Pride among Democrats tumbles, while independents also hit new low, more than offsetting increase among Republicans //
A record-low 58% of U.S. adults say they are “extremely” (41%) or “very” (17%) proud to be an American, down nine percentage points from last year and five points below the prior low from 2020. The 41% who are “extremely proud” is not statistically different from prior lows of 38% in 2022 and 39% in 2023, indicating most of the change this year is attributable to a decline in the percentage who are “very proud.” //
In January 2001, when Gallup first asked Americans how proud they were, 87% said they were extremely or very proud. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the figure increased to 90%, and it held at that level or higher between 2002 and 2004.
The percentage who were extremely or very proud dropped to 83% in 2005, but it did not vary significantly from that mark for the next 11 years. In 2017, a new low of 75% said they were proud, and national pride has deteriorated further since then.
Townhall.com @townhallcom
·
LOL — @SpeakerJohnson is OVER Jeffries' crap.
"Ronald Reagan said one time, 'No speech should be longer than 20 minutes.' Unlike the Democrat leader, I'm gonna honor my colleagues time and be a little more brief than that." 😂
0:20 / 0:20
1:55 PM · Jul 3, 2025. //
"My friends and colleagues, we are so blessed, we should not take it for granted. We live in the most free, the most successful, the most powerful, the most benevolent nation that has ever been on the face of the Earth. And there's a reason for that — the reason that we are the greatest nation is because we were built on the ultimate foundation. And the bold Declaration that my friend Hakeem Jeffries articulated earlier is true. We unite under that. The bold Declaration that we do hold these truths to be self-evident. What is a self-evident truth? It's something that's obvious. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' — it does not say 'born equal,' it says 'created equal.' And...it is our creator that gives us our rights.
"See? The powerful thing about that is we're the first nation in the history of the world that acknowledged that our rights do not derive from government — they come from God himself. You see those words up there — that motto — it says 'In God We Trust,' right above the Speaker's rostrum. You know, a previous Congress put that there in the early sixties....Congress voted to put that there as a rebuke to the Soviets' worldview at the height of the Cold War. Why? Because communism, socialism, find their root in Marxism, and Marxism begins with the belief that there is no God. It's wrong."
"This Congress made a stand those many years ago, and we should do it again — we're different, we're distinct, we're exceptional, because we acknowledge that right there, our motto. It doesn't say 'In Government We Trust,' it says 'In God We Trust.' And we better remember that. He has blessed us with this grand experiment in self-governance now for almost two-and-a-half centuries, and by God's grace, we are working hard, and we are delivering on our promise to Make America Great Again.
If you haven't ventured over to the America 250 link on Whitehouse.gov, this Independence weekend is the perfect time. In partnership with Prager U, the White House has launched the "Founders Museum," with videos that feature AI representations of the founders and revolutionaries of our republic. With the representation of each biography and their contributions to the founding of our nation, the AI animations put forth a challenge to the viewer on how one should carry forward liberty and what was fought and paid for through their sacrifice.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/america250/founders-museum/ //
The videos can be viewed individually, in their respective series (Founding Fathers, Ladies of the Revolution, Major Events, and Declaration of Independence Signers), or as a whole unit. The section also includes a learning option with downloadable biographies, portraits, and documents that allow one to create their own "Founders Museum."
It has long been clear that the leftist activists who succeeded in getting “Juneteenth” added as a federal holiday meant to strip Independence Day of some of its moral and historical significance. The timing of Juneteenth, only a fortnight and change before the Fourth of July, is intended to usurp some of the Fourth’s glory. At the same time, the theme of the new holiday is designed to suggest that slavery, rather than liberty, is the defining feature of our founding. It’s an attempt to make 1776 vie with 1619, with the abolition of slavery being portrayed as our real moment of independence, in place of the moment when we actually proclaimed our independence and declared that “all men are created equal.” //
Per the Office of Personnel Management, the official name of the holiday to be observed on June 19 is “Juneteenth National Independence Day.” The official name of the holiday to follow 15 days later is “Independence Day.” It could hardly be clearer that Juneteenth was intended to compete with, and partially marginalize, the Fourth of July.
