Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "PragerU" channel.

If you haven't done so I highly recommend a visit to the Arizona Memorial. I was fortunate enough to go there in the 1980s and the two tour guides on board the Arizona that day were both Pearl Harbor survivors, one of them being on the Arizona when the attack occurred. They were very gracious and I had a fascinating discussion with them. The gentleman who survived the Arizona attack told me he was going to have his ashes interred alongside his shipmates, an honor reserved for those who served on the Arizona at the time of the attack. I'm fairly certain his ashes are with his brothers now. I also had the privilege of speaking with a man who survived the Bataan Death March and the trip to Japan on a Hell Ship prior to the Philippine liberation and a Marine who was injured during the landing at Peleliu. One trait all these men had in common was a great deal of dignity, which is quite amazing when you consider how viscous the fighting in The Pacific was. Unfortunately, most of the WWII veterans are gone now, including former Senator Bob Dole who passed away today. I may have had differences with him on some matters of policy but he was a true patriot who did a lot for the WWII Memorial, a project I also did a lot of fund raising for. May he, and all his brothers and sisters in arms rest in peace and may God's light shine on them. They really did save the world.
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I don't think they have good intentions. And the people who suffer the most from their malfeasance are the people they claim to be the champion's of, the poor who are stuck living in the areas where most of these offenders do business.
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When I was an undergrad I remember telling one of my favorite professors that I came into the study of American History a fan of Jefferson but I ended up with more admiration for Adams, the hardest working Founding Father.
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You know what, I've heard a lot from both sides on this for a very long time. I generally don't engage because I have a deep love for both but here is my take on it. I don't go Mass on Sunday to learn about the periodic table and when I was an undergrad I didn't ask my astronomy professor questions about the mystery of the Trinity. If that is an oversimplification or a case of fence sitting on my part, so be it. As I say, it's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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I read Dickens years ago. Lately I have been thinking of reading his works again. This video may have sealed the deal for me. Dickens is so skilled at character development. As an author I appreciate anyone who can give voice to a character you hate to say goodbye to.
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Teachers Unions are nothing more than fund raising arms for the DNC. This problem with public education isn't new. I moved over from Catholic school to public school in the 7th grade back in the early 70s. I was blown away on day one when I looked at the textbooks we were given. It was literally at the third-grade level compared to what the Catholic schools were teaching. I didn't reach the level of what the Catholic schools were teaching in the 7th grade until I was in the 10th. I could get an A anytime I wanted. I remember a teacher calling me out in front of the class, accusing me of flaunting my intelligence in front of the other students for attention. Needless to say, my motivation matched the material and I did just enough to get by. I sure as hell wasn't going to set myself up for more ridicule for being too smart for my own good. That was close to 50 years ago. These problems aren't new. Teachers unions were just feeling their oats back then, going on strike every other year for one thing or another. We are paying the price now and will continue to pay the price as long as bad teachers are allowed to keep their jobs because it is easier to hide them than it is to fire them. One of the only good things to come out of all those insane COVID lockdown's was parents looking in and seeing what their children were learning. The pushback has started but the powers that be aren't going to just take it lying down. You've got the unions sicking the DOJ on concerned parents who show up to schoolboard meetings and school principals hiring people to monitor the social media posts of "problematic parents." A weasel in Michigan is being sued for doing that now, getting a woman fired because she posted comments that challenged his authority. He said he felt threatened and ratted her out to the woman's employer, who happily went along like a good leftist. This stuff is real. Tyranny is alive and well and they are training the next generation of Moaists right under your nose. The question is, what are you willing to do about it?
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Hope your bathtub is still filled with water. Ya never know, might just be a delayed action type thing. I mean, you can never be too prepared and the EXPERTS are never wrong. 🤔
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"Sire, the peasants are revolting!" "You bet, they stink on ice!" - Mel Brooks as King Louie XVI: History of the World Part I. On a more serious note though, I have told people for years that in order to understand the left you have to understand the French Revolution, and not in the mythical way a lot of post-modern university professor's frame it. Future revolutionaries like Lenin took a lot away from the French Revolution, including using state-sponsored terror as a method for controlling the uppity proletariat who aren't down with the program. Thank you for delving into this. I hope future installments address Rousseau and his contribution as far as the Social Compact goes. Once you get head around all of that you get a better idea of where the crazy notions of the left come from and why they behave the way they do.
