If pillaging for a communist dictatorship was the answer, what was the question? Exactly?

I heard the lectures about free enterprise then realized that I wanted no part of being in the party that enabled mega-corporate pillaging of our middle class for the benefit of the Chinese communists.^[1]

A great quote pointing out the abdication of the Republicans, well, the entire political, financial, media, and academic swine-o-rama, when it comes to safeguarding the nation and its people. A craaaazeee concept, I know.

On the point about free enterprise being somehow joined at the hip with astronomical malfeasance and nonfeasance of the ruling toads, however, I hasten to point out that free enterprise and capitalism were never envisioned as operating in a Lord of the Flies environment. Courts were always in the picture as necessary enforcers of contract rights and laws against fraud and theft. No one wrote of the necessity of having monopolies dictate everything to suppliers and consumers, as well as drive competitors from the market. Britain’s courts were famous for their honest adjudication of trade disputes and, so, guess which country became a commercial power. The law merchant also developed to facilitate trade among European nations. One didn’t prosper if he did not deal fairly. I don’t know if separate, informal tribunals existed to enforce that law but the law existed for a good reason.

So capitalism is a well-crafted engine with inputs of electricity, air, fuel, oil, and coolant. The dork with his foot on the accelerator all the way to the floor while the transmission in neutral is what the toads have in mind when they talk about the evils of [[[capitalism]]]. But it’s a fundamentally distorted, limited, and/or downright dishonest view. Our author gets it about selling out to the Chinese communists but that’s not a necessary feature of free markets. Cancer is not a necessary part of every healthy body.

With free markets someone’s got to be minding the speed, direction, and maintenance to some degree. Balance of accounts trending against us? Factories shutting down and moving to Zanzibar? Maybe a tariff or different tax incentives to get us back on course?

Monopolists and fraudsters are no more necessary to free markets than axe murderers are to a Christmas party. But in the rush to adopt “socialism” it’s the absolute degradation or diseased deformation of capitalism that the fools have in mind, never the beautiful engine it is. Go to a summer weekend where the car restoration guys display their work. Look at the engines they lovingly maintain. That’s capitalism. The guy dumping sand into the engine isn’t a capitalist, he’s an enemy of capitalism.

One more great quote from Mr. Schlichter:

To reprise a cliché of my own making, Donald Trump was the avatar of our dissatisfaction with the garbage Establishment and the refusal of the useless, sclerotic and cruise-oriented losers allegedly on our side to defend our interests.

Our conservative “champions” always, along with multitudes of officials at the local and state level last year, maddenlingly failed to attend to the most basic of official duties, namely, preservation of the culture and the borders and the keeping of the king’s peace. They played the part to perfection of the cowardly GI that Spielberg interjected so gratuitously in the move “Saving Private Ryan.” His comrade was about to be sliced up by a German troop but the GI did nothing when all he had to do was climb up another four or five stairs and blast the German with his M1.

There are encouraging signs of state Republican parties presuming to chastise some of our lords and ladies. The might be feeling the heat from the unwashed but our state party was quick to act and I think the response was genuine.

Notes

^[1] “The Cons Are Alright.” By Kurt Schlichter, Townhall, 2/15/21.

The inflationary storm clouds continue to form on the horizon.

Last week I noted that the U.S. is printing money at an extraordinary pace.

How extraordinary?

The Fed alone will print $1.4 trillion in the next 12 months. This comes on the heels of the $3 TRILLION it has already printed in the last year.

The Fed is not alone here.

The Biden administration is pushing the “pedal to the metal” in terms of stimulus. It is about to pass a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan. Bloomberg notes that this will be the second largest injection of federal cash in U.S. history.

The only one larger cash injection occurred was the first COVID-19 Stimulus plan (the CARES act) which was launched at the beginning of the pandemic.

We’re now on the tail end of the pandemic and we’re about to print another $1.9 trillion in stimulus. Bloomberg notes that the Biden administration wants to spend $2 trillion on climate change and $1.5 trillion on manufacturing and childcare.

