We Agree; We Don't Want Authoritarian Rule

Can we agree on this? We don’t want to be under authoritarian rule. We don’t want a Big Brother, totalitarian tyranny.

For years now—since the noted descent on the escalator—opponents of Donald Trump have been describing him as a Hitler wannabe. A fascist. Racist, etc., to boot. They are afraid of him; he wants to control us all.

If you’ve been one of those, then it’s time for a paradigm shift. In his four years in office, I defy you to find an action that he took as president that was authoritarian.

He reduced regulation. He lowered inflation and unemployment rates. The economy thrived—except during the couple of quarters of 2020 when the economy shut down because of COVID-19. Note that the President did not shut the country down; that was done by local and state authorities, under the unauthoritative direction of deep state actors in the NIH, CDC, and WHO.

Did Trump deny the American people the use of oil and gas reserves? His successor has. Trump took us quickly to energy independence, with the largest resource supply of oil and gas in the world. Biden immediately shut that down, then went begging to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia—as if we couldn’t supply our own. And he drew down our strategic reserves—and sold them to the CCP, while Americans pay several dollars more per gallon at the pump.

image is screenshot from this Facts Matter video

Targeting Political Enemies

But the real sign of authoritarian rule is the targeting of political enemies. The Biden regime has quite a record of that—especially if you tag on the Obama/Biden years and the Deep State attacks during Trump’s presidency.

The “raid” seems to be a favorite authoritarian ploy—because it’s scary and pushy, and can be construed by media to be lawful.

Here are a few such stories:

·       “Feds Reportedly Raid Project Veritas-Linked Apartments over Ashley Biden’s Diary” by Ben Feuerherd, New York Post, November 5, 2021. / This was when Project Veritas was given Ashley Biden’s diary, reportedly left in a hotel room. They couldn’t verify its authenticity and didn’t want to touch it. They tried returning it, and whoever it was refused. So they turned it over to police. After doing so, James O’Keefe and several Project-Veritas employees had their apartments raided, purportedly looking for the “stolen” diary. More likely this was to scare them, and maybe to do a fishing search for something that could be twisted against them. Even if they’d still held the diary—which they were known not to have—there was no need for a raid. The diary has since been verified as authentic.

·    “FBI Raids Target Democrats’ Political Foes Instead of True Criminals” by Beth Whitehead, The Federalist, June 27, 2022.  This story talks about the FBI targeting a list of people: Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, James O’Keefe, and Jeff Clark. It says, “The FBI is now also engaging in raids on private homes of elderly Americans who peacefully attended the Capitol protest on Jan. 6, 2020. Compare this treatment to that of actual criminals affiliated with Democrats, such as Hunter Biden, Andy McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Michael Sussmann. The latter have seen no personal visit from the FBI since their crimes were committed or exposed.” They mention:

o   Stone’s home in January 2019

o   Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s home in April 2021, ostensibly searching for evidence that Giuliani broke the law regarding Ukraine. This was after Giuliani had offered twice to answer prosecutors’ questions. A year after the raid, Giuliani is still under investigation with no crimes charged against him nor the FBI willing to broadcast what they’re after. 

o   The FBI raided O’Keefe’s home and office under the allegation that O’Keefe had stolen Ashley Biden’s diary. Yet the diary was no longer in O’Keefe’s hands at the time, as he had turned it in to Florida police after evaluating its veracity. 

o   June 22, federal authorities searched the home of Jeff Clark, former assistant attorney general under Trump.

·       “Alaska Couple Says FBI Raided Their Home with Guns Drawn, Interrogated Them in Search for Pelosi's Laptop” by Breck Dumas, The Blaze, April 30, 2022.  This was a case of mistaken identity. Again, a nighttime raid was way over-the-top unnecessary.

·       “Why Were These Churches Raided by the FBI? HOPCC Churches and Seminaries Are Under Investigation for Fraud, Allegedly Targeting Veterans” by Collin Leonard, Deseret News, June 24, 2022. t I’m not defending these churches and their particular actions; it appears they may have been crossing the line into criminal activity. But the normal approach would have been through subpoena of documents, officially terminating their ability to use GI bill funds, and then pursue particular criminal claims. An FBI raid at three locations seems meant more to intimidate than to get evidence that could be obtained in no other way and was at risk of being destroyed.