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Great explanation. It was a lot easier for the lefty professors to explain victimhood that way anyway as opposed to spending a lot of time dealing with Theory of Labor Value, the ins and outs of the Superstructure, and the nuances of Dialectical Historicism. And at the end of the day the lefty profs get to assume their rightful place as the rulers of it all. It's always about power. Power and nothing more. Still, great video.
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I remember those hearings where Clearance Thomas was raked over the coals and the image that has stayed with me all these years is Ted Kennedy sitting in judgement over him, accusing Justice Thomas, one of the greatest legal minds to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court of being a shallow, manipulative, sexist. Get that? We're talking about Ted F***in Kennedy passing judgement on another man over his alleged exploitation of women! Let that roll around your brain. Better yet, ask Mary Jo about it. Oh yeah, you can't. I'm telling ya, you couldn't even sell a script like that in Hollywood. Only in democratic America. Gaslighting and projection is a central part of the comunis...I mean democratic party platform. It plays just as critical a role in them hanging onto power as their plantation system does. I know because I have friends and family who still buy their BS and they ask me why I'm a republican. I have to remind them that I'm not. I just hate the democrats more than the republicans is all because they are bats**t crazy and want to tear the place down and rebuild it in their twisted dystopian image. The democrats caused the first civil war and their shenanigans will be at the root of the second. Sound extreme? Well, so did the idea that a boy could be a girl just a couple years ago. Here's an exercise you can try with your liberal friends. Have them list the positive changes democratic policies have made in the black community since the inception of LBJ's great society and then have them list the names of reasonable comunis...I mean democratic politicians. Then, compare the two and see which list is longer. If they're being honest about it, the exercise should be a pretty quick brain teaser and shouldn't require more than a half page of paper. I have wished for years that the black community would realize how badly they are being duped by these racialists who, as Candace points out, see them as nothing more than chattel. Kind of like how the republican party views conservatives but that's a conversation for another video. Very well put young lady. I wondered about your sincerity early on but you're okay. Keep up the good fight.
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"We will never forgive you!!!!" Okay.
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I'm glad you came around young man. It's not easy going against a cult. And he hit on something that is lost in all the chatter about this organization. The idea that anyone or any group who opposes them is fascist. That's an old semantic trick Stalin taught the left. It's why he used to label the nations he subjugated as democratic; for instance calling East Germany The German Democratic Republic. As Stalin explained it, if you weren't fascist you were democratic. And if you weren't socialist you were fascist. See how the circular logic works? The left still plays these types of word games. It's a form of Orwellian Newspeak and is central to their ideology. It's why you hear a moron like that Don Lemon guy talk about Antifa being a force for good because they oppose fascism. As he explains it, it's right there in their title. And since fascism is bad, Antifa must be good (and I do apologize to any morons I may have offended by lumping him with you, I'm just at a loss for a proper pronoun for him at the moment). Of course, he never explains their origin or what they stand for. But I guess it is hard to explain what a group stands for when in reality it stands for nothing. Besides, I'm not sure Lemon or any of the talking heads and mind dead politicians who back their play either overtly or covertly understand the miscreants out there busting up windows anymore than they understand themselves. They claim to be anti-fascist but in reality they are simply Nihilists dressed up as Anarchists out there playing revolutionary because it's a kick. But alas, most of them aren't even bright enough to understand the distinction between Anarchy and Nihilism anymore than they understand the distinction between socialism and freedom. They are what this young man described in the beginning, just a bunch of angry young punks lashing out at the world because they have an external locus of control. They aren't accountable for their actions because it has all been forced on them by unseen forces that can only be destroyed by violence. And breaking windows and blowing shit up is also fun, let's not forget that because you know...feelings. They are Satan's vanguard. Like I said earlier, nice to see you escaped kid. I wish you well.