America does not need, should not have, and does not legitimately have, two Independence Days. Designating Juneteenth as “National Independence Day” intrudes upon our actual Independence Day. It suggests that Americans’ freedom doesn’t really trace to the Declaration of Independence but rather to the Emancipation Proclamation — or, more exactly, to awareness of that proclamation (more than two years after it was issued). It also suggests that our actual Independence Day doesn’t apply to all Americans. //
PBS writes, “Juneteenth commemorates when the last enslaved African Americans learned they were free.” This, however, is false. After Juneteenth, which marks the moment when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in June 1865 and announced that all slaves in Texas were free, people were still held in slavery in Delaware and Kentucky, border states unaffected by the Emancipation Proclamation. //
Only Congress and the states, through the passage of a constitutional amendment, had the power to end slavery on a national basis.
This fact, and the fact that slavery remained in existence in Delaware and Kentucky after Juneteenth, likely would have been raised in the Senate had it bothered to engage in a genuine debate over whether Juneteenth should be a federal holiday. Instead, that body, which once prided itself on its vigorous deliberations, passed the Juneteenth bill under a unanimous consent agreement in the wake of the George Floyd riots, an act of true irresponsibility and political cowardice.
Since Juneteenth marked the end of slavery in Texas, rather than the end of slavery in the U.S., it a much more sensible holiday for Texas than for the U.S. as a whole.
On a national basis, a date truly worth commemorating would be December 6, the day on which the 13th Amendment was ratified, marking our constitutional triumph over an inherited evil that clashed with our founding principles. On that day in 1865, Americans successfully amended their Constitution to read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” That is a day, and those are words, worth celebrating.
Congress should make December 6 a federal holiday to celebrate America’s abolition of slavery, while eliminating Juneteenth as a federal holiday and thereby confirming that we have but one Independence Day.
In one day, Japan had lost four fleet carriers, a heavy cruiser, and more than 300 front-line naval aircraft. Three of those carriers were lost in the space of a few moments, on the morning of June 4th. The Americans lost the Yorktown, a destroyer, and 150 aircraft. //
I've left a lot of detail out of this account. Explaining everything that happened in the days around this battle would fill a book. But it was the sinking of the Japanese carriers that turned that tide; that was the decisive moment of the war in the Pacific. The war went on for three more years, ships and men were lost, battles were fought and won, and while America suffered some setbacks, after Midway, the outcome was never truly in doubt. The Battle of Midway was the turning point. //
The famous American film director John Ford was on Midway when it was attacked on June 3rd; you can see his account of that battle here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr4YgpKU8ak. //
Eccentric
2 hours ago
The loses for the Japanese were not just the carriers and planes.
They also lost the majority of their experienced naval pilots. The US retained theirs.
As US war production ramped up and older obsolete planes were replaced by newer and better ones, the Japanese were unable to compete.
Atticus62 Eccentric
2 hours ago edited
A massive chunk of the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were lost at Midway. The Japanese went no further in their invasion/acquisition strategy after Midway. Everything started to contract for the Japanese after Midway.
Small, little known story that also affected the Pacific War from that campaign. A Japanese pilot landed his Zero on the ground intact and died quickly during the Alaska invasion portion of the the Midway campaign. The US Army recovered that Zero intact in Alaska and kept the discovery top secret.
The technology and plane were analyzed by the US military and the plane flown by many US pilots and they learned how to quickly counter the Zero's strengths. The intelligence value from that Zero was immeasurable. The Zero soon became a sitting duck in dogfights with US aircraft. That was also a result of the Midway campaign that the Japanese never recovered from. It's just not publicized as much because it took place in Alaska. //
Atticus62
2 hours ago edited
Posted this on PJ, but its important to pass along. If people are interested in reading more about the Midway campaign, I highly recommend the award winning 2005 book Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. It is written by Jonathan Parshall & Anthony Tully. It is a 700 page, extremely well written book that gives one a thorough account of the battle and its ramifications.
