Politics is not important. Life is important. Politics is just a supposedly necessary evil. It is not an end. It is just something that is in the way and that we stumble upon. But it pervades everything. The ideological polarization that some denounce is a farce: it is the Left that has drifted to the extreme, and the Right, as historically befits it, limits itself to reaction. The omnipresence of politics has reached such an extreme that in some dating apps, you can read in the profile “I only date antifas” or “I do not tolerate fascists;” it is worth remembering that, for the Left, a fascist is anyone who does not say amen — with apologies to secularists — to all the madness of postmodern progressivism. (READ MORE: American Campuses Threaten Students and the Nation) Polarization also alludes to two distancing extremes, although the word radicalization better defines the ideological displacement of one of them. The consequences are already here. Check out this headline from a Harris Poll and Indeed survey, “40% of Gen Z and Millennial Workers Would Quit a Job Over Political Differences in the Workplace.” When ideology grows too big, the individual declines and ideas take the place of people. We are at that point. You Can’t Debate Emotion in Politics This Harris poll (Kamala has nothing to do with this) means a few things. For one, intolerance of dissent. It reminds me of when I was 15 and would argue with absolutely anything my parents said, no matter how obviously wrong I was. These young people just want to see themselves as part of a large group, loaded to the gills with prejudice. To the extent that the postmodern Left has abandoned ideas to give way to its amalgam of identity causes, its discourse has been reduced to emotions. And emotions cannot be debated. You cannot debate abortion if someone says “There exists a human life with rights” and the other responds “Do you want to condemn a woman to eternal sadness.” (READ MORE: Google Controls the Internet … and Us!) You cannot debate anything when your opponent has only mastered the art of emotional manipulation. It is a kind of immaturity, and the immature one is like an adolescent: They do not tolerate being contradicted because everything seems to affect the deepest part of their heart, every time they question their ideas or those of others seems like a matter of life and death. On the other hand, the data reflects the consequences of the effort made by many corporations to become ideological loudspeakers. The DEI projects and woke cosmos have achieved the impossible: We now identify an ally or an enemy in the flavor of an orange soda. How has this miracle come about? I will gladly remind you: Many companies are backtracking because they know that it is they with their go woke, go broke, with their extreme and absurd ideological positions, who have contributed to bringing political polarization to the forefront — as if it were mandatory to have a clear criterion on everything, from the environment to glass ceilings. It is implied that the consumer must commit. We hear too little “I have no idea about this issue, so I won’t give an opinion;” I admit that I have never said it myself, but I am a columnist, I make a living by voicing my opinion. Man Is Not Merely a Political Animal Let me clarify something. There are ideological reasons that justify the decision of the young people surveyed. I would not have as my boss, an Islamic State terrorist or someone who uses his company’s profits to support the murderous regime in Venezuela. Not out of hatred, but out of principle. But other than that, throughout my career, I’ve worked with conservatives and progressives alike, and I’m lucky to have a wide range of ideological lunatics of all stripes among my friends. Perhaps because I suppose I still consider people to be people, with all their dignity, rather than mere political animals. It is politicians who try to dispossess people of their identity to trap them in the way of living and thinking of their sects. I also clarify that commitment to ideas is not to be criticized, it is praiseworthy. The problem is when that commitment is placed ahead of everything else as if carrying a party card in one’s mouth were a guarantee of some kind, as if there were no more important militancy in life. (READ MORE: Tulsi Gabbard Endorses Donald Trump) The misnamed political polarization has in recent years broken up families, marriages, and friendships, and now it could also dynamite the relationship between co-workers. This is too much responsibility for a handful of ideas and a collection of damn budgets. It’s time for politicians to mind their own business for a while and let us dine in peace with our friends, and love our co-workers, even if we know they exercise their right to vote, not with their hands, but with their asses. The post Politics Is Taking Over Life. The Way Out Is to Vote Wisely. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