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Sorry Dennis, the Cold War may never have really ended but the rules of the game certainly have. Keeping the Truman Doctrine alive has been a problem for this country for a very long time. I served in the military for more than two decades. I was part of the generation that bridged the gap between the Cold War and the New World Order. American thinking never evolved and I fear we are going to pay a terrible price for it in the not too distant future, one that encompasses a whole lot more than arguing about pronoun's, masks, or bathrooms. We should still be in Afghanistan? You point to South Korea, Germany, and Japan as examples to support your thesis but I say having troops stationed in any of those places serves no purpose but to make people in the defense industry rich. Our military has an officer class that has become politicized and we are led by people who are either 10 years or more beyond their expiration date or are so lacking in real-world life experiences that it boggles the mind. Our entire infrastructure, especially our power grid, is so vulnerable that we are one good enemy strike away from living in the 1850s and we have lost our way on a moral level. Our culture has become coarse and our online bad behavior is bleeding over into the real world. We are raising a generation of confused children and we facing enemies who are more determined and have evolved over time. I'm not saying we should pull off the stage completely, but unless we sort out our own house pretty damn quick we won't have anything left to pull back. Getting our troops out of places where they serve no purpose except lining the pockets of those whose pockets are lined well enough is a good start. Again, your way of thinking Dennis had a place when hundreds of thousands of troops were on the borders of our allies, locked and loaded and ready to go, but that's simply not the case anymore. 9/11 showed us the error of our way of thinking and yet people are still living in the 1970s. It's time to rethink everything, before there's no one left to do the thinking.
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I took two courses in political ideology in the mid-90s, when you had people on both sides of the spectrum proclaiming that ideology was dead and a new era of peace, a Pax-Americana described by some in dialectic terms as the end of history had arrived. Fortunately, I had a great professor who could break down ideology and its application brilliantly and could articulate conservative principles more effectively than anyone I have met before or since, and he was a card carrying democrat. We took our eye off the ball when The Wall came down and bought into the notion of a New World Order professed by Bush and his crowd. I warned people then that authoritarian governments may be waving white flags but their ideas haven't gone away. I was told my thinking was archaic in the early 2000s when I sided with authors such as Samuel Huntington who challenged the neocons view of the future. While we were complacent the commies did what commies do, they continued their long march through the institutions. Fast forward to 2021 and we are, to put it bluntly, f***ked. They flanked us while we got distracted with other stuff. Ask 100 college graduates who John Locke was and I'm sure 95 would either have no idea or they would think he was some cop involved in the slaying of an unarmed black man. There is an old adage that claims those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Well, those who don't know their history become what Lenin termed, useful idiots. We were warned. We just didn't want to believe authoritarianism could take root in our system because it wasn't in our collective DNA. To quote John McClain: "Welcome to the party pal."
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“Jesus answered: My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now my kingdom is not from hence.” ― John 18:36. God allowed bad things to happen to His only Begotten Son. Why would we think we would be immune to the evils of this world? God does not create slaves or masters. Free will is His greatest gift. It's how we respond to life's challenges that matter.
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I think what the young man was getting at was the left trying to classify everyone within their victim hierarchy including those who are autistic. They're really rather Stalinistic in their reasoning. If you are autistic, you can't be an oppressor, therefore, you must be oppressed. There is no middle ground. So then it's a question of where you fall within the hierarchy. Do you have the same value of a left handed black lesbian transgender vegan or are you closer to a plain old person of color who is falling pretty fast within their social order by the way. The members of the alphabet mafia leaped frogged them and went straight to the head of the line because they are really good at fund raising. You're right Dennis, this country is being ripped apart by nihilists with way to much time on their hands. They have set themselves apart from the rest of society and become their own alpha and omega. And since they have no God but their own desires the future matters even less than the past to them. They live only for today and if burning the world down is what it takes to feel good, so be it. The thing is, they are funded by people who do have a future in mind and at the end of it most of these useful idiots will be marched to the gulag right along side everyone else. There is a civil war going on. It's been cold to this point but it is heating up. Like you, I wish wasn't so but this is what happens when you tell God you don't need Him anymore. He leaves you alone. God help us all.