North Korea is infiltrating the West digitally. We must respond with vigilance, not wishful thinking. //
Pro tip for companies: ask prospective employees if they think Kim Jong-un is fat. Seriously. Multiple companies have caught North Korean operatives this way. They won’t criticize the regime—because they don’t want to die. And they’ll walk away from the job if you ask.
Lastly, a moment of reflection.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler, grandson of 10th U.S. President John Tyler, has passed away at age 96.
Yes, you heard that right: the grandson of a man born in 1790 lived into the third decade of the 21st century. That’s not just trivia—it’s a powerful reminder of how young our republic truly is.
John Tyler served before the Civil War—before Lincoln. And now his grandson, a man who lived through the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, the Space Race, and the internet age—is gone.
In a culture obsessed with the now, we forget how close the past really is. We are not far removed from the Founders—we’re their grandchildren. Literally.
Harrison Tyler preserved Sherwood Forest, his family’s historic estate. He protected Virginia’s architectural legacy. But perhaps his greatest legacy was just living—living proof that America’s past is not distant. Our institutions, our Congress, our civic inheritance—they’re real. They’re tangible. And they’re fragile.
His passing reminds us to cherish what we’ve inherited. To study it. To defend it. And to pass it on.
The line between the Founders’ America and our own isn’t theoretical—it’s family.
Speaking to "Fox News Sunday" host Shannon Bream, the 70-year-old actor revealed ahead of the event that one of the pieces of music at the Memorial Day concert on PBS is called “Rise” and it’s one of the pieces of music his late son, a composer, composed before he died in 2024 following a five year battle with a rare bone cancer. He was 33.
“It’s an incredible thing,” Sinise said when asked about getting to hear his late son’s music being played by the National Symphony Orchestra. “I had sent them a piece of music that Mac had written. It’s a piece called the ‘Rise.’” //
He later posted his speech from the evening with actor Esai Morales, which will have you standing up and shouting “USA, USA.”
“America began as an idea, a dream; the blood of those who placed duty before itself made that dream a reality,” Sinise said. “Our Armed Forces answered the call to service even before the United States became a nation.”
“This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of our armed forces,” he added. “On April 19th, 1775, the shot heard round the world was fired on Lexington Green when militiamen from Massachusetts faced off against British forces. Two months later, the Congress authorized the establishment of a united fighting force drawn from across the colonies. George Washington was nominated to be its leader over eight arduous years of struggle with Great Britain. What emerged as the United States Army became the symbol around which 13 fractious colonies rallied and ultimately won their freedom.”
“The principles established at its founding remain unwavering. Always place the mission first, never accept defeat, and never quit … Our Armed Forces gave birth to our nation,” he continued later. “Today, they sustain that nation’s freedoms on land, sea, air, and in space. This Memorial Day, we salute their selfless devotion to an America made possible by their sacrifice."
“Our Army, Navy, and Marines have always been proud to serve, and we, as a grateful nation, owe them our thanks,” Morales concluded. “More than that, we owe them our country.”
America is the only nation in history to be founded on the premise that all men are created equal
America finds itself in the unfortunate position of being the country that keeps the world in balance. When we slip, or show weakness, the world begins to fall apart. Wars spring up, financial instability rises, poverty and disease crop up, and oligarchs tighten their grip to the detriment of people around the globe. Entropy creeps in when America isn't maintaining its strength and making it clear that countries need to be on their best behavior.
A strong American leader brings peace, justice, and prosperity. A weak one invites collapse.
Children in the home may like the fact that they can run roughshod over their mother because it's easier to get what they want. They may "want mommy" all the time because they know that they can get away with a lot more under her.
It's when daddy gets home that the kids shape up and start acting right. They mind their p's and q's, and do as they're told, because facing daddy's wrath is a terrifying prospect. They may not like daddy as much as they do mommy, but they respect him, and it's that respect that keeps the house from falling into chaos.
When Moran used the term "reputation," Trump returned with the word "respect," and I think that's the reputation we should aim for. Not being liked, or feeling like a part of the "global community." We aren't a part of a global community. We are the United States, and without us, the world descends into chaos. Respect for us keeps things in order, and in order to maintain that respect, we have to flex our muscles and, from time to time, throw a punch.
