Politics – Page 2 – Pat Answers Archives

Once upon a time

Government’s most basic responsibility is the preservation of civil order. The fundamental compact between government and citizens is that in return for paying taxes, government protects us from marauders. There is no point having a government if it takes the position that it cannot protect its constituents.

We can be certain that fundamental compact between government and citizens is gone, and the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse demonstrates this.

Rittenhouse was 17 years old when he traveled a few minutes from his home to the town where some of his family and friends lived to help clean graffiti, tend to injured people, help put out fires, and help keep the peace by guarding stores from looters. There is ample video coverage that proves he was doing these things.

Kyle Rittenhouse was doing what the government would not. He stepped up while local government ordered police to hang back. We saw burning, looting and violence against innocent people and businesses and our government, that has a responsibility to preserve civil order, did nothing. These weren’t protesters peacefully marching and giving speeches. These were thugs. Antifa and BLM have demonstrated in many cities over a long period of time that they are nothing more than violent thugs. Our government rolled over.

Actually, it’s worse than that. We have local and Federal elected officials calling these thugs “heroes” and “victims” and refer to them as “protesters”. They’re not just turning a blind eye to the marauders, they are lionizing them.

This is not acceptable.

You want to protest? Fine, that’s your constitutionally-acknowledged right. March, make speeches, write to officials, etc. You want to burn, loot and hurt people? You should be shot on sight.

And maybe if our local governments won’t step up and do what they should, we need to be like young Mr. Rittenhouse and step up. And if you live in an area where your local government protects thugs rather than law-abiding citizens, then maybe, just maybe, we need to remove those officials for destroying the social compact that allows the government to exist at all.

Perhaps we need to revise our history books so they begin “Once upon a time” just like all the other fairy tales.

A little Labor reality

Smithfield Foods is the largest pork producer and processor in the world. It has facilities in 26 U.S. states and it employs tens of thousands of Americans. It directly owns 460 farms and has contracts with approximately 2,100 others.But now a Chinese company has bought it for $ 4.7 billion, and that means that the Chinese will now be the most important employer in dozens of rural communities all over America.

In the future China will employ millions of American workers and dominate thousands of small communities all over the United States .

Chinese acquisition of U.S. businesses set a new all-time record last year, and it is on pace to shatter that record this year.

The Smithfield Foods acquisition is an example. Smithfield Foods is the largest pork producer and processor in the world. It has facilities in 26 U.S. states and it employs tens of thousands of Americans. It directly owns 460 farms and has contracts with approximately 2,100 others.But now a Chinese company has bought it for $ 4.7 billion, and that means that the Chinese will now be the most important employer in dozens of rural communities all over America.

Thanks in part to our massively bloated trade deficit with China, the Chinese have trillions of dollars to spend. They are only just starting to exercise their economic muscle. It is important to keep in mind that there is often not much of a difference between “the Chinese government” and “Chinese corporations”.

In 2011, 43 percent of all profits in China were produced by companies where the Chinese government had a controlling interest in.

Last year a Chinese company spent $2.6 billion to purchase AMC entertainment – one of the largest movie theater chains in the United States. Now that Chinese company controls more movie ticket sales than anyone else in the world.

But China is not just relying on acquisitions to expand its economic power.“Economic beachheads” are being established all over America.

For example, Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group, Inc. recently broke ground on a $100 million plant in Thomasville, Alabama. Many of the residents of Thomasville, Alabama will be glad to have jobs, but it will also become yet another community that will now be heavily dependent on communist China.

And guess where else Chinese companies are putting down roots? Detroit.Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology, selling everything from seat belts to shock absorbers in retail stores, and hiring experienced engineers and designers in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers.

If you recently purchased an “American-made” vehicle, there is a really good chance that it has a number of Chinese parts in it.

Industry analysts are hard-pressed to put a number on the Chinese suppliers operating in the United States.

China seems particularly interested in acquiring energy resources in the United States. For example, China is actually mining for coal in the mountains of Tennessee.Guizhou Gouchuang Energy Holdings Group spent 616 million dollars to acquire Triple H Coal Co. in Jacksboro, Tennessee.

At the time, that acquisition really didn’t make much news, but now a group of conservatives in Tennessee is trying to stop the Chinese from blowing up their mountains and taking their coal.

And pretty soon China may want to build entire cities in the United States just like they have been doing in other countries. Right now, China is actually building a city larger than Manhattan just outside Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

Are you starting to get the picture?

China is on the rise.