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The only thing BLM is fighting for is the end of Western Civilization. ANTIFA is fighting simply because they like destroying stuff. BLM is a marxist organization and the values of Western Civilization are standing in their way of achieving their twisted dystopian ends. ANTIFA just likes destroying stuff. Did I already say that? Well it needs to be said again, and again, and again. And the democratic party and the media use them as muscle to accumulate power. That is it. There is no nuance. And yes, the small m in marxist is intentional for the same reason I will not capitalize the name of their lord and master satan. Neither of them are worthy of being elevated beyond what they are, the enemy of all decent people, evil incarnate. red squiggly lines be damned.
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And therein lies the fundamental difference between conservative thought and leftist ideology and the reason leftist systems fail on a recurring basis. The social contract the left keeps trying to force on us operates on the assumption that people are perfectible. All they need is the proper education by the proper people to help them find their true nature. To help them overcome the effects of the Super Structure according to Marxist beliefs. Rousseau's notion of the "noble savage." It's all built on a false premise. Human nature is flawed. People cannot be perfected. Certainly not by other flawed people. That's why Socialism has to be implemented by the gun and the whip. It goes against human nature. It would work if we were simply animals best suited to classical conditioning. But God gave us a soul and free will to act as we see fit. I have learned certain undeniable truths over time , no matter how hard I fought against them. And believe me, I did for a very long time because if I'm anything I'm a willful SOB with a thick head and a stubborn streak a mile wide. The first is that redemption comes through the grace of God. No person can give it to me. The second relates back to free will. Those fundamental rights Jefferson wrote about, life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness come from my Creator as well, not some government agency. All government can do is prevent me from exercising them or take them away entirely. But they can never capture my soul. That is mine to do with as I will. If I lose it, it's because I gave it away. To quote the great Sean Connery; "Here endeth the lesson."
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To steal from the Untouchables: "You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word." Do I wish I lived in a world where people could be counted on to do the right thing and governments could be trusted to always respect our rights? You bet. But until that world arrives I have to live in the world of the way things are. And in that world, we need the 2nd Amendment.
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The democrats keep black voters on the roll because they appeal to emotion and a lot of black voters vote democratic simply because their family has always voted democrat. How do I know this? I did like the guy in the video suggested and asked a lot of them. I also got the same response from more than a few white folks I know so the family-tie angle cuts in all directions. As for education, I was in the game for a long time so I am well versed in the maxim that it is whole lot easier to lower the test standard than it is to raise the teaching standard. People have this thing with math. If you can quantify something most people will take it as fact. It's where that old line about lies, damn lies, and statistics comes from. How do I know this? I used to run numbers as part of my job. It's like the old bit about the world being flat or round and the teacher responding, how do you want it taught? The problem is, once a lie gets planted and it has time to grow generational roots it's an awful hard weed to it out. There are some people who will never come around. Leftism is a cult and they will drink the Kool-Aid before they surrender their allegiance to it. You see it with these woke companies being willing to crash and burn if it means furthering the message. They are zealots, the vanguard of the great reset, hoping they might get a shot at the priesthood one day. But alas, most of them will discover they are what Lenin termed useful idiots and once the reset is complete and they are no longer needed they will have two options, shut up or die. Gloomy? Maybe, but it is where we are. I don't see the true believers ever believing anything differently so at the end of the day the great reset just may precipitate the great division. I defended this country for the better part of my adult life so I hope that's not where we are headed but as John Adams famously said facts are stubborn things. Ben Franklin said you have a republic if you can keep it. The Boomers said we don't want it and did their best to break it. Now Gen-Z is coming up fast saying, hold my beer. Again, I hope I'm wrong but I fear I am not.
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"I can gather all the news I need from the weather report." Paul Simon; "The Only Living Boy in New York": 1970 Words to live by. I put away the news when they got COVID stupid. I watch once a day for a minute, minute and a half, tops. If I didn't need to keep track of any possible hurricanes heading my way I'm not sure I would even watch that much. Take her advice. Your mind will truly appreciate you for it.