Our enemies, and sometimes even our allies, may not like it, but what they like or dislike doesn't matter. What matters is that they maintain a healthy respect for us, our economy, our military, and our leadership.
Our reputation among other nations should boil down to, "We don't cross daddy."
I remember being more than a little surprised when I found out that Papi had been living in the US for 10, 15, or 20 years on average and obviously had not bothered to learn the language. Many were truck drivers, and while you don't need to know English to understand what a stop sign is telling you, it did make you wonder what aspects of the rules and regulations of the road they didn't fully comprehend because they couldn't speak the language. And if they couldn't speak the language, it made you wonder about assimilation and how much they knew about the place they were living in.
Thomas Jefferson? Que? Pearl Harbor? Que? The Bill of Rights? Que paso, hombre. //
If you can't be bothered to learn your host country's language, then there are probably a lot of other aspects of the culture that you're ignorant of as well. Like politics or current events, the former of which is downstream from the latter. And if you're unaware of such things, then either you're getting your information from family members (which will have a certain viewpoint) or Telemundo, which has its own slant. Neither of these is a great way to invest in your adopted homeland because you should be educating yourself, separating the wheat from the chaff, and arriving at your own conclusions. That contributes to a more informed and independent society rather than one that just accepts what it is told to accept.
Having a common language is like glue that binds a society. It holds it together and makes it strong, and it's one of the most durable adhesives in a culture. When you don't have a common language, you get tribalism. You get division. You get Balkanization. None of these bode well for what is supposed to have been a melting pot where all of the ingredients meld together and assimilate to become one people. Today, thanks to mass uncontrolled illegal immigration, we may never become what we once were. //
Diversity is great, but only if it adds to the culture instead of splitting it up.
Anyway, the diversity trope is getting so tiresome because if it doesn't put unity of purpose in line ahead of it, then we're going to diversify ourselves right out of a country.
So much for “the shot heard ‘round the world.”
The nation recently celebrated a quarter-millennium since the first battles of the American Revolution, fought at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. But, as a recent Wall Street Journal column noted, you wouldn’t know it from talking to most Americans. The anniversary of events celebrated by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1837 “Concord Hymn” passed largely unnoted and unnoticed, “the shot heard ‘round the world” turning into a quiet squib barely detected, save perhaps for the towns in Massachusetts where the events occurred.
The nation’s impending semiquincentennial — a fancy term for our 250th birthday, which we will celebrate next July — provides an excellent time for Americans to rediscover our nation’s history. In an ideal scenario, the more our fellow citizens recognize the sacrifices that our forebearers made to establish, as Lincoln noted, “a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” the more we might cherish, value, and nurture those freedoms today.
Next year marks the 250th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence — the semiquincentennial. Unfortunately, instead of a yearlong birthday party and a celebration of American history, the stage is being set for 2026 to be a year of neurotic self-loathing.
The U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission (also called America 250) was created to provide national coordination for next year’s commemorative events. Ostensibly, each state and territory has also appointed its own independent committee to plan more local contributions to the festivities. In reality, a minimum of 14 states have adopted programming recommendations from a single non-profit called the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH).
The motivation driving the AASLH’s recommendations is neither celebratory nor constructive. John Dichtl, the president and CEO of the AASLH, recorded a Zoom presentation in 2021 in which he explicitly outlined their goals. He describes 2026 as a “once in a generation opportunity to critically engage with our nation’s history,” and a chance to “foster critical awareness of our faults, past and present, and the changes we need to make now to move toward justice.”
In George Orwell’s prescient novel, 1984, the slogan of the Party is
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
The idea is both simple and profound. By eradicating and reinventing history, it is possible to completely reframe reality for future generations. This is routinely done by leftwing academics searching for penumbras and emanations of the US Constitution. //
Salon runs one of these epic falsehoods titled Sorry, NRA: The U.S. was actually founded on gun control. //
This is simply nutbaggery. Madison’s draft amendment is only intended to protect Quakers and Mennonites from being compelled to provide military service. It’s pretty simple.