·       “FBI Raids Home of Retired Texas Couple Who Attended Jan. 6 Capitol Rally” by Darlene McCormick Sanchez, The Epoch Times, June 25, 2022. Another case of mistaken identity. Startled homeowners hearing alarms in the pre-dawn got their guns out. A flash-bang was tossed into the home, upsetting the dogs. This was a year and a half after the January 6^th incident; the retired couple had attended the rally but had not gone beyond the capitol steps. What danger were they to the country on this date, at that hour? It’s fortunate no one was killed or injured.     

There's a whole "List of FBI Controversies" on Wikipedia, worth exploring.

Let’s add in that the administration has declared “domestic terrorists” to be the greatest threat to the nation—and domestic terrorists are redefined as people like us, who are normal, patriotic, good citizens. The NASB first suggested parents who spoke up at school board meetings were domestic terrorist threats—and the DOJ went along with that declaration, without evidence of a single threat.

Recently Senator Ted Cruz challenged FBI Director Christopher Wray about a document leaked to Project Veritas showing symbols associated with domestic terrorists, which included the Betsy Ross flag, the Gadsden flag, the Liberty Tree, the Gonzalez battle flag which reads “Come and Take It,” Revolutionary War imagery, and “Other Commonly Referenced Historical Imagery and Quotes.”  Wray, who heads the FBI, claimed ignorance of any memo regarding associating these symbols with domestic terrorism. (There’s a good body language analysis of this exchange here.)

FBI document leaked to Project Veritas,
identifying symbols of domestic terrorism

 

In case you only listen to broadcast and cable media, maybe you’re unaware that messages not aligned with the regime are not allowed on those platforms. And they are censored on public forums. You ought to be aware that Twitter took down President Trump’s account—including his tweet requesting that protestors on January 6^th needed to go home, because we needed to maintain peace (not because his Tweets inflamed his followers, but because they verified that he didn’t).

Differing views—including factual statements using government data—relating to election fraud, COVID-19 and its vaccines and other protocol or questions of origin, and anything else not approved get cautioned, censored, shadow-banned on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. It is a common “cost of doing business” on these platforms for conservatives to self-censor, use code wording, or otherwise tiptoe around vague "community standards" to avoid being shut down.

 

The Raid

This raid on President Trump’s home was a step too far.

Let’s clear up some legal details. First, the President is entitled to his personal documents. It is a matter of discussion between him and the National Archives as to whom should hold an original or copy of various things. Those discussions were ongoing, as expected. There were not any classified documents the President wasn’t entitled to. It isn’t illegal for him to possess them. He didn’t “steal” or “destroy, spindle, or mutilate” anything. If the National Archives wanted something, they needed to ask and negotiate—which apparently they have been doing.

There was no need of “an informant close to Trump” leaking news that the documents were at his Mar-a-Lago residence; the National Archives already knew that. They had been to the location where the documents were being stored and had recommended an additional lock on the location, for security—which was placed there. That additional lock was broken by the FBI in the raid. 

If this were some other case in which a former government employee had classified documents, or was keeping documents in an unsafe location that could lead to their being compromised, then there would be procedures for that. These would include a subpoena, possibly an arrest—although that would much more likely take place through lawyer negotiations and court hearings, not through an FBI raid using dozens of agents.

If there were a case in which documents were at risk of imminent destruction, ostensibly making an FBI surprise visit necessary, it still would not take an armed brigade.

But it would require a warrant. And the warrant would have to be shown immediately—and a copy would be made available to the subject of the investigation and his legal representation. Reports are that, during the 12-hour search, Trump lawyers were flashed the subpoena from ten feet away, and they were not allowed to keep a copy.

Tom Fitten of Judicial Watch, among others, has requested a copy of the warrant through a Freedom of Information Act request. So far, however, there has been no detailed information about what was being sought or what was taken. They may respond by Monday.

Judicial Watch FOIA request to see the warrant.
taken as a screenshot from here

In the service of a legal search warrant, anything taken by officials would be itemized, and a receipt given. This also did not happen. That means it is impossible to know what Trump had in his possession that they took—or, possibly, what they said he had. In other words, they have put themselves in the position of planting items among his possessions, so we cannot trust chain of custody of evidence. Again, whatever they claim he had or didn’t have shouldn’t matter, because the former president is entitled to his documents, regardless of classification. He committed no crime; the government may have.

