I Stand With The Unicorns

 ... after all, every single French politician of note is doing it.

The "student protests" are all about school conditions. That's why they're vandalizing and torching schools, looting businesses, defacing monuments, tearing apart historic buildings and torching irreplaceable architecture. It all seems reasonable when you think about it, particularly the part about how Muslim businesses have not been touched nor has a single mosque been touched.

Makes sense to me. I'm on Team Unicorn.

Even if we assumed the rationale for the, err, social movement as the tender folks at theLouvre put it when they posted on X that the museum was going to be closed for the time being, we still need to assess whether or not the French government could increase education funding even if it wanted to do so.

The answer is no.

For one thing, borrowing money so they can hand it to their students has gotten much more expensive.

France is also spending a ton on the good stuff.

Country	Total Government Expenditure (% of GDP)	Primary Spending Drivers
France	57.0% – 57.2%	Highest in the EU; driven by extensive social protection systems (pensions, unemployment), healthcare, and public sector employment.
Italy	50.4% – 51.2%	Substantial pension liabilities, demographic aging costs, and high sovereign debt interest servicing.
Germany	49.4% – 50.5%	Comprehensive social insurance systems, federal subsidies for energy transition, and infrastructure/defense commitments.
Spain	45.3% – 45.5%	Public healthcare and pension programs decentralized across autonomous communities; lower relative administrative overhead.
United Kingdom (England)	44.0% – 44.6%	NHS healthcare delivery, state pension commitments, and debt interest, partially offset by lower general welfare replacement rates than continental peers.

In short, there's no more money to spend and borrowing is out of the question.

So when the far-right, Hitler-wannabe Marine Le Pen says she wants to stand with the students and understands their plight and the commie what's-his-face does the same, it's all nonsense from the land of Unicornia.

There's no money. It's all been spent. Even if the "kids" really were lobbying for more Euros and not just trashing the place, they're gonna get stiffed.

Someone ought to tell them this. Someone might also want to hand them the bill for the clean up because the grownups are tapped out.

Nah.

Bonus Unicorn Content

Our granddaughter is 4 and loves unicorns. During a recent sleepover with Grammie, I used ChatGPT to make some coloring book pages for her featuring unicorns in different situations. My favorite had a unicorn with Jordan Peterson.

Recomputing In France

 ... in an infinite loop.

By now, you may have seen this video.

A left-wing French woman joined the student protests but was horrified when the second and third-generation migrants she was with started looting stores. She screamed “This isn’t the cause” They pushed her aside, told her to shut up and said they had “urgent shopping” to do https://t.co/GEWhMCUBSF

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 17, 2026

As I understand it from both the translation of what she's saying and (possibly fabricated) assertions that she has been a vocal supporter of mass migration, she is trying to tell the looters that she is on their side. Whatever the case is, the look on her face shows a stack overflow going on in her brain.

Lots of people have commented on her and this particular look of despair, but I think I have a unique take.

What she is trying and failing to reconcile are these things:

1. All migrants are good
2. These migrants are looting her store

That's pretty much it. She cannot process what is happening to her. The forcing function is the social stigma associated with telling others that migrants looted her store. She might be able to escape the loop if she can just convince herself that the store deserved to be looted, either because of colonialism, racism or the frustration of the Africans / Muslims doing the looting. She's clearly struggling with that because she was trying to stop the looting.

Above all, she will not allow herself to be associated with the far-right, whatever that happens to mean today, and thus lose all of her friends and social allies. That overrides all other considerations. Her girlfriends must always think that she is compassionate, open-minded and welcoming no matter what.

So she can't acknowledge what is happening, but she can see it happening. (1000-yard stare commences).

for (i = 0; i > -1; i++) do ...

Bonus Thought

Prior to the 7th Century, Algeria was Christian. What happened? Did all the priests and deacons get copies of the Quran and decide peacefully that there was no God but Allah and Mohammed what His prophet? Probably. As we all know, only white people can be imperialist.

I'd Go

This is so good it deserves its own post.

Wear A Virtual Hijab

 ... by not smiling. That's the advice to women in places with a lot of Muslim men. 

It never occurred to me that it's not just the bare head, it's also the connotations on the facial expression that matter. You may decide to skip the hijab, but it's advisable to never show warmth to a Muslim man. Yes, I know, there are lots and lots of moderate Muslims.

But which ones are they and which are the ones who take the faith seriously?

I've been concerned that our granddaughter may someday have to wear a hijab, but it looks like long before that, she'll have to wear a virtual one.

Here's the full post from X with the embedded video below.

This American used to be a liberal and was shocked by what she was told in college about Muslims

“I went to college where a social work professor asked our class, what are you doing on an everyday basis to combat racism and prejudice and bigotry? So I raised my hand as a really proud, liberal, naive young woman. I raised my hand so proud and I said, well, when I go to the airport, I always go out of my way to be really nice and smile at Middle Eastern men. because I assume that people have been really mean to them at the airport, so I always go out of my way to smile at them.

