The Liberal Way of War

Never underestimate the enemy redux

Posted on May 30, 2021May 30, 2021 by Mike

There’s never been a shortage of violent intent, ruthlessness, and will to power on the Left.

The first point is that the general attitude is that all of the Left is represented by the soy-boy weakness we see from the Left’s poster children. It is not.

Leftism is about power, not rule of law. What does that sound like? It sounds like a gang hierarchy. In truth, that describes the rise of most Leftist groups as they head for absolute power.

Need an example? Joseph Stalin was a bank robber. He was a kidnapper. He ran extortion and protection rackets. Undoubtedly he was a murderer before the Soviet Revolution ever began and he could update his rookie numbers into the big leagues.

Stalin was a thug. When the Revolution started, he assumed a military command position and rose to prominence because: he was ruthless and brutal.

Of course, the mincing idiots in the Alberta Young Communist League won’t be anything but grease between underneath the tank treads of the real Leftists. If they were all that we faced? The Revolution would be over as soon as the microwaves ran out of power to heat up the chicken tendies the Alberta Communist Party uses for food.

Communist revolutions since the French Revolution have had the effect of bringing not the brightest and the smartest and the most virtuous to power, but the most bloodthirsty. Stalin himself initiated purges to every possible threat to his authority for just this reason.

So, Large Marge is right on this point. The people that the Left will put against America won’t be the weak that they put forward. What they put forward will be determined by ruthlessness. Say what you want about Stalin, but he wasn’t dumb. And he wasn’t a nice cuddly grandpa – he left his own son to die in a POW camp during World War II rather than accept the offered trade for him.

As I said: the purple-haired weirdos the Left militants put out front as cannon fodder are no more than useful idiots, functioning as cover for the real thugs. It’s the thugs who nobody should be underestimating.

MAN BITES DOG!

Posted on May 29, 2021May 30, 2021 by Mike

Better sit down for this one. It’s a real shocker.

Gwen Stefani has been repeatedly accused of “cultural appropriation” because of her love of Japanese street style, but the pop icon isn’t caving in.

Speaking to Paper Magazine, Stefani said there would be much less beauty in the world if people stopped cultural appropriation.

The issue the singer has received the most heat for has been over her Harajuku clothing line and backup dancers.

She also essentially said that there was more freedom before woke mobs took over social media looking for things to be angry about.

“I think that we grew up in a time where we didn’t have so many rules,” she said. “We didn’t have to follow a narrative that was being edited for us through social media, we just had so much more freedom.”

The superstar also pushed back on the belief that celebrities have a duty to wade into political issues.

“The whole point of voting, is you have this personal space to feel how you feel,” Stefani said. “I use my platform to share my life story and to engage with people and to exchange whatever gift I was giving. I’m not a political science major. I am not that person. Everyone knows that. So why would I even talk about it?”

Well I’ll be blowed, how about that? Y’all please excuse me for a sec, while I lean over and pick my jaw up off the floor. I never have had strong feelings about Stefani’s music one way or the other, but after this she’s all right by me. The Federalist has more.

The line between what woke Americans would call “cultural appropriation” and what they would call “racist” is a fine one and might not even exist. After all, Stefani’s critics didn’t stop at calling her use of a Japanese dancing troupe offensive cultural appropriation. They said it was “extremely racist,” with (third-rate, unfunny hack “comedian” Margaret—M) Cho going so far as to compare it to blackface and minstrel shows, examples of dehumanizing entertainment that openly mocked black people and caricatured people of African descent.

It’s here that the Stefani blowback exposes an American crisis of communication that has occurred in large part because the activist left has forfeited scales of severity in our dialogue. If loving Harajuku so much that you stylize your art around it is the equivalent of a minstrel show or blackface, then how are we supposed to qualify flagrant acts of racism?

Blurring that line is the whole point, of course, for all sorts of reasons. Progtards believe it to be a sound, effective strategy, one that will shame, cow, and subdue anyone they accuse of it. To their eventual dismay, it’s going to backfire on them before all is said and done—and quite badly, too. I’ll bold the part below that hints at one of the ways that ill-considered torpedo is already beginning to circle back on them.

This loss of perspective is pervasive, to the point that sitting U.S. senators and the now-vice president will call a fake hate crime a “modern-day lynching,” but it explains a lot about our cultural decline. It’s why activists insist that silence is violence and murder convictions are not justice.

An obsession with cultural appropriation also reveals the deep unseriousness of self-proclaimed “anti-racists.” The modern left, with its influence in boardrooms and newsrooms and classrooms, takes every opportunity to lecture weary Americans about the enduring evil of whiteness and of white supremacy.

While their racially charged screeds are almost always unfounded, within their rhetoric is a message that threatens to cultivate white pride where it didn’t exist before. By reinforcing the idea that cultural appreciation is cultural appropriation and therefore racist, woke warriors encourage white people to insulate themselves from the cultures and experiences of others and fully embrace tribalism wherein race is a focal point.

Annnd bingo. By forcing white people into an untenable corner this way, based on the assumption that it will render them more complaisant, they’re actually radicalizing many who had always been perfectly fine with placid coexistence with ethnic and racial Others before. The very move the idjit Left thought would subdue and pacify whypeepo (BCE’s term, which I’m pleased to swipe) is creating a veritable army of people who are now becoming fully Woke to the unfortunate truth of the slogan the color of your skin is your uniform.