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"The past is not dead. In Fact, it's not even past." I like that a lot. We are experiential beings by nature. Everything I learn through my experiences remains with me throughout my entire life. So why should it be any different for humanity as a whole? Totalitarian movements always attack the past because as Orwell said in his book 1984, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” However, they always fail in their attempt because traditions and beliefs handed down from generation to generation are not that easy to kill. That doesn't mean they can't be killed though. We owe it to subsequent generations to keep our shared, collective memories at the forefront of our cultural consciousness or we risk losing all that others have sacrificed so dearly to teach us. Men like Dr. Hanson are important because they are the modern-day keepers of the scrolls. Who will pick up the torch when men like him pass on? Who knows. But we need to groom them or we risk losing more than a bunch of nice stories.
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I remember years ago telling my favorite professor that I when I started studying American History I was squarely in Jefferson's corner. But the more I studied the subject the more I came to appreciate Adams. At the end of it all, I had changed camps. Too bad he got under everybody's skin the way he did and too bad his was so thin. But then, he wouldn't have been Adams any other way. The hardest working Founding Father and my personal favorite after Washington. Cool vid!
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Great points about choice. I used to teach leadership and one of the phrases I would keep on my board was "Life is 10% about what happens to you and 90% about how you respond it." It's easy to slide into feeling sorry for yourself though and we all do it from time to time. Another point I used to make when students would complain about how horrible their boss was or how they had to stay on people to get things done was that during that past hour, while they were complaining about how jacked up their workplace was, some parent somewhere learned their child has cancer. I did it to remind them that we often mistake annoyances for problems. Like the old saying goes, no matter how bad you have it, you can always find someone who has it a bit worse.
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Thank you Mr. Prager! This chat is getting bookmarked. I said from the very beginning of the COVID business that people were acting irrationally and it was all driven by fear, and fear is a terrible emotion to take advantage of. The people who have will have some splainin to do as Ricky Ricardo would say when they are standing tall before God. I live in a 55+ community and fear has had a devastating effect on so many of my neighbors. A man who was my best friend here has been so consumed by it that he has basically cut him and his wife off from any human contact that isn't absolutely essential. I tried to tell him he couldn't keep her in bubble wrap but he is so afraid she will die before him that he is doing everything in his power to shield her from the disease. I drove them to the pharmacy and got them vaccinated but it didn't matter. I think he just got so used to living in fear that it became his new normal. But worse than that, it made him mean. I see what fear has done to him and several other people here who used to be social and I made myself a promise that I will never live a life based on fear. I never have and now that I have seen it up close I am more determined than ever. I think it's largely a matter of faith. Now, I'm not ultra religious and I am only now getting reacquainted with the Catholic Church after a very lengthy separation but I have always trusted in God. People I know who have little or no faith tend to get scared when the end comes near. I'm not saying that happens to every agnostic or atheist, but I will say this, people who have genuine faith don't fear death. As you point out, we don't rush headlong into it and take unnecessary risks but I have never found a single person of true faith who is afraid to die. Death is something like 10,000,000,000 -1 but I trust in the one man who defeated it enough that when my time comes He'll be there to welcome me home with open arms. It's a simple faith, but it's mine and you know what, it keeps fear at bay. 🙏 Finally, I love that line: "Don't behave the way you feel." That is sage advice. I used to explore this with my students when I was a leadership facilitator. I would mention how we often confuse thoughts with feelings. For instance, how many times have you said, "I feel like going outside?" How can you "feel" about going outside? You are THINKING about going outside but what are you FEELING at the time? Too often we let our emotions drive our thoughts and when that happens the machine is running backward. That is how decisions with tragic consequences get made. Anyway, loved this video maybe more than all the rest and you have made some dandies. Please keep up the good work. Emotional people like me need to be reminded not to act on them.
