Our friendly neighbourhood Gentleman Adventurer had a guest on his podcast yesterday, and that guest just so happened to be yer ‘umble servant ‘ere.
Now, to hear his side of the story, I badgered him to be on his podcast until he finally relented and gave in. As I recall, I simply sent him an email mentioning that it might be a cool idea, he said it would be fun but wasn’t sure about the technical details, I offered a couple of suggestions, and we sort of took it from there.
So, y’know, make up your own mind, I suppose.
We had to sort through a few sound issues before the main podcast – partly due to the microphone on my end, admittedly – but being blokes, we figured it out in the end without too many problems. And now that Adam knows how to record conversations in Skype, it should be easier for him to have more guests on his show – which I genuinely hope he does, because he is a lot of fun to talk with.
Adam and I also apparently have VERY different ideas about what is, and is not, an attractive woman; in his opinion, I’ve only ever posted ONE good-looking girl in my Friday T&A segments. All I can say to that is… oops.
I have no doubt that, if you boys dislike my taste in girls, you will make that painfully clear. Stick yer opinions in the comments below.
Seriously, though, I had a great time talking with Adam. He is a great host with a lot of stories to tell, who had to grow up very much the hard way, and went to the School of Hard Knocks for many years. He is a righteous dude and very much a Man of the West.
Many thanks indeed to Adam for having me as a guest on his podcast. If you are not subscribed to it, or at least listening to it on a regular basis, I highly recommend it; he has a LOT to say about a very wide range of things, and his Aussie accent makes his acerbic commentary sound even better.
Also, if you are not subscribed to his blog, please consider doing so, as his commentary is always worth reading.
And if you have not read his first or second books, please do. I can promise you that they are well worth the read; the first one in particular will show you the growth and maturation process of an overgrown boy through hardship and adversity into an actual man.
A few points that I wanted to add during the podcast, but we didn’t have enough time to explore:
- Adam quite rightly castigates the “conservatives” in Australia – they are known as the “Liberal Party” there, which is hugely confusing to Americans, I know – for not fixing the stupid mistakes of their Leftist predecessors in the 1970s. This is a depressingly familiar pattern in Western countries, and just goes to show that “conservatives” have singularly failed to “conserve” one single damned thing.
- That also brings to mind the old chestnut from Chesterton: “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.“
- When it comes to Russian men, my criticisms were certainly accurate, but it is also worth adding one very strong positive attribute of Russian men: they are the most loyal friends that you will ever meet.
- This is true of Russians in general. A Russian’s trust is very hard to earn. It takes a lot of effort to get them to open up. But, once you earn it, you are basically a blood brother for life. A Russian man who is your friend will literally give you the coat off of his back to help keep you warm.
- I didn’t get a chance to do my “local” accent on the podcast, but trust me on this, it’s a scream if you ever hear me speak “down home”. My “normal” accent sounds quite Western, which absolutely confuses the hell out of anyone who meets me in real life. It’s quite a lot of fun to play the, “So, where did you say you were from again?” game – for me, anyway.
12 Comments
"This is a depressingly familiar pattern in Western countries, and just goes to show that "conservatives" have singularly failed to "conserve" one single damned thing."
And yet there is a Walther in my pocket, in .40, a Dragunov five feet to my left front, and a steel cabinet with a couple of dozen more in the next room, with 8-9000 rounds of ammunition on the dividing wall. How do we square that with your rather categorical statement?
Uh… sir… you live in Virginia these days, right? The same state that was recently debating a bill introduced by an "American" Daemoncrat state delegate that would have allowed abortion at any point during a woman's pregnancy and would also have permitted a baby to be killed literally right up to the moment of birth? The same state that was once reliably conservative and Republican, and is now basically a Daemoncrat stronghold?
That is what people like Adam and I mean when we say that conservatives have failed to conserve anything. We respect what you did during the Cold War, when your generation of conservatives did a phenomenal job of destroying the Evil Empire – full credit to you for that, no question. But in the forty years since Saint Reagan of the Right fought that war and won, the culture has shifted hard to the Left – and conservatives have done little to nothing to stem their tide of stupidity and filth.