If you doubt this, just read the following:
* When you total up all imports and exports, China is now the number one trading nation on the entire planet.
* Overall, the U.S. has run a trade deficit with China over the past decade that comes to more than 2.3 trillion dollars.* China has more foreign currency reserves than anyone else on the planet.
* China now has the largest new car market in the entire world.
* China now produces more than twice as many automobiles as the United States does.
* After being bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, GM is involved in 11 joint ventures with Chinese companies.
* China is the number one gold producer in the world.
* The uniforms for the U.S. Olympic team were made in China.
* 85% of all artificial Christmas trees the world over are made in China.
* The new World Trade Center tower in New York is going to include glass imported from China .
* China now consumes more energy than the United States does.
* China is now in aggregate the leading manufacturer of goods in the entire world.
* China uses more cement than the rest of the world combined.
* China is now the number one producer of wind and solar power on the entire globe.
* China produces 3 times as much coal and 11 times as much steel as the United States does.
* China produces more than 90 percent of the global supply of rare earth elements.
* China is now the number one supplier of components that are critical to the operation of any national defense system.
* In published scientific research articles China is expected to become the number one in the world very shortly.

And what we have seen so far may just be the tip of the iceberg.

For now, I will just leave you with one piece of advice – learn to speak Mandarin.

America-an obituary?

We’ve traded the American Revolution for the Cultural Revolution.

“Going thru my e mails, I found this, Called America. “

“… In the springtime of youth, an endless summer beckons. As you pass 70, it’s harder to hide from reality.Nations also have seasons: Imagine a Roman of the 2nd century contemplating an empire that stretched from Britain to the Near East, thinking: This will endure forever…. Forever was about 500 years, give or take.

France was pivotal in the 17th and 18th centuries; now the land of Charles Martel is on its way to becoming part of the Muslim ummah.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the sun never set on the British empire; now Albion exists in a perpetual twilight. Its 95-year-old sovereign is a fitting symbol for a nation in terminal decline.

In the 1980s, Japan seemed poised to buy the world. Business schools taught Japanese management techniques. Today, its birth rate is so low and its population aging so rapidly that an industry has sprung up to remove the remains of elderly Japanese who die alone.

I was born in 1942, almost at the midpoint of the 20th century – the American century. America’s prestige and influence were never greater. Thanks to the ‘Greatest Generation,’ we won a World War fought throughout most of Europe, Asia and the Pacific. We reduced Germany to rubble and put the rising sun to bed. It set the stage for almost half a century of unprecedented prosperity.

We stopped the spread of communism in Europe and Asia, and fought international terrorism. We rebuilt our enemies and lavished foreign aid on much of the world. We built skyscrapers and rockets to the moon. We conquered Polio and now COVID. We explored the mysteries of the Universe and the wonders of DNA…the blueprint of life.

But where is the glory that once was Rome? America has moved from a relatively free economy to socialism – which has worked so well NOWHERE in the world.

We’ve gone from a republican government guided by a constitution to a regime of revolving elites. We have less freedom with each passing year. Like a signpost to the coming reign of terror, the cancel culture is everywhere. We’ve traded the American Revolution for the Cultural Revolution.

The pathetic creature in the White House is an empty vessel filled by his handlers. At the G-7 Summit, ‘Dr. Jill’ had to lead him like a child. In 1961, when we were young and vigorous, our leader was too. Now a feeble nation is technically led by the oldest man to ever serve in the presidency.

We can’t defend our borders, our history (including monuments to past greatness) or our streets. Our cities have become anarchist playgrounds. We are a nation of dependents, mendicants, and misplaced charity. Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.

The president of the United States can’t even quote the beginning of the Declaration of Independence (‘You know — The Thing’) correctly. Ivy League graduates routinely fail history tests that 5th graders could pass a generation ago. Crime rates soar and we blame the 2nd. Amendment and slash police budgets.

Our culture is certifiably insane. Men who think they’re women. People who fight racism by seeking to convince members of one race that they’re inherently evil, and others that they are perpetual victims. A psychiatrist lecturing at Yale said she fantasizes about ‘unloading a revolver into the head of any white person.’

We slaughter the unborn in the name of freedom, while our birth rate dips lower year by year. Our national debt is so high that we can no longer even pretend that we will repay it one day. It’s a $28-trillion monument to our improvidence and refusal to confront reality. Our ‘entertainment’ is sadistic, nihilistic and as enduring as a candy bar wrapper thrown in the trash. Our music is noise that spans the spectrum from annoying to repulsive.

Patriotism is called insurrection, treason celebrated, and perversion sanctified. A man in blue gets less respect than a man in a dress. We’re asking soldiers to fight for a nation our leaders no longer believe in.

How meekly most of us submitted to Fauci-ism (the regime of face masks, lockdowns and hand sanitizers) shows the impending death of the American spirit.

How do nations slip from greatness to obscurity?
• Fighting endless wars they can’t or won’t win
• Accumulating massive debt far beyond their ability to repay
• Refusing to guard their borders, allowing the nation to be inundated by an alien horde
• Surrendering control of their cities to mob rule • Allowing indoctrination of the young
• Moving from a republican form of government to an oligarchy
• Losing national identity
• Indulging indolence
• Abandoning faith and family – the bulwarks of social order.

In America, every one of these symptoms is pronounced, indicating an advanced stage of the disease.

Even if the cause seems hopeless, do we not have an obligation to those who sacrificed so much to give us what we had? I’m surrounded by ghosts urging me on: the Union soldiers who held Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, the battered bastards of Bastogne, those who served in the cold hell of Korea, the guys who went to the jungles of Southeast Asia and came home to be reviled or neglected.

