So Many Things They Know That Aren’t So

image found here

That Reagan quote is our theme today. We're applying it to Friday's oral arguments at the Supreme Court and Thursday's anniversary of the January 6, 2021, difference of opinions.

 

SCOTUS on Mandates

This past Friday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the vaccine mandate cases, both for OSHA and for healthcare workers at facilities receiving federal funding. The first took two hours; the second, more tailored case, was an hour and a half. You’re welcome to listen to all of it. But I’ll go over some of the highlights, and the commentary on those highlights.

Notable is the way the nine justices appear. Three do not wear masks; six do. Note that all are triple-vaxxed (two vaccine doses plus booster). Everyone had to have a clear COVID test to enter. Therefore, theoretically, there was no reason to wear a mask in a sparsely populated, well-ventilated room—unless you assume the vaccines and tests do not work and a person with no symptoms can spread the disease.

The three who don’t wear masks—Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch—ask questions about constitutional authority. Where does the government have power to do what it’s doing?

The three Democrat appointees all wear masks—and Sotomayor was additionally tuned in remotely. I couldn’t see this; I’m using a description from Robert Barnes from the Viva & Barnes Sunday night livestream. So I’m further confounded that someone might think she could get the disease over the internet. Is this an old person misunderstanding about computer viruses?

Crankshaft comic of January 8, 2022, found in the Houston Chronicle

Anyway, these three do not seem interested in the law, or the Constitution, or authority. They simply put forward the notion that the government can do whatever it deems necessary, because—crisis! Extraordinary times; extraordinary measures.

The remaining three middling justices, with masks, asked questions that made it seem, according to Barnes, they were all focused on, “Isn’t this a little too much?”

So mask wearing—or at least lack of it—might be an indicator of constitutional understanding, just as it seems to be out in the general population.

The description of mask wearing, by the way, was different, according to Amy Howe on SCOTUS Blog, where she says all of the eight present wore masks except Gorsuch. And she noted that two of the lawyers also participated remotely. So I don’t know whether the mask is the true indicator. But the division of three segments of justices seems apt.

Politifact tweet, January 7, 2022
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Sotomayor was the most embarrassing to the Court. Even Politifact rated her exaggerations as “very false.” She tried claiming:

We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators!!!!!

Exclamations points are my addition. The fact is, there have only been 83,000 children hospitalized with COVID since the pandemic began. And Fauci last week noted that we still do not differentiate between hospitalized for COVID and hospitalized with COVID. Everyone admitted to a hospital for any reason these days is given a COVID test. If they test positive (and false positives are still common), then they are listed as a COVID case, even when asymptomatic. So a child with a broken leg could be considered a COVID case. Many children, particularly during the Delta and Omicron phases, have had COVID, but most are mild and may not even be tested. So, yes, there are cases. But an illness that is milder for children that the flu ought not to cause a justice of the Supreme Court to clutch her pearls in a panic.

According to federal data, under 5,000 children with a positive COVID test were in hospitals in this country. Again, that’s “with,” not necessarily hospitalized “because of” COVID. The CDC said Friday that 4 in 100,000 children admitted to hospitals are infected with COVID—maybe that’s the factoid she twisted. The CDC’s Dr. Rochelle Walensky added, “We have not yet seen a signal that there is any increased severity in this age demographic.” She also noted that similar worries about the Delta variant had proved to be unfounded.

There was more need of fact-checking. Sotomayor also claimed, “Omicron is as deadly as Delta." Not so. South Africa got through their entire wave with possibly zero deaths from the variant, as of mid-December. Cases skyrocketed and then dropped.

Southern Africa has been improving for weeks, meaning
its peak has passed. Data from here, January 9, 2022.

Other countries are now going through the precipitous rise in cases. In our area, so many people have been coming down with it that we closed church on Sunday. I’ve known many who have had it lately—many more lately than I’ve known during the rest of the whole pandemic. But I know no one needing hospitalization. During earlier variants I did know of several hospitalized cases. So I think we’re in the Omicron wave now. But death from COVID tends to appear late—after weeks of treatment. So current deaths could still be from the Delta variant. That data is extrapolated from spot testing; not everyone knows what variant they have. But the milder symptoms and quick spread right now mean it’s probably Omicron.

Omicron is at least as easy to deal with through early treatment as earlier variants. And that information doesn’t even appear in the SCOTUS hearings.

