Liberty Relearned

The Ministry of Truth

They call it the “Disinformation Governance Board”.  Some of us have another name for it-- The Ministry of Truth. The DHS says its focus will mainly be on false or misleading information getting out, attracting illegal immigrants from places like Haiti to come here.  The Associated Press recently ran a piece on it, giving the official rationale for its inception. The story claims DHS will only use the board to investigate and counter the actions of foreign actors.  Sorry, but past experience in this area makes us a little skeptical.  The Hunter Biden laptop story for instance was squashed with just the mere supposition that it was Russian disinformation.  The suppression of this story may have affected the outcome of the 2020 election.

An article posted in RealClearPolitics.com had a slightly more skeptical take.  It questioned the Constitutionality of the program and raised questions about its administrator, Nina Jankowicz, who's been accused of spreading disinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop story. I guess it can be truly said she is an expert in disinformation, some of it coming from her peers.

This makes Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter even more important.  If another story comes along like Hunter Biden “laptop from Hell”, the Left won't be able to count on Twitter to just suppress it.  They will need the might of the DHS 'Ministry of Truth' to put behind their suppression efforts. Given the record of Democrat administrations abusing their power such as with the IRS targeting conservative organizations, and the FBI and CIA's involvement with the Russian Collusion Hoax, we can expect the DHS, with their new Ministry of Truth, to also be abused also to partisan ends.   We'll be watching for it, count on it.

Until next time,

Stay happy, healthy, and free!

Season 2 of the Liberty Relearned Podcast covered a lot of ground, from Bidens expensive and empty promises, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, to Covid, Fascism, and Woke Disney.  Included are clips from previous episodes of the podcast.  

Elon Musk has emerged as a champion of free speech and is trying to buy Twitter so he can reform it to being the world's premier free-speech platform.  The Left of course will have none of it.  They like being able to dictate who and what can be said in the free world's virtual public square.  They are doing everything they can to throw a monkey wrench into Musk's plans to wrest control of Twitter from the tech tyrants. They'll even act against their own financial best interests to maintain their control over public discourse. Will they succeed?  We'll be watching with great interest how this story unfolds. 

Easter Message, 2022

Easter celebrates the Resurrection, and calls to mind the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. In the Northern Hemisphere, it is celebrated as a spring holiday. Spring seems like the appropriate season to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. The rebirth of the natural world around us reminds us of Jesus’ restoration to life. The world in 2022 seems to be in the spring cycle as it emerges from the scourge of Coronavirus pandemic and destructive authoritarianism. Slowly, we see our freedoms coming back to life. Most of us at least, can work, play, and worship with renewed freedom and with restored vigor. But, just as not every tree and plant grow back its foliage, and just as not every flower will bloom at the same time, nor will every nation, state, and town be restored. The total restoration takes time, but the arrival of summer is a force of nature. Mammals awake from their winter slumber, they may be weak at first, but nature drives them to seek nutrition. Humans also emerge requiring sustenance, not just for the body, for their minds and spirit as well. We’ve lived through a two-year winter of death– physical, moral, and spiritual. Just as nature drives the newly awakened bear to search for what will give it and its family life, nature calls for us to restore the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional balance to our lives.

Easter reminds us that just as Jesus was reborn as a higher eternal form of himself, that we can and must strive to do this same. Life and freedom are the twin gifts the Creator has given to us. As one or the other becomes diminished, their restoration, rebirth, resurrection, once started becomes a force of nature. As we will it, death gives way to life, fear to courage, and oppression to freedom. Become one with that force of nature that demands the scales be re-balanced in favor of our Divine right, and perhaps achieve in the process, a rebirth to a higher form of spiritual life.

Paschal blessings to you!

-J.P. Mac

It's not the sexiest of subjects for the conservative or libertarian, but agricultural practices and distribution do have an effect on our everyday life.  It doesn't tend to be a problem in the West, because actually, we're quite good at it.  When war threatens the production and distribution of food worldwide, then it becomes a problem, and we must take notice and immediate action. The answer, which may be surprising to some, it to let the free market/capitalist system do its thing.  In the podcast, we go over an article from the Heritage Foundation that provides suggestions on what the U.S. Should, and shouldn't be doing. Spoiler alert!  The answer isn't greater interference from the central planners in D.C.