There is speculation about what the FBI was after—which they even went through Melania Trump’s closet to search for. Some speculate it must have something to do with January 6^th. I doubt that. The most plausible reason is to find a way to keep Trump from running again. There is a statement in law (federal code section 2071) that a person convicted of mishandling classified documents (as Hillary Clinton clearly did) would not be allowed to run for any future public office. Nice try, but that law does not apply to the President of the United States; the documents are his. Former presidents fill their presidential libraries with such materials. The president can declassify at will. Classified materials may be kept and safeguarded by the National Archives as well—or copies.

What is important to the nation is the preservation of documents. And what we can’t be certain of is that a federal agency this reckless concerning the law would want to preserve documents, rather than destroy anything that might be embarrassing for the regime. There’s a strong possibility that Donald Trump has documents that could take down a great many Deep State players. And they want to stop that at all costs.

 

Why They Did It

In short, they have never hated Trump because he is an authoritarian, or racist, or any other epithet they have thrown at him. They have hated him because he is a threat to their way of doing business—their power mongering.

YouTuber Mr. Reagan lays out a scenario, which he imagines happened some years back. A group of these players sat together in a room, white board at the ready, and brainstormed ways to take out Donald Trump. They tried the Russia hoax—it failed. They tried impeachment over that; it failed. And eventually proof came out that the Clinton campaign had paid for the whole hoax.

Mr. Reagan imagines a list of things they went down. Both impeachments (including one after he left office) failed to show any wrongdoing on Trump’s part. They had to steal the election, of course. And then they tried to set up something they could blame on Trump, such as an insurrection. How inconvenient for them that there wasn’t one. They had gone through the dry run in Michigan, with a hoax attempt at kidnapping Governor Whitmer. Every person on trial in that case was acquitted or granted a mistrial—and the defense was government entrapment. There were more FBI agents and informants than actors—and the plot would simply not have been considered without the urging of those government agents.

The Detroit FBI Field Manager was promoted to DC field manager just in time for the January 6^th entrapment. (See the Revolver news story on that.) FBI agents and agent provocateurs instigated entering the capitol that day. Add to that, most of the crowd that did get agitated were provoked by Capitol Police, who shot them with rubber bullets, threw concussive grenades into the crowd, and beat nonviolent protesters. As more evidence comes out, it appears all six of the deaths that day were caused by the police, not the protesters. No police were killed; only protesters. (See the EpochTV documentary The Real Story of Jan. 6.)

Government business was continued as usual that same evening. People went home peacefully, as President Trump had asked them to do. And yet Biden calls it the worst attack on democracy in history—worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The only way that is true is when you see the regime’s response (coupled with the election theft itself) as the regime’s attack on our constitutional republic.

After January 6^th, people were rounded up—often experiencing violent raids at their peaceful homes in the pre-dawn darkness. People have been taken into custody and kept there, without trial, without rights, without access to counsel, in solitary confinement—often without charges—now going on a year and a half. For misdemeanor trespass charges.

I got sidetracked from Mr. Reagan’s list. Anyway, they have tried this false narrative that Trump caused an insurrection on January 6^th, and the people aren’t buying it. Their Senate inquiry is going nowhere. More of their lies have come to light, rather than people getting convinced of Trump’s guilt. Mr. Reagan thinks that the very fact they have moved on down the list—and this raid was probably near the bottom—shows that they’re giving up on the insurrection lie.

This raid was unprecedented. You don’t raid a former president’s home and confiscate his belongings. It’s unthinkable outside a banana republic. 

Definition 2, from Dictionary.com

It obviously smacks of political weaponization of government law enforcement—which it is, whatever their stated reason on that warrant. The FBI is at fault. Director Wray has no explanation. The DOJ is at fault. What we can be certain of is that America dodged a bullet when the Republicans refused to allow Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court in those last few months of the Obama administration. Garland clearly does not have the law or the best interests of the United States on his list of guiding principles. He’s about political vendettas and personal power mongering.

Under a president even slightly less weak than Biden, it’s hard to imagine this happening.

 

What Next

Is there something from that imagined white board list they haven’t gotten to yet? I don’t know. But their time is running out. This midterm election is critical. The raid this week was a Hail Mary pass. The thing about Hail Mary passes; they hardly ever work. That’s why football teams don’t do them all through the game—only when desperate.

