Yes, yes — we’re leading off this week’s 5QT with a recitation of the obvious.

But have you noticed that recitations of the obvious appear ever more necessary as our world devolves into utter stupidity?

Back in college, I had a professor for freshman English who was a perfect avatar of the modern leftist lunatic. On the first day of class, before she took us through the syllabus (no Shakespeare or Chaucer, but definitely Virginia Woolf, Chinua Achebe, and the Communist Manifesto), she informed us that she was a lesbian married for “political” reasons. Her husband was a convicted cop-killer set for execution at the state prison, and she married him as a statement for “social justice.”

I’m not kidding.

Those classes were a three-day-a-week theater of the absurd. I have recurring dreams about them — they’re the setting for my version of that dream we all have where it’s the final exam and you’ve neither studied nor been to class all semester. The class was full of preppy kids busily pledging fraternities and sororities but terrorized by the professor’s threat to fail anyone wearing Greek letters in her classroom. And the discussions?

Yikes.

I remember one particularly heated discussion in the class in which the professor said something so inflammatory that one of the other kids ended up writing a letter to the dean about it (which resulted in nothing, of course), and the room was in an uproar. And I remember standing up and imploring everyone that “Hey, can’t we at least start at some fundamental level where we all agree on some basic stuff?”

Which resulted in my learning a very basic lesson about the Left — which is that there is no fundamental level where we can agree on the basics. I learned that from my politically married lesbian English professor who professed very little English at all.

Among those who subscribe to what’s now known as the woke religion, who spout various iterations of critical theory as their perceptions of basic human truth, nothing can be agreed on.

They don’t even agree on the concept of truth. They think your search for an objective reality on which you can base your life is a racist, sexist, homophobic pursuit.

I thought that woman was nuts. And of course, she was. They ultimately ran her off because too many kids whose parents gave big money to the university were complaining about the abuse she blasted out from her desk every day.

But nuts though she might have been, we now have millions of her. Why? Because we put up with them and let them multiply.

The obvious old adage applies. You get what you tolerate. And we tolerate things we never should have.

1. Hamas Shouldn’t Be Tolerated, And Here’s How Not to Tolerate It

I first saw this video while reading John Daniel Davidson’s excellent Federalist column that I’ll excerpt just below. You’ve probably seen it as well by now…

⚠️ language – antisemite in NYC confronted by non Jews after he’s caught tearing down posters of Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas. pic.twitter.com/Bcni0Tlwth

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) October 27, 2023

Davidson has this exactly right:

The clip went viral for how much it contrasted with the videos we saw all last week, of pro-Hamas college students self-righteously ripping down posters of missing and kidnapped Israeli children. In nearly every video, the person holding the camera tries to shame the Hamas supporters, plead with them, or persuade them that what they’re doing is wrong, offensive, and morally insane. All to no effect.

Not this anonymous blue-collar man in New York. He understands there’s no point shaming or pleading with such people, so he instead brings something to the table that’s been missing from these exchanges: a credible threat of violence. He understands the time for pleading or persuading has passed, and that people who rip down posters of missing Israeli children deserve no toleration, no dialogue. They must be stopped — by force if necessary.

He even concedes that the Arab man has a right to his repugnant opinions — that he can wave his Palestine flag and chant “death to the Jews” — but he has no right to silence the views of others. And clearly, the people cheering on Hamas in the streets are the sort of people who have no qualms about silencing the views of others if they have the numbers and force to do so.

Here in this one brief exchange, then, we can see a profound and potentially fatal dilemma facing the West. There are two important aspects to it. The first is the feminization of our institutions, which has allowed the people in charge of those institutions (especially the colleges and universities) to ignore objections from those in the minority without any fear of retaliation or consequences. In the past, this mostly took the form of left-wing student mobs, often egged on by faculty and administrators, shouting down conservative speakers with impunity, sometimes even attacking them.

He’s exactly right about that. Because the pro-Hamas gang is not the conglomeration of peace-seekers they pretend to be. And the people ripping down posters of Israeli and American hostages or those murdered by terrorists are exactly the same people attempting to shut down the speech of those who disagree with them.

That guy in the video above, whose name we understand is “Paulie,” because of course it is, was a whole lot more effective than this well-meaning good Samaritan:

And… more people taking down hostage signs in NYC.

Can anyone please give me a logical explanation as to why someone would take down signs of kids being held hostage by terrorists?!
Some people are just pure evil.pic.twitter.com/PB2NZyUOrM

— Leftism (@LeftismForU) November 2, 2023

There is an effective way to withhold tolerance for filth, and an ineffective way. Something which was definitively proven in the 20th century but utterly forgotten in the 21st is that violence, justly, properly, and effectively applied or implied, is the mortar that holds civilization together. And intolerance of horrible things, backed by a credible threat to enforce that intolerance with physical harm to the purveyor of horribles, is necessary to keep the horrible from becoming commonplace.

Another video making the rounds online is an even more on-point exposition of who the pro-Hamas barbarians are:

That’s one way of dealing with people who rip down posters. pic.twitter.com/LM1jpOkwGJ

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) November 2, 2023

We see this all the time. The modern anti-civilizational Left, which is represented quite well by those in power, is scandalized at the idea that the defenders of civilization might show their teeth.