Our government must correctly identify our priorities.  If you're looking down the barrel of a worldwide food shortage, maybe the priority should be food production.  Asking the current administration in Washington to set its green agenda aside in favor of a greens agenda may be a lot to ask, but we have to get this right, not just for our sake, but for the sake of billions across the globe. We can revisit the need for an electric car in every garage and a windmill on every street corner after we've dealt with the potential of mass starvation.

For reference:

https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/report/what-the-us-should-do-now-minimize-the-risk-global-food-shortages#

        Catholic Relief Service (CRS), Ukraine relief

        International Committee of the Red Cross, Ukraine relief

Virtues of the Right:

What determines what is "left" and what is "right" politically and socially? What are some of the core values of each ideology and how are they manifested in today's society? Essentially, it comes down to collective vs. individual ethics. The left believes in collectivism and the right, individualism. Communism, socialism, and fascism are all examples of collectivist socio-economic societies. The right seeks to conserve Western Civilization, the Left seeks to tear it down and replace it with a collectivist Utopia.  The problem with Utopias is they cannot exist without a high degree of authoritarianism. 

In the podcast, I refer to a chart that lists several core values of the left and the corresponding value of the right. 

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and free. 

Pork is back on the menu..

Congress just passed an omnibus budget that approves $1.5T in spending, much of it pork-laden. Of course, with a Democrat Congress in the current era, most of that pork is going to fund woke agenda items. Nancy Pelosi decided to use the war in Ukraine as leverage, tying a Ukraine support package to the greater omnibus. There is a good article by Matthew D. Dickerson from the Heritage Foundation that lists some of the woke pork.

From the article:

“1.  Earmarks were banned by conservatives a decade ago after high-profile cases of corruption were exposed.

2.  Unfortunately, earmarks are making a big return in President Joe Biden’s first appropriations package.

3.  None of these earmarks have anything to do with carrying out the proper, limited roles of the federal government enumerated in the Constitution.”

Speaking of the situation in Ukraine... Poland wanted to give Ukraine some of its Soviet-era fighters.  Somehow this turned into a botched, overly complicated effort. Putin knows the West has been and continues to supply Ukraine with lethal military equipment. Does it really matter at this point if the system destroying the Russian tank or APC is air or land-based?

To help with Ukrainian relief (These are trusted, well-established charities):

Catholic Relief Service (CRS), Ukraine relief

International Committee of the Red Cross, Ukraine relief

Until next time,

Stay healthy, happy, and free.

Here's my hot take on the President's SOTU speech. He started out pretty well by saluting the armed forces and people of Ukraine. It was all pretty much downhill from there. It took a lot of intellectual gymnastics to spin anything he did into a success. He used Covid as an excuse for runaway inflation. Everyone knows that emerging from Covid restrictions played only a part of it. He tried to spin it as the inflation was because the economy was improving too fast! He rehashed his already doomed Build Back Better program. His most laughable moment was when he claimed he wanted to secure our border. I don't know how he got through that line with a straight face. Good news, funding, rather than defunding the police is now the policy of his administration! Even that bit is suspect. What he's not telling you is that the end result would be to shift much of the funding of police away from the local governments where it belongs. #SOTU22 #BuyVotesBetter

To help with Ukrainian relief (These are trusted, well-established charities): 

Catholic Relief Service (CRS), Ukraine relief

International Committee of the Red Cross, Ukraine relief

It's official, the Russians are back on top as Christiandom's authoritarian villains after briefly being unseated by the upstart Canadians. It feels like some weird cosmic balance has been restored.  Yes, that's flippant, but it does seem that someone's freedom is always being threatened somewhere.  With the Russo-Ukrainian war officially underway we can see how violating some conservative, if not strategic principles has helped get us to this point. 

When Jen Psaki, the Presidents press secretary says we need to push renewable resource production, rather than fossil fuel production to avoid problems like in Ukraine, it shows a dangerously naive world view. We could simultaneously hurt Putin's ability to wage war while helping the American and European people but Biden won't do it. 

The war has already caused many refugees to flee the fighting for countries like Poland and Slovakia.  Soon, Europe will have a humanitarian crisis. This will necessitate NGOs to step in, like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and others to step in. 

Now, more than ever, stay happy, healthy, and free.