If I were to guess at the next such desperate attempt, I would say they’ll try to keep the November midterm election from happening. Maybe because of riots. Maybe they’ll try to scare us about another pandemic. Maybe it will be something we haven’t even conceived of. Evil minds can be very inventive. All I know is, if they don’t keep their power now, good patriots have a chance to bring to light and clear the government and institutions of the evil cabal of tyrants. So they will pull out all the stops.

So, you Trump haters, if you have any actual concern about authoritarian rule: Wake up! The authoritarian, totalitarian, corrupt tyrants are the ones you put in power.

The rest of us are beyond our patience, waiting for you to wake up and see what’s been going on right in front of our eyes.

We’d like to be a country united—united against totalitarian tyranny. But we can’t unify with people who hate us and hate our freedoms and our Constitution. We can’t compromise like we’ve done in the past—live and let live. Because those tyrants aren’t letting us live.

We’ve agreed with you all along: authoritarian rule is wrong. We’re just not blind, as you have been, about where we see it.

What you’ll find, once you wake up, is that we won’t punish you for having been blind; we’ll just welcome you to the light of freedom. That’s the path to unity and peace.

 

Real Caring Requires Thinking More than Feeling

Caring looks different sometimes from what we immediately think it should look like. That will be true when we look at many issues, for example:

·         Economic inequity

·         Borders

·         Gender dysphoria

·         Healthcare

·         Affirmative action

There’s a way of looking at these and other issues that is the quick gut version of caring. And then there’s a way of looking at the same things, with a little further thinking, to see whether the quick gut version will really help. Because, if it doesn’t, then real caring requires something else.

This concept came up in a couple of things I was listening to this weekend—Jordan Peterson debates, again. In a debate with Slavoj Zizek, titled “Happiness: Capitalism vs. Communism," Jordan Peterson (on the side of capitalism) says this:

Jordan Peterson in "Happiness" debate
screenshot from here

If you’re actually concerned that the poorest people in the world rise above their starvation levels, then all the evidence suggests that the best way to do that is to implement something approximating the free market economy.

In other words, all that stuff about fairness, or getting rid of inequality, because you care about the poor—that doesn’t work. He provides data:

The one thing you can say about capitalism is that, although it produces inequality, which it absolutely does, it also produces wealth—and all the other systems don’t. They just produce inequality.

So, here’s a few free market stats: From 1800 to 2017 income growth, adjusted for inflation, grew by 40 times for production workers and 16 times for unskilled labor, while GDP rose by a factor of about .5 from 1 AD to 1800. So, from 1 AD to 1800 AD it was like nothing. Flat. And then, all of a sudden, in the last 217 years there’s been this unbelievably upward movement of wealth.

And it doesn’t only characterize the tiny percentage of people at the top, who, admittedly, do have most of the wealth…. [The absolutely poor at the bottom are] getting richer faster now than they ever have in the history of the world.

And we’re eradicating poverty in countries that have adopted moderate free market policies at a rate that’s unparalleled. So, here’s an example. One of the UN millennial goals was to reduce the absolute rate of poverty in the world by 50% between 2000 and 2015. And they defined that as $1.90 a day. Pretty low, you know. But you have to start somewhere. We hit that at 2012, three years ahead of schedule.

And you might be cynical about that and say, well, it’s kind of an arbitrary number. But the curves are exactly the same at $3.80 cents a day and $7.60 a day. Not as many people have hit that, but the rate of increase towards that is the same. The bloody UN thinks that we’ll be out of poverty, defined by $1.90 a day, by the year 2030. It’s unparalleled.

Do you really care about getting the poor out of poverty? Because we know how to do that: free markets.

In a different debate—this one was a Jordan Peterson/Sam Harris debate in Dublin, moderated by Douglas Murray, which I reviewed via a response by commentator Chris Kohls on his Mr. Reagan podcast. The debate was on the efficacy (or harm) of religion, but Harris failed to engage on that. So there was a diversion to other themes, which includes our main theme for today:

There’s just as much error on the side of empathy as there is on the side of too little empathy. And that’s a hard thing for everyone to learn, because empathy feels so good. Like, if you feel mercy towards a suffering child, that is kind of an indication that you’re an ethical person. But that’s not the basis for complex and sophisticated foreign policy.

from left, Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Sam Harris
in the Dublin debate, as reviewed by Mr. Reagan podcast
screenshot from here

Jordan Peterson was talking about borders, which I’ve heard him talk about elsewhere. But this is an excellent way of thinking about them, so I’ll share this version:

Borders exclude and privilege those within the borders. Yes. OK, now let’s take that seriously. Now, part of the seriousness is, poor innocent children are hurt at borders. That happens all the time. OK, the question is, are you willing to give up the borders?

