The Crowhill Journal

This is a quick episode to address a couple questions from the mail bag.

First, what’s the difference between an ale and a lager?

Second, it seems kids are more politically involved. Is that true? Is it a good thing?

P&C drink and review Steel Reserve, a cheap, high-powered lager you can get at 7-11.

Mississippi has taken the confederate battle flag off their state flag. Nascar has prohibited confederate flags. Sounds like progress, right? But why are some people so attached to this flag? Is it “southern pride,” or is it racism?

What about confederate monuments? Should they come down? P&C agree that they should (in most cases), but there are larger issues to explore, such as who gets to interpret the meaning of a symbol?

Some people legitimately see the confederate flag as a symbol of oppression and racism. But to others, it might only mean southern pride. Who gets to decide what it means, and is it fair for person A to judge person B’s use of a symbol according to what person A thinks it means?

Are there any guiding principles in this? At this point, it seems that whoever is uncomfortable wins. Is that the right way to handle this?

You can right click on this link and download the episode, or play it in this browser.

When a politician pledges to spend a lot of money on some issue, what that means is that he’s using the issue as an excuse to hand out money to his friends and allies.

Biden climate plan would spend $2 trillion in bid to boost economy

He may actually believe in the cause (in this case it’s climate change), and he may make excuses to himself about handing off money to his friends.

“Well of course! We’re funneling money to companies that have the right values. We don’t want the Koch brothers doing this.”

And so on.

But the bottom line is that when the government decides to spend a lot of money, there’s going to be corruption.

I know a person who used to be involved in politics in Eastern Europe. He said they had “corruption commissions” to keep an eye on this sort of thing. That sounds like a good idea. Of course the corruption commission itself will almost certainly become corrupt. Wherever there is power and money, there will be corruption. But … you’ve got to try to control it.

What has become of free speech and our ability to agree to disagree with one another? What happened to “I don’t like what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”?

That used to be the liberal standard.

Now, if you depart from the ever-changing requirements of the woke scolds, the mob attacks you and you lose your livelihood.

This has degraded our public institutions. Newspapers, according to Bari Weiss, choose and tell stories “in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences.”

How does this help the culture?

[Admin note: going forward, most P&C episodes will be private, and not available through libsyn. When they are available on libsyn, I’ll post them in this format.]

Here’s my first attempt at posting a private podcast. Let’s see if it works.

(If I link to it like this, you should be able to right click on it and download the file.)

With special guest, Noman, Pigweed and Crowhill take a look at Jack London’s Sea Wolf, an exciting book that introduced the world to the interesting character, Wolf Larsen. Captain Larsen is an amoral, materialist monster.

While the book is good in general, a particular passage caught Crowhill’s eye, because it dealt with the “race” of the Norwegians, and the “race” of the Italians.

Huh?

Crowhill called on his friend Noman to discuss.

This episode discusses the concept of race and racism, whether stop and frisk was racist, and several other interesting points.

Be warned. Noman sings a slightly inappropriate song in the middle of this podcast.