This is the nation that took in my immigrant grandparents, whose uniform my father and most of my uncles wore in the Second World War. I don’t want to imagine a world without America, even though it becomes increasingly likely.

During Britain’s darkest hour, when its professional army was trapped at Dunkirk and a German invasion seemed imminent, Churchill reminded his countrymen, ‘Nations that go down fighting rise again, and those that surrender tamely are finished.’

The same might be said of causes. If we let America slip through our fingers, if we lose without a fight, what will posterity say of us?

While the prognosis is far from good, only God knows if America’s day in the sun is over.”

Another unsettling email

The military has ruled if you are not fully vaxxed, you are not deployable.

An unsettling email I received…take it for what it is worth.

Fayetteville Technical Community College (FTCC) has a very close working relationship with Ft. Bragg and they have a number of programs to assist troops transitioning to the civilian world. I talked to one of my folks who works with troops wanting to transition to starting their own business.

He told me that all of the transition programs are totally swamped with senior troops saying F**k it, I’m getting out, and looking for help to what they will do after the military. The next biggest group are all the rest saying the same thing. Senior NCOs and officers are bailing out.

Also, this is having a significant economic impact on Fayetteville. Fayetteville survives on selling crap to soldiers and the base. Soldiers aren’t spending money. They are hording their cash because they don’t know how long they will have a pay check.

This is a big hit on retailers because younger troops tend to blow their money every two weeks because they have no obligations and like their toys. That has all stopped. Some retailers of such toys are reporting a 50% drop in revenue/sales. Many of these businesses survived during Covid because of the troop spending never stopping. That isn’t the case anymore.

I also talked to a recently retired Special Forces (SF) senior NCO who is still plugged into SF on Bragg. The base is FULL. The main reason for this is that the .MIL had ruled weeks ago that if you weren’t fully vaxxed, then you are not deployable. Most, if not all, units on Bragg are now undeployable because too many of their troops are not vaxxed reducing their deployable troop strength below minimums. As Bragg is the home of Army SF, this is having a major impact on mission capability worldwide.

Troops that are currently deployed can’t come home because no units are available to replace them. New mission requirements can’t be fielded because they don’t have the full strength units to deploy. He told me that all of this was intentional and the opinion of senior NCOs on Bragg is that this is intentional to weed out the “undesirables” and leave a weakened force that are woke.

He also said that it was going to be cluster f**k that was going to get a lot of people killed when a nation decides to take advantage of this. The conversation included Taiwan.

The rest of what he told me I can’t share here. But needless to say, it was damn ugly.

On a side note, I had to block most of the Bragg police channels from my scanner starting a few weeks ago because their levels of calls was overwhelming the other jurisdictions that are closer to home.

Define your adversary

just because millions of people are wary, leery, and cautious when it comes to the mRNA vaccine doesn’t mean that we’re “anti-vaxxers.”

(from an email I received)

We’ve all heard of “smear tactics” or a “smear campaign” and various “smear terms.” Some of us have bore the brunt of said name-calling. When I figured out that it was an ideological weapon used (primarily) by the left wing against the right wing I became far less concerned, vulnerable, or “guilty” when I found myself as the intended target of such political weaponry. These days, I’m not one bit afraid to use those tactics on the left. Doesn’t hurt to give them a dose of their own medicine from time to time.

Anyway, I was thinking of the new smear term: “anti-vaxxer.” I’m seeing it all over the place these days. If a person is opposed to taking the Covid vaccine then he or she is automatically an “anti-vaxxer.” It’s very much like calling someone who’s opposed to illegal immigration a “racist” or a man who leads his household a “patriarchal misogynist” or a person who believes homosexuality is morally wrong a “homophobe.” Well … you get the picture.

But I want to focus on the newest smear: anti-vaxxer. Though there are people in the world and in the USA who are wholly opposed to ALL forms of vaccination I’d say that most of us are willing to accept the fact that some vaccines have been quite beneficial over the decades. I’d also say that most of us aren’t opposed to people “choosing” to be vaccinated even if we don’t believe it’s necessary. I don’t personally care what someone else pumps into his or her veins. I’m all about a person’s “right to choose” in this instance.

But we live in a world where some of the FDA “approved” medicines have turned out to be downright dangerous. We’re also aware that medical malpractice is a leading cause of death in the USA. We also know that viruses can’t be cured by vaccination (a fact that’s currently unfolding before our very eyes). When we read an Israeli study that strongly suggests that folks who’ve had Covid and recovered from it are better off than vaccinated folks, we take note.

So just because millions of people are wary, leery, and cautious when it comes to the mRNA vaccine doesn’t mean that we’re “anti-vaxxers.” It means that we don’t trust what we’re being told and we want to see what the long term effects of a new and untested and unproven vaccine will do over the long term.