Ed-squared also turn the logic of the Second Amendment upon its head. If the Founders had, indeed, harbored fear of an armed populace then they went to great lengths to hide it. Take a look at the militia laws extant in the colonies at the signing of the Constitution.
Connecticut required every male over sixteen to keep a musket, powder and shot.
Virginia declared that all free men were required to possess a musket, four pounds of lead and one pound of powder. If a free man was not financially able to afford a weapon, the county had to provide one.
New York dictated a fine of five shillings to any male, sixteen to sixty, who could not arm himself.
Similar statutes are in all colonies. The clear intent of these laws is not that they link firearms ownership to militia membership, rather they are aimed at people who don’t have firearms in order to ensure the colony has a militia. Think of these laws in the same way that you’s think of laws requiring kids to be immunized before they can go to school. The laws aren’t aimed at people who voluntarily immunize and the purpose isn’t to further public education. Rather mandatory immunizations are on the books as a way of coercing people who would not immunize voluntarily. //
A free and an independent people are a direct threat to the progressive experiment. The only way they will achieve that goal is to lie and lie relentlessly and shamelessly until they control the past. We can’t allow that to happen.
Southside Judge Smails
a day ago
I didn't know any of that...any specific books recommended?
anon-y2mh Southside
a day ago edited
Probably the biggest one I can think of off the top of my head was "At Dawn We Slept" by Gordon Prange.
However, something to think about - the USN actually wargamed an attack where the US had 24 hours warning. Pacific Fleet was able to sortie, and they met Kido Butai some four or five hundred miles north of Pearl Harbor.
Where they proceeded to get their asses kicked (it hurts to say, but I say that as a veteran myself - call Pearl Harbor what it was) as badly as they did in real life. There were only 2 carriers available in PacFlt at that point. One was off delivering aircraft to someplace (Midway, I believe). Don't remember where the other was, but they were not in any shape at all to contribute to a battle with 6 Japanese carriers.
The gotcha was where they were. In the real world, Pearl Harbor was only something like 60 - 100 ft. deep. The Navy was able to salvage and patch many of the ships initially sunk or mangled. Had they met the Japanese navy 500 miles northwest of Pearl, they would have been in multi-thousand foot deep water. Any ship lost there would have been lost permanently.
The point is that Pearl Harbor has on several occasions been called the most "successful defeat" in USN history. Had they been warned, the death toll would have been higher and the permanent destruction of PacFlt (minus the two carriers) would most likely been almost total.
anon-y2mh Mrs. deWinter
2 hours ago edited
Hat tip!
First, I owe Mrs. deWinter and mopani an apology. When I wrote my original post, I had a false memory and used an incorrect number. There were 3 carriers (not 2) in PacFlt's order of battle. The carriers were Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga. Enterprise was returning from a mission to send a Marine fighter squadron to Wake Island. On the morning of 7 December, the task force was about 215 miles west of Oahu. Lexington and her task force was returning from a similar mission to Midway, and was, on the morning of 7 December, 500 miles southeast of Midway. She alone, of the 3 carries, was in a position to do something about Kido Butai. However, the smart money would have been a direct order to her commander telling him to run for it. There was no way on the face of this planet that Lexington was in a fit state to go up, effectively by herself, against any two of the 6 Japanese carriers present. Had she attempted to do so, she would almost definitely been sunk, losing a significant number of her sailors.
The third carrier (the one I'd forgotten about because she wasn't present in theater that morning) was Saratoga who was just pulling into San Diego when the attack started in Hawaii.
One other thing I touched on but didn't really go into depth on was the death/injury toll. Of the 8 battleships present in Pearl Harbor that morning, 5 were either sunk outright or damaged badly enough that they would be expected to sink had that damage occurred in deeper waters.
Of those 5 battleships, only two (Arizona and Oklahoma) were completely written off. The remaining three (Nevada, California, and West Virginia) were ultimately moved to Puget Sound, WA for repairs and refit.