How rich is the irony, then, that the very disharmony the Left is promoting should drive so many decent folks, who had little to no thought of tribalism, bigotry, or racial conflict until now, to adopt one of the core tenets of the guy who founded the American Nazi Party? Another item swiped from BCE sums it up well:

And not long after that realization is when the shooting starts. Hope Gwen and her old man are arming up.

Marxist science

Posted on May 29, 2021May 29, 2021 by Mike

Groucho Marx, that is.

I’m a Doctor, but COVID’s Broken My Faith in Medical Research — I Can’t Believe Anything I Read or Accept Any Mainstream Facts
Those who decide to shut down and stifle debate – whatever they may believe themselves to be doing – are, in fact, traitors to the cause of science.

Those of us who put forward an alternative view to the prevailing orthodoxy on the virus or on vaccinations are being vilified, threatened and cancelled. This is not how science, or a functioning democracy, works.

The main purpose of science is to question and attack. To subject ideas to the greatest scrutiny. Those who decide to shut down and stifle debate – whatever they may believe themselves to be doing – are, in fact, traitors to the cause of science. Stranglers of the enlightenment, assassins of progress.

They are not alone, and things have gotten far worse in the past year or so. Science has taken a terrible battering during Covid-19, though I have always known that dissent against a widely held scientific hypothesis is difficult.

Just trying to get published is a nightmare. The peer-review system is one of the many weapons used against innovative thinking. ‘Let’s see what the current experts think of this new idea which threatens to overturn everything they have researched and taught over the last 30 years, and have built their reputations on… I wonder if they will like it and approve it?’

Expertise is great. ‘Experts’… well, that is a completely different matter. We certainly have a few formidable ones kicking about with Covid-19. In the UK, we have the great and good of the SAGE committee made up of – who knows? – and chosen for whatever reasons. They wield enormous power, and never disagree on anything. In the US, we have Fauci and the CDC. Ditto.

In the background we have the World Health Organisation (WHO)… who can tell you what way the wind is blowing if nothing else. They remind me of Groucho Marx’s famous comment. “These are my principles. And you if you don’t like them… I have others.” However, we at the WHO would like to make it clear that nothing about Covid-19 has anything to do with China, in any way. Can we have more money please?
Anyway, where are we with this virus, and with science?

In my opinion, Covid-19 succeeded in breaking my last vestiges of faith in medical scientific research. I cannot believe anything I read. I accept no mainstream facts or figures.

We are told such utter nonsense. For example, the ‘fact’ that vaccination protects against Covid-19 more effectively than having had the disease itself… This is just utter nonsense.

We were told that the virus was spread by touching contaminated surfaces… Really? We were told it spread through droplets, not aerosols. Which is the most complete garbage. We were told that everyone has to wear a mask. We were told it could easily be passed on by asymptomatic people. Based on nothing at all. I could go on.

No need to, really. Welcome to the party, pal.

Doomed by diversity

Posted on May 29, 2021May 29, 2021 by Mike

A peek at the state of the union, and where it might be leading.

Is there no limit to the racial, religious, ideological, political, cultural and ethnic diversity the nation can accommodate before it splinters into its component parts?

In professions of religious belief, atheists, agnostics and secularists have become our largest “congregation,” followed by Catholics and Protestants, both of which are in numerical decline.

Diversity of faiths leads to irreconcilable, clashing opinions about morality on the most divisive social issues of our era: abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, etc.

Racial diversity, too, is bringing back problems unseen since the 1960s.

America was almost 90% white in 1960, but that figure is down to 60% and falling. In 25 years, we will all belong to racial minorities.

Are we Americans still united in our love of country? Do we still take pride in what we have done for our own people and what America has done for the world in the 400 years since Jamestown?

One of you guys wanna break the news to him, or should I? Just kidding; it’s Pat Buchanan, and he already knows.

Some look at Western civilization as 500 years of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, slavery and segregation — practiced against people of color. This is the source of the West’s wealth and power, it is said, and that wealth and power should be redistributed to the descendants of the victims of Western rapacity.

For many, equality of opportunity is no longer enough. We must make restitution, deliver reparations and guarantee a future where an equality of rewards replaces an equality of rights.

Something is seriously wrong with a country that professes to be great but whose elite cannot abide the mildest of heresies to its established truth.

There’s not a damned thing wrong with the country that couldn’t be fixed toot-sweet by just ridding ourselves of the craptastic old elite and replacing it with a better one, really.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Posted on May 27, 2021May 27, 2021 by Mike

“We see you”? They don’t even seem to care anymore whether we do or not.

Lol how random pic.twitter.com/YP1jRqPtmU

— Kennedy Hall (@kennedyhall) May 22, 2021

My own personal opinion has evolved—in a purely SCIENTIFICATIOUS!™ process, naturally—from Fauci should be fired, to Fauci should be prosecuted, to Fauci should be hung by the neck until he is dead, dead, DEAD.

(Via Ace)

How the Tenth was lost

Posted on May 27, 2021May 27, 2021 by Mike

Unsurprisingly, the profoundly nefarious 17th played an important role in its destruction.

Michael Finch, the President of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, has an excellent article over at the American Thinker making clear where the Progressives are in their fight against the Constitution. He identifies what the Biden administration intends to accomplish—nothing less than completing the project of centralizing power in the federal government begun by the Progressives over a century ago. Finch very correctly observes that “the 10th Amendment, with its clear limitations on federal power, has been seriously eroded over the past century,” and that Biden and his handlers intend to put an end to the remaining limitations on federal power.