These are staggering amounts of money. Never before in history has the U.S. printed this much money.^[1]

Climate change and child care. Now I’m glad someone’s addressing those problems.

Notes
^[1] “The U.S. is About to Set a Record… and It’s Not a Good One .” By Graham Summers, ZeroHedge, 2/15/21.

We’re it. The older generations – the parents of Baby Boomers – are too close to the end to spare the time to give the project.

It’s up to US – the much-maligned Baby Boomers, who – at this point – are the only living archive of the past culture and heritage.

I’ll be 70 next month. I dimly remember seeing McCarthy on television, when I was around 3. My mother was working part-time in the evenings, and my dad would brush my hair while watching the evening news. So, I did have an actual memory of Sen. McCarthy – and, he didn’t seem like a bad man, to me. Despite the ‘judgement of history’, most of our neighbors agreed with him. You must remember, I’m from Cleveland, and in our working class neighborhood, immigrants from newly-Communist countries were common.

I also remember the Civil Rights era. Not all the people involved were dedicated to ‘peaceful protest’, although many were. At the time, I accepted all that the news presented as actual fact, not opinion. It never crossed my mind that journalists would lie to push forward a particular agenda.

Not my father. He’d grown up amongst people of different races, and he could not be lied to about relations between them. Not every Black person was a saintly innocent, nor were all Rednecks ignorant and prejudiced. Some were, sure. But the reality was more – nuanced – than the simple stories that made it to the evening news.

That’s the value of experience vs. learning at a remove from life. You can’t bullshit the guy who has life experience. He knows better, from his own real perspective.

Now, why did this come up as a topic?

This. They’re trying to gaslight us again. Trying to make us doubt our own memories, written in the experience of our own senses. When the last of us who remember die off, who will be there to speak differently?

Now that the Clown Impeachment is over, it’s time to focus on the proposed misdeeds of the House, Senate, and Deep State regulators and administrators.

Such as this plan to put the Reigning Deep State (RDS) in charge of everything, forever.

But, wait, there’s MORE! That doesn’t even cover a small portion of the awfulness of the bill – HR 1 – that aims to wipe out opposition to the Left’s dominance for all time.

And, by dominance, I mean complete inability to offer even a token resistance without incurring severe penalties.

Here’s the List of Need-To-Be-Primaried-GOP. It should be made clear to the GOP leadership in those states, that, should the ‘insurgent’ opponent NOT receive the nod for the ballot, voters will organize to elect the Dem in that state.

Better an Open Enemy, than a Cowardly Traitor.

For that matter, don’t wait until the next election – ‘encourage’ them to resign – SOON!

February 15, 2021

I started this yesterday, but got lazy and decided to keep it over another day. That’s the beauty of being a self-employed blogger – I decide when to hit the Publish Button.

And, that’s my answer to this man, who talks about how the NYT silences divergent voices (which they do, but who cares). He was a blogger – a successful one – who shut down his online writing. He blames the NYT.

I don’t. I blame his FEAR. He FEARED the feedback that would be driven by NYT labeling his writing as “WrongThink”. As thought all that many people actually READ the “Old Gray Lady” anymore. Come on! They’re a joke.

Except in that small circle of ‘Officially Smart’ people, whose opinion Rinehart, like so many others who live in those rarified places, desperately crave. They, not their readers, give the NYT and all of that Legacy Media its power.

That’s what Trump tapped into when he swerved to posting his thoughts on Twitter. Most of the country – outside of that Elite, Privileged Group – gets its news from:

• Facebook posts (the link is generally there, but – I have to be honest – most people don’t go much further than scanning the headline and a few sentences).
• Twitter
• Instagram
• TikTok (and, given the time constraints, the point better be made quickly)
• Network talk shows/’newslike’ shows, like Today, Fox Rising, and the local news – which all have occasional snippets of actual breaking news sandwiched within a large portion of filling – gossip, sports, and ‘human interest’ stories
• Conversations with friends and family
• Text messages
• Virtual meetings with family
• Church sermons
• And, for a small but steady group – blogs

He tapped into that ability to bypass the Traditional News Media, and catapulted to the Presidency.