And she looked at me in front of the entire class and said, never do that again, because in their culture, smiling at a man means that you're a prostitute, so never do that again”

“I was stunned into silence. And I don't know who needs to hear this today, but sympathy toward an ideology that is openly hostile, brutally oppressive and objectifying to women is not empathy. It's actually what I would call Western privilege. You have the privilege of extending sympathy to men who buy into this radical ideology because you have never been a Middle Eastern woman subject to being under it. How you look at them will never change how they look at you”

For those that didn’t know this, it’s real. In Muslim culture a woman smiling at a man that is not her husband is considered haram (forbidden) and strongly prohibited

Muslims say a woman uncovering her face and smiling at a man can lead to evil, here’s the actual reasoning

“It is haraam for a woman to uncover her face or to smile at a non-mahram man, because of the evil to which that may lead.” 

Our cultures are not equal. Islam is not compatible with Western Civilization

This American used to be a liberal and was shocked by what she was told in college about Muslims “I went to college where a social work professor asked our class, what are you doing on an everyday basis to combat racism and prejudice and bigotry? So I raised my hand as a really proud, liberal, naive young woman. I raised my hand so proud and I said, well, when I go to the airport, I always go out of my way to be really nice and smile at Middle Eastern men. because I assume that people have been really mean to them at the airport, so I always go out of my way to smile at them. And she looked at me in front of the entire class and said, never do that again, because in their culture, smiling at a man means that you're a prostitute, so never do that again” “I was stunned into silence. And I don't know who needs to hear this today, but sympathy toward an ideology that is openly hostile, brutally oppressive and objectifying to women is not empathy. It's actually what I would call Western privilege. You have the privilege of extending sympathy to men who buy into this radical ideology because you have never been a Middle Eastern woman subject to being under it. How you look at them will never change how they look at you” For those that didn’t know this, it’s real. In Muslim culture a woman smiling at a man that is not her husband is considered haram (forbidden) and strongly prohibited Muslims say a woman uncovering her face and smiling at a man can lead to evil, here’s the actual reasoning “It is haraam for a woman to uncover her face or to smile at a non-mahram man, because of the evil to which that may lead.” Our cultures are not equal. Islam is not compatible with Western Civilization

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) October 12, 2026

Bonus Content

Dig this interview with Mohammed Saifullah.

British Islamic content creator Muhammad Saifullah said in an October 4, 2026 episode of the Liam Tuffs Podcast that if he were Prime Minister, homosexuals would be arrested, tried in a court of law, and executed, while adulterers would be stoned to death. He continued by saying that anyone who insulted or criticized the Prophet Muhammad would be executed as well. Saifullah said that he would personally torture apostates... He said that this is what the religion of Islam teaches, and asked how the Prevent Program and the British police, whom he referred to using expletives, could not be "man enough" to ban Islam: They allow the source of what he is saying, the Quran, to be distributed throughout the country, but once he starts preaching what is inside the Quran, he is considered a radical.

This guy is not British. The British government intentionally let him in and let him stay. It's an island, for God's sake. It's not that hard to keep people out.

Just what was served by having him in England?

Everyone Loves Pay Day, No One Likes Tuesday Afternoon Deadlines

... or: Musings On Theological Socialism.

Sarah Hoyt gave an Instalanche to this X-extract blog post about the failure of the New Harmonie socialism experiment.

Robert Owen paid around $150,000 for the town of Harmonie, Indiana. He got 20,000 acres, more than 160 buildings, working mills, and farms already producing food. He renamed it New Harmony. Close to a thousand people arrived in the first year.

Owen already ran successful textile mills in New Lanark, Scotland, where he was famous for treating workers well and running a profitable business at the same time. He believed that if you removed private property and paid everyone equally, cooperation would naturally replace competition.

In January 1826, William Maclure sailed a riverboat full of scientists, teachers, and geologists down the Ohio River to New Harmony. Historians call it the “Boatload of Knowledge”. Thomas Say, the father of American entomology, was on it. So was Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, one of the most respected naturalists of the era. This was the most educated, best-funded, best-equipped socialist community ever attempted on American soil. If cooperation could beat markets anywhere, it should have worked here.

It collapsed almost immediately.

The hardest workers were feeding, housing, and clothing neighbors who did nothing while receiving the same food, the same shelter, and the same rewards. So they stopped working too. Why wouldn’t they?

My feverish, coffee-starved brain made a connection into my current, deep disaffection with the Catholic Church. I instantly thought of the term, Theological Socialism. If my faith's leadership thinks everyone is going to get the same reward after we die, then why don't I go to the beach instead of Mass? Like the hard-working people in New Hamonie, I've realized that if my prelates are right, then I've been played for a chump.

They aren't right. Not at all. They are reveling in being the paymaster and totally avoiding the task of foreman. 