The Progressives certainly have gotten away with trampling on the 10th Amendment for more than a century, but that raises this question: how did they manage to get away with doing that?

The answer is that the Progressives tricked Americans into repealing the 10th Amendment without realizing that was what they were doing. It was very cleverly done, so cleverly that even today Americans by and large do not understand what happened. When in 1913 America approved the 17th Amendment, the amendment that provided for the direct election of senators, the 10th Amendment was doomed.

How can that be? After all, the 10th Amendment says nothing about the election of senators. The point of the all-important 10th Amendment is that the Founders created a federal government of strictly limited powers. Here it is in full:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The 10th says the powers of the federal government (here referred to as “the United States”) are limited to the enumerated powers, the limited powers assigned it in the Constitution; the individual states (here referred to as “the States”) retain all their powers not delegated to the federal government. But the important point for us to understand is that the Founders’ method for selecting senators was the key to keeping the powers of the federal government limited.

In the Constitution and in the original American republic, senators were selected by the state legislatures. The wisdom of the Framers is nowhere more evident than in this feature of their constitutional design. This was the central pillar of that design. It secured the 10th Amendment by the power of the Senate. As I wrote in my book about the founding entitled Common Sense Nation:

The Senate had been a barrier to the passage of federal laws infringing on the powers reserved to state governments, but the Senate has abandoned that responsibility under the incentives of the new system of election. Because the states no longer have a powerful standing body representing their interests within the federal government, the power of the federal government has rapidly grown at the expense of the states.

Before the 17th Amendment, the state legislatures controlled the upper chamber of Congress. There was no way the federal government was going to usurp the power of the states. The 17th Amendment disempowered the states, and the 10th Amendment promptly began eroding away.

Americans in 1913 were fooled by the Progressives because too many Americans no longer understood the Founders’ design for liberty. You have to give the Progressives credit. They did understand the Founders’ design, they picked their target brilliantly, and by selling the 17th Amendment as a reform, they won a great victory.

And America That Was, in consequence, has been circling the drain ever since, spiraling ever faster as it slips down the pipe to its ultimate doom. Mike’s Iron Law #1,246: whenever Progressivists win, America loses.

Another look in

Posted on May 27, 2021May 27, 2021 by Mike

More on the outrageous and intolerable persecution-by-prosecution of an entirely blameless young man, Lucas Gerhard.

LSSU is something of an “aggie” college, with a large and respected criminal justice program. Still, as is the case for 99% of American colleges, it manages to have a “social justice and community activism” page as part of its campus life — although the link to that page is dead. One of LSSU’s leftist students, a young woman, frequently argued with Lucas, so much so that he blocked her on social media.

In the summer of 2019, Lucas bought himself an AR-15, which he brought to campus with him. At the time, he promptly followed school rules, checking his gun and ammunition in with the LSSU safety office. At around the same time, Lucas sent a private Snapchat joke to friends, showing a picture of his kitted-out rifle, with the message, “Takin’ this bad boy up, this outta [sic] make the snowflakes melt, aye?” As if it wasn’t already clear that this was a joke, he added, “And I mean snowflakes as in snow.”

Two leftist students saw that image on a friend’s phone and took a picture of it. The young woman who fought with Lucas then used the Snapchat image to file a report with the police, claiming that Lucas was making threats.

When the police showed up, Lucas explained that he was just making a joke about people whose brains melted when they were faced with an opposing political ideology. Nevertheless, the police arrested him the next day and charged him with violating Michigan Penal Code §750.543, which governs making terrorist threats. Under the law, a person makes a terrorist threat if he “[t]hreatens to commit an act of terrorism and communicates the threat to any other person.” The penalty calls for up to twenty years in prison plus as much as $20,000 in fines.

During the pre-trial hearing, the prosecutor claimed that Lucas had multiple “contacts” with the law, which was a lie by omission. While campus leftists frequently tried to sic the police on Lucas, he was invariably found innocent of the charge against him. One example was when he wore his OCSO cadet uniform while carrying an authorized bag of police training gear to a lecture he was giving — another “threat.” There were no charges, nor were there charges when someone vandalized his car.

Even worse, during the pre-trial hearing, the prosecutor played a graphic video of the mosque shooting earlier that year in Christchurch, New Zealand. Faced with the prosecutor’s “evidence,” the court denied Lucas bond. Instead, he was sent to jail, where he spent 83 days, a problem for a Type I diabetic, before his father could bail him out. He’s been under complete house arrest ever since, with a $500/month tether and no access to education or the internet.

So why am I writing about this case? Because every conservative needs to understand that, while we’re still slack-jawed with disbelief and dismay about events in America in the last year, leftists at every level — the White House, Congress, statehouses, courts, prosecutors’ offices, colleges, and dormitories — are engaged in all-out war.

Bingo. Which only makes the very next sentence seem all the more odd. And, frankly, embarrassing.

If we are to avoid cultural, political, and constitutional defeat, we need to adopt their legal tactics: letter-writing campaigns, phone calls, non-violent protests…anything to raise the volume.

We most certainly do NOT, thenksveddymuch. The “justice” system is now just another wholly-owned subsidiary of Leftist Inc, having been co-opted and subsumed long ago, just as nearly every other important American organization and institution has. Appeals for justice made to offices and/or processes under complete Enemy control may make some of us feel better about their plight, if only for a brief spell. But such appeals—or entreaties, or supplication, to call things by their rightful names—won’t do a damned thing to halt a seemingly endless train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, that we all bear witness to each and every day.