There’s another detail I’m wondering about: if the wave lasted about four weeks in South Africa, and is already well underway here, then getting vaccinated now would still leave you vulnerable during the coming few weeks. Getting a shot might even make you more vulnerable. So why the continued push for vaccination?

Anecdote for our times: I’m familiar with someone trying to bring his fiancée over from Ukraine. She had COVID a month or so ago. In Ukraine they seem to be aware that, while your natural antibodies are very high from just having had the disease, you shouldn’t get a vaccine; that’s not helpful and possibly dangerous. So she has to keep going back for tests until her antibodies go down (and, by the way, they go down in the current active state but remain in memory cells, so she’ll still have immunity), because the US won’t allow her in without being fully vaccinated.

Here’s what the Democrat-appointed justices seem to believe:

·         COVID-19 is as dangerous and likely to cause death as smallpox or Ebola.

·         It is just as dangerous to children as adults and elderly.

·         Nothing works against this dangerous pathogen except vaccines—and three shots are much better than two—or more if deemed necessary later.

·         The vaccines guarantee immunity and spreading. Except from the unvaccinated; you can still get it from them.

·         The unvaccinated spew the pathogen wherever they roam, killing off people in their wake, whether they have the disease or not.

·         If the justices are personally fearful of a pathogen, then certainly that is reason enough to favor granting any and all power to the federal government to take whatever measures the elite bureaucrats deem necessary.   

Of course COVID-19 has never been dangerous to most of the population. Most deaths have occurred in people over 80 with co-morbidities. Some deaths have occurred in younger people with serious co-morbidities, so it has been concerning. But this is the first time we’ve tried quarantining the healthy who are not at risk.

About 98% of the vulnerable population are vaccinated at this point. But there have been treatments available—and most effective are early treatments—at least since April 2020. The vaccines should never have gotten emergency use authorization status, because other effective treatments were available. The treatments were censored and derided—so that vaccines could be pushed. Whoever did this was content to have hundreds of thousands of people die unnecessarily so they could push a vaccine.

And the vaccine they pushed wasn’t a traditional vaccine that gives immunity; it was merely something that might somewhat increase a person’s antibodies for a time. It doesn’t prevent getting the virus, so they started saying the vax is necessary to have a milder case. But a vaccinated person can still get the virus and spread it. A person with natural immunity cannot get it or spread it (except, all bets are off with Omicron, which might be a step toward being a new virus, such as we have with other common cold coronaviruses). And yet people with natural immunity are as likely to be shunned for not also getting vaccinated as are those who have managed to stay well two years into this without contracting it (because their Vitamin D levels are high enough?) and do not want to be forced to take an emergency use vaccine.

Regardless of what those three justices think, vaccines have never been mandated without exemptions for religious or health reasons. Vaccines that are experimental have never been mandated—and should not be; it is a violation of the Nuremberg Code. And these vaccines neither prevent getting ill nor spreading the disease.

If it’s this easy for me to get all this information, why are these justices so ignorant?

Viva Frei is Canadian, so not fully aware of which judges were appointed by which party, etc. He put it this way:

But the questions and the hyperbole coming from the judges was what you would expect to hear from a bad lawyer, not from the highest decision-makers in the world, in the country. And it’s hyperbolic. And it’s grotesquely ignorant. And it’s the highest, allegedly, supposed to be the most informed, most educated people in the land, who are going to be making these decisions for the rest of the country.

Later in the livestream, Viva and Barnes were looking at a bit of Supreme Court history, treading carefully not to make the wild Nazi comparison, and then came back to the vaccine mandate discussion. Robert Barnes added this scathing assessment:

Frankly, this started in Britain and the US. The ideas for eugenics and social Darwinism were British and American ideas. The Nazis always cited British and American authorities. Particularly, like, I’m waiting for somebody in one of these vaccine mandate cases that gets to SCOTUS to just go after them on this issue. To say, “The last time you got high and mighty on when you thought public health authorities should be completely deferred to was when you said three generations of imbeciles was enough in order to force sterilizations that became the law of the land for 50 years, that led to forced sterilizations of poor women all across the country. So maybe you should be a little bit more careful, before you get up on your high horse about what you think medicine is, before you take off that black robe and put on that white lab coat and pretend that your professional class compadres are the ones who should dictate and direct public health policy in America. Because you have a long history of being atrocious at it. Abominable at it.” The ideas for eugenics came from America. The Nazis copied American laws and American policies and American principles—and their number one source of authority was the Supreme Court of the United States.

