Five Quick Things: Clarence the Great - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Five Quick Things: Clarence the Great
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Boy, this has been one heck of a week.

For news and politics, certainly. But it’s more than that for me — The Revivalist Manifesto, the book I’ve been flogging in this space for a couple of months now, is finally available at Amazon. Check it out here.

A quick shameless plug from someone you know:

Scott McKay has written a treatise on where conservatism has come from, but more importantly, where conservatism should go. His is an optimistic vision that will revitalize America if embraced. Conservative leaders take note!

Melissa Mackenzie, Publisher, The American Spectator

OK, OK. Let’s get this show on the road.

1. Clarence Thomas Is One of the Greats

That was true before Thursday, but after the majority opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which Thomas wrote, those of us who have been his admirers didn’t have that signature judicial win to prove it. I mean, we had lots of things over a long and distinguished career we could point to.

But nothing like this. There haven’t been a whole lot of moments in the history of the Supreme Court in which a point was hammered home in so decisive a fashion:

Boom.

There has always been an undercurrent of racism among white leftist gun-grabbers, particularly of the urban variety, and the effect of their gun-control policies has been deleterious particularly to law-abiding blacks made defenseless in their homes and neighborhoods because — surprise! — the criminals don’t actually have a problem getting guns in places where they’re banned.

Even the more racist of the white Democrats have understood this. Take, for example, this guy:

During my 12 1/2 years as a Member of this body, I have never believed that additional gun control or Federal registration of guns would reduce crime. I am convinced that a criminal who wants a firearm can get one through illegal, nontraceable, unregistered sources, with or without gun control. In my opinion a national register or ban of handguns would be impossible to carry out and may not result in reductions in crime.

Who was that? Why, it was Joe Biden, back in 1985!

That was only a few years after he distinguished himself with his “racial jungle” remarks on the Senate floor.

Clarence Thomas understands this. With the Bruen opinion, he’s laid down a marker that conservatives, particularly black conservatives, can pick up and win with. Because gun control has always been about white leftists afraid of black people. The reason the gun-grabbers turn so ghoulish and go so ballistic every time some white or white-adjacent beta male loser turns mass shooter and makes headlines is they then get to push the anti–Second Amendment agenda without the tinge of racism it usually carries.

2. The FDA Wants Nicotine-Free Cigarettes, Or Something

People who destroy literally everything they touch are now reaching for everything:

The Food and Drug Administration has called cigarettes “the only legal consumer product that, when used as intended, will kill half of all long-term users.”

But the agency has never regulated nicotine, cigarettes’ notoriously addictive ingredient — and for years, it has been wanting to change that. Now, it seems, the time has come.

The FDA is poised to set a maximum nicotine level in cigarettes and some other tobacco products, looking to make them less addictive and wean smokers away from the habit. Despite an overall trend away from smoking, tobacco use remains the No. 1 cause of preventable deaths in the United States.

“Lowering nicotine levels to minimally addictive or non-addictive levels would decrease the likelihood that future generations of young people become addicted to cigarettes and help more currently addicted smokers to quit,” FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf said as the agency announced its plan.

Just so we’re clear here, there is already a massive trade in bootleg cigarettes across America, and it’s a pretty good bet the bureaucrats at the FDA know this.

And trying to de-nicotine the cigarettes will only fuel that black market. One wonders if they know that, also.

Maybe do less, and try not to utterly botch that smaller list of things you do, before you declare yourself our live-in 24/7 nanny.

And this comes from somebody who’s never smoked and gets irritated smelling the exhaust from others who do. Leave us alone, for crying out loud.

3. There Aren’t Enough Democrats in Wyoming to Save Liz Cheney From GOP Voters

You guys heard about this, right?

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has sent direct mailers to Wyoming Democrats, requesting they change parties to be eligible to vote in the August Republican primary.

The mailer has direct instructions on how Democrat Wyoming voters can change their party affiliation to cast a vote for Cheney, who is down 28 points to Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman. The mailer also displays Cheney’s campaign web address for Democrat voters to learn more specifics.

“DO I HAVE TO BE REGISTERED AS A REPUBLICAN TO VOTE FOR LIZ IN THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY?” the website link reads. “HOW DO I CHANGE MY PARTY AFFILIATION TO REGISTER AS A REPUBLICAN SO I CAN VOTE FOR LIZ?” another says.

Joseph Barbuto, the chairman of the Wyoming Democrat Party, was among the constituents who received Cheney’s direct mail piece. Speaking with the New York Times, he said Cheney’s plot of winning reelection by Democrat votes is likely to fail.

“Even if every Democrat in the state switched over,” he stated, “I don’t think it’d be enough to help her.”

Let me stop laughing at this long enough to make one point, which is that the Liz Cheneys of the world — the Bush Republicans I talk about — have seemingly begun to notice how deeply disgusted the GOP base are with them, and you’re seeing more and more of these appeals to Democrats to save them.

