Liberty Relearned

“Some of the time...” has ended.

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”

Ah, the timeless wisdom of Abe Lincoln!  (That does put a new perspective on the Latin phrase:  “In vino veritas,” but I digress.) The American people haven't been given much in the way of real facts, at least not by the legacy media, but they are aware that they've been feed lies and nonsense.

They know for instance, that CRT and so-called “Anti-racism” as it's been taught to them and their kids is just racist claptrap, and are now on the lookout for it in their schools and places of business. They don't know if “Build Back Better” is better, but they do know that you can't spend trillions of dollars and not cause inflation.  They know that they were lied to about Russian collusion, Kenosha, and Jussie Smollett being the victim of a hate crime. What else have they been lied to about? They wonder.

Now, when they hear the Democrats shrieking about Trump, Republicans, conservatives, and so on, being a threat to democracy, they will be far less willing to accept such statements as anything more than hyperbole. If the recent elections in Virginia and elsewhere are any indication, more and more average Americans are breaking free from the leftist's spell.

Another quote attributed to Lincoln is this:

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

The Democrats are finding this out the hard way. They will fall way short of 'all the people',  and 'some of the time' ended in November of 2021, if not before for a lot of people, and continues to end, day by day for others.

Now, let's continue on with that great Republican tradition, and have some real facts...and a beer.

Its name is "Omicron". It's the reason you'll still need to wear a mask at work and in school in 2022.  It will be the desperate need cited for getting small children vaccinated.  It's the reason you have to stay home for Christmas again this year (and don't even think of New Year's). It's the reason why you'll be getting a fourth shot in about five months. It's the reason your compliance will continue to be mandatory in 2022, the year you thought you'd finally be free of COVID.  If you live in the formerly free country of Australia, it will be responsible for lockdowns 473 thru 842.  If not Omicron, it will be the next variant. When the name Omicron fades from the headlines, as Delta did, it will be replaced. Thanks to COVID, we're all going to find out how many letters there are in the Greek alphabet.

A recent article in the NY Post tells of this new COVID-19 variant.

If the short, yet well-chronicled history of the COVID pandemic teaches us anything, is that news of the Omicron variant will be exploited as a reason to administer (read sell) more vaccine doses.  It will be used as justification for all sorts of limits to our freedoms, even as the Western world grows sick, not from COVID, but of things like vaccine mandates and COVID apartheid. All across the globe, people are taking to the streets against the quarantine of the non-sick, forced medical treatment, and general infringement of human rights in the name of fighting a disease that the vast majority of people who've contracted it have recovered from. The expert class has so undermined their credibility that many now simply tune them out, even if they happen to be right. Again, it must be said, there will always with this disease be an excuse for authoritarian behavior on the part of our leaders, many of whom have a caviler attitude towards the rights of others.  This patronizing and oftentimes detrimental treatment will continue for as long as we let it.

Last week, I read and then discussed an excerpt from a Victor Davis Hanson piece, "Trickle-down Bidenism".  In it he talks about the many crises occurring in the United States during the ancient Biden Administration. He wonders if the Democrats and just inept or if the damage being done is intentional. Unfortunately, the audio quality of last week's podcast was not that great (gremlins!).  The topic I think is too important to just let go, so I decided to revisit it this week. This time, the audio quality is much better so again, my thoughts (familiar to some of you) on the topic...

 Evil or just plain bad?

In an article for The Independent Institute, Victor Davis Hanson blasts the Democrats and especially President Biden for the growing number of crises in America since he and his fellow Democrats took power in Washington in January. In it, Hanson asks the rhetorical question– “Does the Biden socialist cadre who engineered these self-induced calamities have any clue about the damage they have done to America? Or do they believe the chaos is tolerable collateral destruction to achieve an otherwise unattainable socialist paradise?” Although it is generally good counsel to not attribute ill-intent to what can just as easily be attributed to incompetence, the way the Democrats have governed gives us cause to wonder.

Included is an excerpt from Victor Davis Hanson article: Trickle-Down Bidenism (Please read the whole thing, it's worth it.)

So are the leftist Democrats in power really just inept or is all the destruction being caused to our society and economy just a price to be paid to achieve the collective Utopia they seek?

Evil or just plain bad?

In an article for The Independent Institute, Victor Davis Hanson blasts the Democrats and especially President Biden for the growing number of crises in America since he and his fellow Democrats took power in Washington in January. In it, Hanson asks the rhetorical question-- “Does the Biden socialist cadre who engineered these self-induced calamities have any clue about the damage they have done to America? Or do they believe the chaos is tolerable collateral destruction to achieve an otherwise unattainable socialist paradise?” Although it is generally good counsel to not attribute ill-intent to what can just as easily be attributed to incompetence, the way the Democrats have governed gives us cause to wonder.

Please read the Victor Davis Hanson article: Trickle-Down Bidenism for his thoughts. 

So are the leftist Democrats in power really just inept or is all the destruction being caused to our society and economy just a price to be paid to achieve the collective Utopia they seek?

This past Tuesday, Americans across the nation said “no” to the divisive progressive Democrat agenda.  Most notably, Governor-elect  Glenn Youngkin, who ran a race focused on education and the economy defeated one-time governor, Terry McAuliffe.  The election turned on one issue primary, the question of who should decide what Virginia kids get taught in school, teachers or parents.  McAuliffe said teachers, parents said “wrong!”.  While kids in the Commonwealth were home last year attending classes at home, parents got a rare close-up glimpse into what was their kids were exposed to in school including elements of racist CRT doctrine, and graphic depictions of sex not just in sex-ed, but in school board approved literature.