Remember when Greg Abbott put those water barriers in the Rio Grande, the effect of which was to make it much more dangerous and difficult for invaders to wade across that river into Texas? What was the reaction? That it was inhuman for him to do so. Defending civilization by enforcing its tenets — in this case, stopping people from wantonly breaking laws we purportedly all agree should be on the books — is somehow an affront to decency.

You get thinking like that when you put up with the idiots who spout it, rather than forcefully countering them with words and action.

3. Johnson v. Schumer Is Very Winnable, So Long as Productive Intolerance Holds Sway

On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s aid package for Israel passed on a bipartisan vote with 12 Democrats signing on to funding $14.3 billion for Israel paid for by an equal cut in the growth of the IRS. And this was what Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, had to say:

Let me be clear: The Senate will not take up the House GOP's deeply flawed proposal

Instead we will work on our own bipartisan emergency aid package that includes funding for aid to Israel, Ukraine, humanitarian aid including for Gaza, and competition with the Chinese Government

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) November 2, 2023

There’s an easy response to this. That response is, “Well, OK, but we won’t be funding any of this stuff then.”

Schumer is demanding that House Republicans dine on a dog’s breakfast of horribles — you can bet his omnibus bacchanal will include a host of items the vast majority of Americans would find (1) inappropriate in a foreign aid bill and (2) offensive to their values and interests — rather than a simple aid package with a pay-for.

Of course, the “pay-for” is funding of the IRS, which we’re now told “makes” the government money because the $14.3 billion outlay supposedly will generate some $26 billion in additional revenue over the next 10 years. That’s the line the Congressional Budget Office is pushing, because of course they are.

Johnson had a good comeback for that. “Only in Washington when you cut spending do they call it an increase in the deficit,” he said.

Another comeback would be “If the federal government was earning almost a 200 percent rate of return on its spending, how come it runs more than a 25 percent deficit?”

Either way, the proper response to Schumer’s intransigence is silence. The House passed the aid bill the House wanted to pass, and if that aid bill dies in the Senate, then Chuck Schumer can explain to America’s Jewish population and our allies in Israel why growing the IRS and feeding the Ukrainians money is more important than defeating Hamas. Because Johnson has no obligation to capitulate to Schumer’s dog’s-breakfast passage. Amend it back to the House bill and take it to conference, or just let it die on the House floor and let Schumer screech.

Because at the end of the day, while the Israelis could certainly use that money, they can absolutely win this war without it. Giving them diplomatic cover for cleaning Hamas out of Gaza is a lot more valuable than that money ever could be.

And unlike the old-school Washington General morons who’ve made up the Republican leadership in Washington these several decades of yore, Johnson now has an opportunity to be productively intolerant of Schumer’s incontinent babbling.

4. A Good Example of Intolerance

There has been a major hue and cry over Tommy Tuberville in the Senate staging a protest by holding up mass approvals of military promotions because of the Biden administration’s conversion of the Defense Department into an abortion tourism travel agency. (READ MORE: Tuberville Stands Alone)

The usual suspects in the Senate — Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Joni Ernst, etc. — have joined with the Democrats to assail Tuberville for it rather than standing on principle. Graham, in fact, is especially noxious; I’m going to have to think about whether the next column in this space doesn’t launch into him as one of the most prolific traitors to the pro-life movement who ever existed, but that’s a separate column in itself that we don’t have space for in this entry.

Senator @LindseyGrahamSC needs to stop pandering to the left and their agenda. The military needs to follow the law and deny use of taxpayer funds to support a culture of abortion.

Stand with @SenTuberville. He is right. https://t.co/25f94uNeLS

— Gunnery Sergeant Jessie Jane Duff (@JessieJaneDuff) November 2, 2023

Those guys can now decide if they want to stage a similar backstabbing of J.D. Vance over his own protest in the Senate:

No more banana republic stuff from Joe Biden. So long as he goes after his political opponents, I will hold nominations to the Department of “Justice” pic.twitter.com/Tfc3d69ind

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) November 1, 2023

Good for Vance. And here is a question: what are Lindsey Graham, Joni Ernst, and Mitt Romney doing to stymie Team Biden’s efforts at weaponizing the justice system against their political enemies?

And if the answer is “nothing,” and yes, that is the answer, then why is that the answer?

Graham, Ernst, Romney, and the gang are the ones tolerating the horrible things here. And that puts the question on us: why are we tolerating them?

5. And Finally…

The Texas Rangers blew out the Arizona Diamondbacks in five games to win the World Series, with the clinching victory coming on Wednesday night. From a sports perspective, this was a significant event; I’m 53 and it’s the first time the Rangers have ever been world champions since I’ve been on this Earth.

From a societal perspective it’s significant as well. There are 30 teams in Major League Baseball, and 29 of them celebrated Alphabet People Pride Month in some form or fashion in June of this year.

The only team not subjecting their fans to the obnoxious indignity of such celebrations?

The Texas Rangers.

Good for them. Good for them. If you didn’t notice the baseball gods were conservative when the Atlanta Braves won the World Series a couple of years ago after Atlanta was stripped of the All-Star Game by the woke Major League Baseball office after the Georgia Legislature passed some rudimentary election integrity bills, then you ought to notice it now.

READ MORE:

Democrats Love the IRS More Than They Love Israel

Here’s to You, Cornel West and Dean Phillips!

The Spectacle Ep. 50: Polygamy of the Personal and Political Type