Might as well ask the Tooth Fairy to flit in and save us while you’re down there on your knees begging. That’s about as likely to produce the desired outcome, and can’t be any more of a waste of time and effort.

Question everything

Posted on May 26, 2021May 26, 2021 by Mike

The imperative of our era.

There is no problem in the United States that could not be solved if we were still a nation of critical thinkers. But critical thinking has been intentionally replaced by dogma. Having a degree is not equivalent to having an education. Knowing something is not the same as understanding it. In a world saturated with information, the “key” to distinguishing between truth and falsehood is one question, one word: “why?”

Why should schools and companies discriminate based on skin color? Why should my race say more about me than my brain? Why is it okay for federal immigration law to be ignored while federal tax laws must be obeyed? Why are Americans who defend the Constitution treated as domestic terrorists? Why are Americans who burn down cities treated as heroes? Why does every “solution” to climate change involve the expansion of government powers and the contraction of personal liberties? Why must the government police speech in order to keep it free? Why must government disarm citizens in order to keep them safe? Why is the government so afraid of the people that it must spy on them at all times? Why is it no longer “our government,” but rather the government?

Are those questions dangerous in a “free” society? Of course not. They lead to discussion, which leads to debate, which leads to contemplation, which leads to greater understanding, which creates a more perceptive mind, a more capable American, and a more complete human being. When government deems some questions subversive, it is admitting that it no longer represents the people, but rather rules over them. And any public school system that replaces the tools necessary for developing critical thinking skills with rigid indoctrination countenancing no dissent is producing not healthy citizens, but useful slaves.

The great philosopher George Carlin used to say, “Don’t just teach your children to read[.]…Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.” That’s how real learning is done — in the trenches with one hand on a flashlight searching for knowledge and the other gripping a shovel, digging up the oft-buried truth. Carlin also knew that when it comes to truth, governments cannot be trusted: “I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me.” If more Americans could learn this simple principle, our society would be in a much better place. Free people with free minds do not need politicians to do their thinking for them.

The science is settled? The time for debate is over? Never. Only people interested in stealing your agency and capturing your soul say such things. It is our capacity for reason that makes each of us distinct and our distinctive qualities that make each human life individually valuable. When government deems individual minds unnecessary, then individual lives become disposable. That’s when governments do great evil.

Ahh, but what about when government deems individual minds not just unnecessary, but an active, credible threat to their own designs? What’s to be done about government then?

Life in the USSSA

Posted on May 25, 2021May 25, 2021 by Mike

The United Soviet Socialist States of Amerika, that would be. Not to be confused—not EVER, not on your life—with the FUSA.

Lucas Gerhard is a 21-year-old man. Instead of celebrating his graduation from Lake Superior State University in Sault St. Marie, MI, in the criminal justice field and looking for a job in law enforcement, Lucas is locked down in his father’s home, wearing an ankle bracelet.

Probably a good thing, getting this dangerous criminal off the streets, don’tcha think? I mean, I’m confident this young punk is a menace to his community, and to all right-thinking, decent Americans, right?

Lucas is an Eagle Scout and has no criminal record.

Oh. Well. Hrm.

Okay, at this point I think it only right to warn all CF lifers afflicted by high blood pressure or heart problems: from here on out, I personally guar-on-tee that this bag o’ dicks is gonna REALLY piss y’all off.

During his trial, the prosecutor attempted to paint Lucas as a threat to the school community, claiming that he had numerous “contacts” with Law Enforcement at LSSU.

Lucas’s father explained: “The so-called ‘contacts’ were made as a result of more anonymous calls to LSSU public safety, and an incident where Lucas’s car was vandalized and his rear window smashed out! Not a single one of those was what can be considered a negative or derogatory incident. An example of one incident where a call was made was when Lucas was in his OCSO cadet uniform and carrying a bag of police training gear across campus to his communications class where he was giving a speech in law enforcement methods. The call was made as soon as he exited his dorm. The police were apparently told by the caller that they felt threatened by seeing Lucas when they saw him carrying riot gear. Note that LSSU is a school where a large majority of students are Criminal Justice majors! But Sault St. Marie police officers actually responded and pulled Lucas out of the classroom WHILE HE WAS GIVING HIS SPEECH to question him. His professor came out and told the officers that Lucas’s speech was pre-approved as well as the props he brought. The report noted that his explanation was accepted and no further action taken. I might add that every other time something like this happened, the result was the same. No action taken, either from Law Enforcement nor the College. The level of harassment Lucas endured there was astonishing.”

Lucas’s real crime was being an unashamed conservative college student.

The story we are about to tell you is truly one of the most remarkable cases of injustice you will ever read. It’s a story of how easily two intolerant, liberal students, with the help of the police, school administrators, and an overly zealous prosecutor, can cancel the life of a young man, all while trampling on his First and Second Amendment Rights.

Incredibly, unbelievably enough, that’s only the beginning of this bona fide horrorshow. It gets even worse.

Anybody out there whose initial response was to mutter something along the lines of “can’t happen here” is hereby strongly advised to wake the fuck up and smell what the Wokester commie ratbags are cooking. STRONGLY. Read the rest, if you can stand to. Mention is made of “making the snowflakes melt,” although Lucas was careful to aver to Johnny Law that it was actually “a reference to liberals whose brains ‘melt’ when faced with something or someone who expresses an opposing political ideology.”