Don’t discount that advantage. The Dems did not, and were driven to working with the Tech donors to shut down all access to non-approved people on mutiple channels. For heaven’s sake, they had to mobilize MasterCard and other payment processors to refuse service to the NLDs (Non-Leftist Dissidents), lest they use that alternative access to the public to both get their message out, and to support themselves in the process.

I agree with Ornery Dragon – you CAN call it censorship, even if the entity doing it is not government, but private companies.

So, follow the advice of one of the most influential men of the 20th century.

     I’ve gotten quite a giggle these past few months over the entrance into women’s sports events of biological men who claim to be women. A curious thing happens when that’s permitted: the winner of the event is always a biological man. As my Roman ancestors might have said, mirabile dictu! (Or as a contemporary American would probably put it, “Whoda thunk it?”)

     Needless to say, some women – especially women involved in women’s sports – are rather exercised about the whole thing. I can understand it perfectly. Indeed, my sympathy is boundless – right up to the point where those women are posed a very simple question:

     That’s when the hemming and hawing begins.

     I have no problem with a man of effeminate characteristics changing his appearance, his dress, and his manner to resemble that of a woman and thereafter living as if he is female, just as long as he doesn’t use his altered appearance to commit a crime or an interpersonal deception. That practice has been going on for quite some time, really. I’ve written about such men in my novels Experiences and The Wise and the Mad. If criminality and cruelty are absent, so is any objection I might make.

     But for a well developed, athletically gifted man to exploit the current “transgenderism” craze to enter women-only sporting events is beyond any possible justification. A word I cordially detest in most contexts — unfair — is the only possible evaluation.

     What’s that? You’re seriously asking why? Genetics, my good man, genetics! The Y chromosome and what goes along with it confer immense physical advantages on men over women, statistically speaking. It’s why women-only sporting competitions exist.

     I would hope that the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch don’t need to have that explained to them. I think far too much of you folks. But from here we move to a couple of related topics that are, shall we say, likely to generate high emotions. I think you’ll find the contrast in attitudes illuminating.

     Just as men and women differ physically, they also differ emotionally. Here again there is general if not entirely comfortable agreement. Women are more emotionally driven than men. They tend to be more dependent on their support groups than are men. (Indeed, men seldom have “support groups,” unless you count the neighborhood tavern’s collection of regular attendees.) Women are more concerned with winning the consensus of their social circles than are men.

     Genetics again? Hard to say with perfect confidence, but the pattern is well established, impossible to gainsay. The same is true for the well established differences between the sexes in occupational preferences. Far fewer women are attracted to the STEM fields than are men. Despite decades of effort to attract increasing numbers of women into the scientific and technological fields, men still heavily outnumber women in all of them.

     The point here is not some sort of invidious comparison. The sexes differ in several ways. The ability of one of them to conceive and bear a child is only one such. It’s not about “better” or “worse.” It’s certainly not about “value.” It’s about perceptible, enduring differences that have resisted efforts to change them and being frank about them, just as we’re frank about the athletic differences between the sexes.

     Breeding matters. It always has and always will.

     While there are probably characteristics one cannot breed for, it’s definite that there are things one can breed for. Physical beauty and physical prowess are among them. Why are there so many beautiful women in Southern California? Because attractive women who sought to enter the world of cinema, whether or not they succeeded in doing so, remained there, married handsome men, and produced children from those matings. No, not all of their offspring were absolute stunners, but a percentage of them were. A higher percentage than one would find elsewhere in these United States. The same is true for athletic potential, for height, for eye and hair color, and for other characteristics…including a few that one should not, ethically speaking, attempt to reproduce (e.g., deafness).

     Luther Burbank knew it. What applies to plants applies with equal validity to animals and men. Gregor Mendel knew that.