I like natural, grass-fed beef while avoiding meats high in antibiotics, hormones, and that have been fed GMO grains. Does that mean that I am “anti-beef?” No … it means that I’m health-conscious.

So those willing to call me an “anti-vaxxer” should be willing to accept being called “anti-choicer” or “anti-free will” or “anti-liberty.” Turnabout is fair play.

Guest Editorial- (WARNING, ROUGH LANGUAGE)

Their entire goal is to lose. If you ever doubted, you’ve had the better part of a year of their stupidity to reflect on.

US, AT THE GATE A GUEST POST BY THOMAS
KENDALL
I was talking to Sarah yesterday and I had a revelation I think is worth sharing.

Let’s begin at the beginning. About a month ago, Instapundit posted this.

Now, I’ve been thinking of the rise and fall of civilizations lately. I can’t think why it’s been on my mind. It’s a tale as old as time—a civilization emerges, establishes a new worthwhile order, the good things brought forth by said order soften up the people maintaining it, the softening turns to decadence, and the decadence gives way to the barbarians, who clean the slate. Where would you say things are lately?

Here’s a hint. A friend and I were discussing another observation that someone made in an article recently (I wish I could find the original. I’d give credit if I could find it). The basic idea is—

In short—the federal government of the United States of America has become impotent at almost all good things.

Expanded out—There is no start to its talents. It cannot maintain its borders. Since the “election” it doesn’t even try. No surprise there. It cannot maintain friendly relationships with allies—as our recent screwing of Britain on our way out of Afghanistan shows. The “leader” of the “free world” could not be bothered to pick up the phone for our closest ally. Speaking of Afghanistan, it can’t win a war. It can’t even lose gracefully. In fact it ****ed up leaving so badly some people are entertaining that it intended to **** it up, because how the **** does somebody above the age of six not notice that pulling the military out first and the civilians out second is not even a remotely workable strategy? Resulting in leaving millions of dollars of equipment—and—excuse me, what? Millions of dollars of dollars in the desert? Fantastic.

It makes self sabotaging and idiotic choices to stymie its own domestic oil industry, while accepting a pipeline not from Canada, but one that’s a joint Russian-German venture instead. Which means the problem, contrary to any environmentalist whining, isn’t the pipeline—it’s the pipeline with a friendly country. Big surprise— its only true interest in the environment lies in international agreements that hamstring us while doing nothing to China, the world’s largest polluter. It either can’t be trusted on energy production and the environment, or is trying to get it wrong.

It can’t manage its economy. What could have been a “V” shaped recovery has been turned into an “L” shaped one. What could be contributing? Paying people to do nothing? Rampant inflation? Meanwhile all the dumbasses running the country can think of is spending several billion more dollars that don’t exist. The country has infrastructure problems for a fact, but they’ll only acknowledge that to the extent of cynically plastering the word on an “infrastructure” bill which is in fact just a far Left wishlist that largely ignores actual infrastructure, in the hopes people will be dumb enough to support it because it has the right label.

And on.

What aptitudes does it have besides taking money, trampling civil liberties, and ignoring constitutional laws at gunpoint? News flash, dummies: We don’t need peaceful protestors incarcerated without a trial. We don’t need the weight of the federal government turned to the problem of violating states rights because Texas passed a law Biden doesn’t like. We need military egresses that look like they weren’t planned by Bozo the clown and an economic plan better than something China would design for us as an attempt to permanently sink the country. Is there anyone at all in DC who can provide that? If not, is there anything useful they can do? I’ll wait.

For this shit, shit that makes even most Americans roll their eyes, which nobody at all takes seriously except dipshit Leftists who have reached the form of retardation accessible only to those with PhDs—for this we have spent 20 years sending American farm kids to their death in the sandbox? Did anyone tell them that before they signed up? I wish I could go back in time and do it. These were the ideals we were supposed to be standing for this whole time? These were the things we were going to inculcate in orthodox muslims? While giving them semi-automatic rifles and training on how to use them? Are you ****ing kidding me right now?

This is what decadence looks like. When the government stops even attempting competence because nothing and nobody that currently exists can replace or displace them so who cares about results? When comfort and plenty have become so common, been taken for granted for so long, that the question of utility or even basic sanity isn’t even distantly considered. When it’s assumed that self-harming policies that will obviously damage the country won’t really matter because nobody has ever known a world without America and fundamentally has no idea how the present day came to be. When the country’s most educated start chasing bizarre and unimaginably stupid ideas on economics that boil down to “inflation won’t happen if you double the monetary supply by printing money, if only you just believe hard enough”. In fact, when education stops being a means to greater insight, more useful abilities, and a better life, and becomes a cult devoted to the kind of idiocy that can survive only with strenuous censorship, the tenets of the cult being treated by the indoctrinated as a collection of sacred mysteries and deeply-thought paradoxes— while to those not similarly trained it is self-obviously a collection of contradictory and self-serving lies.

