Things I wish I had Written

Recently I have found some writing I have thought was very good, so good I wish I had written it.

I grew up listening to Marty Robbins and his great Western songs. In fact earlier this week I listened to his Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs album, that link goes to "They're hanging me tonight", a great tragic song if such things appeal to you as they do to me. But until tonight I never knew he had written a political song. How political? His record label refused to release the song, I should also point out that this song was recorded in 1966 when Marty Robbins was still making the Country and Western charts. Ohhh if your not a Lefty you really have to listen to this, fantastic!

Marty Robbins - Ain't I Right


Quadrant is an Australian monthly journal that has been going since the 1950's, It was originally published as part of a pushback against Communist publications in the West, it even received funding from the CIA during the Cold War. It is still published and you can buy it in Newsagents or order it if they do not have it in stock. It is a Classical Liberal/Right Liberal/Conservative hybrid, Intellectual but in the good old fashioned way. Here's the part I wish I had written:

Ideologies Have Consequences/

"Western progressives appear to approach external and internal politics with sharply different mindsets. International relations are viewed through the prism of "win-win". The idea is that hostile ideological regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran or geopolitical adventurers like Vladimir Putin's Russia can be won over through negotiations, bribery and appeals to what the Western Left considers the "real" (that is, material) interests of the outlier regimes, premised on a global progressive view of the world. In this view, anti-democratic adversaries can be persuaded into abandoning their zero-sum approach to international politics and embracing the globalist "win-win" or non-zero-sum scenario, as Robert Wright (Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny) argued more than a decade ago.

On the other hand, the progressives view domestic politics as strictly a zero-sum game. Their opponents at home, Western conservatives, are often excoriated as racists, xenophobes and reactionary retrogrades. The current President of the United States and the leaders of, for example, the European Parliament and European Commission, appear to expend much more vitriol on Republicans and Eurospectics, respectively, then on the West's anti-democratic enemies. This hostility is often reciprocated, hence the increasing polarisation of Western politics"

Here's some from websites.

Is Lack of Play the Reason Kids are Depressed?

"Many of the older generation, in recalling their own carefree childhood play experiences, are quick to wish the same for their children and grandchildren.

But there is a major difference between those days and today. The older generations were able to play in their backyard and throughout the neighborhood because many of them had a parent at home. Not an overseeing, hovering parent ready to swoop in at the sign of a scratch, but an adult who encouraged children to get out of the house and was a responsible and wise resource in the event of real trouble. The few children who didn't have a parent at home could run with the herd and still be safe because the eyes of so many other parents were upon him.

It's all well and good to say that children need more freedom and opportunities to play, but can this really happen in a society where both parents go to work and bring home a paycheck?"

https://antidem.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/lion-and-ox/

"This, of course, runs up against two of the left's most anti-reality tendencies. The first is its consistent inability to comprehend the difference between the descriptive and the normative - between an "is" and an "ought". To the left, if something ought to be, then it is - or perhaps more specifically, if something must be true in order for their beliefs to be valid, then it is true, and questioning it will be placed beyond the pale. The second is their belief in the power that laws passed by governments have to restructure reality. They protest: "But we have passed laws to ensure equality! We have Supreme Court decisions! The law is clear!" Perhaps it is - but it is also meaningless in the face of implacable reality.

So here is some reality: You cannot pass a law that will make human beings equal. You can pass a law that will force everybody to act as if human beings are equal but that is not the same thing. The government could just as well pass a law forcing everybody to act as if unicorns existed, and enforce it with penalties so harsh that virtually nobody would be willing to speak up against it. In fact, you can go father. You could mandate teaching about unicorns at schools and universities, and indeed, you could even set up whole Departments of Unicorn Studies. You could make sure that films and television were careful to never question whether unicorms existed. You could get people kicked off of social networks for snickering at the idea of unicorns. You could make it so that those who dared to disbelieve in unicorns were fired from their jobs, blacklisted from entire professions, and rendered unable to make enough money to put food on the table for their children to eat.

You could do all of that, and it still won't make unicorns exist."

A great song and three very good thoughts I wish I had written, I hope you found them as enlightening as I did.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
Another Article You Might Like?
Liberalism Versus Religion