This isn’t new, of course. John McCain probably doesn’t get the 2008 nomination but for Democrats crossing over in open primaries, for example.

What’s new, though, is that the modern Democrat Party is so hostile to anything Republican that none of it works.

Simping for the Dems on MSNBC after he voted for impeachment and opted to play organ-grinder monkey on the J6 commission didn’t get Adam Kinzinger anywhere, did it? His Dem “pals” drew him right out of a district and put him in political limbo. And the Wyoming Democrats are laughing at Liz Cheney.

And if you want to have a good time, go and check out Bill Cassidy’s Facebook and see how friendly the Democrat commenters under his threads are. The only problem there is trying to figure out whether it’s the Dems or the conservatives who are nastier.

Bush Republicans don’t get that the era of political consensus is over. This is something I talk about in The Revivalist Manifesto quite a bit. And when that consensus is gone, the one thing you really can’t do is to screw over your friends.

John Cornyn is going to find this out when he next comes up for reelection. (READ MORE: How Much Did the Cornyn Gun Surrender Cost the GOP?)

4. Google Is a Special Kind of Awful

You shouldn’t let this week go by without reading Daniel Greenfield’s piece on Google at FrontPage magazine and the awful sex cult a large number of their employees apparently belong to:

“I was fired from my team there in February of 2021 because I raised alarm about a cult within Google, a group called the Fellowship of Friends. The group is well-documented: There are allegations of child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape within the group,” Kevin Lloyd, a former video producer, blogged.

“The cult’s members dominate my former team at Google through favoritism and cronyism, not to mention direct payments back to the cult.”

When Lloyd complained, he was told to keep quiet or lose his job, and then he was finally fired….

The Fellowship of Friends is a good deal more obscure, but it fits neatly into the mold of California cults that promise enlightenment through the teachings of a guru. What it actually offers, according to former members, is something much more troubling.

A journalist covering the cult described being told about “sex rituals” in which its leader, Robert Earl Burton, would allegedly “attempt to have sex with 100 followers in a day.”

San Francisco Chronicle story discussed allegations of “Eastern European ex-members who said they received religious visas to come out to California, only to learn when they arrived that sex with Burton was an unwritten part of the deal.”

Burton’s preference was for young men whom he included in his “male harem”.

Gross. And here’s just a bit more:

Google is denying any connection to the cult and its abuses, but Lloyd describes a troubling atmosphere in the company.

When he brought up the issue with his manager, he was told, “Let’s go off campus.”

Google, like Facebook and other Big Tech companies, is notorious for the cult-like surveillance of employees on its compounds or campuses. Some workers have reported that their personal phones were wiped when they fell afoul of the Big Tech giant. Others worry that the monopoly, which is behind the Android mobile operating system, can spy on them through their devices.

Lloyd’s manager told him that he was “horrified” by the cult’s foothold in Google, but that “complaining could lead not only to the loss of his job” and that the department’s cult figure was a “powerful guy.”

Definitely read the whole thing, though it will make you queasy.

Greenfield is right that it isn’t hard to see how a cult can make inroads at a place like Google, which hires lots of people who, without branding them as geeks or nerds, might not quite fit in with the traditional American social scene. But this is another data point in the argument why we’ve got to do something about the centralization of social, cultural, and economic control of our country in a small elite of people utterly unqualified for such roles.

Just look at Mark Zuckerberg, for that matter.

5. Come See Us on Tuesday!

You might have gotten an email about this, but on June 28, which is next Tuesday, we’re doing an online event about The Revivalist Manifesto and revivalism in general. I’m really looking forward to it, and so should you.

Details here:

Please join The American Spectator for a special conversation with author and American Spectator contributor Scott McKay and American Spectator publisher Melissa Mackenzie on June 28 at noon EDT. Scott’s evaluation of the conservative movement has led him to create a new vision for the future that will reinvigorate conservatives and revitalize America. Scott will be discussing his new book, The Revivalist Manifesto: How Patriots Can Win The Next American Era, his vision for American conservatism, and much more! Please reserve your place today. Spots are limited!

Yours Faithfully, Melissa Mackenzie Publisher, The American Spectator

Reserve Your Place Here!
Scott McKay
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Scott McKay is a contributing editor at The American Spectator  and publisher of the Hayride, which offers news and commentary on Louisiana and national politics, and RVIVR.com, a national political news aggregation and opinion site. Scott is also the author of The Revivalist Manifesto: How Patriots Can Win The Next American Era, and, more recently, Racism, Revenge and Ruin: It's All Obama, available November 21. He’s also a writer of fiction — check out his four Tales of Ardenia novels Animus, Perdition, Retribution and Quandary at Amazon.
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