Being the only ship to successfully get underway, Nevada was hit by at least one torpedo and 6 bombs, forcing her crew to turn out of the channel and beach her near the mouth of the harbor (had she sunk in the mouth of Pearl Harbor, the harbor would have been utterly useless until she was cleared out of the way). After repairs, Nevada, was used for convoy duty in the Atlantic and provided fire support for 5 landings (Attu, Normandy, Southern France, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa).
California was hit by two torpedoes and a bomb. However one of the hits started a fire which disabled part of the electrical system that powered the pumps. So she slowly sank over the next 3 days. After she was refloated and repaired, she took part in the Battle of Suriago Straight, she was hit by a kamikaze during the invasion of Lyangen Gulf. Following repairs, she was again present and providing fire support during the invasion of Okinawa.
West Virginia sank after multiple torpedo hits. After being refloated and repaired, she was sent to support the invasion of the Phillipines (Gen. MacArthur and his "I Have Returned" moment), taking part in the Battle of Suriago Straight, as well as the battles of Lyangen Gulf, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
So I think it's safe to say that those three ships materially contributed to the success of the war effort, and none would have been available had they been sunk 400 miles northwest of Oahu.
Now the men are something different. There were 2,008 sailors killed and 710 wounded during the attack, with roughly half of the fatalities coming from the explosion on board Arizona. We can probably deduct the Army/Army Air Corps casualties (218 killed, 364 wounded) from the totals, as the Army Air Corps couldn't have been present due to range from Pearl Harbor. The Marines would still have suffered some fatalities, but it would come down to whether or not they were deployed on the ships or if they were shore Marines at the time.
Let's start with keeping the Marines out of it, and deducting the Army/AAC totals from the Navy. That would leave us with a floor of 1790 killed and 646 wounded.
This is where it gets really sketchy to determine what a reasonable total should be. If we determine that California, Nevada, and West Virginia were total losses (with only California sinking slowly enough to get more than a tithe of her men off), we'd be looking at 778 casualties from Nevada and 1157 casualties from from West Virginia, assuming that they sank in a similar way in this universe as they did in ours. In our world, West Virginia lost 106 killed and Nevada lost 60 killed and 109 wounded. So, if you take the C-A-T =DOG numbers that we came up with above, my back-of-the-napkin arithmetic raises the casualties from 2043 killed and 1178 wounded to something on the close order of 3450 killed and 646 wounded (the numbers I have access to don't easily differentiate between wounded and killed, so I've been kind of lumping everything into the killed basket).
And this is, frankly, almost more important than saving 3 ships for battle later. Our back of the envelope estimate says we'd lose 1400 or so more trained sailors. And from a human perspective, we'd lose another 1400 or so brothers, sons, and fathers. In Pearl Harbor, these men were able to frequently self-rescue by crawling to other ships via mooring lines. They were close enough to shore that, assuming that they could dodge the burning oil slicks, they stood a passable chance of getting to dry ground. In the middle of the Pacific, they'd have to take their chances that someone would be around to rescue them, as they would be in no position to rescue themselves.
So, yeah. I'll freely admit that the above was a bunch of back-of-the-napkin arithmetic held together by more wild guesses that I should have used, but it kind of puts things in perspective.
Where would our nation be without men like this? When the attack came, they performed. It was a deadly dangerous business. So many of these men saw friends maimed and killed. Even the survivors bore scars, some within, some without. But they recovered from the attack and went on to flood in increasing numbers across the Pacific, and they won. It's hard to imagine what may have happened if they hadn't, but they did. Vaughn P. Drake Jr., from what we read of his life, made no great deal of his service. Many of his peers did likewise. There was a job to do, they did it, and then they went home and got their lives back. They are heroes nonetheless, and now there is one fewer hero in our world. //
Mr. Drake will be laid to rest in Winchester Cemetary in Winchester, Kentucky, with full military honors, as he deserves. There are now only 15 confirmed survivors of the December 7th, 1941 attack.