Let me be the first to fling caution to the winds and state outright that it’s way past time some snowflakes were made to melt for real, physically and literally, by bringing the fires of Hell itself to bear on their sorry, smarmy asses. Before it’s too late, and they can no longer be stopped.

Totally, totally unacceptable, this is.

I will not comply

Posted on May 24, 2021May 25, 2021 by Mike

And you Vaxx Nazis can go fuck yourselves.

Bloomberg Columnist: We May Have To Force People To Get Vaccinated

You can try, certainly. Let’s see how that works out for you in the end.

So much for “my body, my choice.” The authoritarianism of Michael Bloomberg and his flunkies is on full display in a new column at the anti-gun billionaire’s personal news network, where columnist Clara Ferreira Marques argues that personal choice and responsibility should take a back seat to government coercion and brute force when it comes to vaccines.

Sticking a needle in people’s arms against their will may be “unpalatable,” says Marques, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen if large numbers of Americans refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine on their own.

Full compulsion — which implies fines or even prison, as opposed to simply not getting a benefit or public service — isn’t easily embraced. For me, that’s less because of arguments around personal liberty than because of the deep polarization in many societies, including the U.S., that would only worsen with such an approach. More importantly, some reasons deterring people from vaccinations — distrust of health or political authorities, or more pressing medical or shelter problems — deserve to be tackled, not papered over.

Why am I not shocked that the argument around personal liberty isn’t compelling to a Bloomberg lackey like Marques?

Seeing as how the authoritarian Left is not only indifferent to personal liberty but actively, virulently hostile to it, how shocked could anybody be? JD Rucker calls it a cult.

The mentality surrounding the Covid-19 vaccines is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. On one level, it’s easy to understand why people would be willing to do just about anything to relieve their fear, financial distress, emotional hardships, and longing for normalcy. On the other hand, why are so many who claim to “follow the science” willing to ignore the science behind these injections?

What we’re seeing is the rise of the Vaccine Cultists. They have made it part of their daily lives to “do their part” in making sure every human being on the planet is injected with a Covid-19 vaccine of some sort. From their perspective, it’s all about making it ubiquitous.

Let’s make a clear delineation between “Vaccine Cultists” and basic pro-vaxxers. If you got your shots and you’re going about your business feeling secure that you’re protected, not worrying about whether others around you are also vaccinated, you’re just a basic pro-vaxxer and while I disagree with your choice, I hold no ill feelings towards you.

If you’re out there promoting the vaccines, begging or demanding friends and family get theirs, asking people who are in close proximity to you if they’ve been vaccinated, calling on your workplace to mandate vaccines, going on social media to attack Covid-vaccine-skeptics, or getting tattoos to commemorate your inoculation date, then you’re a Vaccine Cultist.

To be clear, I’m not an anti-vaxxer per se. I believe in the science behind vaccines and while I’ve chosen to generally avoid them, you won’t find me out there saying much about it before 2021. I’ve always been a vaccine-freedom guy. If you want your vaccine, take your vaccine. If you don’t want it, don’t take it. But the rise of the massive propaganda campaign to get as many people injected as possible combined with the inception of the Vaccine Cult have turned me into a vocal opponent of the Covid vaccines altogether. As many have tried to say repeatedly, these “vaccines” are completely different from anything that has ever been mass distributed in the world. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny lambasted me for calling them “vaccines” at all, and she’s right. They’re simply not, though Merriam-Webster Dictionary tried hard to make them so.

I’m also not one who thinks Covid-19 is just a bad flu. I do believe it is very dangerous for the elderly and those with major health issues. I also know that there are otherwise healthy people who were hit hard by Covid-19; my kid’s doctor said he felt like a freight train hit him for a week. I do not downplay the disease other than to note that for children and young adults, the chances of it being fatal are minimal.

JD goes quite a bit further out of his way than I consider absolutely necessary in order to present his thoughts in a calm, reasonable fashion. For my own part, I ain’t gonna bother. It’s like this:

Never

Just you come and get me, you filthy bastards—if you think you’re big enough, and can round up enough help. I solemnly promise you that I won’t be taken down easily…and that I DO NOT consider violent resistance to be off the table.

Update! Only just saw that I forgot to include a link to the JD Rucker piece, which can be found here. Apologies to all for the omission.

How liberty is lost

Posted on May 22, 2021May 22, 2021 by Mike

It’s always a mistake to accept their premises.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control did an about-face, announcing that the fully vaccinated among us may resume normal activities. The news came more than a year after California initiated the first lockdown on March 19, 2020.

The CDC’s new posture comes with some narrow exceptions. If you’re traveling on a plane or find yourself in a homeless shelter or in a medical or correctional facility, you still need to wear a mask; and the CDC made sure to clarify, apparently out of great deference for federalism and Hayekian spontaneous order, that its guidance does not predominate over the requirements of federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.

Before the CDC updated its pandemic guidance, this was exactly the position espoused by libertarian law professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law. Writing from his regular perch at the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy, Somin’s argument is summarized nicely in the subheading of his piece, “Free the Vaccinated from COVID Restrictions”: “Doing so will protect constitutional rights, reduce vaccine hesitancy, and increase liberty—all at once.”