Here are some other sources related to the oral arguments:

·       “Left-leaning fact-checker nails Justice Sotomayor over wildly false claim about children, COVID-19” Chris Enloe for The Blaze, January 9, 2022. 

·       “’Many on Ventilators’—Justice Sotomayor Falsely Claims Over 100,000 Children in Serious Condition Because of Covid” Jeff Rizzone for The DC Weekly, January 7, 2022. 

·       “Live Q&A: Judge Refuses FDA Request, Gives 8 Months for Pfizer Data; Trump Social Network Nears” Joshua Philipp on Crossroad Highlights, January 9, 2022. 

·       “30 States Oppose Biden Vaccine Mandate, Via SCOTUS Brief of Family Councils” by Joseph Menslage for Katy Christian Magazine, January 4, 2022. 

·     

 

January 6^th Anniversary

That was enough for a full post. But the other example of ridiculous beliefs from last week was the January 6^th anniversary, which deserves a mention. Alas, my resolution to write shorter posts fails already. Anyway, first enjoy this celebration from The Babylon Bee:

·         “10 Fun Ways to Celebrate January 6 This Year” The Babylon Bee, January 5 2022. 

The most unlikable politician in history, VP Kamala Harris, gave the speech of lies: 

Certain dates echo throughout history, including dates that instantly remind all who have lived through them—where they were and what they were doing when our democracy came under assault. Dates that occupy not only a place on our calendars, but a place in our collective memory. December 7th, 1941. September 11th, 2001. And January 6th, 2021.

Let’s do a chart:

Event	Deaths	Those Who Caused Deaths
Pearl Harbor bombing	2,335 military personnel killed 1,143 wounded	Japanese declaring war against us
9/11/2001 attacks at World Trade Center and Pentagon	2,977 people were killed 6,000+ injured	Islamist terrorists continuing a war they declared against us
1/6/2021	1 protestor killed, 4 rally participants died of natural causes*	Capitol Police

 

Here’s what they seem to believe, or want us to believe:

·       All Trump supporters are insurrectionists, trying to overthrow the country.

·       Anyone who attended the Trump rally on January 6th participated in insurrection.

·       The reason people were at the capitol was to stop the official proceedings being carried out by Congress

·       They wanted to overturn a free and fair election of the people by staging a coup.

·       Trump instigated the insurrection and signaled people to attack the capitol.

·       Lawmakers barely escaped with their lives.

Except, of course, that’s not true. Any of it.

The hundreds of thousands of rally goers went to express their support for Trump and to express their dismay at the rampant voter fraud; it was called the Stop the Steal Rally. They were encouraging lawmakers to accept alternate slates of electors from several states. This is a constitutionally provided procedure—which Democrats often avail themselves of for no rational reason beyond partisanship.

Only a small percentage of people entered the capitol. Most of those who entered did so at the invitation of Capitol Police, where they were allowed to walk around and take photos.

A much smaller percentage caused violence. None of those causing violence was armed. No one at the Capitol that day was armed except the police. No lawmakers’ lives were threatened; they were all evacuated at the first sign of a breach of the building.

There was indeed some violence. Instigators have not been charged, oddly. As more evidence comes out, it appears this was an FBI-instigated entrapment operation. They were hoping to goad Trump supporters into violence, so they could blame Trump and his supporters. The people who were charged are being held on trespass charges and a few for vandalism. There are no insurrection charges, because there is no evidence of insurrection happening that day. None.

Recently information has come out about two of the “natural causes” deaths. One is a woman said to have overdosed on a prescription medication. There is surveillance footage of her being beaten by Capitol Police and dragged back into the building. This calls the coroner’s report into question as part of a political coverup. Story here:

·       “Videos Shed Light on Death of Rosanne Boyland at US Capitol on Jan. 6” by Joseph M. Hanneman for The Epoch Times, January 7 (updated January 8), 2022. 

·       “Live Q&A: Judge Refuses FDA Request, Gives 8 Months for Pfizer Data; Trump Social Network Nears” Joshua Philipp for Crossroads Highlights, January 9, 2022.  This is the same video as above; here it is linked to come up at the place of this story.