To Vaughn P. Drake Jr.'s family, I can only say this: All of America is proud of Mr. Drake; we, as a nation, are richer for the existence of men such as he. Indeed, without men like him, we might very well not have a nation at all. //
7againstthebes
21 hours ago
Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness. GB Shaw
The above characterizes that entire generation of people. Men that were willing to absorb punishment in order to close with their enemy and dish out punishment of their own. Men and women that did the job and came home and made their life happen. Made society happen. Made new industry happen. People that brought about a new era of prosperity to this country.
They never whined about the hardships. They just worked to make everything better.
Judge Smails
19 hours ago
Read a book sometime ago about this subject. It would appear to me that adequate intelligence was not being passed from DC to Pearl regarding Japan. Still, that radar system that was operational did what it was suppose to do and painted the massive amount of aircraft in formation (over 300), far larger than those three unarmed B-17s. The soldier watching it phoned the duty officer and was told "not to worry about it." Outrageous. We knew an attack was coming, but not where. Could have been the Philippines, Singapore or Thailand. No one thought Pearl was in jeopardy for some reason. Astonishing.
Air patrols should have been up looking west through north. It would have been easy to spot over 300 aircraft in formation as they closed on the north coast of Hawaii. Two days before, Japan told all its embassies to destroy their sensitive material. DC knew this. Tragic, horrible day.
anon-y2mh Southside
16 hours ago edited
Probably the biggest one I can think of off the top of my head was "At Dawn We Slept" by Gordon Prange.
However, something to think about - the USN actually wargamed an attack where the US had 24 hours warning. Pacific Fleet was able to sortie, and they met Kido Butai some four or five hundred miles north of Pearl Harbor.
Where they proceeded to get their asses kicked (it hurts to say, but I say that as a veteran myself - call Pearl Harbor what it was) as badly as they did in real life. There were only 2 carriers available in PacFlt at that point. One was off delivering aircraft to someplace (Midway, I believe). Don't remember where the other was, but they were not in any shape at all to contribute to a battle with 6 Japanese carriers.
The gotcha was where they were. In the real world, Pearl Harbor was only something like 60 - 100 ft. deep. The Navy was able to salvage and patch many of the ships initially sunk or mangled. Had they met the Japanese navy 500 miles northwest of Pearl, they would have been in multi-thousand foot deep water. Any ship lost there would have been lost permanently.
The point is that Pearl Harbor has on several occasions been called the most "successful defeat" in USN history. Had they been warned, the death toll would have been higher and the permanent destruction of PacFlt (minus the two carriers) would most likely been almost total.
America remains the freest nation on earth. Does that mean you get to keep your student visa if you use it to support terrorism? No, but to cite that as proof that Europe is more liberal on free speech is laughable. The Economist should be ashamed. //
Bootsie
3 hours ago
In Europe you have freedom to say anything you want, as long as it is what the government says you can say. Is that about right? //
anon-g9p7
3 hours ago
Diversity leads to tribalism.
The most vicious tribe wins. //
anon-aqgv anon-exgv
3 hours ago
Europe has "free speech" for Leftists only. //
TexasVeteran
3 hours ago edited
"Europeans can say almost anything they want both in theory and in practice."
That’s a bald faced lie, just ask Tommy Robinson! Even pointing out a negative fact about Islam will land you in jail.
"Europe’s universities never became hotbeds of speech-policing by one breed of culture warrior or the other."
Because there's no dissent.They all think alike— on the left!
"No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza."
Another lie, they’ll, end you to prison for supporting Israel!
Ninety-nine years ago, H.L. Mencken - the "Sage of Baltimore" - released his book, "Notes on Democracy," which I really need to go read again. Mencken was no fan of big government, even by the standards of the 1920s; in fact, you could argue that he was no fan of government at all. What's interesting about his work is his prescience.
Granted, society and politics run in cycles. The Strauss-Howe Generational Theory is one attempt at defining these cycles. So is the old saw that goes, "Tough times make tough people; tough people make good times; good times make weak people; weak people make tough times." //
Mencken. He wasn't an optimist. But when you read his work, you wonder if he didn't have some kind of premonition as to what's going on in the United States today. Back then, in the Roaring Twenties, Mencken made this observation:
The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone – one which barely escapes being no government at all.
Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently – one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.
In other words, the only legitimate role of government is to protect the citizens' liberty and property. //
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself … Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.
All government … is against liberty.
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. //
Sarcastic Frog
2 hours ago
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself …"
This was true in ancient times; it was true in 1926; and its true today.
Unlike almost every other country, the US was founded on rebellion- people thinking for themselves and resisting the pressure to obey the government for the sole reason of "because we tell you to."
There are those who hate this quality and actively push against it with their NewSpeak and pronouns and "canceling".
I hope we will always have the rebels, who think for themselves and resist the conformity.
anon-t75 Sarcastic Frog
2 hours ago
"A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson. //
anon-t75
2 hours ago
"I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." ~ Thomas Jefferson. //
idalily
2 hours ago
My favorite Mencken quote: "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." Not sure quite why I love it. I just do.
Helen Andrews
Feb 20, 2024
12:04 AM
The year 1994 marked the beginning of the era of globalization. For a short time after the end of the Cold War, it was unclear what would be the driving theme of the next period in history. Then it emerged: borderlessness. The theme of the new era would be the free movement of goods, people, and capital. In a few short months on either side of January 1, 1994, the European Union was formed; the Marrakesh agreement was signed, creating the World Trade Organization; the Channel Tunnel opened; and the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect.
Hubris was present from the beginning. During the negotiations over NAFTA, union leader Richard Trumka, then of the United Mine Workers of America, later president of the AFL-CIO, asked a Clinton administration official whether he was worried about the effect of free trade on American blue-collar workers. The official said yes, but eventually “wages would start to go up again, and things would even out around the world.” Trumka asked him how long this would take. The official answered, “About three to five generations.”
We are now one generation into this process, thirty years from the start of NAFTA, so we are at a good point to ask: Are things evening out? Is the new equilibrium we were promised any closer, and it is better than the one we had before? //
On the 30th anniversary of NAFTA, its opponents stand vindicated and its defenders are chastened—or at least they should be. In many corners of the left and right, free trade dogma is as strong today as it was the day NAFTA was signed. It is therefore worth looking back to see what exactly went wrong with NAFTA, what made people blind to its flaws, and why its costs proved greater than anyone predicted at the time. //
The U.S. lost 5 million manufacturing jobs between 1995 and 2015. Even in advanced technology products, we now have a massive trade deficit. Globalization has not made our manufacturing sector leaner and meaner. Between 2011 and 2022, manufacturing productivity in the U.S. actually declined. To be clear, these dismal numbers are not mainly the fault of NAFTA. The number of jobs lost to Mexico was relatively small; the China shock dwarfs it. Yet NAFTA set off the chain of events that allowed globalization to run free the way it did. It gave the free traders a big win and reshaped the coalitions to their advantage.
There have also been non-economic costs to NAFTA that don’t show up in economic statistics. For one, NAFTA made Mexico fat. The same cheap corn that pushed the farmers off their land flooded grocery stores with processed food and high fructose corn syrup. Coke became cheaper than water. The result was that Mexico’s obesity rate almost doubled; 17 percent of adults are now diabetic, compared to 9 percent in 1990. In 2016, diabetes was Mexico’s leading cause of death. If you believe the online nutrition gurus, NAFTA exported the same obesogenic diet patterns based on massive corn subsidies that have caused Americans to get fatter in the last half-century, far more than our rates of calorie consumption and physical activity can explain. It also gave an economic boost to the same corn producers fueling that dynamic at home.
NAFTA also made Mexico liberal. Today Mexico has gay marriage, gay adoption, and abortion, all things that would have been unthinkable when the agreement was signed. //
The lawsuit that led to the 2023 Mexican supreme court decision decriminalizing abortion was brought by a progressive NGO funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Tides Foundation. //
Pork prices surged after the pandemic because, as journalist Rana Foroohar explains in her book Homecoming, “the largest pork producer in the United States, Smithfield, is owned by a Chinese company that takes orders from the Chinese government, which understandably wanted to export to China what pork was available during a time of scarcity.”
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