Is Our Children Learning?

06 Thursday Jul 2017

Throwback to build on this morning’s theme. Also a primer for what’s coming to Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/perrinlovett) soon. – P

PERRIN LOVETT

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?” So inquired President select, George W. Bush to a crowd in Florence, South Carolina, January 11, 2000. The politicians obviously are not learning. But is … are the children? A new international study doesn’t look too good for youngsters in America. The study is massive, 384 page PDF download but here it is.

The 2015/16 Index of Freedom of Education concentrates on the availability of “non-govermental” education. The rankings are deeply hidden, starting on page 315. The mighty United States, which ever one knows is the freest place on Earth, is in a tie with Hungary for 17th place. Who knew Hungary was the co-freest place on the planet.

This study is concerned with educational opportunities outside of the mainstream of “public” “schooling.” That would include private schools, charters,community, parochial, family schools, tutoring and home schooling. Most global education studies…

View original post 971 more words

[From the Mere Inkling Blog] C.S. Lewis Compared J.R.R. Tolkien to What?

23 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on [From the Mere Inkling Blog] C.S. Lewis Compared J.R.R. Tolkien to What?

Rob Stroud on C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, friendship, and colorful sea critters. Another example of a well thought out, centered blog, unlike … uh … just read it. 🙂

Mere Inkling Press

polyps

These two great Oxford giants were good friends. As such, they accepted each other’s eccentricities. But that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t find humor in those peculiarities.

The Inklings were notorious for their candid critiques and their not-so-subtle teasing of one another. That’s what we all do with our good friends, right?

It’s humor offered not to wound, but to gently discombobulate our companion. And it’s success is measured in the laughter generated among colleagues who share goodwill.

I recently came across a reference, however, where Lewis may have transgressed the bounds of propriety. I leave the assessment of that fact to you.

In a 1947 letter to Margaret Douglas, who had recently lost her mother, Lewis offers warm words of consolation. In addition, he briefly references two publications that she had apparently alluded to in her own letter. The first was his Preface to Essays Presented to Charles Williams

View original post 651 more words

Waco: A Harbinger, 20 Years Later

19 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Waco – 24 years ago, today. A generation away and fading fast. Look for a little pomp and spin on the silver anniversary next year. It’s starting to seem like ancient history. I suppose it might as well be. From four years ago on the 20th anniversary:

PERRIN LOVETT

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the fiery end of the federal government’s siege on the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist Church in Waco, Texas. April 19, 1993 was the end of a month and a half ordeal probably unlawfully initiated against a peaceful, if weird, group of Christians by the tyrannical Imperial federal government. In addition to being a serious injustice in and of itself, it also stands as a critical warning to all of us free citizens currently enduring the 21st Century.

(Separation of Church and State? Google Images.)

I recall the media’s treatment of the story during the winter and spring of 1993. Essentially, they reported the feds’ words verbatim and, in keeping with modern journalistic tact, did so with no critical analysis whatsoever. The Clinton administration and their lamestream puppets said that David Koresh was a deranged and dangerous man who had brainwashed a large group of followers Jim Jones…

View original post 1,857 more words

Post-Apocalyptic Faith

13 Thursday Apr 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Post-Apocalyptic Faith

A fast but fascinating look at Christianity, post-apocalypse, real and fictional. Please check out Rob’s outstanding (and much more centered than my site) Mere Inkling.

Mere Inkling Press

shelter

In a post-apocalyptic world, would there be any room for Christianity? A variety of writers have addressed that in dramatically different ways, arguing for faith’s final dissipation or its ultimate triumph.

Post-apocalyptic literature being what it is, of course, most of the portrayals of Christianity either (1) reveal its idealistic collapse, (2) describe its survival as a crippled reflection of its former self, (3) depict its takeover by some persuasive power figure or mysterious cartel, or (4) ignore it altogether, as if it never existed.

In a recent essay on the subject, one of my favorite books was referenced. Canticle for Leibowitz was one of the first novels I read that awakened me to the fact reading could be enjoyable. A Canticle for Leibowitz struck a perfect chord in me, blending captivating science fiction with a consideration of the place of faith in the apocalyptic equation.