The CDC’s shift undoubtedly is a welcome development, all things considered. But people like Somin could not be more misguided in supporting it as a matter of best practice. In doing so, they ratify a pernicious principle that has the potential to destroy our long-term freedom. Instead of reasoning from first principles, Somin works from within a techno-scientific, experts-know-best framework that, unsurprisingly, constrains his thinking and directs him to validate the public health bureaucracy’s authority and priorities. One need only examine what accepting the totality of the CDC’s guidance would truly mean to see the short-sightedness of Somin’s position.

That the CDC, or any other institution, would presume to strip us of our God-given natural liberty to buy groceries or see a play or play with our children in a park, all in the name of some dubious goal of “public health,” and then purport to “return” our rights—but only if we jump through a vaccine-related hoop—is a grievous affront to the salutary legal revolution brought on by the birth of America that Jaffa identified. We are being ordered to accept the submerged premise of the CDC’s new position, namely, that we are free to do only what the government explicitly permits us to do. Sadly, a great many Americans are only too willing to comply.

It is deeply shameful that we let a virus with a roughly 1.8 percent death rate upend completely our society’s habits, customs, practices, mores, and ways of thinking about the interaction of law and liberty and the legitimate domain and reach of each. (Recall that SARS had a 14-15 percent death rate, and we did not feel compelled to shut down the country for over a year.)

Actually, it wasn’t a virus that did it. The Left was allowed to “upend our thinking about liberty” many decades ago, transitioning (ahem) far too many of us from stout, indendent citizens to simpering dependents content to suckle at Mommy Government’s flabby teat forever. After that “fundamental transformation” was accomplished, pulling off the Covid coup de grace was simplicity itself, practically a fait accompli.

A virus of the mind

Posted on May 21, 2021May 21, 2021 by Mike

Doc Z explains why Zombie Communism won’t ever just lie down and stay dead.

Conservatives of my generation made the terrible mistake of believing Marxism was fatally discredited with the fall of the Soviet Union, and only a few aging freaks in campus faculty still took it seriously. We weren’t ready for the next wave of the mind-virus and its variants.

It was an easy mistake to make. How could people cling to an ideology that spread death, poverty, and failure around the world, once its primary nation-state supporter lay in ruins – its claims of success across the decades exposed as lies, its victims celebrating their freedom?

How could so many people ignore the hideous history of Marxism and continue to believe THIS time it will work, THIS time all the bugs have been ironed out, THIS time the right people are finally in charge? Forgive my generation for thinking the horror was finally over.

Marxism persists because it IS a virus. It was designed that way – give the old devil and his disciples credit for being ahead of the curve in realizing that an ideology could be custom-tailored to propagate itself endlessly, without needing any nourishment from success.

Every single aspect of Marxist theory is designed to protect and perpetuate the ideology no matter how badly it fails, most notably including the elements of every Marxist ideology that justify the use of violence against those who threaten it, or refuse to submit to its demands.

An ideology that asserts dissent from its principles in good faith is impossible – making dissent a sin punishable by loss of rights, confiscation of property, imprisonment, torture, or death – is well on its way to insulating itself against any degree of objective failure.

The most viral element of Marxism, the DNA that carries over into all its mutations, is the elimination of individual responsibility – the promise of “justice” and “entitlement” achieved through collective power. Every strain of Marxism tells adherents they have been exploited.

This is reflected in the core economic assumption of Marxism: capitalism “exploits” workers and “steals” the value of their labor. All of Marxism’s misery and bloody horror, all of the failure and brutal civil warfare it spreads through societies it infects, flows from this idea.

Never again should any defender of freedom underestimate the seductive viral appeal of these ideas, especially to young minds. Marxism is a vision of society run like a big family. It appeals to kids from good families…and those who desperately WISH they had good families.

Marxism flatters envy and transforms it into a virtue. It offers a regimented vision of society that appears logical once its (entirely false) basic premises are accepted. It claims to makes sense of a senseless and unjust world – very appealing to the young and alienated.

Most importantly, Marxism lifts the burden of individual responsibility from its acolytes. “Socializing” costs and consequences, classifying all misfortune as “exploitation,” dividing people into static classes at war with each other – it all says nothing is YOUR fault.

Every strain of Marxism tells its victims that they can never hope to find success, fairness, justice, equity – whatever euphemism becomes fashionable after the old ones wear out – on their own.

Gee, sounds exactly like what Democrat-Socialists have told American Nigras for years and years now, so as to keep them forever on the Donk plantation, almost word for word. Pure coinkydink, I’m guessing.

But I must remind one and all that, contra the general assumption, Marxism has NOT “failed every time it’s been tried.” Sure, it hasn’t worked—CANNOT work—according to the usual definition for the word. But as Hayward’s essay tacitly confirms, that’s predicated on a premise that is false. As I argued the other night, our metric for what constitutes success and failure must be recalibrated, putting ourselves back in line with the stark reality that Marxism has enjoyed an unbroken string of successes when it comes to realizing the true goals of the despots who implement and then rule under it. I repeat: it all depends on what the meaning of “success” is.

The Con con

Posted on May 18, 2021May 18, 2021 by Mike

Conservatism as commodity, bought and sold in the marketplace.

Every once in a while, a post or series of posts comes along that captures why conservatism never amounted to much. This post in the ironically named American Conservative is a good example of the genre. The topic is how to deal with the privatization of authoritarian power, primarily in Silicon Valley. The argument put forward is that using the state to tame these rogue companies is morally wrong, so we have to find some new way to contend with these out-of-control tech firms.