Another “natural causes” death that may also have been caused or contributed to by Capitol Police is believed to be Kevin Greeson, 55, of Alabama. He had a history of high blood pressure and reportedly died of a heart attack. But there is an eyewitness account and video showing that there was a sudden attack on a peaceful crowd by Capitol Police, with less-than-lethal tear gas, concussion grenades, rubber bullets and pepperballs. The eyewitness report is from comedian Tyler Baggins of Wisconsin, who was recording the crowd that day. His video shows the crowd singing the Lee Greenwood song “I’m Proud to Be an American” and then cuts to footage of CPR being done on Greeson.

Lauren Witzke was a reporter on scene that day for National File, reporting this:

By the time I got to the Capitol, people had already made their way up to the steps. Trump supporters were waving flags and trying to talk to the Capitol Police. Every rally-goer at that point was extremely peaceful. I then saw Capitol Police Officers with rifles appear on the balcony looking down on us. Almost immediately, the Capitol Police on the ground started throwing flash grenades into the crowds, teargassing us all.

I moved about 40 feet away from the steps, and just stood there, yet the tear gas and flash grenades continued. After being flash bombed and tear-gassed for the third time, I looked down beside me to see that a middle-aged man—Kevin Greeson—on the ground, blue in the face.

My friend Kimberley immediately began CPR and continued until her lips were bleeding. But she couldn’t get him breathing again. Men were yelling “Help we need an EMT, get this man an ambulance,” etc. We begged the Capitol police officers for help. But they ignored us, and continued macing old men who got anywhere near them.

Trump supporters were able to make a makeshift gurney out of the fencing and carry him out of there. Capitol Police continued to flash bomb and tear gas us, macing in the face anyone who came near them.

She reported that there had been absolutely no violence in the crowd prior to the assault from Capitol Police. Emergency personnel did not rush to help, as previously reported. People in the crowd carried the man to get medical help, which took about half an hour, at which time he was pronounced dead. There is some speculation that any eventual violence that happened was in response to his death and the unwarranted and unwarned assault by Capitol Police.

This information comes from a source I am not familiar with, so use your discernment. However, in other places it coincides with news I’ve heard elsewhere, such as the Ricochet report, which I wrote about and linked to here. Here's the story:

·       “VIDEOS: Jan 6 Violence Sparked by Innocent Man's Death, Police Grenade Assault on Peaceful Crowd” by A. J. Cooke for National File, January 6, 2022. 

Robert Barnes also tied these two issues together, which kind of summarizes today’s post:

Well, it’s kind of parallel to the vaccine mandate hearings at the Supreme Court. You have the reality of the way things are actually shaping up, if you look at the facts on the ground, versus the narrative, the myth, that’s being propagated by the press. And just as Sotomayor had this myth of everybody’s dying, and the kids are dying, and all the rest, the mythical narrative of January 6th is still the insurrection that almost happened, that has to be remedied. We should look at it like the second coming of the Civil War and 9/11.

And the reality is, it’s none of those things. Nobody’s been charged with insurrection. There’s more people filing frivolous lawsuits against everybody. More evidence that, in fact, capitol police—some of the other people that died that day may not have been from natural causes; it may have been the capitol police killed them. And they covered it up. And thanks to the good work of Tom Fitton at Judicial Watch, they’ve used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover more evidence. Because there’s 14,000 hours of video evidence the government’s trying to hide from the world, including from the defendants themselves.

And it appears the reason for that is not only a lot of informants being part of the process, but the Capitol Police behaved in a very illicit manner, and was just violently bringing people in and beating the daylights out of them for kicks and giggles. Including women, older women, like that.

Now we’re starting to find out why they hid and covered a lot of this up. That the only really violent people that day were actually the capitol police, not the people who are accused of being the insurrectionists.

This is not the America we know and love. God help us. Here’s a New Year’s wish: May all their crimes be shouted from the rooftops; may all the corruption be rooted out of our government; may we return to the thriving civilization that happens when a free and good people are allowed to live their lives without tyranny.

An Age of Populism

This past Saturday we had a specially scheduled extra Tea Party meeting to hear from author/historian Larry Schweikart. He’s the author of A Patriot’s History of the United States, published back in 2004. It was a NYT #1 bestseller, but that didn’t happen until 2010, after Glenn Beck talked about it multiple times on his show. Six years after publication. It was kind of a shock for an academician used to never selling more than a boxful of books.