Verily, decadence is here. We can infer that what comes next is the barbarians. And we have options. Mexican illegals? A heady mixture of poverty-stricken Marxists who have never known a system that wasn’t corrupt, functionally lawless, and devoted to the tenets of voting oneself rich; and outright criminals with lives like “a demon’s resumé”? Perhaps radical Muslims? By sheer numbers worldwide they’re the most likely option. The Taliban just got a huge infusion of cash and a big boost in morale. In a few short days we’ll know whether they’ve arranged a thank you gift for Zho Bi-Xen and his kleptocrat marching band to commemorate his intended pull-out date. But even if, and God I hope, they have not, we can expect an uptick in terrorism and quite shortly. Or perhaps China? The Middle Kingdom would laugh at being called barbarians, but I call genocidal communists like I see them. Mao was morally three steps below a pig and Xi has enough power to aspire to greater depths. As is I wouldn’t dream of feeding a pig Mu Shu Xi due to the great risk of poisoning the pig.

But there is a barbarian group not considered. Us.

Hang on. Before you balk, listen. Look again at what these idiots are selling as the fruits of civilization. Defenses of pedophilia and urinals as art. And more, too—sterilization and disfigurement of teenagers in the form of sex changes. Black supremacy as a panacea to made up threats of white supremacy. Books nobody reads, movies nobody watches, paintings that exist only to launder money—even the ones not made by Hunter Biden.

What good person would not be proud to be considered a barbarian by these miserable, over-decorated Faberge people? I’d be mortified if they agreed with me! So they think I’m a sexist or a racist or whatever. Fine. They do not use these words to mean the same things I mean, so it’s a pointless argument, and they are now officially beneath my explaining myself to them. When the people who are calling me names are so morally opaque that the Taliban can make devastating critiques of them just by referencing the foundational works of their own gender studies programs, I’m done caring about the names. Fine. I’m what you think is a racist. I’m what you think is a sexist. But you think a lot of very stupid things, and as the curtain continues to draw back on the carnival of madness that’s been behind the scenes the entire time it’s occurring to me that what you think and reality overlap so seldom that the only time not to ignore you is when I can ridicule you. If that is your civilization, someone hand me a pointy horned helmet.

So you disagree with the conservative standpoint? Fascinating. From your track record that means it’s probably correct. Also we did the Pepsi challenge. We’ve tried turning the spigot of Leftist bullshit on, off, and recently on again. The results correlate closely with you being full of shit. So blow it out your ass.

Yes, this is a moment of peril, but also opportunity. See in your country what every hostile group listed above sees in it—the makings of great civilization, along other, less stupid lines. All of it guarded by weak, fat, stupid people with no will and no self-belief. Take that mindset and go forth.

Get involved in your local systems. There is an old prayer for God to make ones enemies ridiculous. Congratulations to whomever was still praying it. Your prayers have been answered. Will you tell me that you cannot defeat these people? People who lose casual debates to terrorists not on principle but on basic facts?

Emulate those who are taking back their school boards. The educational system was the place where the corruption started, it’s fitting it’s the first place to start getting won back. It’s defended by fluffy fools whose highest moral value is their own paycheck and the accolades of equally soft idiots on Twitter. They’re rooting for COVID in the hopes they can maximize their time to not teach your kids while getting paid, and the worst part is that given what they were probably teaching your kids that would actually maybe be a win-win.
You can’t reason with them so don’t bother. Recent events have made it clear you may as well try to talk sense into a three-day-old mackerel. Just confront them with their own stupidity so that people who see the inevitable video understand what this is about, and don’t feel that you are too good to shout them out of the room. You’re the barbarian, remember? Not like the nice civilized people with their gender-queer Tik-Tokers pushing vaccine propaganda. That means you’re excused from conversations with morons. Don’t bother trying to find common ground. Look at where they’re standing! Do you want to try to find the midpoint between that and reality? Silly. Pointless. Send them back to their walled online gardens to whine to their equally stupid friends about the barbarians.

Can we take it back from the ground up? I don’t know. But hey, it’s got to be worth a shot. Join the fun! Find some friends and locate a low-hanging political event to raid. When was the last time you went to a town hall for your town? Isn’t just a part of you curious to know whether your local county commissioner starts by declaring her pronouns? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see someone like that made very uncomfortable? You can make that happen. You can probably do it within the next month. Bring a few friends! Or a few dozen. Some of the people reading this probably were afraid to do that kind of thing for fear of losing their job. The Biden economy might have freed up some of your time. What have you got to lose now? More importantly, the way things are going, are you going to lose it anyway if things continue as they are? Think on it.

And consider this—the odds are in our favor, in that we’re well positioned. All the other barbarian groups have to come over here. We just have to drive down the block. The engine of our government is undoubtedly and unquestionably corrupt. But it’s also begging to be rendered irrelevant. There are more of us than them, and more than that, there are more of us than they can imagine.

You can certainly be assured that they will not win. That’s not at issue. Their entire goal is to lose. If you ever doubted, you’ve had the better part of a year of their stupidity to reflect on. You can quit wondering. They will lose. They want to lose. The only question is who they lose to. They want to lose to China, but I think losing to the radical Islamic world is their consolation prize.
Let’s spoil their day. Let’s make them lose to America.