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Dinesh is a smart guy. I wish I shared his optimism. But I don't see a day when conservative thought will share an equal platform with lefty propaganda. The MSM is beyond diseased, it is like a zombie that can't be killed by conventional means. Look at the roll call. See how many anchors and producers are sons and daughters of media and political types, all of whom were left leaning. The level of government dependency is accelerating and we have blown so far past anything close to fiscal sanity that the only way the left gets defeated now is to do exactly what they want, tear it all down and start over. I wish it wasn't so and I sincerely hope I'm proven wrong. I'm nearing the end of the ride though so I doubt I'll be around to reap the whirlwind anyway. But my heart breaks for those who will be. Think of all the liberty we have already surrendered and remember what Adams warned: "Liberty lost is lost forever." Love ya Dinesh, just not sure I agree with you on how it all ends.
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Reagan put it best: "The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." That's what's going on with these kids these days. I had dinner with some friends a while back and their 22-year-old daughter was there. I was amazed at her sloganeering. It was like a Moveon.org billboard had come to life. It was especially interesting listening to her lecture us about the plight of black people. Her parents and I grew up in a neighborhood that was 80% black. I'm not sure this young lady has even met a black person yet. And her tolerance for cognitive dissonance was simply astounding. It was front and center as she went into her detailed explanation of the "science" behind transgenderism, something she admitted sounded kind of kooky but...you know...feelings... And she was especially proud of her cousin's brave decision to try and figure out a way to send her kids to an elementary school in a shithole neighborhood so they wouldn't be burdened with White Privilege the way she is. I'm willing to bet she would find it pretty easy to find a parent who is willing to trade places to get her kid the hell out of that school with the 20% literacy rate. Imagine that? Trying to set your kid up for failure? But hey, she'll be able to post some really neat pictures of her little darlings to her Facebook page. Virtue signaling at it's finest. That and you know...feelings. Part of me wanted to educate her but I'll be honest, I just don't have the energy. There was a time when I was involved. I spent a lot of time in the trenches and unfortunately I have arrived at a sad conclusion, this country is heading exactly where it wants to go. I wish these young folks could understand the long-game these Cultural Marxists are running on them but in all honesty the majority of them couldn't be bothered. Try explaining Rousseau's take on the Social Contract, the tyranny of the French Revolution, Marx's mixed up dialectic arguments or any of the tenants their ideology is based on. Marxism plays off ignorance and envy. It works real well with the envious ignorant. Victimhood is all the rage. Will it sort itself out? I hate to say but it's highly unlikely. The long march through the institution is bearing its fruit now. I'm closer to the end the ride so it's doubtful I'll be around to see it but God help these young folks when they have to REALLY deal with the shit storm they created.
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My family immigrated to this country almost 60 years ago and I support this message. 👍
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Dave Rubin may be sincere and I believe his conversion to be genuine based on the fact that he has stayed the course, but Maher doesn't evoke the same sort of response from me. He made a career out of mocking people of faith and spreading flat out falsehoods when it suited his purposes, which were his ratings. Maybe all the craziness finally got to him or maybe he just wants them to cool their jets just enough to stay in power. I don't know. But his claim that he is now a hero at Fox doesn't move the needle for me. Lot's of folks are popular at Fox who quite frankly I wouldn't give the time of day to. Does anyone think Karl Rove is a conservative? I don't watch Fox or any major news outlet so maybe I'm the wrong guy to play that card. But I will say this, if you are counting on Bill Maher to have some sort of "Road to Damascus" moment count on waiting a long, long, long, time.
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Multiculturalism and diversity matter a lot more in the West than the rest of the world. Do you think the Saudis give a flying hoot who is offended over feeling excluded during Ramadan? Having been there during that particular time of year I can tell you they do not. To anyone who is offended by Christmas...sorry. Get over it. Or don't get over it. I don't care. As for wondering what Otto is thinking I refer you to the Far Side cartoon that looks at what we say compared with what dogs hear, which outside of their name is "Blah, blah, blah." One of my all-time favorite Far Sides.
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What I want to know is how much of my tax dollars are spent paying the 1600 bureaucrats who gave this video a thumbs down? 🤔
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