He has written several other books, and is on tour now with the biography Reagan: The American President. There are other bios of Reagan; why do another? Dr. Schweikart says it’s because the others didn’t get to who Reagan really was. He says, “Reagan was the guy you saw on TV. He bled red white and blue.” That was not an act or a public face.

As an actor, Reagan definitely wasn’t a “method actor.” He knew how to be himself, but he didn’t like portraying someone he wasn’t. He only once portrayed a bad buy. But he did have two good roles: the dying George Gip, the Gipper, in Knute Rockne—he had played football and that was real to him. And the other was Kings Row, in which he plays a man who started as a wealthy socialite who loses his money and has to do labor. His legs are crushed in a railroad yard accident, and a sadistic doctor assures him they’re operable but then amputates the legs unnecessarily out of hatred. Reagan’s character is embittered and despondent for much of the movie, but when his friend tells him what actually happened, he responds with defiance. Did the doctor think he lived in his legs? He recovers his spirit and renews his will to live.

Dr. Schweikart, and many people, believe Reagan deserved an Academy Award for that role, but Spencer Tracy won that year.

There are other actors who are best playing characters like themselves. John Wayne was one. (Coincidentally, they both had the nickname Duke.) John Wayne also avoided playing bad guys. Whoever he played, he was visibly John Wayne playing that role—and we liked seeing him do that. Reagan’s acting method was like that. It’s different from Johnny Depp, or Tom Hanks, or Meryl Streep. But we’re OK with that.

His experience in media—which included sports announcing, and hosting Death Valley Days (history stories I remember watching weekly as a child), in addition to acting—helped him appear at ease in front of a camera. He knew how to speak directly to people, so the media didn’t have to (didn't get to) filter what he meant through them. That was something relatively new, for a president. FDR started fireside chats on radio, but wouldn’t have translated well to television. JFK was the first to benefit from television. But Reagan was the first to handle television and other media platforms with comfortable ease.

He had a simple approach to being president—two goals that very few people believed were possible, but he believed them and said so, and they connected with the American people:

1.       Defeat the Soviet Union.

2.       Build the economy.

The two goals were intertwined, according to Dr. Schweikart. For example, “The Soviets exported vodka, gold, oil, and spies. They still do.” So Reagan set out to control inflation, no matter the cost. By 1982 inflation dropped to zero. From 7-8%. That dropped the price of gold. Then Reagan met with oil dealers in Saudi and told them to burn their reserves, to control prices. The Soviets were outraged, because this affected their ability to sell their oil. Without money, they floundered in the Cold War.

Reagan allied with Pope John Paul II to do an end run around the Soviets. Together they increased funding to Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, pumping in rock music—which is the music of freedom. (Dr. Schweikart recommends a video on this: Rockin’ the Wall: How Music Ripped the Iron Curtain.) Rock music made Soviet people want to be like Americans—and even want to be Americans.

Reagan was out of office by the time the Berlin Wall fell, but ending the Cold War—that was Reagan’s doing.

Dr. Larry Schweikart
image from here

There are plenty of other stories. But I’m interested in some connections Dr. Schweikart made during the Q&A, about populism, which is something I don’t understand. I think our country works best when the people are good citizens, educate themselves on issues and candidates, and then make informed decisions when they go vote. I do that; I do my part.

But the outcome of voting depends on swaying those who haven’t done their study and due diligence.

There are people who make comparisons between Reagan and Trump. Their personalities and characters are quite different. But both of them understand the media really well. They both lived and worked in media before ever entering politics. And the public knew them through their media appearances long before getting acquainted with their politics.

Trump has also had a fairly simple message/plan:

·         Secure borders.

·         Appoint constitutionalist judges.

·         Lower taxes and roll back over-regulation to improve the economy.

These things, he told us directly, would Make America Great Again. He'd have none of this managing a superpower in decline, like Obama was doing. As Carter was doing before Reagan, too—another parallel.

I recall that my household was for Reagan in 1968. (Fun fact: the political pundits of the day thought he was too old to run in 1968.) We watched his speech at the Republican National Convention on TV. My dad was into politics, and even ran for office once. My mom wasn’t interested in politics—but she was interested in Ronald Reagan—whom she knew from movies and TV, and he was so handsome. (Another fun fact, or rather, personal opinion: my dad had a similar look, although blond—thick hair, rosy cheeks, similar face shape, at least in his younger years.) Anyway, it’s my experience that there was a good portion of the electorate, from at least the 1960s, who selected their candidate based on his popularity—his name recognition plus personal appeal to the common people.