The first thing you should notice is the style is exactly what we get whenever the topic of immigration in on the table. The obvious answer is dismissed. In the case of immigration, that means shutting down the border and cracking down on employers who use helot labor. The open borders crowd always says that is impossible or harmful in some way. Instead, they offer a collection of overly complex solutions that have no chance of succeeding but will keep the punditry busy.

In the case of Big Tech, we have laws on the books to put an end to this reign of terror, but enforcing those is socialism, according to the usual suspects. We cannot have that, even if it would work. Instead, let us have a twenty-year series of international commissions to study technical standards and pass a bunch of laws that no one reads, but have cool names like “Data Portability Act”. In other words, the people who cannot build a wall along the border are going to fix the internet.

Interestingly, the rodents from Conservative Inc. always use the same trick the Left is so fond of using, which is the false dichotomy. “We can shut ourselves off from the world or embrace globalism” is how they frame trade. “We can become a hermit nation or remain a nation of immigrants” is how they frame immigration. Now it is “We can choose central planning or preserve an open internet” with Big Tech. It is the same partisan game the Left plays, just tailored for a middle-class white audience.

The fact is, enforcing Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act as intended puts a halt to the most egregious violations of our rights. Twitter can choose to be a publisher or an open platform. If it is the former, they can censure their platform however they like, but they are accountable for the content. If they choose to be an open platform like Gab, then they get the protection of Section 230. There is no need to reinvent the internet to solve the biggest problem with Big Tech.

Similarly, the obvious collusion that goes on with these big firms could be crushed with the use of existing law. There are plenty of examples of the tech companies colluding with one another to ban people from their platforms. If we can give a cop 20-years on civil rights violations for shooting a fleeing suspect, we can give the harpies of Silicon Valley a few years for violating the civil rights of Alex Jones. One lawsuit is all that would be required to end that practice and restore some sanity.

Of course, the author of the AC piece is clearly trying to strike the libertarian position, which is a blend of hiding under the bed and shilling for global capital. This is what is wrong with the libertarian-conservative commentariat. They are not interested in advocating conservative interests. Instead, they are focused on making sure their corporate donors are free of government interference. If that means the rights of conservatives are trampled, well “whoopsie!”

As with any swindle, if you can’t figure out who the mark is, it’s you. Z’s title brought to mind an old Mad cover:

“The Big Con” is as on-point a description of modern “conservatism,” the NeverTrumpTard punditry, and the Vichy GOPe as you’ll ever find.

All part of a Plan, and the Plan is working as intended

Posted on May 17, 2021May 17, 2021 by Mike

Working very damned well, in fact.

There are a lot of unprecedented things happening, but not all of them are shocking. For example, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that, once they got their hands on real power, the same lunatics who don’t believe in human biology immediately made a serious mess of our economy. It took them less than six months to do it. First, they acted like the U.S. dollar had no value. They spent money like they’d just printed it for the occasion, which, needless to say, they had. Predictably, we wound up with frightening levels of inflation, which for the record they still deny exists. But inflation does exist, as you well know if you live here. Corn prices, to name just one example of a staple commodity that’s now out of control, have risen by 50 percent just since January. But that wasn’t bad enough. The lunatics decided to make it worse. They paid millions of Americans more than they make at work, to stay home and do nothing. To justify doing this, they used the word “COVID” quite a bit, but it had nothing to do with the pandemic. They just wanted to break the system. And so they did. And the rest of us immediately wound up with a bewildering combination of rising unemployment in the middle of a severe labor shortage. So, at the very same time, we found ourselves with too many workers, and also too few workers. That doesn’t even make sense, but thanks to their policies, that’s now exactly what we have. And then, finally, in case 2021 didn’t remind you enough of a grimmer version of the 1970s, we now have serious gas shortages, in a country that just recently was energy independent. All along the east coast of the country today, people couldn’t fill up their cars. The footage looks like Venezuela.

What is this about? Well, you know. On some level — let’s be honest about it — the White House approves of this disaster.

Yes, some gas stations are closed tonight. But soon enough, the lunatics plan to close them all — every gas station in the entire United States, shuttered forever, to make way for some new, as-yet-undefined means of transportation that will magically replace the gasoline engines we’ve used for more than 100 years. This is a green revolution. So who cares about some old pipeline?

Remember that on his first day in office, Joe Biden shut down a pipeline, that’s the first thing he did. It was the massive Keystone XL. Biden didn’t wait for mysterious hackers to shut it down. He shut it down himself. And more than 11,000 people lost their jobs. And, by the way, gas prices went up. In case you haven’t noticed, gas prices have never gone down.

Why? This is the result of policy decisions made by the new administration. This is the Green New Deal. We’ve got it already. And if you love gas shortages and electricity blackouts and $80 plywood, this is the program for you.

Typically, in the material world, where the laws of nature apply when the price of something jumps that quickly and that high, you’ve got a supply problem. Because it’s supply and demand. There isn’t enough of that thing to go around. Does that apply to lumber? Are there fewer spruce trees out there than there were a year ago? Are those trees growing more slowly than they once did? Have we seen a 280% in new houses being built? The answers: no, no and no. The answer, as you may have guessed, is that bad federal policies are distorting the price of everything in this country, from two by fours, to diesel fuel to corn dogs. None of this is an accident. Just as it wasn’t an accident when the power went out in Texas over the winter. It wasn’t a cold snap that did it, it was a federal policy that encouraged the state to rely on windmills that don’t actually work. So, it’s not a natural cycle. Somebody did this to us on purpose.