     The thorniest of all subjects within the envelope of heritability is intelligence. To what extent is intelligence heritable? The consensus among cognitive scientists is that there is a predisposition toward high intelligence among the children of the intelligent. The heritability factor is variously estimated to be between 20% and 60%. But few of them will say so “out loud,” as there are large, militant interest groups all too eager to destroy anyone who might suggest that breeding matters to intellect.

     Yet here again, there are patterns to be observed that no man can gainsay. One of them is the difference in the distribution of IQ scores between Caucasian men and Caucasian women. The two distributions’ means are just about identical, but their standard deviations differ significantly. Why? No one knows. But the pattern has persisted for at least a century.

     The number of scholars that dare to discuss such matters in public grows smaller every year. Those militant interest groups are frighteningly good at using strategically composed and placed slanders to destroy reputations and careers. Ask Arthur Jensen. Ask Philippe Rushton. Ask Charles Murray.

     Only one thing do I know, and that is this: To condemn a fact because it crosscuts one’s political agenda doesn’t falsify the fact. It merely renders the condemners and those who go along with them vulnerable to their prejudices in ways that could cost them heavily at some unpredictable future time. Reality is cruel that way. It always has been to men who prefer their wishes to the observable, verifiable facts.

     Wasn’t that fun? Maybe tomorrow we’ll talk about race.

     Then reflect on the profound wisdom it contains:

     You’re welcome.

     “I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” — Dale Carnegie

Entities in the narrative world which threaten imperial narrative domination are attacked, smeared, marginalized and censored.

That’s all we are seeing with the increasingly shrill mainstream panic about disinformation, conspiracy theories, foreign propaganda and domestic extremism. Our rulers and their media lackeys are not compassionately protecting us from deception, they are ensuring that they remain the only ones authorized to administer deception. By golly the only ones allowed to deceive us should be our government, our news media, our teachers and our priests.

“Johnstone: The Real World And The Narrative World.” By Caitlin Johnstone, ZeroHedge, 2/12/21 (emphasis added).

     If it cannot be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. – Robert A. Heinlein

     I only recently became aware of this Prager U video:

     It’s an excellent, facts-and-figures based refutation of the “renewable energy” con the enviro-Nazis have been promoting. And therefore, the Left has put a lot of effort into refuting it…but seldom with facts or figures. That’s an indicator to prioritize. It suggests that the available facts and figures are on the side of “conventional” energy sources – and they are.

     There are other indicators of importance, of course: the shrillness of the anti-fossil fuels community; their use of tendentious “models” that embed all manner of questionable assumptions; their habit of hiding their supposed data and falsifying the rest; their continued insistence that “we’ve got to act now!” to eliminate fossil fuels, when the available data say no such thing. Remember Al Gore’s claim that the polar ice caps and the glaciers would be melted by now, and Earth’s coastal cities, where approximately a third of Mankind resides, would be under twenty feet of water? He won an Oscar for that, didn’t he? I don’t suppose there’s any prospect of getting him to admit that he was wrong, though.

     One way to control a people is to control some vital commodity on which their lives and livelihoods depend. Dispatchable energy capacity, often abbreviated as “cap” in discussions of the Earth’s energy budget, is vital to virtually everything we do. “Cap” is essential to:

1. Heating and cooling our homes and other environments;
2. Operating our consumer-convenience equipment;
3. Operating our capital equipment;
4. Powering our vehicles.

     Those four headings subsume virtually everything of importance to human existence. Unless you’re a beach bum in some tropical land where food hangs from the trees, free for anyone to pluck and eat, you’ll almost certainly employ energy for items 1 and 2 each and every day. If you’re a worker of any sort, you’re almost certain to employ energy for items 3 and 4, as well.

     The famous “renewable” sources of wind and solar energy are only irregularly equal to items 1 and 2. They can’t cope with items 3 and 4 at all. Physics, weather and climate, and other stubborn facts of life are against it.