Dr. Schweikart wrote a book called How Trump Won—which he wrote before the election. He knew what was coming when most of the media did not. I intend to read it, but I gather his theory is that only a populist candidate can win in today’s America.

The Democrats don’t have a populist candidate. That’s why their ridiculously large field is flailing. When asked who he thinks their nominee will be, he says, “She’s not in the race—yet.” People suggest Michelle Obama. Good guess, because she does have a sort of populist appeal. But he believes she’s not interested in politics or actually running the country. No, he’s predicting Hillary Clinton. Because she’s obsessed, and feels entitled. And certainly has the name recognition the others don’t.

I hope he’s wrong. I don’t believe she could win; I just don’t want to see her in front of our faces ever again.

But he made another somewhat wild prediction: Who will be the Republican nominee in 2024? Kanye West.

I did not see that one coming. Again, I hope he’s wrong. I’ve been paying attention, and I’m aware of Kanye West’s conversion to Christianity, and somewhat to conservatism. He seems sincere. People report that there’s true humility there. I’d much rather that than anyone the Democrats would put forward. But I prefer someone with a track record of living a Christian life through some hard times and still sticking with it. And I prefer as a president someone who is so well-versed in the Constitution that they could chat with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, and add his own federalist paper to their conversation. I don’t expect a person dedicated to writing and promoting his music will be spending sufficient time on economics and foreign policy to qualify.

I didn’t think Trump had either. But at least economics was his bailiwick.

But populism counts, Dr. Schweikart is convinced. For example, there may not be a person under 40 in the United States who doesn’t know who Kanye West is. Only a fraction of that large demographic have any idea who Mike Pence is—even though he’s the vice-president.

Populism requires a candidate who connects with young people who are not paying attention to politics. You’ve got to have someone who speaks their language, and appeals to what they’re thinking about—while convincing them that freedom, prosperity, and civilization are preferable to tyranny, poverty, and savagery disguised as “free stuff” that someone richer will pay for.

Dr. Schweikart told us to write down his predictions, and we'll see if he can stand by them. By the way, Kanye said on radio a year ago, “When I’m president…” referring to after 2024. It’s actually on his mind.

It’s a short wait to find out if Dr. Schweikart is right about Hillary Clinton. I heard on radio today that she has only until around the 15^th (or maybe 18^th) of November to get on the ballot in one of the earliest primary voting states.

While I had a historian handy, I asked, how do we keep our history, keep truth? He said that will be the fight of the next 5-7 years. The dinosaur media is being pushed out. New media, including online media is taking over. We need to write. And we need to make videos—to reach the youth. We need to be involved in popular culture.

As the late Andrew Breitbart said, “Politics is downstream from culture.” So, if we want to have a say in how we're governed, we have to contribute to the culture.

I don’t know how to do these that. But I hope there are people out there who do. Because apparently our future depends on what younger people watch, hear, see, read, and pay attention to.

We Must Never Forget

It’s a Memorial Day, which is always worth noting here, where we seek freedom, prosperity, and civilization. Freedom isn’t free.

I’m mostly sharing what other people have posted to celebrate this day.

First, a reminder of what this day is:

·         Armed Forces Day, for those currently serving, is celebrated the third Saturday in May

·         Veterans’ Day, for living former servicemen/women, is celebrated November 11.

·         Memorial Day, for those who died while serving, is celebrated the last Monday in May.

       

Image from Military Families United, found on Facebook.

Here are some images that remind us of the reverent spirit of the day.

Quote from Ronald Reagan,
image found on Facebook, from Founding Principles

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in the rain,
imaged shared on Facebook in 2015 by Randy Baughn

Here are some reminders of what our freedoms cost.

Image shared on Facebook by Newsradio 740 KTRH

 

Image found on Facebook, shared by Until Every Troop Comes Home

This next section is the Memorial Day post from my US Representative, Dan Crenshaw, former Navy Seal who lost his right eye in Afghanistan, specifically honoring those he lost from his Seal Team. The words and photos are his:

Enjoy your Memorial Day and let us remember why we celebrate. We celebrate the lives of the heroes we have lost. Never Forget.

Please read the entire post.