While the U.K. cracks down on citizens for social media posts and praying outside of abortion clinics, Democrats seem hopeful that they can import the same stringent speech policies to the United States. During a recent interview, vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz said that “there’s no guarantee of free speech on misinformation or hate speech, especially around our democracy.” On today’s episode of the Spectator P.M. Podcast, hosts Ellie Gardey Holmes and Aubrey Gulick comment on the Democrat campaign to restrict free speech. They discuss the First Amendment and the importance of protecting speech for a functioning Republic. Join them to hear their analysis! Like and share The Spectator P.M. Podcast, and tune in to our next episode! READ MORE: The Democrat Party is a Cult Read Aubrey and Ellie’s writing here and here. Listen to the Spectator P.M. Podcast with Aubrey Gulick and Ellie Gardey on Spotify. Watch the Spectator P.M. Podcast with Aubrey Gulick and Ellie Gardey on Rumble The post <i>The Spectator P.M. Podcast</i> Ep. 72: Walz Says ‘Misinformation’ and ‘Hate Speech’ Aren’t ‘Protected By the Constitution’ appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Beverly Gage, a professor of history at Yale University and the author of a recent biography of J. Edgar Hoover, recently took to the pages of Foreign Affairs to present her and Jacob Heilbrunn’s version of the history of the far Right in 20th-century America to explain why conservatives embrace foreign tyrants. She accepts Heilbrunn’s idea that modern conservatism is “rooted … in a sincere affinity” and “admiration” for “brutal, often racist authoritarians” dating back to “Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II up to the apartheid government of South Africa.” Gage’s “history” supposedly explains why Donald Trump’s “explicit racism” and “‘America first’ nativism” has captured the Republican Party. Gage’s “history” is left-wing history that maligns conservatism and ignores the allure of autocracy on the Left, which includes what Jean-François Revel called the “totalitarian temptation.” ‘Deeply Catholic’ Americans to Blame for ‘Autocratic Allure’? Gage mentions a few on the Right who, in the 1920s and 1930s, expressed admiration for Mussolini and Hitler. “Some,” she writes, “were deeply Catholic,” while others were racists. Some on the far right saw autocrats as a way to “protect traditional Christianity, or patriarchal families, or even just the idea of hierarchy itself.” You can see where this is going. The allure of autocracy is to be found, according to Gage, in “deeply Catholic” Americans who oppose abortion, cherish the traditional nuclear family, oppose the left’s woke agenda at home and their neoliberal approach to foreign policy. (READ MORE: Trump Is an Extraordinary Manager of Client Nations) Gage traces the right’s “autocratic allure” to William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review, and expresses surprise that such right-wing admirers of autocracy could emerge from her beloved Yale, Harvard, and Columbia. She calls this group “right-wing” dissidents and “high-born pseudo-intellectuals” — because her cherished Ivy League is supposed to produce only enlightened members of the leftist elite. She includes among the right-wing Ivy League dissidents Buckley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Josh Hawley, Sen. J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Donald Trump. Buckley and others at National Review, Gage writes, were admirers of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco whose forces won the Spanish Civil War over the communist-controlled Republican forces in the mid-to-late 1930s. Franco saved Spain from the Stalinist forces and during the war refused to ally with Hitler’s Germany. Perhaps Gage thinks Spain would have been better off if the Stalinists had won — they, after all, were supported by many leftist intellectuals. (READ MORE: Trump, Not Harris, Has ‘Strategic Realism’ in Spades) Indeed, as Paul Hollander has documented, leftist intellectuals spent much of the 20th century supporting the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, and other communists. They fell prey to the “totalitarian temptation” that an elite, intellectual cadre could transform mankind into a workers’ paradise. The left, not the right, supported the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century, yet Gage accuses the right of having an autocratic allure. History Teaches Leftist Intellectuals Have Their Own ‘Totalitarian Temptation’ And let us not forget that it was the Democratic Party of the defeated Confederacy that founded the Ku Klux Klan and imposed Jim Crow laws throughout much of the South. And it was powerful Democratic politicians like Richard Russel and Lyndon Johnson who ensured the defeat of anti-lynching laws throughout more than half of the 20th century. Perhaps Gage should read or re-read Robert Caro’s masterful account of this in his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. Was it the autocratic allure that led the Ivy Leaguer and notorious racist Woodrow Wilson to prosecute and imprison his political opponents who spoke out against America’s entry into the First World War? For that matter, was it the autocratic allure that led Ivy Leaguer Franklin Roosevelt to unjustly remove persons of Japanese ancestry from their homes on the West Coast and transport them to camps further inland? Or that led FDR to use the IRS against his political opponents? Was it the autocratic allure that led Ivy Leaguers John and Robert Kennedy to be complicit in the overthrow and resultant assassination of South Vietnam’s leader Diem or to attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro in Cuba? (READ MORE: The Sun Sets on Britain) As far as embracing dictators, no American president ever courted a foreign leader the way Ivy Leaguer Franklin Roosevelt courted Stalin during the Second World War. Gage should read Robert Nisbet’s Roosevelt and Stalin: The Failed Courtship, which shows FDR repeatedly ridiculing Winston Churchill to gain favor with the murderous Soviet dictator, and conspiring to cover up Stalin’s responsibility for the murder of 15,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. And who could forget the liberal Ivy Leaguer Barack Obama going on an apology tour to seek forgiveness for America’s past sins from Iran’s clerical autocrats? Obama’s apology tour proceeded to Latin America, including communist Cuba. Was Obama also stricken by the autocratic allure? Gage near the end of her essay even gets a dig in at Ronald Reagan for appointing Jeane Kirkpatrick (who received an Ivy League postgraduate degree at Columbia), who “made the case that Washington should cozy-up to right-wing autocrats,” as his U.N. ambassador. Kirkpatrick understood, even if Gage does not, that authoritarian regimes allow more freedoms than totalitarian regimes, and are more likely than totalitarian regimes to evolve into democracies. Reagan, who opposed abortion, supported the traditional nuclear family, had many traditional Catholics in his administration, and lacked an Ivy League degree, somehow liberated half a continent from communist rule without firing a shot. So much for conservatism’s “autocratic allure.” The post Is This the ‘History’ They’re Teaching at Yale? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Trying to define the Midlands is like trying to define “the underground”, and so it can be appreciated that defining the Midlands underground is extremely difficult. But even the complete geographical idiot would appreciate that Birmingham is in the Midlands and that a club that featured groups such as Ten Years After, Canned Heat, Soft [...] The post Mothers – The heart of the Midlands Underground Scene (1968 – 1971) first appeared on Nostalgia Central.