A cinematic masterpiece of…

View original post 705 more words

Spring and Other Phenomena

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Spring and Other Phenomena

2017: Darius wasn’t hick enough for CC. And Rock Fore is gone – it’s country crooning forever more. Ten years after Cheap Trick rocked the Masters. Y’all can have it all; I’ll be in FLA.

Happy Last day of Winter 2017…

PERRIN LOVETT

Today we observe the vernal equinox in the Northern hemisphere, better known as the first day of Spring. It’s a big deal for gardeners and sun worshipers, both beachy and pagan. Today also marks the feast of Palm Sunday, the commemoration of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem and the beginning of Holy Week. Easter is coming fast.

300px-Assisi-frescoes-entry-into-jerusalem-pietro_lorenzetti Pietro Lorenzetti, 1320.

There are but five days until the release of what may be the best Batman movie ever, judging by the last two trailers.

In the Garden City preparations are almost finished for the 2016 Masters Tournament and related festivities. The azaleas are blooming. John Daly is prepping his RV. The big tent at Hooters will be up any day.

If you’re in town the evening of Tuesday, April 5th, you can attend the annual Rock Fore! Dough charity concert in Columbia County. When I returned to Augusta nine years ago the…

View original post 142 more words

Fred on Family (His) and Society (Ours)

17 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Other Columns, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Fred on Family (His) and Society (Ours)

Tags

America, civilization, culture, English, Fred Reed

This is a must read for the Anglophiles.

Fred Reed, in one essay, explains both his family tree and the precipitous decline of a civilization.

We were part of a thing brief but of immense value. The literacy, the attention to language, was of one cloth with that of the English, whose mastery has never been equaled and seldom approached. It has lasted in the family. In evenings with my grandfather at Hampden-Sydney, a parlor game was to call out three numbers–“746, 2, 7”–page 746, column 2, seventh entry of a huge dictionary on onion-skin paper–whereupon the caller-out had to spell the word, define it, pronounce it correctly, and give the etymology.

Tidewater was in the current of the English stretching from at least Sir Philip Sydney through Lewis Carol, Milne, Galsworthy, Kipling, Tolkien, Churchill and a hundred others. A thousand others. This virtuosity is now lost beyond redemption as American society, once determined from the top down, has come to be determined from the bottom up. Can you imagine an American politician writing—well, anything literate, but especially the equal of Churchill’s A History of the English Speaking People?

But we were speaking of the curious continuity of families. Come the war, Charles Scott Venable served on Lee’s staff, and Andrew Reid Venable on Jeb Stuart’s. This was a continuation of the aristocratic sense of duty. Their country was being invaded by alien people and they, like Lee, like Jackson, determined to defend it. Both were graduates of Hampden-Sydney, as am I, as were my father and uncle.

After the war Charles Venable was an astronomer and professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia. My grandfather processed mathematics at Hampden-Sydney and served as dean. My paternal uncle passed the bar but chose journalism, my father being a mathematician. I am whatever I am–for years I worked my way through math texts because I liked them–and my daughters are, aside from being smart, a musician and an artist. One of them popped ninety-ninth percentile in math on some standardized test and was invited to attend a math camp. A weird continuity.

America is not, or was not, ever, a “nation of immigrants”, a “proposition nation”. Ronald Reagan and a thousand shrieking loony liberals and cuck apologists aside, this country was an extension of Old England. Until the early 1800s, this was a land of the English. For another 100 years or so it was a land of the English and those of European descent who closely approximated the English tradition and experience. It is only since 1966 that the character has changed. And the change is noticeable.

I have seen, firsthand, the change and decline. The Lovetts came to America in two waves. One assigned to New England and the Puritan settlements. The other, my closest kin, like Fred’s people, settled in Virginia. Unlike his folks, mine departed South for the Carolinas and Georgia.