Brendan Looney. Did our first deployment together at SEAL Team 3. One of the best and most respected leaders on the Team. Husband, son, and brother. “Be Strong. Be accountable. Never complain.”

Pat Feeks. One of the best JTACs out there. Best story teller I ever met (those who knew him will understand!). Loyal friend, husband, brother, and son. He always showed up when you asked him to.

Dave Warsen. All American. Spent a lot of time together on our deployment to Afghanistan. When not on missions, we’d hit the volleyball court (half sand, half rocks). Strongest guy in the platoon, and also the happiest. Truly loved and missed.

Kevin Ebbert. My roommate in BUD/S. One of the smartest, most capable, kindest SEALs I ever knew. Skilled medic, loving husband. Missed dearly.

Brad Cavner. Cool, collected, and a great operator. Brad taught me to shoot left-handed after I lost my right eye, and spent countless hours getting my CQC skills back up to speed. “It’s about the Brotherhood.”

Tom Fouke. My old roommate. Dear friend. The gentlest big guy I ever knew. He raised an Argentine Horned frog named Lester when we lived together. Loved life, loved Metallica. World would be a better place with him in it.

Brett Marihugh. The most motivating and entertaining guy in our BUD/S class. Told stories for hours about his time as a cop before he joined. He pretended to be a doctor so he could visit my hospital room in Afghanistan and check up on me after I got hit by an IED.

Charles Keating IV. “Chuck Heavy”. His laugh was contagious. Life of the party. He was killed placing himself in danger so that his Team wouldn’t have to. Navy Cross recipient. Epic hero, husband, son, brother.

Another story of loss is Jennie Taylor's, mother of seven whose husband was killed in Afghanistan on his fourth deployment in fifteen years. She is now faced with carrying on their life dreams in his absence, with God’s help.

Jennie Taylor with her husband and kids
image from here

Finally, below is a brief speech from President Ronald Reagan on a past Memorial Day. There’s this memorable quote in the middle:

Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States, and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost. It imposes a burden. And just as they whom we’re grateful were willing to sacrifice, so too must we, in a less final, less heroic way, be willing to give of ourselves.

And it ends with this good summary for today:

As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation.

Being Capable of Self-Rule

I don’t like the idea of elite vs. the great unwashed, or the proletariat, or the uneducated masses. I’m with Martin Luther King, Jr., willing to look at the content of a person’s character, rather than where they come from or some other arbitrary detail.

But the purpose of politics is to persuade large numbers of people—people who may or may not be educated or clear thinking enough to understand the issues on their own and be capable of recognizing solutions.

The difficulty is that, in a democratic society, the persuaded masses rule, whether they’re right or not.

Our founding fathers tried to prevent the damage that could happen from a straight-up democracy—which is essentially mob rule. They gave us a Constitution, which limited government to certain enumerated powers. And within those constraints, they set up a representative government, with a bicameral legislative body, with the House of Representatives based on population, and the Senate based on the separate states equally. The House would respond more directly to the people, but the Senate would be a more deliberative body, thinking more of state interests than individual interests.

"Scene at the Signing of the Constitution"
painting by Howard Chandler Christy
image from Wikipedia

They separated the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, with more or less equal powers that would be a check and balance on each other. All of this was to prevent any branch from usurping powers it was not granted.

The founders took great care to set up government to do only what it was intended to do: protect life, liberty, and property.

But a self-ruling people—that is, a people who set up their own government, rather than become subjects of a ruler—must be capable of ruling themselves.

Usually I have a lot of faith in people in general to think things through and try to do the right things. That’s what I do. So sometimes I believe any normal person does that.

But there’s a lot of evidence that large portions of the populace do not think things through. And that leaves them subject to being swayed by propaganda rather than truth.

There was an example this week. Steven Crowder did one of his “Change My Mind” sessions at a college campus. This one was “White Privilege Is a Myth: Change My Mind (2nd Edition)” on the campus of Texas Christian University. It’s rather long, most of an hour. But I’ve included it in full below.

Most of the conversation is between Crowder and a young black woman who defers mostly to her white friend (Crowder points out that the white girl is “white-splaining” for the black girl). The white woman claims that America was set up by white men for the sole benefit of white men, and has been corrupt and oppressive from its inception.