You're brighter than this. You said "singularly failed to conserve one damned thing." I've just shown you the one thing. Virginia falling to the government drones in Fairfax country still doesn't refute the one thing. New York becoming Auschwitz for the unborn still doesn't refute that one thing.
Moreover, it's an important, nay, THE important one thing. As long as we're armed, we can undo the damage. Now who do you suppose preserved that one key thing? Libertarians? it is to laugh. The Alt right? They were still wetting their diapers. (Many of them are _still_ wetting their diapers.) No, conservatives conserved that one key thing.
Sir, I'll readily concede that the 2nd Amendment has been preserved, in many of the states – except where it hasn't. And those places really matter, because the states with the worst gun control laws just so happen to be the centres of cultural, financial, media, and political power in the country. Commiefornia, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, etc. – all of which have significant, armed, conservative, rural populations. And that has not made one damned bit of difference. The Left has happily continued its Long March through the institutions, unchecked and unopposed.
Conservatives have spent forty years losing the war for the culture – in large part because they do not have an actual ideology or doctrine to defend. Russell Kirk made this quite clear in The Conservative Mind. Conservatism is not based on tangible doctrines, but on "principles", which conservatives have routinely given up in order to go down to "Noble Defeat".
Furthermore – Texas, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia all have large populations of rednecks (God love 'em) armed to the back teeth. That does not appear to have deterred hundreds of thousands of illegal invaders from coming in to those states, often with the implicit or explicit permission of the Federal government and the city-bound elites. Nor does it appear to have pegged back the large waves of liberal numbnut carpetbaggers who come South fleeing from the stupidity of their native lands, only to inflict the very same stupidity in their new ones.
We now see the results of these losses in the culture, and the demographics, in the politics of the land. Sen. Ted Cruz narrowly won a race against Vanilla Obama that he should have run away with. The People's Republic of Austin calls itself a "sanctuary city" for invaders – in the very same place where the state Capitol building sits. Gov. Ron DeSantis barely won a race against a corrupt mayor of a failing and dangerous heavily black city – one of the worst cities in the country, actually.
And that's before we get started on some of the more egregious "slippery slope" decisions by the SCOTUS, where even having a (barely) conservative majority still hasn't stopped flagrant abuses of power by the Left.
I greatly admire and respect the conservatives who gun up. I wish I could do the same right now. But the lessons of history are absolutely clear: an armed population is vitally necessary to keep government power and cultural Marxism in check, yet it is certainly not sufficient.
What happens when – not if – Texas turns blue? At that point, America is basically done. There will never be another Republican President. There will be no point in hanging on to the Constitution. All that we can do is hope and pray that the resulting civil war will not be as bloody and horrifying as many of us suspect that it will be.
With greatest respect, sir – is that what conservatives aimed for? The sundering of the country that they loved, and the deaths of potentially hundreds of thousands, even millions, in the resulting fracturing? You once tore Rosie the Whale a new one for being stupid enough to suggest that the Left could win an actual shooting war against the rest of the country, and rightly so. But why was it necessary for conservatives to simply keep retreating until the point that war was inevitable?
Tom., being armed, fit and skilled is very good but having the organization, ideas you are willing to sacrifice everything for and the will to fight is more important.
Americans for the most part are hyper individualistic other than when organized by the state, a few militias aside. If you can't get half a dozen friends to gun up with you without Daddy Gov you'll lose to anyone else who can.
The American conservative also has no ideology to speak of and note "leave me alone" is not an ideology. Its closer to the anarchist bull that some factions of AntiFa spew . You have to accept power and have to actually govern and regulate in order for this complex society to function
I know that many on the Right long for simpler times but that simply won't happen without mass death and collapse if that ever happens. You break it, you buy it. You get to run the EPA now.
Last. I'm not sanguine since they lack the above the Right has much will to fight. And note non compliance is not "will to fight" . Oh well. not in my backyard is not will to fight either.
Huge chunks of the US are under Socialist control, the country is flooded with illegal aliens and our culture is pushing Bacha Bazi so anything short of overt gun confiscation , box cars or a mandatory chip under the skin is fine?
Now I won't hold inaction against anyone., I don't think its time to fight anyway and am outright telling people not to do stupid things especially while its moving a bit our way but eventually its going to be "crap or get off the pot" and given the circumstances out there and how degraded the US is I'm not sure there is enough will to make anything happen.