The wave of conservative and GOP wins across the country have been widely seen as a repudiation of the Biden Administration and the policies of the extreme left, including defunding the police and excessive government overreach when it comes to COVID policy, especially the vaccine mandate.  The leftist indoctrination taking place in our children's classrooms was merely the straw that broke the camel's back for the voters in Virginia and elsewhere. 

(Here's are Excerpts from Buck Sexton's November 3rd article in Townhall.com that highlight some of these election implications.)

This is the first election since a series of disastrous ones that saw the Republicans lose the White House, then two Senate seats in Georgia. Since then, the Biden Administration has been faced with one disaster after another-- a slowed-down economic recovery from COVID, a disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, inflation, and now shortages of many imported goods. The GOP wins in VA and school-board elections across the country are a serious blow to one of the Left's sources of strength, our education system.  Without control of the public education system, they cannot indoctrinate our nation's youth with their woke values.

Halloween is a lead-in to All Souls’ Day. Will the “soul” of the American ideal be one we lament in the future? Will 2021 be the year that future historians will cite as the Republic’s death? Halloween may be a scary day but 2021 may mark the beginning of a scary era for this country. The rise of authoritarianism, inflation, collectivism and shortages should scare the average American, and if the left has its way, will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It’s not too late to turn back, but will we? Tuesday, Nov 2nd is All Souls Day. It is also Election Day. How we celebrate one may affect how we celebrate the other.

Four real things that scare me this Halloween:

Shortages.  This is a man-made catastrophe. When you pay people to not work, this is what you get.  Not enough people designing, making, transporting, and selling things.  The three major causes:  Lockdowns, disincentives to work, vaccine mandates.

Inflation.  Another man-made catastrophe.  Like the shortages we're experiencing now, Inflation can be traced to the government's interference in the normal economic cycle.  It's a combination of money given and not earned, and money created to monetize public debt.  Inflation is the most regressive of taxes.

Authoritarianism.  The alarming rise in authoritarianism in Western democracies is just that, alarming. It can come from a benevolent place, a patronizing attitude toward common people.  It can come from a sinister place, a sadistic need to control others and delight in their misery. It is condescension made into governmental policy. Utopianism requires tyranny to overcome the basic human need to exercise rational self-interest.

Collectivism. This ranks #1 on this list because the other three, Authoritarianism, Inflation, and Shortages can all trace their roots to its implementation.  “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”  -Socialist slogan. Collectivism rejects the notion of individual rights and sovereignty. Communism, socialism, and fascism are all forms of collectivism. Because they run contrary to human nature, these forms of state collectivism require authoritarianism to keep them alive. Inflation and shortages are common real-world byproducts of collective economic practices, especially socialism.

I'm not going to pick on Alec Baldwin here.  I'm sure he's genuinely beside himself with grief and remorse.  I will say that people who believe that guns kill people and not as the saying goes:  "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," will have a hard time understanding that they can be one of the "people" in that saying when they are around firearms.  When it comes to death and injury due to firearms, intentional, or unintentional as in this case, the problem is always the thoughts, belief, and understanding that is the problem. Many on the left, have divorced the gun's actions from human actions.  When you do that, things like gun safety become mere abstractions.  They don't realize that it's not the gun that's unsafe, it's the handler of that gun that is either safe or unsafe.  #2A #gunsafety

Gun safety is a conservative value. 

When the left/Democrats accuse the Republicans of doing or being something, i.e. racist, fascist, etc, they themselves are guilty of it. They ALWAYS project their faults on others, and there are NO exceptions, even when they accuse Trump and other conservatives of being fascists.  Anyone who's studied historical fascism can see that the left increasingly is showing fascistic tendencies. I would define fascism, based on history (as opposed to propaganda) As: 1. Authoritarian 2.  Collectivist, and 3.  Micromanagement of business, as if the government served on every board of directors.  They believe in the supremacy of the state and the needs of the state (collective) over the needs of the individual.

America is a divided country. Most of that division is deliberate. The far left has adopted a divide and conquer strategy. They pit rich against poor, black against white, male against female, vaxxed against the unvaxxed, etc. From their own mouths, they have declared that the system needs to be burned down and built back better. They believe a collectivist Utopia will spring from the ashes of Western Civilization. Towards that end, they have exploited existing tensions between various factions, and where there were none, they invented them. This has left America in a Cold Civil War, and one the Biden Administration has recently turned up the heat on. Ordinary Americans who have decided to speak out against elements of this divisive ideology, particularly Critical Race Theory (CRT) being taught in schools. School-board meetings have been the venue in recent months for impassioned, sometimes even heated comments being made by concerned parents, exercising their 1st Amendment rights to air their grievances at school-board members and other local officials.

Recently, the head of the DOJ, Merrick Garland, has ordered the FBI to monitor alleged incidents of violence and intimidation. This is a move that is seen by many as an aggressive overreach on the part of the federal government into what should be local matters. This move is likely only to exacerbate the existing tensions between the left and the right. The left has over decades, and increasingly, been using higher education and the public school system as indoctrination centers.