My family history (much of it) strangely tracks that path Fred lays out, from at least 1066 and on-wards. It ends with me and my daughter in the 21st Century. My little girl was born into a society which somewhat resembled the one I witnessed in the 70’s and 80’s – a little.

b7d7782350bdf324b86d3c70429dda6a

I saw the changes as they unfolded. I would like to go back. Whether that is possible remains to be seen. If it is not, then damn it. All of it.

Dutch Riots Will Help Greet W. MNGA *The Last Refuge

11 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Dutch Riots Will Help Greet W. MNGA *The Last Refuge

On Saturday the Dutch government withdrew landing permission for a Turkish foreign minister’s aircraft, sparking a furious reaction by Turkish president Recep Erdogan and escalating a diplomatic dispute between the two NATO allies. The primary concern of the Dutch was the Islamic Turks inability to assemble without violence in Rotterdam. Throughout the day tensions grew […]

via Turkish Islamists Riot in Rotterdam Holland After Turkish Minister Refused Entry… — The Last Refuge

Surprises on the Road

09 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Other Columns, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Surprises on the Road

Tags

blog, cigars, Perrin, travel

Wow. What a day! Took the show on the road again today around 4 AM.

1) The traffic report:

I-20, I-95, I-10, I-75, all U.S. Highways, and all side roads are all in terrible shape. Every single mile is under construction, blocked with clover wrecks, and prowled by the Po-Po. Abandon all hope. Stay home.

2) “Check Engine”. On a 500-mile trip! Awesome. I did, she looked fine – if a little dusty.

3) Got into the Southern Command and discovered my auto-post selections from last night did not work. Thanks, Word Press! Now I look as drunk as the Russian with the magic nuclear moles….

All better now.

_20170309_142628

The Davidoff Effect makes everything okay!

Did Someone Hit the Vodka too Hard?

09 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Did Someone Hit the Vodka too Hard?

Tags

America, mole missiles, money, Russia, War

Retired Russian colonel Viktor Baranetz wrote an entertaining article for Komsomolskaya Pravda: “Trump-Pump-Pump And Our Big Bang“. Baranetz seemed to have two main points, one thought-provoking and one off the wall nutty sounding.

“The U.S. is the permanent ‘world champion’ in the size of its military budget – almost $600 billion, which is 10 times more than Russias. Even if we add together the military budgets of the top ten countries in the world, they would not reach the American budget! Now it turns out that even that is not enough for Donald Trump. He intends to increase defense expenditure by $54 billion. This money would be enough to maintain five Polish armies. Or 10 Ukrainian ones.

“The American public is already grumbling at Trump, who prefers guns to butter. But cunning Trump understands what his trump card is: He is ‘buying’ the support of the army, as well as of military industry corporations. Former Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army Yuri Baluyevsky is certain that ‘the idea to increase defense expenditure was presented to Trump by the U.S. military, who argue a lot about the power of the Russian army, realizing this is an opportunity to get new money.’ But how will Moscow react to the growing military budget of the U.S.? Baluyevsky answers: ‘Russia will not compete with the U.S. in defense expenditure. We are in a different weight class. For us, the main question is how to ensure Russia’s defense at a lower cost. I am sure that we have already found asymmetrical responses. I don’t see a big problem here.’

“What are these mysterious ‘asymmetrical responses’ that our politicians and generals speak about so often? Maybe it’s a myth or a pretty turn of phrase? No! Our asymmetrical response is nuclear warheads that can modify their course and height so that no computer can calculate their trajectory. Or, for example, the Americans are deploying their tanks, airplanes and special forces battalions along the Russian border. And we are quietly ‘seeding’ the U.S. shoreline with nuclear ‘mole’ missiles (they dig themselves in and ‘sleep’ until they are given the command)[…]

“Oh, it seems I’ve said too much. I should hold my tongue.

Point 1:

The U.S. spends a ridiculous sum on “defense”. He’s 100% correct here in all his statements. He merely confirmed those poll study results – the U.S., the most powerful nation, militarily, spends ten times as much as the second nation, Russia. If Trump gets the extra $54 Billion, then it will be nearly 11 times as much.