Now let’s think about what borders are. Your skin is a border. And you’re prejudiced in protection of your skin. For example, you won’t just sleep with anyone; you reserve the right to keep that border intact. Right? And to be choosy about the manner in which it’s broached. You likely have a bedroom; it probably has walls. You have clothing. You have a house. You have a town. You have a state. You have a country. And those are all borders. It’s borders within borders within borders within borders. And you need those borders, because otherwise you will die. So we could not be too hypocritical about the damn borders. We don’t know how to organize fragile things without putting boundaries around them.

You see that in Genesis, right? As soon as people realize that—I’m sneaking in a little religion here, in case you didn’t notice—as soon as people realize, they become self-conscious. They wake up and realize their vulnerability. The first thing they do is manufacture a border between them and the world. And we need borders between us and the world.

 And we pay a bloody price for borders. And I say those words very carefully. We pay a bloody price for borders, and it’s often in the price of other people’s blood.

And so, then, the question might be, well, how should you conduct yourself ethically in a world where other people are paying in blood for your borders? And the answer that I’ve been trying to communicate to people is, get your damn house in order. Bear as much responsibility as you can. Act as effectively as you can as an individual in the world. Because then you can justify your privilege. You can justify your luck and your good fortune. And maybe, within the confines of your border, you can be more productive and useful than you would be in the absence of borders altogether.

You do what you can where you can. You don’t say, “I want to feel good about that poor suffering child at the border, so I’m going to insist that the whole country gives up that border.” Meanwhile, who cares what happens to the property owner right there at the border, or anyone else who is harmed by the lack of a border? And, for that matter, what does getting rid of the border do to help the poor suffering child there? It’s not a certainty that getting rid of the border would even help her.

We don’t really have room today to cover all the other issues on that list. But we can briefly cover a couple of them.

Gender Dysphoria

It might make you feel good to say, “I care about that poor person who was born a male but thinks he/she is a female.” OK, but it isn’t self-evident that the best treatment is to get the whole world to support that person in their self-deception. No matter how elaborate the costume—which could include hormones and surgery—the body will still be a male body, with male DNA in every cell. What could have been a reproductively fertile body could be rendered permanently infertile. Isn’t it worth considering whether there is another, maybe better, solution? Especially since outcomes for those who have transitioned are not very positive (suicide as high or higher, body dysphoria continues), and since many have overcome the dysphoria without transitioning, and many who have transitioned have regretted taking that drastic step.

It may be that the best way to care for that individual is to actually care for them individually, and get them the support and treatment that will do them the most good. That very well might include mental health therapy to deal with the gender dysphoria or confusion first. Certainly waiting would be a better way to deal with children—the majority of whom are likely to outgrow the problem by adulthood.

Affirmative Action

It might make you feel good to care about a student from a minority group that suffered discrimination in the past. But it isn’t self-evident that the best solution is to give that student special treatment, in college admissions, for example.

It might be that a black student scores relatively well on exams, showing he would do well in just about any state school, but would be well below the mainstream or even the bottom of students at an Ivy League school. Do you help that student by putting him in an environment where he’s not likely to thrive? High dropout rates among blacks given affirmative action shows it’s not a kindness. They’re also like to choose an easier major, avoiding STEM fields, where they would have done well enough to follow a good career path, if they’d gone to a good-enough college instead.

Malcolm Gladwell tells a story in David and Goliath, that illustrates this. A young woman black woman excelled in science and math in high school. She chose to attend Ivy League Brown, instead of University of Maryland. But it turned out to be overly competitive, and she struggled, coming to believe she was stupid and incapable, because she was comparing herself to even smarter students, and ended up giving up her lifelong science dream for an easier field.

Gladwell then says this about affirmative action:

Affirmative action is practiced most aggressively in law schools, where black students are routinely offered positions in schools one tier higher than they would otherwise be able to attend. The result? According to the law professor Richard Sander, more than half of all African-American law students in the United States—51.6 percent—are in the bottom 10 percent of their law school class and almost three-quarters fall in the bottom 20 percent. After reading about how hard it is to get a science degree if you’re at the bottom of your class, you’ll probably agree that those statistics are terrifying.[i]

Derryck Green, of Project 21, talks about the results of affirmative action in a recent PragerU video; the segment is from about 1:40 to 3:50, but you can watch the whole five-minute video below.

