The Serial Thinker Blog

The Fifth Stanza

Dear American Leftists. 

The Fifth Stanza of the Ranger Creed:

"Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is NOT a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country."

I will stand in public and recite this stanza. 

Will you?

St. George, Utah facing lawsuit after denying permit for drag show at public park: 'violations of free speech' | Fox News

The city of St. George, Utah is being sued after it denied a permit to a group that organizes drag performances. 

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2023 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper.

Charlize Theron blasted people disapproving of the drag queen community and their exposure to children during a pro-drag queen telethon Sunday, telling critics "I will f--- anybody up who is like trying to f--- with anything with" drag queens.

via www.foxnews.com

Which raises the question: Are drag shows protected speech?

I just learned that using the heteronormative phrase ‘biological women’ can cause students to fail assignments because it is deemed exclusionary. Be careful out there.

I’m about fed up with the endless stories of retail theft and vandalism and the feckless attempts by inept city politicians to stop it. So here’s my plan: If a retailer’s shoplifting and vandalism losses reach a particular threshold, the city will pay for the losses AND help them close up shop and relocate.

Good Morning Folks - For those of you who are active investors, are you familiar with companies’ ESG scores? ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance and it’s essentially a social credit score used by the ultra large, ultra left leaning investment groups like Blackrock and Vanguard to determine a company’s suitability for investment. So to attract their trillions of dollars, a company no longer has to just be good at their core businesses, they must also bend the knee to the investment companies’ woke politics. So if a company’s Board of Directors doesn’t look diverse enough, or it fails to make the appropriate virtue signals during various “awareness months”, the investment companies will dump their stocks and hurt them financially. It is absolute extortion and an underlying reason why some formerly sensible companies are now acting in idiotic leftist ways.

Are you familiar with "The Memory Hole" from the book 1984? In the book, the government's Ministry of Truth destroyed all information, both contemporary and historical, that did not align with government propaganda; thereby erasing it from the public's memory. Then the Ministry systematically recreated all potentially embarrassing documents, in effect, rewriting all of history to match the often-changing state propaganda. These changes were complete and undetectable.
How is this any different from the big tech censorship and cancel culture that we're seeing right now?

You do realize that if the Muslims ever gained control of Israel, that every church, every synagogue, every Christian and Jewish holy place throughout the country would be destroyed. The evidence for this is what they have done in their own countries and territories.

Where is this on the spectrum?

The President often calls people like me extreme:

Is it extreme to believe that the solutions to one's problems do not lie within the government?

Is it extreme to want people to keep as much of their earnings as possible?

Is it extreme to want safe cities?

Is it extreme to want excellent public schools?

Is it extreme to want a robust economy?

Is it extreme to expect the government to operate within the Constitution that created it?

Is it extreme to expect adults to be responsible for their own lives?

Is it extreme to expect secure national borders?

Is it extreme to expect our government to tell its citizens the truth?

Is it extreme to expect the billions spent on addressing homelessness to actually do something to mitigate the problem?

Is it extreme to expect people not to urinate, defecate, and engage in drug activity on the streets of our cities?

Is it extreme to want to protect the lives of viable unborn children in the womb?

These are the things that I want

The President often calls people like me extreme:

Is it extreme to believe that the solutions to one's problems do not lie within the government?

Is it extreme to want people to keep as much of their earnings as possible?

Is it extreme to want safe cities?

Is it extreme to want excellent public schools?

Is it extreme to want a robust economy?

Is it extreme to expect the government to operate within the Constitution that created it?

Is it extreme to expect adults to be responsible for their own lives?

Is it extreme to expect secure national borders?

Is it extreme to expect our government to tell its citizens the truth?

Is it extreme to expect the billions spent on addressing homelessness to actually do something to mitigate the problem?

Is it extreme to expect people not to urinate, defecate, and engage in drug activity on the streets of our cities?

Is it extreme to want to protect the lives of viable unborn children in the womb?

These are the things that I want

I'm not a medical professional, but I know enough to know that if you pick at a scab it takes longer to heal. What the left has done regarding race relations is not pick at scabs but tear them completely off and leave raw exposed wounds. These wounds are newly tender, they are inflamed easily, and they are prone to infection (as we have all seen). Rather than using their positions as influencers to treat the wounds and providing time for them to heal, they have created an environment where the wounds remain inflamed and the sites continues to degrade.