     But really, the enviro-Nazis aren’t against fossil fuels and nuclear power as such. Their real target is capitalism itself. The smart ones won’t say so out loud. Moreover, they’re constantly trying to distance themselves from the socialists, communists, Luddites, and “back to nature” goons who do say so out loud.

     Herewith, a few words about the criteria by which modern Man selects his energy sources. In assessing an energy source, we look for two things above all others:

1. Concentration: that is, the amount of extractable, easily employed energy per unit mass;
2. Undesired byproducts: otherwise known as wastes.

     As it happens, these characteristics are related. Waste output varies inversely with energy concentration. In other words, the more concentrated an energy source, the less massive its waste output tends to be. When it comes to generating electrical power, nuclear power is the indisputable champion: gigantic energy output for very small amounts of waste. We ought to be exploiting it far more than we do at present.

     But we can’t use nuclear power to propel our cars, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes. (All right, naval warships are an exception.) What does that leave? The fossil fuels have the next greatest concentration of energy per unit mass. Moreover, we’ve gotten really good at capturing their waste products before they can foul the air or water.

     This is where the enviro-Nazis do most of their shrieking. “Sooner or later we’ll run out, and what will we do then?” they cry. But once again, the facts are against them. Each and every year, the world’s proven reserves of the fossil fuels, measured in how many years of human consumption they would support, increases. The figure currently stands at 50 years of consumption at current rates. Offshore and ocean drilling, hydrofracturing, and the recent advances in techniques for reviving “exhausted” oil wells will increase those reserves even further.

     This sort of hard data absolutely infuriates the enviro-Nazis. They’re Cause People, you see. When you undermine their Cause, you’re undermining their self-concept and sense of personal worth. That makes it personal to them – quite as personal as if you’d attacked their religion…which, in a sense, you have.

     My advice is to carry a copy of Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource with you wherever you go. It’s chock-full of hard data about such matters. The smarter enviro-Nazis will shy away upon seeing it in your grasp. You can hit the others with it…renewably, at that.

I love memes. The idea of using graphics and a little text to convey a complex idea is genius!

Face it – MOST people find it hard in GOOD times to follow an abstract analysis, a lengthy storyline, or a political plot. In times like this, with high stress due to the economy, personal financial concerns, fear of illness striking those we love, and worry about the direction of our country – well, I have found that I have trouble lately following along with non-fiction narrative. I’ve picked up several books about The Coup, background on the political shenigans of the Left, and other densely informative text, and, to be honest, I find my attention wandering.

No reflection on the books or articles. It’s me. I’m stressed enough to not be capable, right now, to handle the mental processes that it takes.

Things NOT related to our ongoing crises, even if technical, I can handle. I plowed through a lot of documentation on Linux over the last two days to finally solve the problems I was having installing the portable hard drive to my Pi system. Finally got it going yesterday afternoon!

So, it’s not a matter of mental deterioration. It’s just stress, which makes normal brain functions temporarily quite difficult. It doesn’t matter how much you rest or sleep – the wear and tear is on the executive functions of the brain.

Take away the stress, and, after a short while, you’ll be back to normal.

So, considering that most of us are mentally fatigued, here’s a link to some terrific memes from Powerline Blog.

And, just because, here’s the QR link – in case you want to print this out and send around the hard copy.

It’s the Republican Study Committee, and it’s headed by Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana. I took a look at what they tweeted about the COVID spending, and it’s an eye-opener (hint: print out and pass around in public places – they may be able to keep us off social media, but – so far – they can’t stop us working from door to door).

Speaking of that suggestion above, keep in mind that MOST of what is posted on social media is ignored, or scanned over, and forgotten quickly. Only those things that are particularly funny or ‘fuzzy’ will be passed on widely.

So, that means that your impact is much greater when you are the one that is passing along those screenshots and short blurbs, with links attached. Here’s a short tutorial on how to add QR code access to your Word or other Office documents.