*Now read it again, while listening to this, for mood music: We ARE Odds, we ARE not gas-lit, we are the barbarians. And yes, to these pampered jades (not of Asia though paid by it) being rendered irrelevant and ridiculous is worse than being physically killed, so let’s shoot for that. And if you think the “metaphorical” battle needs less courage? You have no idea. Let’s go. Yeah, this might all tip in the kaki earlier than not, but until then, let’s fight by other means. Put your helmet on, and the wings too if you wish. (Hey, we’re odds and they’re cool. Our fabulous detachment will appreciate them.) Let’s go.

The only thing we have to fear is…GOVERNMENT ITSELF

truth, then why are governments working with Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor scientific debates? Is truth so fragile that it will not survive false attacks?

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

I am of the opinion that we are all a part of one of the great epochal shifts in human history and that what we fight to secure today will reverberate through society for generations. We did not ask for this moment — most of us, in fact, have hoped that by quietly enduring the hardships that come our way, our toleration of what is intolerable would somehow be rewarded with comfort and peace. As with all turning points in human history, however, the desire to ignore obvious trespasses in order to forestall conflict has had the effect of encouraging further harm until conflict is all but certain. Like a garden hose tied into a knot, societal pressure has been steadily building, and everybody senses that it could pop at any time.

As with all revolutionary moments, at the root of this conflict is an idea. In one word, that idea is freedom. Now, governments have been manipulating this word for as long as humans have been demanding it. Lenin seized power in Russia while claiming to “free” the proletariat masses. In FDR’s famous Four Freedoms State of the Union address in 1941, the president defended freedom of speech and freedom of religion but also insisted that it is government’s responsibility to ensure “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear.” In the days since the United States Supreme Court refrained from interfering with the State of Texas’s decision to limit abortion after the detection of a baby’s heartbeat, pro-abortion Americans have insisted that a woman’s “freedom” to terminate her pregnancy up to the moment of childbirth supersedes the baby’s freedom to live. So when I say this revolutionary moment is at its heart a conflict over “freedom,” I must be clear that it is an ideological battle pitting human life and free will against the commands of collectivist authorities — namely, that individual liberty is a moral imperative being threatened by an increasingly all-powerful globalized government run by a small handful of decision-makers in the name of the “greater good.”

Every interaction between government and citizen today tests how far individual liberty may be diminished before the public pushes back. Should authorities have had the power to close businesses and prohibit public gatherings in the name of health? What if the risk to the public’s health is less than one percent? What if the risk is merely one-hundredth of one percent? If government can interfere with liberty whenever there is any degree of risk, can there be any degree of liberty?

If government can make you afraid of something — imaginary or not — may it then control your life completely in order to guarantee FDR’s “freedom from fear”? Does depending on government to ensure “freedom from fear” not incentivize government to invent new fears that only additional government powers can vanquish? Does this not subsidize fear with taxpayer dollars and guarantee that government will always strive to make citizens afraid? Can it really be true that individual liberty should be “allowed” to exist only when there is nothing that can hurt us? Isn’t that what a master might tell his slaves?

If truth exists independently from governmental decree, and science is a process in search of truth, then why are governments working with Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor scientific debates? Is truth so fragile that it will not survive false attacks? Is science so dependent on “official edicts” that it must be regulated and practiced only by a small priestly caste? If scientific consensus depends on government creating a monopoly over information, does this mean that truth is whatever government deems it to be? Since government is incentivized to invest in fear, is it likely that government will ever declare a truth that isn’t also scary?

If government power grows by monopolizing information and weaponizing fear, then isn’t the greatest threat to government an independent citizen unafraid of thinking for himself? Is it not true, then, that every single person is capable of destroying the illusion of total government control? Is it not true that leaders can rise from anywhere — whether at local school board meetings, in football stadiums, or even from spontaneous testimonials during Red Lobster dinners? Is it difficult to imagine “freedom speakeasies” popping up wherever freedom is outlawed? Is it not true that there are more citizens than jail cells and that when enough people choose to disobey unjust laws, government must choose either to change the laws or lose its powers? Is it not true that every fight for freedom throughout history has started with a spark that catches fire? Is it not also true that sometimes the worst brushfires spread, and things get unbearably hot for a while, but then great growth rebounds after that?

I am of the firm opinion that not only does the course of history refuse to follow some linear arrangement dictated by those in positions of power, but that it also often ricochets against the most concerted efforts of those attempting to direct its currents. During these moments of self-inflicted backfire, history is up for grabs, great leaders rise, and even greater ideas emerge. For Americans, the propositions that set our ancestors free beckon once again.

As President Coolidge observed in his timeless 1926 speech celebrating the 150th anniversary of America, some truths are set in stone: “If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.”

We didn’t ask for this moment, but should we have the strength of character to see it for what it is, then we have the power to determine what happens next. All we have to decide is that freedom is worth defending with the time that is given to us.