While she is right that women didn’t originally have the right to vote (and, depending on the state, neither did white or any other race of men if they didn’t own property), she fails to understand that all of the Bill of Rights pertained to women every bit as much as men. Slaves were originally excluded in slave states—but of course we suffered a Civil War to correct that.

When Crowder asks what evidence she has of men having privilege today, she claims it is really white male privilege; there’s no privilege for black men, who get sent to jail for having a quarter ounce of weed while white men would get away with it. Crowder asks for statistics; she has none. He uses his handy phone and looks up data on the NAACP website, which shows that black men are incarcerated at higher rates, but that site has no mention of behavior. The girl insists that of course black men don’t commit crimes at higher rates, because it’s all about the racist system. She knows that is so, but she doesn’t have data. Crowder provides some for his side, but she cannot. But she’s sure it’s just a matter of doing a little online search, and then her views would be proven.

Except they’re not.

After Crowder talks with her, he has a young black man and his Asian friend, neither of whom believe they’re oppressed in America. Their conversation is more uplifting.

The earlier white girl was absolutely certain that she was right. And she was absolutely certain that what she was saying was common knowledge and common sense. Even though it was either unsupported opinion or provably false.

She was a college student, and made it clear she had gotten a scholarship for being top of her class. So she knew what she knew—accusing Crowder of enjoying privileges that were unrelated to his life growing up in a French Canadian culture with a fair amount of oppression and difficulty, not coming to the US until adulthood.

As Reagan used to say,

“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”

On Tuesday, working at the polls—primary elections where Republicans and Democrats had to awkwardly share a room for their separate polling places—I was gratefully aware that voters were trying to do their civic duty. But I was also aware that not very many spend as much time as I do researching and figuring out who to vote for, especially for the many smaller judicial races. I do believe if everybody studied as hard before voting as I do, we would have better outcomes, even though they wouldn’t always agree with me. 

In order to be an informed—instead of a propaganda-manipulated—people, we need to know the criteria to look for. A nice candidate who seems articulate isn’t enough. And it certainly isn’t enough for a candidate to try to sway voters by appealing to their tribal issues (race, gender, etc.) We need voters who understand how our government is set up.

When you’re looking at candidates, there are questions that help gauge just how likely a person is to pursue freedom, prosperity, and civilization for all. These are Spherical Model questions, rather than right/left questions. I laid them out in 2015, here.

If you—or your representative—need to decide on an issue, you can ask these freedom-leading questions: 

·         Is the policy being debated something that an individual has the right to do, and therefore has the right to delegate to his/her government?  For example, a person has the right to protect his own life and property. He can, therefore, combine resources with his neighbors and hire a government entity, such as a sheriff, to do that job for him. Similarly, the several states can combine to delegate the power of defending the nation to a national government entity. Conversely, a person does not have the right to take his neighbor’s excess grain production, for example, and bestow it on himself, because his neighbor was more prosperous in a particular season. He can, of course, ask his neighbor for charity, but he cannot coerce the neighbor to give. That would rightfully be considered theft. Therefore, the person cannot delegate the redistribution of wealth to the government to do for him. 

·         Does the policy infringe in any way on the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights? Does the policy infringe on the free exercise of religion or try to establish a particular sect as a state religion? Is political speech hindered? Does the policy infringe on the right of citizens to bear arms? Does the policy constitute an illegal search or seizure? Does the policy deprive a person of life, liberty, or property when the person has not committed a crime for which that deprivation is the just sentence? Does the policy try to claim for government a power that was not specifically granted in the Constitution? etc. If the policy infringes on the God-given rights, then government cannot take that power without usurping power from the people.

·         Is the idea being debated a proper role of government, some aspect of protection (including defense, protection from interstate crime, enabling international and interstate commerce, standardized weights and measures and currency, the judiciary that guarantees the protective laws), as enumerated in the Constitution? If not, then accepting the idea is outside the Constitution and below the northern 45th parallel.

Two years ago I listed the Five Essential Attributes of Active Citizens, as outlined in a speech on Citizenship by Lawrence C. Walters.

1. Accept responsibility.

2. Do their homework.

3. Engage with others.

4. Take action.

5. Learn from their experiences.

If we’re going to remain a self-governing people, rather than slip downward into being ruled by power mongers, then we need a critical mass of educated populace, willing to do their part. If you’re reading this, that’s a start. You’re probably doing your part. So share it with anyone who has a sense of civic responsibility. If enough of us do that, then we can trust it will be enough.