The overnight success of The Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers in early 1963 sent the London managers, agents and record company men scurrying not just to Merseyside but to other large centres of population in the North of England – to Birmingham, Newcastle and to Manchester. Because of its proximity to Liverpool, the Rainy [...] The post The Manchester Scene: 1963 – 1973 first appeared on Nostalgia Central.

In the late 1950s, the American pop industry stumbled upon a new and startling hit-making formula: the ‘Death Disc’. Jody Reynolds started the ball rolling with his 1958 hit Endless Sleep, a song covered successfully in the UK by Marty Wilde. Suddenly, death discs were big business. I looked at the sea, and it seemed [...] The post Death Discs first appeared on Nostalgia Central.

Why, when the rest of Britain in the late ’50s and early “60s was back-pedalling away from solid rock & roll into a goo of Bobby Vee and Shadows imitators, did hundreds of groups spring up on Merseyside punching out a raucous no-holds-barred mixture of rock, country music and black rhythm & blues? As with [...] The post Why Liverpool? first appeared on Nostalgia Central.

The traditional “gateway to the north”, the Watford Gap motorway service area on the M1 in Northamptonshire, was originally known as The Blue Boar. The Blue Boar company operated garages and forecourts across the Midlands, including close to Watford village on the A5.  When the A5 looked set to lose a lot of trade to the [...] The post The Blue Boar – An oasis on the M1 for the Big Beat Stars first appeared on Nostalgia Central.

The first time I appeared on Juke Box Jury, I wasn’t on the panel. I was in the “Hot Seat” – that famous chair hidden from the panel behind the screen. The jury were discussing my first record, Love Of The Loved. I had been smuggled into the studio after the programme started so the [...] The post Cilla Black on “Juke Box Jury” first appeared on Nostalgia Central.

The Gerry Anderson television live-action series UFO (1970 – 1973) featured many spectacular vehicles, including spaceships, tracked land assault wagons, and a submarine which could launch a supersonic jetfighter while underwater. As was common with Anderson productions, the majority of these vehicles were highly detailed miniature models. But the sleek gold-coloured futuristic car belonging to Ed [...] The post UFO 1 – Ed Straker’s Car first appeared on Nostalgia Central.