If you, like me, are using Freeware like LibreOffice (does almost all that MS Office does, at no cost, other than voluntary donations), here’s a link to get that access within LibreOffice. For other software packages, try a search with “QR codes in _________”, replacing the ____________ with the name of your preferred program.

And, for those not realizing the power of QR, what that does is give people a way to point their phone, IPad, or tablet camera at the code, and be instantly swept away to that associated link – from the HARD COPY of the code, as well as a screenshot of it.

That’s powerful. It means that relatively non-techy people – the kind who just use a few applications, and don’t understand the term, URL – can be linked to stories/videos/news reports that uncover the stories the media does NOT want them to have access to.

Here’s a QR code for the Republican Study Group site.

Try it – use your phone, take a picture, and be taken instantly to the site. (I’m assuming that you have a QR Reader installed on your phone). By making this in a printable handout, you can print out index card-sized handouts, and help people use them to spread the word around. Virtually ALL of the younger kids use them. And, as a side benefit, take the time to install an app on their portable device, that will allow them to point and go. It makes the process a lot easier for people to check out a link, and ease is the driving feature of spreading a meme or idea.

New York Times technology correspondent Kevin Roose consulted some “experts” on “how we might restore a proper respect for reality.” Lord knows I’m on the edge of my OfficeMax high-speed, swivel, gaming chair when it’s time to receive guidance from NYT truth searchers. One of the experts Roose consulted is a Stanford “disinformation researcher” which is confidence-building point for me since if you can tap the thinking of a disinformation researcher and put your finger on honest-to-gosh “disinformation” then it stands to reason that what’s left is truth itself. Miller Time! and that’s a fact.

John Derbyshire is more jaded than I am and puts the damn damn on that most popular of words these days that has replaced more technical — but inadequate — terms like “lies,” “porkies,” “stretchers,” “propaganda,” and “bullshit” and is used to alert us to an entirely new, never-before-encountered phenomenon of nefarious people impossibly trying to sell us a verbal Brand X in order to convince us to place our bets on Brand X:

“Disinformation researcher”? Uh-huh. Anyone who pays attention knows that the word “disinformation” has at this point been bled dry of all honest significance. It’s just a Woke word, a CultMarx word for any true facts the Ruling Class want suppressed.^[1]

Recommendations flooded in from the “experts” that a “task force” should be formed headed up by a “reality czar” to help us navigate these modern treacherous shoals of human disingenuousnessness. This would be on the order of a national Miss Manners, as I understand it, who would offer quotidian, targeted advice on what is or is not pristine in the facts and analysis departments. This would presumably put Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Piers Robinson out of a job but since when did the New York Times care whose ox was gored so long as real Truth comes out the other end of the sausage machine, if I make myself clear?

Mr. Derbyshire also has some choice words on Jesus’s exquisite observation about the Pharisees’s straining at a gnat but swallowing a camel in the context of (1) the “storming” of the Capitol on January 6 and (2) the riots, looting, arson, and homicide in the runup to the election in November that so convinced the rest of the world — yet again — how vital our “leadership” really is. Highly recommended.

It’s a widespread phenom these days, this inability or studied obtuseness that prevents the compilation of lists of pressing problems in descending order of criticality. If you’ve actually bothered to read what I’ve posted over the years (sniff) you’ll recall the times I’ve mentioned Joseph Heller’s choice vignette in his novel Catch 22 where Yossarian, on leave in Italy down in the ville, witnesses a GI throw another GI out of the window and kill him. Heller describes the boots of the MPs pounding up the stairs and then the MPs burst into the room and firmly declare to Yossarian that “You’re AWOL!” The Blacks Liberating Merchandise folkspersons, the Al Sharptongues, the Maxine the Magnificents, the Sarah Jeongs, and those questing for illicit Brazillian Blowouts seem to have copied that page out of that book and focused on white people as the source of all unhappiness in this land with a secondary hatefest for Pres. Trump. Yes. If only there weren’t white people this would be an ok country. Now on to solve the problem of unemployed engineers in the Indian subcontinent.