This last weekend, I worked the men's Cursillo retreat. In the kitchen, we dished up some great meals. Many of my friends in the kitchen were from the Valley - El Centro, Calexico, etc. Like the Chicago girl who took my last name, they were all from modest means and now relatively successful. They had something to give to others because they had lived, in fits and starts, the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. As Instapundit said some years ago, wealth and income are markers of behavior.

Discussing this with ChatGPT, we came to this:

(B)efore wealth can be distributed, it must be created. Before generosity can be practiced abundantly, the capacity for generosity must be developed.

Your wife and your friends from Calexico and El Centro illustrate something that gets lost when wealth is discussed exclusively in terms of inequality and redistribution.

They began with relatively little. Through years of work, discipline, delayed gratification, and sacrifice, they accumulated not merely financial resources but productive capacity. They developed skills, judgment, reliability, and habits of responsibility.

Their present generosity is made possible, in substantial part, by their earlier sacrifices.

And here's where the Catholic dimension becomes especially interesting.

The very virtues that made these people prosperous are themselves Christian virtues.

Industry, prudence, temperance, fortitude, stewardship, and perseverance are not merely economic instruments. They are moral achievements.

Of course, wealth itself is not proof of virtue; Christ's warnings about riches make that clear. But neither is wealth morally irrelevant. How someone acquired it, what sacrifices its acquisition required, and what responsibilities he subsequently assumed are legitimate subjects of moral judgment.

G. K. Chesterton said, "Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about." Traditions are the hard-won lessons from the past being given to us on a silver platter.

1826 is a long time ago, long before the modern era where the transfer portal has ruined college football. Ancient Israel, which gave us the Old Testament is older even than that, before Jean-Jacques Rousseau's benighted concept of the noble savage. The people who lived through the failure of New Harmonie tried to pass along their painfully gathered wisdom in writing. So did the rabbis watching the Israelites prance around golden calves right before the smiting got real.

We ignore those and turn to socialism in all its rancid forms at our own peril.

It's a ton of fun to yap about a world of generosity and open-hearted forgiveness. It's not a lot of fun tell your staff they're going to need to work late tonight.

"Your scrolls need to be distributed to the Children of Israel tomorrow morning at 0800!"

Papal Bookend

The riots in France are the perfect bookend for the Pope's visit. He shows up and gets the royal treatment, his courtiers enjoy themselves in magnificent cathedrals and then everything goes to pieces.

Church leadership enjoys the praise for being so compassionate and then return to their comfy homes while the laity fight off the migrants we were told to welcome.

🇫🇷 More footage of the riots in Paris And I don’t believe for a second that this is just about schools anymore... Writer: Sol https://t.co/UnJDbnuVEi

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 6, 2026

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Where the hell are our fighters?

@icbkr @Oilfield_Rando Agreed, but are any of them directly making the case for Catholicism over Islam? The Muslims certainly do the reverse. To borrow from the Pearl Harbor movie, Tora, Tora, Tora, "Where the hell are *our* fighters?" https://t.co/13oqhZwv5D

— K T Cat (@ktcat) March 10, 2026

Where's The Offramp?

In jolly old England, things have gone from tense to tensor. Recently, a rubber dinghy full of military-aged African and Muslim men came ashore as they do on a regular basis. A fellow named Danny Tommo had organized a rowdy welcoming committee for them. Shouting, waving flags, but no violence. That is, until Danny went into the water after the men had disembarked and stabbed the thing to death.

Now the dinghy was the property of the human traffickers. There was no one on board. Danny used his knife to make sure the human traffickers couldn't ever use it again. 

Danny is now in the express lane to jail. He's been arrested for property damage although just whose property, no one is really sure. His real crime was to defend England. British jails are full to bursting. Migrant rapists get off with suspended sentences regularly. Danny is going to face real jail time for doing the job the military, coast guard and police ought to be doing.

Stopping rubber boats from landing is really not that hard.

In terms of the public mood, things are dramatically worse than they were earlier in the year. Into that environment comes the latest news from Gosport. It turns out that another set of invaders hit the shore and were scheduled to be taken to taxpayer-funded accommodations in Gosport. Protestors were a threat, so the authorities turned the boats back and forced them to return to France in order to not further enflame tensions.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Sometimes I crack myself up.

No, the authorities put Gosport into lockdown, read: local martial law, and summoned a motorcade worthy of a world leader to take the "migrants" to their hotels. What follows is a decent sampling of what happened and how the British feel.

Exit question: Where's the offramp here? Is it full-scale civil war or is there some kind of mysterious, 4-dimensional chess being played by the authorities that will shock us all and result in peace and harmony?

Keep in mind as you watch these videos that the cops are not protecting the citizens, they're protecting the illegals.

Super Special Bonus Content

This is from today. The flow never stops.

BREAKING: The British authorities are disembarking illegal migrants in Dover https://t.co/XzWGXYKCXd

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 6, 2026