchical society, one in which adults guide children until they’re capable of governing themselves.

But first, adults have to be adults. And they’re not.

Take the parent who declared, as a DRUDGE headline blared, that his “Eight-Year-Old Son’s iPad Addiction Is As Real As Alcoholism, Drug Abuse.”

The editorial so titled was published on a large website. In line with the prevailing anti-intellectual childishness, public writing has turned into public advocacy. Conjure and cultivate a malady, share it with the world, and—abracadabra!—you’re a hero. In any event, you don’t need to read this flaccid folderol to know the following:

* It’s the fault of the parent that little snot is addicted not to books or to outdoor ball games, but to gadgets.
* Who gave sonny boy the gadget? The parent did! Take the iPad away.
* Stop paying for your kids’ cell phones and assorted hand-held devices. (It costs a fortune!)

We survived without them. If the kid needs to contact crazy-in-love parent urgently, he or she can go to the principal’s office. It’ll give Kid an opportunity to practice a few civilizing skills you’ve refrained from imparting, lest manners mess with his élan: …

Read the rest. “How the Cult of the Kid Is Making America Not Great” is now on The Unz Review. “Share” and “Like” it on social media.

AND, if you’d like to feature the Unz Review’s “Paleolibertarian Perspective” on your website, please email me at ilana@ilanamercer.com.