My personal favorite in the current Steven King sh^tscape is the drama over Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom I happen to revere. (Get a load of the bills she’s introduced and her version of what patriotism and her role as a Congresswoman are! Works for me!) Anyway, she has an interesting personal history and knows a thing or two about some events in our recent past but has returned to the straight and narrow path, now presenting an image of a . . . gasp . . . real person unlike the regiments of preening, phoney baloney dimwits that play at being “influencers.” I’ll not detail any of Rep. Greene’s statements because I’ve only gotten them second and third hand but here’s my question: Which positions has she taken that are more damaging to the Nation than what eminently wise and learned Americans of the first rank have declared as sacred precious [Un]truths:

• “nation of immigrants,”
• “living Constitution,”
• “structural racism,”
• “white privilege,”
• “responsibility to protect,”
• “honest election,”
• “regime change,”
• “Assad must go,”
• “bipartisanism,”
• “weapons of mass destruction,”
• “rules-based international order,”
• “war on terror,”
• “war on drugs,”
• “for-profit prisons,”
• “spirit cooking,”
• “American exceptionalism,”
• “nation building,”
• “multiculturalism,”
• “patriarchy,”
• “gender,”
• “diversity,”
• “transgenderism,”
• “insurrection,”
• “incitement,”
• “white supremacist,”
• “affirmative action,”
• “Medicare for all,”
• “a woman’s right to choose,”
• “women’s health,”
• “hate speech,”
• “terms of service violation,”
• “stimulus,”
• “inflation target,”
• “Russian collusion,”
• “Russian expansionism,”
• “Russian aggression,”
• “our values,”
• “progressive,” or
• “inclusion”?

There might be more.

Where is the pearl clutching and boo hooing about the morons who mouth that sort of garbage?

Rep. Greene made an exemplary mea culpa speech in Congress which, along with the changes she’s made in her life, would normally suffice in a country vaguely Christian to earn her a measure of charity. That is not the way the game is played though and huge energy is being and will be expended to crucify courageous, free-thinking individuals, to destroy them with gleeful, vicious explorations of every possible ad hominem angle, all the while studiously ignoring what are quaintly known as “existential threats” to the nation as it was conceived.

The fascination of the elites with “disinformation” is something that will make you lose your lunch when you contemplate that the search for the truth of any matter is the last thing that can be tolerated in America 5.0, or however far that counter has risen. The elites really are contemptible as can be seen in the performance of toad impersonator Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and the others who disgraced themselves in this video.

The nation is on the cusp of economic bankruptcy and who can say in the light of this that we’re also not facing a profound moral bankruptcy as well, one that long preceded our economic difficulties? A nation that can NOT decide what problems it is trying to solve is in deep trouble and due for a spell of high-speed travel on black ice.

Notes

^[1] “American Anosognosia—the Capitol Hill ‘Insurrection,’ BLM/Antifa Riots, and Our National Reality Crisis.” By John Derbyshire, 2/6/21.

     Paper constitutions raise smiles on the faces of those who have observed their results; and paper social systems similarly affect those who have contemplated the available evidence. How little the men who wrought the French Revolution and were chiefly concerned in setting up the new governmental apparatus, dreamt that one of the early actions of this new apparatus would be to behead them all! How little the men who drew up the American Declaration of Independence and framed the republic, anticipated that after some generations the legislature would lapse into the hands of wire-pullers; that its doings would turn upon the contests of office-seekers; that political action would be everywhere vitiated by the intrusion of a foreign element holding the balance between parties; that electors, instead of judging for themselves, would habitually be led to the polls in thousands by their “bosses”; and that respectable men would be driven out of public life by the insults and slanders of professional politicians.

     [Herbert Spencer, “From Freedom to Bondage,” 1891]

     “And are we not big enough to meet them in plain battle?”
     “We are four men, some women, and a bear.”
     “I saw the time when Logres was only myself and one man and two boys, and one of those was a churl. Yet we conquered.”
     “It could not be done now. They have an engine called the Press whereby the people are deceived. We should die without even being heard of.”

