{"id":64711,"date":"2018-11-15T18:45:52","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T23:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=64711"},"modified":"2018-11-15T18:47:05","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T23:47:05","slug":"the-daily-gouge-archive-wednesday-november-14th-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=64711","title":{"rendered":"The Daily Gouge Archive, Wednesday, November 14th, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Wednesday, November 14th, 2018…but before we begin, writing at the WSJ<\/em>,\u00a0<\/strong>Arthur Herman highlights…<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Danger of Rushing Into Peace<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n

Gen. Pershing thought the World War I armistice was premature. He was right, and a bloodier war ensued<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/h3>\n

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“On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the guns were stilled in what was then the bloodiest war in history. A century later it\u2019s worth remembering that while the armistice ended a world war, it also set the table for the next, thanks to the misguided idealism of its author, President Woodrow Wilson<\/span><\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Allies had no military<\/em><\/span> reason to stop the fighting.<\/strong> The German army had been badly beaten in a series of battles and was streaming homeward in confusion.<\/span> The British and French were at the point of exhaustion after four years of constant slaughter, but Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, wanted to turn the German retreat into a rout.<\/strong><\/span> His forces had taken a bloody nose in the Argonne Forest, but they were still fresh\u2014and growing in numbers. By the start of 1919 Pershing expected to have more than a million men in the field. Completing Germany\u2019s defeat, even advancing to Berlin, would put the U.S. in a position to dictate final peace terms. Germany\u2019s unconditional surrender would allow America to shape Europe in ways that would guarantee Americans soldiers need never die there again.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But Wilson demurred. The president had entered the war pledging \u201cpeace without victory.\u201d<\/span> His objective was to create a new world order<\/em><\/span>. When the new German government sent a note to Wilson on Oct. 4 asking for an armistice, he saw an opportunity to achieve his aims without further bloodshed.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

…Only one<\/em><\/span> military leader dissented from the armistice agreement: Gen. Pershing<\/em><\/span>. Although in the end he bowed to his commander in chief and his fellow Allied generals, he never gave up his belief that total military victory was the key to lasting peace<\/span><\/em>.<\/span> \u201cWe never really let the Germans know who won the war<\/em><\/span>,\u201d he said in 1923<\/em><\/span>. \u201cThey are being told that their army was stabbed in the back, betrayed, that their army had not been defeated<\/em><\/span>.<\/span> The Germans never believed they were beaten<\/em><\/span>. It will have to be done all over again<\/em><\/span>.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It was<\/span><\/em>. The armistice spared<\/em><\/span> Germany the final defeat it had earned<\/em><\/span>.<\/span> Its army remained battered but intact, and the \u201cstab in the back\u201d myth took deep root in the interwar years<\/span><\/em>. It eventually contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler, who identified the Jews as the perpetrators of the betrayal.<\/span> America and the world would have to fight yet another, even bloodier war, to prove him wrong<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/span>…”<\/p>\n

Yet, surprisingly, the lesson must still be relearned, as when inaccurate, highly emotional press coverage in the First Gulf War of the supposed “Highway of Death”…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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…led George H.W. Bush to let Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards off the ropes, thus allowing Saddam to continue stirring the pot in the Middle East while his Republican Guards stepped up their campaign of slaughter and terror against Iraq’s Shiite and Kurd minorities.\u00a0 More importantly, it ensured the unfinished task of taking down the Iraqi dictator would fall to another President Bush, at the cost of countless billions of dollars and untold thousands of lives.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As George Santayana so famously observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.\u00a0 Unfortunately, those who bear the cost of the reeducation are most often innocent civilians and members of our Military.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We don’t give Douglas MacArthur credit for much, but he was right when he observed, “There is no substitute for victory”.\u00a0 And we’d add a war lost is only slightly worse than a war half-won.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, here’s The Gouge<\/em>!<\/strong><\/p>\n

First up, writing at NRO<\/em>, Kevin Williamson recounts life in…<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Lonely Mob<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n

Feel blue? Lack purpose? Life a little dull? Get a lift by fighting some fantasy Nazis<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/h3>\n

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“J<\/span>ust before the election, an Andrew Gillum intern named Shelby Shoup was arrested and charged with battery after assaulting some college Republicans on the campus of Florida State University. It was rather less exciting than that sounds: She went on a rant about \u201cNazis\u201d and \u201cfascism\u201d \u2014 Gillum\u2019s Republican opponent, Ron DeSantis, finished up at Harvard Law and then joined the U.S. military and helped to fight actual Jew-hating totalitarian thugs in Iraq<\/span><\/em>, in case anybody cares about the\u00a0facts<\/span>\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 before dousing the Republicans with chocolate milk.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t much of enduring interest in that story: Feckless and hysterical young Caitlyns have been going all rage-monkey from coast to coast for a good bit now, and one might get a feel for the level of maturity at play here by meditating on the fact that a grown-ass woman of legal voting age was walking around drinking chocolate milk<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong><\/span> Caitlyns gotta Caitlyn, I suppose.<\/p>\n

Of course Shoup should be convicted on a misdemeanor battery charge, this being a fairly open-and-shut case supported by video evidence.<\/span> Her actions are also a serious violation of the university\u2019s code of student conduct, which could entail punishment up to and including expulsion.<\/strong> <\/span>Kicking her out of the university would be excessive, I think, and she\u2019s obviously in need of further and better education. I\u2019d suggest having her write a 40-page essay on the works of Russell Kirk or F. A. Hayek, or maybe Ludwig von Mises on the actual Nazis and totalitarianism<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Spilt milk, indeed.<\/p>\n

This sort of behavior should be understood as being on a spectrum<\/span><\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The assault on Tucker Carlson\u2019s home by Antifa thugs this week was a much<\/em><\/span> more serious episode.<\/span> It was an act of political terrorism directed at the family of a journalist and commentator with the goal of intimidating him into silence<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong><\/span> \u201cWe know where you sleep at night,\u201d they chanted as they vandalized his home and his wife hid in a pantry. (He was not at home during the episode.) They also broke his front door in what may or may not have been an attempt to illegally and forcibly enter the home. A mob of 20 or so thugs trying to kick in the door, a mother by herself hiding in a pantry:<\/span> The next time somebody asks you why anybody really needs a semiautomatic rifle<\/span>,<\/span> here\u2019s your answer<\/span><\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine a line that measures the moral distance between Shelby Shoup\u2019s battery in Florida to the Antifa assault on Tucker Carlson\u2019s home, and then extend that line by the same distance in the same direction. Where are we then<\/em><\/span>?<\/span> Arson? Bombs<\/em>?<\/span> The kind of massacre James T. Hodgkinson was trying to pull off when he shot Steve Scalise and fired on other Republicans<\/em><\/span>? How long until we arrive at Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin Laden \u2014 both of whom earnestly believed<\/span> that their acts of terrorism were morally imperative in the face of tyranny and evil<\/span><\/em>?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Shoup and Antifa flatter themselves<\/em><\/span> that they<\/em><\/span> are what stands between the United States and fascism or Nazism. This is, obviously<\/em>, absurd<\/em><\/span>.<\/span> It\u2019s pure tribalism<\/em><\/span>: President Obama<\/em><\/span> authorized the extrajudicial killing of American citizens as a national-security measure; President Trump<\/em><\/span> is an angry tweeter. But it is the latter<\/em><\/span> rather than the former<\/span><\/em> that apparently presages the rise of a Falange Americana<\/em><\/span>. That<\/em><\/span> is how you know that this is a fundamentally unserious point of view<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span>…”<\/p>\n

In other words, they’re angry, ignorant, misguided, pampered pieces of…<\/strong><\/p>\n