Not that it is defense-oriented. The military budget largely serves three purposes: money, money, and more money for the MIC; a jobs program, and; foreign intervention. It’s offense, not defense. The U.S. military was also the world’s largest in 2001 when they couldn’t even defend their own headquarters.

Defense spending is to Republicans what education spending is to Democrats. More spent after a certain point just means spending more. Ah, well, it’s just money.

Point 2:

The mole missiles. Either Brother Barabetz was be facetious or else he must have just come from the bar. While designing missiles that burrow into the seafloor and wait for “the command” must be technically possible, I suppose that, and implanting (seeding) them, would be exorbitantly expensive. Too much so for $60 Billion per year.

And I can’t see them being that effective if they were real. Essentially they would amount to underground nuclear explosions. Powerful, yes, but not nearly as powerful as a conventional in-air detonation. And they could likely only be deployed against non-military targets. I assume we could detect the seeding construction near one of our sub bases, for example.

They already have a similar but better system available – on their subs.

The “moles” seem as plausible as that 50s or 60s sci-fi movie wherein the Chinese dug an invasion tunnel to America through the center of the Earth.

nimbus-image-1489021646569

It is possible the man was talking about something real and using the ridiculous as a cover. When you’re outspent and out-gunned, asymmetrical warfare is an option. Something like the self-correcting trajectory is possible and plausible.

I also noticed the man talked about defending Russia. It’s cheaper to defend that to attack.

Anyway, maybe he had a triple at lunch and felt pretty good. Maybe he’s off the reservation. Maybe he’s on to something. Dunno. You?

The Border of the Fourth Amendment

02 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

America, borders, Constitution, Fourth Amendment, freedom, The People, tyranny

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

-U.S. Constitution, Amend. IV

Persons, their papers and effects, safe from search and seizure. Warrants. Freedom. America. Civility. Constitution. Rights.

Ancient. History. Gone, my friends. Read on: the “border” of the 4th Amendment:

Over the last decade, tens of thousands of visitors to the US – plus US citizens and residents returning home – have been subjected to warrantless border searches of their electronic devices.

Border officials may seize, search, and copy the contents of any such device. There’s no arrest, warrant, or even probable cause required – just “gimme.” And activists claim that since the inauguration of President Trump, this practice is becoming increasingly common.

While the majority of searches seem to occur when entering the US, border officials also have the authority to search electronic devices before you leave the country. In some cases, you may even be asked to log into your social media and email accounts and allow border officials to peruse their contents.

And that’s not all. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would apply these rules not just at the “border,” but also within 100 miles of any border crossing. In other words, many of America’s largest cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Francisco are also effectively “constitution-free zones.” So is any city with an international airport.

While I haven’t heard of warrantless electronic device searches outside actual entry points into the US, between October 2008 and June 2010, 6,500 persons had their electronic devices searched along the US border, according to the DHS records.

In most legal challenges to this practice, federal courts have essentially rubber-stamped these policies. Even if you take the precaution of encrypting the contents of your electronic devices (highly recommended), border officials may demand the password.

…

The border and incoming arrivals I can kind of see. Don’t like it, but I can see it. It’s the 100-mile radius and the interior aspects that call up my inner Lexington and Concord here. While I have not heard of DHS (to protect us from CIA-bred terrorists, remember) searching phones or laptops in the interior, I have heard of their checkpoints, random places on the highway and nowhere near any border.

hqdefault

These aren’t the civil rights you’re looking for. Lucas Film / 20th Century Fox / YouTube.

Please read Nestmann’s full article. He gives some great tips for surviving these ordeals. He mostly recommends encryption and throw-away devices. Sage wisdom. And, as he notes, you may forget legal challenges. Constitutional protections are only afforded terrorist “refugees” now. You. Don’t. Count. Anymore. Pay your taxes and shut up!

Mr. Trump really has precious short time to Make America Great Again, if he can. Nestmann’s digital dodges work fine for now. There’s always a temporary and relatively easy way around tyranny when it starts. The rifles come out a little later.