     [C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength]

     Many would say that the American experiment has falsified its test thesis: i.e., that a constitutional republic formed for the protection of individuals’ rights can endure. It’s an argument worth considering. We the People of the United States have meekly surrendered to a Usurper Regime that’s cheated and defrauded its way to power, is destroying our economy, and is eliminating several of our long-established rights as we speak. Yet what the Usurpers are doing is forbidden by the Constitution! How, then, are they getting away with it?

     It’s quite simple, really: A constitution, no matter how freedom-oriented or well designed, cannot enforce its own terms. There must be an external enforcement agency – and it cannot be the government itself. It can only be the people who have chartered the government and demand that it remain within its constituted bounds.

     As I’ve written before, the key to the restraint of government can only be an armed, vigilant, and freedom-loving people. If the people lack sufficient arms, or are unaware of what’s being done to them and its probable consequences, or are insufficiently attached to individual liberty as a sacred principle to rise up in its defense, they will fail to restrain the depredations of the State, whether by inability or unwillingness. That’s why totalitarians always:

1. Target the educational and communications sectors of a nation first and foremost;
2. Strive to divide the people, setting some against others;
3. Forbid the private ownership of weapons.

     Items 1 and 2 have been under way for decades. The Left’s conquest of the educational and communications sectors is nearly complete. It has used those levers to create several deep divisions among us. The Usurper Administration is working on item 3. If it should succeed in disarming the citizenry, the fat lady will have sung this opera’s final aria. It could hardly be simpler. Yet it appears too complex for most Americans of today. Why?

     Bookworm has a thesis:

     I was a little girl in San Francisco in the 1960s, but I certainly remember the rebellious spirit that animated the youth of the 1960s and early 1970s. They were pushing back against the traditional values of their parents and teachers.

     In leftist Marin, though, in the first decades of the 20th century, the young people were entirely in sync with the leftist values of their parents and teachers. That appears to be true in liberal enclaves across America. It’s also the case that young people in changing communities (traditional homes, leftist teachers’ unions), will hew to their teachers’ values. My generation sneered at the teachers. (I still do because, with few exceptions, I found my children’s teachers to be singular ill-informed and not very bright.)

     I assumed that, eventually, conservativism would intrigue these young people because it was the opposite of the stifling conformity imposed on them in their communities and their homes. After all, the media, the entertainment world, and the history books constantly tell us that the youth movement in the 1960s was a rebellion against the stifling conformity of 1950s America.

     There hasn’t been a counter-revolution, though. Today’s young people are more sheeple-like even than my now-grown kids were.

     I added the emphasis.

     I’ve had little contact with teens these past couple of decades. If Bookworm is correct, there will be no pro-freedom uprising by the current crop of young Americans (i.e., the 18-34 age bracket). The best of them simply aren’t interested; the rest have their hands out for freebies. Guns? Forget that; these tykes aren’t even interested in owning a car.

     We old farts haven’t “uprisen” either. Most of us are too busy arranging to protect ourselves, our spouses, and those sheeplike kids; the rest haven’t the strength or the stamina. (I’m in the latter group.) That makes the near-term prospects for an uprising look bleak. The Usurpers will probably get most of what they want, if not all of it.

     What about the longer term? Is there no possibility of an unindoctrinated generation of pro-freedom rebels willing to risk their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for liberty and justice?

     Where would they come from? Certainly not from our existing educational institutions. Nor could they learn what they would need from the media of today. The barons of technology would surely impede their communications, so they might not even be able to find one another. As for arms, if the Usurpers succeed in destroying private weapons rights, where would they get them?

     It’s not looking good, Gentle Reader. It looks very much as if the future of freedom is in the hands of today’s Americans: you and me. And we’ve been sitting on our hands, waiting for someone else to shoulder the burden.

     I think I’ll go bash my head against the wall for a while.