It’s “bad national policy” all right, but exclusively in the sense that it’s a policy that is bad for the nation. But there’s another sense to be taken into account: bad as it is, damaging as it is, it is also effective policy—because the bad things it’s doing, that damage, is the effect the policy was intended to produce.

Over time my reaction has evolved from amusement, to mild pique, to being outright annoyed when I see references to this or that putatively “failed” Democrat-Socialist policy, program, or initiative. The same blinkered narrative is applied to describe Marxism itself, which “fails every time it’s tried,” or so we’re endlessly told—as if the sole ambition of its advocates and administrators is to see to it that all are adequately fed, housed, and liberated from servitude and want. Bless their selfless, charitable hearts, Marxists just want to make sure that both the high and mighty and the downtrodden alike are fairly treated. That the State meets its obligation to ensure that avarice can never be wielded as a cudgel by one man in the bludgeoning of his brother. That all resources are equitably distributed.

Sorry, but…no. Whatever Karl Marx’s own notion might have been originally, Communism as we know it today is usually pretty danged good at achieving its true imperatives: untrammeled power and wealth for the ruthless few at the top of the heap, hopeless subjugation without mercy or surcease for the hapless serfs below.

The truth is that Communism, as well as the machinations of its Democrat-Socialist Party adherents, actually succeeds every time it’s tried. Understanding that is a matter of realizing what their ACTUAL goals and intentions are, and ignoring what they SAY they are—ie, “success” isn’t anything to do with uplifting, assisting, or liberating anybody, other than members of the Ruling Class kleptocracy—and then adjusting your own perceptions accordingly. Or, to adapt the famous words of another notorious latter-day Marxist, it all depends on what the meaning of “success” is. Once you’ve recalibrated your terms and definitions properly, it’s all perfectly obvious.

This flag is your flag, this flag is MY flag

Posted on May 14, 2021May 14, 2021 by Mike

Sooner or later, you can be sure they’ll get around to something you DO care about.

Outside Christie’s home in upstate New York, nestled beneath a tree near her driveway, sits a small rock painted with a Confederate flag that could cost her the custody of her little girl.

In a row between parents identified only as Christie and Isaiah, the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court’s Third Department unanimously allowed the pair to retain joint custody of their biracial child but ordered the mother to remove the rebel rock by June 1. Failing that, the court ruled the rock’s “continued presence shall constitute a change in circumstances.”

Put plainly, the bench threatened to revisit parents’ custody agreement and warned: “Family Court shall factor this into any future best interests analysis.”

It seems the parents have been locked in a protracted custody battle for some time. The New York Post reports that “the mother wants the dad to only see his daughter every other weekend, and the father wants sole custody.” In the course of the dispute, Isaiah has mentioned the rock only in passing while making a broader argument for custody of the girl. It was only when the case ended up in the lap of the appellate court that judges honed in on Christie’s taste in decor.

“Although not addressed by Family Court or the attorney for the child, the mother’s testimony at the hearing, as well as an exhibit admitted into evidence, reveal that she has a small confederate flag painted on a rock near her driveway,” Justice Stanley Pritzker wrote in the ruling. Pritzker then set his sights on the child’s racial background.

“Given that the child is of mixed race, it would seem apparent that the presence of the flag is not in the child’s best interests, as the mother must encourage and teach the child to embrace her mixed-race identity, rather than thrust her into a world that only makes sense through the tortured lens of cognitive dissonance,” Pritzker wrote. “Further, and viewed pragmatically, the presence of the confederate flag is a symbol inflaming the already strained relationship between the parties.”

How one feels about the Confederate flag is irrelevant to the real issue here.

Those who grin at the removal of Confederate symbolism from the public eye should know that the implications of this could and likely will extend far beyond Southern heritage.

The list of contraband symbolism, political views, and speech is sure to grow as the war on the specter of white supremacy escalates. Some might say that it is paranoid to suspect as much, an example of the slippery slope fallacy. Those people also thought that the toppling of statues would stop with Confederate monuments.

Those people need to get their heads around the undeniable fact that the neverending escalations of the toxic Left will NEVER stop. Appease them all you like; bend over backwards for them until your spine (if any) snaps, betray every last principle you ever held dear, accept another false “compromise” in which you somehow gain nothing as your “reward” for yielding—it won’t matter. They will always and forever come back with yet another demand, yet another depredation, looking to take the next bite of your freedom until every last morsel of it has been gobbled up.

So stop doing it. It’s long past time that Team Liberty recognized that the Left has from the very beginning played the long game, never for an instant taking their eyes off the prize they seek: tyranny. Any momentary gesture they give to comity, accomodation, reason, and cooperation is false, a manipulation intended to move them closer to their ultimate goal. Giving in, if only for the sake of holding on briefly to some semblance of peace, does nothing but further embolden them. Unless we fight them ferociously on every issue—even the most seemingly trivial of them—we will one day find ourselves with our backs against the wall, left with no ground on which we can stand.

I am a Son of the South. The Confederacy is part of my cultural heritage; I am proud to fly its Battle Flag via the tattoo of it on my right arm, and I do not give a good goddamn what ANYBODY thinks about that.

Forget? I’ll see every last whimpering, whining PC piece of shit in Hell first.

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