To summarize, we all need to take a clearer look at caring. Stop killing with kindness. Doing something  that looks like caring in order to make yourself feel good about how virtuous you are is called virtue signaling. Instead, try stepping back from the immediate emotion, and thinking through the specific case, or the full range of possible consequences. And then do a rationally kind act. And do that act yourself—instead of pushing, or even requiring, others to do it.

---

[i] Gladwell, Malcolm, David and Goliath, p. 91. The statistics he references are from Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It.

Would I Use a Gun? More on the Proper Role of Government

This is yet another piece on the proper role of government. We’re using a way of looking at it provided by Penn Gillette, in a speech at the libertarian CATO Institute. I came across it in a Mr. Reagan podcast compilation of various people's Red Pill moments—the change in direction of people from progressive/leftist/socialist to freedom-loving Constitutional conservative. Penn’s is from 11:20 to 13:50 on the video. 

Penn Gillette, speaking at the CATO Institute
screenshot from this video

I met Teller when I was 18, and we started putting together our magic show, and I guess we were kind of fast tracked to be Hollywood liberals. I met a man named Tim Jennison. I was then just your standard liberal, there in the end of the 80s, and Tim was libertarian. And Tim was also a peacenik.

I started giving all the arguments for why the government needed to be more powerful and do all these things. And Tim said a really simple sentence to me: “Do you think it’s OK to punish people who’ve done nothing wrong?” And I said, “No.” And then he said, “Then why is it OK to reward people who’ve done nothing right? Can’t you see that you can’t reward without punishing? They are the same thing.”

And then Tim started saying, “You know, you’re so against force. You’ve never hit anybody in your life. You are insanely peacenik in terms of the way you see war and what you think the countries should do. Why do you think it’s so OK for the government to use force to get things done that you think are good ideas?” He said, “You’re wrong. You’re an a—hole! Think about this.”

Turns out, to me, that’s the way you argue with me. Because that’s the way you show respect. You’re saying, “I’m really telling you what I really think. I’m not gonna try to trick you or try to be nice or suck you in. I’m just telling you what I think.”

And it started me thinking, one really good definition of government—that the government are the guys with the guns. And we are the people that tell the government what they can do. So, in my morality, I shouldn’t be able to tell anyone to do something with a gun that I wouldn’t do myself.

If you asked me, would I use a gun to stop a murder? Yeah. Would I use a gun to stop a rape? Yeah. Stop robbery? Yeah. To protect our country and our way of life? Yeah.

Would I use a gun to build a library? [pause] No! Do I think libraries are really important? Wicked important! So, will I give my money to help someone build a library? Yeah. Will I ask other people to give their money to help build a library? Yeah. Will I beg? Yeah. Will I lie? A little bit. Will I use a gun to get someone to build a library? No.

And that is, in a nutshell, my entire view of politics.

Penn is an atheist, a libertarian, and often profane; we don't agree on everything, but because he's clear on what he believes and why, there's a lot we can agree on. I'm interested particularly in his definition of government, along with his "would I use a gun" question.

I think this might make a useful game. We’ll use the question “Would I use a gun to…” and then fill in the blank. This will only work with a civilized people, who believe they shouldn’t go around killing people. That’s why it worked with Penn Gillette. So we’ll start with that premise.

image found here

Would I use a gun to…

·         Take money from someone who earned it to give to someone who didn’t earn it?

·         Force a business owner to pay all workers, regardless of ability or contribution to revenue, a minimum wage of, say, $15?

·         Build a school?

Let’s take that last one, because it’s similar to Penn’s library example. Is it important? Yes (“wicked important,” he would say). Would you give your money to help build one? Possibly, depending on the particular school, but yes. Would you ask your neighbors and friends to give their money to build the school? Yes. Would you even go to businesses and ask them to contribute to building the school? Yes. (Penn adds, would you lie? but mostly for humor, so we’ll skip that.)

But would you go to your neighbors, or the neighborhood businesses, and pull on gun on them to force them to cough up a “generous donation” for this school? And then you’d feel comfortable living among these people afterward? I’d say no. I’m assuming you’d say no too.