As such I don't blame the Left for being bold, it would seem to them the enemy is as always bluffing.
The best thing anyone can do is to get organized and have an idea to fight with your friends for. Guns we got, ammo we got , ideas we don't
Do that and we might even win without a war.
Then, given that concession, you must understand that the blanket statement is false. All the extranea you've brought in doesn't change that your initial blanket statement is false.
Sir, yours is very much an attempt to "lawyer around" the statement. The fact is that conservatives haven't really managed to "conserve" the 2nd Amendment either. Gun rights are under attack all over the country, and have already been pushed back considerably in the big cities. Hell, it was one Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan who signed into law the Mulford Act, prohibiting personal carrying of firearms and imposing a 15-day waiting period on gun purchases, and it was a certain President Reagan who supported the passage of the Brady Act.
How, exactly, does this fit into the lawyerly view of "conserving" anything, especially when it is conservatives themselves who like to say (as I do): "What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you not understand"?
Tom, the 2nd amendment is conserved except where it isn't , NFA, 1968 GCA , Brady Act , California , New York, New Jersey , Maryland, Illinois D.C etc
In some states we've begun to restore our rights but its far from most and the majority of Americans live under Constitutionally dubious regimes
And as for more important things, culture, history. common values Christianity, I could go on They've encouraged the founding peoples to be replaced nearly as much as the Democrats
The Conservatives are utter failures save a little on guns
And Didact, its natural for Tom to lawyer around . he started in that profession back in 1995.
And Didact, its natural for Tom to lawyer around . he started in that profession back in 1995.
I know ))
The reason why I take issue with the approach of lawyering around things is because my original statement was, and is, a rhetorical device couched in hard dialectical fact. That is why it is so effective at pissing off conservatives – because, at its core, it is true.
Yeah sorry, Didact. Sometimes the Internet is poor at communicating basic facts like "hello I did the research" Mea Culpa .
You are of course spot on. Its kind of understandable, even as failure prone as US "Conservatives" are the core idea of not wanting to upset at the apple cart is always part of the makeup ..
Its made worse by the Libertarian streak that so many have and that streak is basically a gateway drug to the Left since Libertarianism is the worst of all worlds save communism , economic liberalism + social liberalism is a recipe for a third world country
Real Conservatives IMO anyway are far closer to Paleoconservatives, Socially Conservative (authoritarian as needed) and Economically Conservative, aka Economically Nationalist
The easy way I'd put is is the Pure Food and Drug act and the EPA despite some failures are at their core true right wing endeavors in that the conserve clean air and water and are based on the notion that the profit incentive can lead to amoral or even immoral behavior. Greed is not good
Long term thinking is Conservative .
This creates huge level of cognitive dissonance with Republicans who are often corporate stooges, money cucks or so stuck on a stupid frontier muh rugged individualism that makes no sense in 2019 whatsoever
The US is 80% urban , very high tech and awash in deadly tech and chemicals that did not exist in 1780 or 1880 or maybe 1980.
You can't run away from responsibility for your society and hope to lead it
As a personal aside, Tom is justly famous in our circles for his fascination with crucifixion .
Morally IMO again he doesn't come close to the proper targets. Thieves and robbers are scum and murders sometimes deserve a noose. if anyone though deserves that excruciating a death its polluters who ruin the land and water for future generations . I'm not all in on it mind you
Everyone dies and stuff is replaceable but ruined land can be forever
Long term thinking for good ends, is Conservative. Terror to maintain order is a thing of the Left
No, I'm not lawyering around anything. I am holding you to account for a uncategorical statement that is categorically false. You can legitimately say that conservatives have conserved little, have conserved not enough, could have conserved more (although that is, in the circumstances, arguable). What you cannot say is that they conserved nothing.
Oh, and yes, guns are under attack everywhere but the left has been losing that fight since about 1987. They are not winning it now, either.
You seem to be stuck on a sort of lefty approach, where only perfection and the end of history are worthy goals. No, history doesn't end, the fight goes on. Moreover, when Generation Zyklon comes of age, quite possibly the most conservative generation in history, you will see how things that seem lost are regained.