Brothers - Our warrior heritage is not diminished by what is happening in today's army. Our lineage is secure. We stand shoulder to shoulder with each other and in ranks with great Americans leading back from this very moment through each of our nation's conflicts to the days before our country was even founded. Stand fast. Keep the faith. This is a wound but not a terminal wound. We will have warriors training and leading warriors again. It's in our collective DNA. Hang tough. Hang together. We can weather this and rebuild a country -- and an Army -- that we can all be proud of.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

I wonder if there's a correlation between instances of tree nut allergies and the mom's level of education. My hypothesis is that the more well educated mom is, the more likely it is that her child(ren) will have some sort of food allergy.

The grading schemes that some school districts are adopting across the country are absolute bullcrap. They devalue the hard work that some students have done (and are doing) by awarding the same grades to other students who show up sometimes and put in minimal effort.
How does this teach kids to have resilience in the face of adversity?
How does this teach kids that sometimes times will be tough and life will be hard, but that's when we need to be tougher and harder?
How does this encourage excellence rather than normalize mediocrity?
So does everyone qualify for Honor Society now?
Does this mean that cords at graduation are now over?
What about merit based scholarships, those seem horribly elitist.
If we continue striving like this we'll be up there with Nauru in no time....

"Be a man of principle. Fight for what you believe in. Keep your word. Live with integrity. Be brave. Believe in something bigger than yourself. Serve your country. Teach. Mentor. Give something back to society. Lead from the front. Conquer your fears. Be a good friend. Be humble and be self-confident. Appreciate your friends and family. Be a leader and not a follower. Be valorous on the field of battle. And take responsibility for your actions. Never forget those that were killed. And never let rest those that killed them." ~ Major Douglas A. Zembiec USMC (KIA, OIF 2007)

If you support lax border control, you don't give a shit about the thousands of people who follow the rules to enter our country legally
If you support lax border control, you support Fentanyl on the streets
If you support lax border control, you endorse crimes committed by illegal aliens
If you support lax border control, you encourage child sex trafficking
If you support lax border control, you facilitate heroin addiction
If you support lax border control, you promote illegal guns in the hands of criminals
If you support lax border control, you ignore the violence and murder perpetrated by the cartels
If you support lax border control, you don't care about the rape and abuse of migrant women
If you support lax border control, you turn a blind eye to the exploitation of migrant workers
If you support lax border control, every single dead body on the Southwestern frontier is on your hands

If you support lax border control, you cannot, with any integrity consider yourself a humanitarian.

This is why I love baseball. This information was posted on a coaching website recently and it talks about dealing with failure - which is a HUGE part of baseball. Even for the best players.
This was posted on Proactive Coaching yesterday and I found it really helpful: Excellent comment by Cal State University Northridge Baseball Coach Greg Moore… “It would surprise parents if they understood how much we evaluate the response to failure. We want to see how a young man and his parents fail on the field and over a long period of time. This ranges from sitting the bench, to a rough slump. Most of the best players succeed day to day and week to week. Parents of course enjoy that. I want to see if a mom or dad sees the value in 0 for 12 or 2 weeks without playing. Most players, almost all, struggle for extended periods as they move from high school to college, or college to the pros. Seeing struggle on the field is the beginning. The evaluation that matters comes from the questions and answers after the game. Does he blame the shortstop, the umpire or even mechanics that were “off” that day? Or does the performance or contribution to the team begin and end with the person answering the questions. Is there an instinct to create an action plan to improve, or a reflex to sulk or point fingers. We also evaluate the parents ability to encourage that productive response to struggles. The most surprising thing we evaluate is what should be no surprise to a baseball player, response to failure.”

“Lived experience” is truly an ignorant phrase, though it is used to sound persuasive. It represents a sample size of 1 and is statistically insignificant. So if you are tempted to use “my lived experience” to defend a point, know that you sound like a moron.

If Hamas and Israel’s military capacity were reversed, would there be any Jews in Israel at all? That is the measure of Hamas’ hatred and Israel’s restraint.

The current administration is made up of both types of people.

“As long as you tell yourself that other people are responsible for your situation, there’s no room for improvement.” - Jordan Peterson