Let’s get a little more specific. Would I use a gun to…

·         Force neighbors and friends to pay for LGBT-agenda sex ed to be taught to elementary school children?[i]

·         Force neighbors to submit their children to such sex ed?

·         Force neighbors and friends to pay for children to be indoctrinated with the “rightness” of doing away with religious freedom, the right to self-defense, the electoral college, or other limits to government spelled out in the US Constitution?

How about this. Would I use a gun to…

·         Enforce favorable treatment to a certain race?

·         Enforce favorable treatment to a certain sex?

·         Force people to pay for others to kill unborn babies?

·         Force people to pay for other people’s health insurance?

·         Force people to favor people from other countries entering our country illegally over people who follow our laws for entering our country?

If you’re willing to do these things, you pretty much just look like a thug. You look evil. And it’s pretty clear, when we put it this way, that you would be doing something evil if you took a gun to force your neighbors to behave a certain way or do certain things.

This “use a gun” description really is the way it is. It just looks sanitized if a government does it for you, and you don’t ever see the guns. But it is in fact coercion at the bottom of it.

How about this one: Would I use a gun to…

·         Force a person to use pronouns that are both inaccurate and not part of the language’s natural usage?

Jordan Peterson speaks on transgender pronoun law
screenshot from here

That’s the actual situation in Canada regarding gender pronouns, which Jordan Peterson gained fame for standing up against. He didn’t actually offend any transgendered person in his presence. He didn’t even refuse to use such a person’s preferred pronoun when respectfully requested—depending on circumstances. He just said that government’s assertion of power to control his speech—not even to prevent certain words, but to require certain unnatural words—was a bridge too far. He would not submit. And he has pointed out that would mean the government would then be required to fine him. He wouldn’t pay. And if they imprisoned him, he would go on a hunger strike. He would not submit to this government coercion. And he understood fully what his refusal meant.

What his standing up has done is point out that government is, in essence, force. Which we’ve symbolized in today’s piece as a gun. If a transgendered person is so offended that people don’t use the pronouns they require (and they don’t all require the same ones, so it’s anyone’s guess what such a person might want) that they feel justified in pulling out a gun and threatening death if their choice of pronoun is not used—then that person is too uncivilized to be among us. That person needs mental health therapy, possibly even institutionalization.

Yet we have governments using their guns, their force, for these things that we clearly wouldn’t use a gun for ourselves.

As Penn Gillette pointed out, “We, the People,”[ii] do not have power to delegate anything to the government that we don’t have the natural right to do ourselves. We have the right to our life, liberty, and property. We have the right to protect those things for ourselves and our families and neighbors. So we have the right to hire government to protect those limited things for us.

If you wouldn’t pull a gun on your neighbor to force him to call you by a particular pronoun—because that would be crazy—then you don’t have that power to delegate to government.

If you wouldn’t pull a gun on your neighbor to force a “charitable donation” to yourself or another neighbor, then you don’t have that power to delegate to government.

If you wouldn’t pull a gun on your neighbor to force her to frog-march her children to the local school for LGBT indoctrination, then you don’t have that power to delegate to government.

If you wouldn’t pull a gun on your neighbor to force him to never speak opinions that you disagree with, then you don’t have that power to delegate to government.

Governments have been usurping powers that we have not delegated—because we cannot delegate powers we don’t have.

We can’t vote to delegate a power to government that we don’t have. That would just make it a democratic tyranny, but a tyranny nevertheless—which is why we don’t have a democracy. We have a constitutional republic. If, as Benjamin Franklin noted, we can keep it.

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[i] This is happening in California now, as in this story by Rebecca Friedrichs. I wrote about Friedrichs and this issue here, and pertaining to other states, in two parts starting here.

[ii] Not quoting Gillette here, of course, but the Declaration of Independence.

Who Is Pulling the Strings?

I’m sharing a video today that I’m not altogether certain about, but it has gotten my attention.

It’s a 25-minute presentation by a commentator named Chris Kohls, on a YouTube channel he calls Mr. Reagan (referring to Pres. Ronald Reagan).

Chris Kohls, Mr. Reagan presesntation
screenshot from here

He asserts that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a puppet, hired through a casting call, who essentially learns her lines but has no ideas of her own. He presents evidence that she’s managed and controlled by her chief of staff (among others), who is part of a group called the Justice Democrats, founded by Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks.