Fellowship and humanity

Our liberty is inherent.
Our freedom is inherent.

The removal of both requires consent.

I will not divide my humanity, nor concede my core view of fellowship, simply to comply with the demand of another that I consider my brother or sister of greater or less equity than myself. Any business that chooses that path will not benefit from my economic participation. I choose freedom!

Not only are various governmental agencies forcing the separation of people from their community networks, we are also seeing faith-based organizations, churches, buying into the fear. Even in areas where churches are not forcibly shut down, many are seeing a structural shift where some faith leaders are willingly ostracizing their community under the guise of various COVID alarms. This is not good…. not good at all.

Fellowship is the essential ingredient to a purposeful life. How and why we interact with each other is how and why we recharge our core humanity. To see faith leaders willing to separate from the function of fellowship is alarming. However, as individuals we must not allow this foreboding sense to become the normal expectation.

Throughout history, large armies have been defeated through the process of division. It is not a leap to see the same strategic objectives being deployed against social assemblies including congregations. It is puzzling how many in leadership cannot see the danger in social and spiritual distance when the bond of fellowship is needed more than ever.

Each of us has a different connection to our community. Each of us has a different level of internal strength… such is the nature of living. However, the distance between people is manifestly not a good outcome when combined with the lack of food for the soul.

Ultimately, it is the currency of human connection that is the true value in our lives.

We have each felt how our positive influence upon the lives of others nourishes our own sense of purpose and fulfillment. Do not lose that. Do not think you can compensate for that through other arbitrary measures; you cannot.

With local, state and federal leaders moving beyond the workplace distance; and beyond the community distance; and beyond the church distance; and now entering your home to tell you the importance of separating yourself from your family, we must evaluate these arbitrary decrees very deliberately.

Evaluate very closely what we are willing to give up. Perhaps we are in this position today because we didn’t sit still enough and contemplate the real priorities in our lives.

Our liberty is inherent.

Our freedom is inherent.

The removal of both requires consent.

I choose not to disconnect.

I choose purpose.

I choose my own humanity.

Shared from a friend

In wartime we naturally expect civil liberties to be suspended. Likewise, the reasoning goes, during a pandemic we need to act in a unified way under some central command to fight this viral existential threat. Individual rights and freedoms must be curtailed for the sake of the greater good.

But that’s a false analogy. A pandemic is not a war. It’s a natural disaster. (Granted, SARS-CoV-2 may not be so “natural,” but still, the virus is not an “enemy” waging a war on us.)

Michel Accad, MD
09/15/2021

The main reason we are seemingly so accepting of lockdowns and vaccine mandates is that we have been conditioned to view a pandemic or an epidemic as a war being waged on our society.

But that’s a false analogy. A pandemic is not a war. It’s a natural disaster. (Granted, SARS-CoV-2 may not be so “natural,” but still, the virus is not an “enemy” waging a war on us.)

A natural disaster doesn’t intend to subjugate cities and countryside, take natural resources and wealth, rape women, or enslave men. The virus doesn’t intend any of this. It has no intentions whatsoever. Heck, it is not even alive.

The only similarity between a war and a pandemic, then, is that oftentimes many lives are lost in both cases. I say “oftentimes” because it is actually not the case that lives are always lost during war, even if the war itself is lost. The enemy may be so powerful as to take over the country without a shot being fired. In fact, war rarely aims to kill citizens for the sake of killing. Deaths are usually the consequence of one state trying to control another. Once control is achieved, the killing usually stops.

But not so with the virus. So far as we know, it just kills individuals mindlessly. It has neither the intention nor the capability of taking over the country or subjugating the people. Therefore, it is not a threat to the common good, only to many individual goods.

And that’s a major difference. It’s for the sake of the common good that, in wartime, we accept the sacrifice of the individual good. And, particularly if it’s a “just war,” the sacrifice is actually embraced by the individual. The hero may regret leaving behind wife and children but he is propelled to move to the front by the greater attraction of safeguarding the greater good.

Granted, human nature being what it is, wars are rarely just and individuals are rarely heroes, so the sacrifice often involves forced conscription. But still, we can have a sense of how things are supposed to be in time of a “good” war when all citizens are “good” and ready to enlist.

But a pandemic is clearly not like war. It does not bring forth the same motivations of heroic self-sacrifice and reactions of solidarity that a just war brings. If a heroic action takes place during a pandemic (and clearly such action does take place from the ranks of frontline workers) it is a self-sacrifice aimed at saving the lives of particular individuals and is therefore indistinguishable from peacetime heroic action, as when a person jumps into a torrent to save a drowning baby. It is motivated by the love of neighbor, not love of country (i.e., common good love), precisely because it is not the country nor its common good that is under threat.