I don’t know Kohls, hadn’t heard of him before seeing a clip on Tuesday’s The News and Why It Matters on The Blaze. (This section is about 18 minutes in; a subscription is required.) But I later saw a link to the longer video, which I’ve included below, at the bottom of this piece.

I looked up Kohls. He’s an actor and commentator. Other commentators have also started as actors; Michael Knowles, on The Daily Wire, for example, so being an actor doesn’t necessarily mean he’s just acting.  But is it possible someone is scripting this for Kohls? I guess that’s possible. It’s also possible that he’s right.

So I also looked up the Justice Democrats. According to Wikipedia:

Justice Democrats is an American progressive political action committee founded on January 23, 2017, by Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, and former leadership from the 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. Uygur and Kulinski are no longer affiliated with the group.

from Justice Democrats platform page

I took a look at their platform positions on the Justice Democrats website. It’s probably safe to say I’m diametrically opposed to everything they want—or, when they claim to want something I also want, I know you can’t get that result the way they want to get it.

They want:

·         The Green New Deal—i.e., $40 trillion (double the annual GDP) in programs that would devastate the economy, take away our transportation, and lower our standard of living to “equal” poverty.

·         Guaranteed jobs and income, regardless of merit or willingness to produce.

·         Higher taxes—without a way to escape (from which anyone who could would, of course, move away).

·         Free Medicare-style healthcare for all. Paid for by those high taxes that people and companies would leave the country to avoid.

·         Free college and trade school tuition. Paid for by—well, as I said above.

·         Protection of abortion under all conditions—enforcing paying for it through taxes, no matter what.

·         And other “social justice” causes that either have no connection to reality or are purposely intent on imposing tyranny on us all.

·         Oh, and also abolish ICE.

Kohls says Ocasio-Cortez didn’t “run for Congress”; she “was run.” In other words, it wasn’t her idea to run as a candidate for Congress; it was some puppeteers’ idea to run someone in that role—someone they could control and use as a vehicle for their agenda.

The current Justice Democrats director, Alexandra Rojas, says they got 10,000 applicants for the role. Ocasio-Cortez says she wasn’t even the one who put her name in to apply; her brother put her name in.

Kohls says he’s done casting, and he’s been cast in roles. He thinks they did a superb job of casting. Ocasio-Cortez is appealing, attractive, appears to be a “common man” type of representative.

And she’s almost devoid of any ability to think through an issue beyond the talking points. I don’t think she’s stupid; I think she’s ignorant. She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. But she seems perfectly willing to speak the lines given to her. That’s got to be better for the puppeteers than a politician-with-own-agenda would be.

This explains why Ocasio-Cortez never engages in interviews that pit her against an adversary, or even a serious line of questioning. And she doesn’t debate. Even under these conditions, when she’s pressed beyond her talking points, she blathers.

Saikat Chakrabarti, co-founder Justice Democrats
and chief-of-staff for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez
screenshot from here

I had been thinking she must at least be brilliant at social media. But it turns out those behind her are the experts at that too. Among them are experienced social media manipulators. Saikat Chakrabarti, social media expert for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, who is one of the co-founders of Justice Democrats, is Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff. Supposedly it was her staff that wrote the behemoth Green New Deal legislation--during a weekend in December. Justice Democrats are listed as one of the groups that helped. Kohls says he can't find evidence that Ocasio-Cortez was even in the room during the creation of her flagship legislation.

If it were only about this one district in a very blue area of New York, I wouldn’t give this a second thought. But they’ve been doing this practice in multiple races, targeting mainstream democrats to make them more radical. In 2018 they won three races. That was their first campaign year. They’re playing a long game.

It’s something to watch for. We tend to expect both lies and radicalism from democrats. But this isn’t about fighting candidates, or even politicians who could be voted out. This is about the people hidden behind the scenes, controlling the message, controlling the media messaging, controlling the votes of representatives—and these puppeteers are unelected and unaccountable. If one of their puppets gets voted out, they’ll just cast another for the role.

Imagine the damage these shadow-governors could do with a larger portion of the legislature, or, heaven forbid, the presidency.

People who think you’re seeing a fresh, new face with great new ideas—you’ve been duped.

That was this year. The next question is, how do we keep you from being duped next year? Because the freedom, prosperity, and civilization of all of us depends on you susceptible populists not getting duped.