This is particularly true of this covid pandemic which attacks individuals with such discrimination, generally sparing the young and healthy while slamming the old or those with metabolic or immune vulnerabilities. But discriminate destruction is, in fact, typical of natural disasters: It is the Gulf Coast, Florida, and the Eastern Seaboard that are the target of the hurricane while the earthquake shakes California; Vesuvius was fatal for Pompeii, but hardly for the rest of Campania or for Naples; the flood affects those living on the plain, not the mountain dwellers; etc. It is not the common good that is undermined by the disaster, but only many individual material properties and many individual lives. War, on the other hand, aims at controlling the whole land.

That’s why lockdowns and vaccine mandates are so wrong. They are a kind of collective action that would be justified in wartime but is applied in actual peacetime.

And it’s easy to see the difference in effect: when the state mobilizes factories to build weapons to defend from the invasion, the good that results benefits everyone, since the threat itself is collective. But when the state shuts down restaurants and churches allegedly to save hospitals, while the Zoomocracy thrives, it has pitted one part of the nation against another, thus manufacturing winners and losers from within its own people.

And likewise with these horrendous vaccine mandates that overtly do violence to the unvaccinated who are plainly innocent of any wrongdoing. By coercing vaccination on one group to “protect” another group from the virus, state mandates treat some people as human shields for the benefit of others. Yet all are within the same commonwealth!

Our preconditioned way of thinking about pandemics in martial terms may unfortunately turn into reality. The virus may eventually recede but many common goods may not survive the response to the pandemic.

After it was announced that the administration would decree a nationwide vaccine mandate that could affect 100 million people, the Babylon Bee immediately put up a headline “Joe Biden Announces Civil War.”

It wasn’t fake news. Unfortunately it was not satire either.

Jabberwocky

There are people in the world who put no value on human life, even their own. They would say or do anything to do harm to someone else and not think twice about it. Some cultures hate other cultures simply for being a different culture. They live to kill people they do not see eye to eye with. Heck, many live to kill other humans simply to kill them.

I talked with some of my Democrat/progressive friends the other day. They believe Joe Biden is on the right path for the country. They get most of their ‘news’ from Alexa/MSM, so no surprise there.

Also interesting. They do not have a concept of things outside of the United States and how other cultures live. Living with blinders on so to speak. Our conversation got around to immigration and the Afganies being brought over. We also chatted about our open southern border and letting anyone in who just happened to show up. They agree both these are good things. I disagreed.

Living in a Christian country, where we believe in a live and let live, everyone is free to do as they please society, it is hard for them to view anything else. They cannot fathom that other ‘cultures’ and philosophies put a different value on “life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. It seems they cannot imagine anyone thinking any differently. They live in a land of make believe.

Early in the President Trump term, we heard a lot about “MS13”. I had heard of them, but never really gave it much thought. So I did some reading around. I read police reports, saw extremely graphic pictures and even a video one of them had taken while preforming ‘machete work’ on a live victim. Do not go looking for them if you are faint of heart.

This needs to be understood when they are spreading around “Immigrants”. If you are awake and look for the truth, the Somalies in Europe think nothing of raping and killing the local inhabitants of the country that took them in. Many of a certain faith will kill “infidels” simply for being infidels. They will kill you just because you do not think like they do or you look different. Yeah, they are not “Woke” like we in the United States are.

“Mass immigration” exacerbates the situation. Especially a mono-culture Mass immigration then putting them all in one area. They do not assimilate into their new culture, they continue as they had before. Taking in immigrants and assimilating them into their new culture is what is needed if they are to thrive in a new socity. Even then, the worst of the lot will not.

President Putin understands this. I believe he has been fighting the Globalists all alone until President Trump came along. He knows what the mass immigration means to his country, and it is not a good thing. Here is a short blurb about the Afghan’s the USA is taking in thousands of unvetted, and President Putin’s view of it. He is not taking any in. Remember, he was the only country to offer asylum to the white South African farmers and he has not taken in any of the others whom mass migrated into the rest of Europe.

Vladimir Putin says he’s not allowing Afghan refugees into Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday his country won’t accept Afghan refugees because he doesn’t want to deal with “militants” masquerading as asylum-seekers.

The Russian strongman slammed Western nations for placing Afghan refugees in countries even near his border while their US and European visas are being processed.

“Does that mean that they can be sent without visas to those countries, to our neighbors, while they themselves don’t want to take them without visas?” Putin raged to the Russian TASS news agency. “Why is there such a humiliating approach to solving the problem?’

He said he will not accept “militants showing up here under cover of refugees.”

The US has negotiated with various countries to at least temporarily accept Afghans who are fleeing their country

Russian officials have not joined in the effort to evacuate thousands of desperate Afghans at Kabul airport seeking to flee the country.

Rather, the Kremlin has praised the Taliban for “restoring order” to Afghanistan.

“We are seeing the statements the Taliban made about ceasing combat actions, an amnesty for all of those involved in the confrontation, about a need for a nationwide dialogue,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “They are being implemented.”

Since nothing in today’s world is as it seems, has the “Clown Invitational Association” set the Taliban up as a buffer between the Communist Chinese and the Middle Eastern oil fields?