About theartfuldilettante

The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.

We Are Living in a Left-Wing Nazi Germany

Posted on October 10, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

FEMA Information officers keep telling the media why they have no money for rural, Trump-voting areas, but plenty of money for left-wing hotbeads like Asheville, NC.

Listening to a “FEMA Information Officer” is like relying on WHO for a flu virus or the Soviets for Chernobyl.

Despite their smug sociopathy, leftists are supposedly worried. Are they, really?

“The Hill” and other Establishment Communist publications are talking about Democrats “hitting the panic button” because they feel Trump is pulling ahead.

All I can say is that I remember these headlines EXACTLY from 4 years ago this time. We have seen it all before.

If Democrats really are in a panic, heaven help Donald Trump, JD Vance and their families. Because when totalitarian psychopaths panic, the bullets start to fly.

I will keep saying it because it’s true, and because they keep providing evidence, over and over again: These lefist-RINO career politician American fascist power mongers are capable of ANYTHING.

“A professor at the University of Kansas has been placed on administrative leave after saying that men who don’t vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because she’s a woman should be shot. “We could line all those guys up and shoot them,” he said in a recently leaked video. The university has not named the instructor as of Wednesday evening.” [Breitbart 10-9-24]

A UNIVERSITY professor said this. Not a serial killer. Increasingly, what’s the difference?

Administrative leave TRANSLATION: “Make it look like we’re punishing him until the story dies after 48 hours and we’ll put him back.” Of course, he will end up as the president of Harvard or Columbia, or land a gig with MSNBC.

It’s a left-wing Nazi Germany.

Hear me: We are a society inching our way toward concentration camps. Or worse. Whites, males, Christians, legal citizens, conservatives and heterosexuals are the most vulnerable. Leftists are riddled with hatred and they are in charge of absolutely everything. Nazism began on the university and cultural level. It can happen in America too. The targets are different; the process is the same. Wake the hell up.

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China’s Potemkin Economy

Posted on October 9, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

It’s been obvious for years that China has a Potemkin economy, kept alive by slave labor, market bubbles, and government underwriting. it can’t last forever. The latest grim forecast about the economy comes from Peter St Onge, an economist with a much deeper fund of knowledge about and understanding of the Chinese economy than I could have in a thousand lifetimes.

The biggest hint that the Chinese economy was in trouble was the demise of Evergrande, a massive property developer in China. The bankruptcy was huge, with the company’s assets valued at a probably inflated $245 billion and debts of $300 billion. However, Evergrande was just the biggest pop in the Chinese real estate bubble, not the only one.

Image: An abandoned luxury project in China. YouTube screen grab.

Across the board, Chinese ventures have been having problems, whether with overvalued assets, the Belt and Road initiative (which was fading even before Israel blew up the Belt and Road port in Yemen), or its demographic implosion, which will leave it as a nation of old men.

The military is also somewhat illusory. In May or June, a nuclear submarine sank in a Chinese shipyard—although, to be fair, we had a disastrous Navy ship fire a few years back, and a New Zealand ship just ran aground and caught fire. These things do happen.

Generally, though, the Chinese military has a competency problem with both men and equipment. My guess is that this is because communist countries do things in a slipshod fashion. The only spur to work is fear. As is the case with all slaves (which is what people in a totalitarian state are), when there’s no immediate oversight, people do as little as possible, and they do things badly.

Now, St Onge’s insights tell me that things are much worse than I had realized based solely on my semi-informed reading of reports about the Chinese economy. Three weeks ago, St Onge did a short video explaining how the above problems, plus a shrinking manufacturing sector, were leading to a coming recession in China:

In the three weeks since that video, St Onge says things have gotten much worse. China, he reports, is no longer on the edge of a recession. Instead, it’s dropped into the full danger category, forcing the Politburo to hold an emergency economic session and to start printing money like crazy to prop up the manufacturing, banking, and real estate sectors:

Specifically, Beijing’s going to dump about 3.8 trillion yuan — roughly half a trillion dollars — to keep the economy running.

At the same time, China is slashing interest rates.

By the way, does any of this sound like déjà vu all over again? Because if it does, you’re right. It’s exactly what the Biden government has been doing to force a smiley face on the American economy. That is, it’s printed money and slashed interest rates.

The problem, of course, is that, whether in China or the United States, monetary policies cannot make up for a vacuum within the economy itself. If all the other government policies disincentivize the most important capital a nation has—the human capital—no government jiggery-pokery can keep the economic flywheel spinning.

Economies boom when people dive in, getting creative and working hard because there’s something in it for them. Government created inflationary wealth can lead only to eventual collapse because it’s all fake.

Currently, I view China as a serious geopolitical enemy, right up there with Iran. While Iran relies on physical terror, China is more insidious. It seeks to bankrupt America while destabilizing the people’s values through things such as TikTok. (In China, TikTok is not flooded with videos about sexual perversion, race hatred, anti-capitalism, anti-Americans, and mental illness. Just sayin’.) I’d rather face an outright war with a plainly seen enemy than slowly die before an enemy that destroys our manufacturing sector with cheap goods and destroys our national identity with values that are anti-liberty, anti-normal, and anti-moral.

Having said that, considering how deeply entangled our economy is with China’s economy, if China falls, none of us will have a soft landing.

Eisenhower’s “The Chance for Peace” Address

Posted on October 8, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

“Worked for Ike.”

Truth, thank you.

EISENHOWER: “The Chance for Peace” Address
Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16th, 1953
https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/file/chance_for_peace.pdf

“IN THIS SPRING of 1953 the free world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples.

To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hope of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.

The 8 years that have passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly lengthened across the world.

Today the hope of free men remains stubborn and brave, but it is sternly disciplined by experience. It shuns not only all crude counsel of despair but also the self-deceit of easy illusion. It weighs the chance for peace with sure, clear knowledge of what happened to the vain hope of 1945.

In that spring of victory the soldiers of the Western Allies met the soldiers of Russia in the center of Europe. They were triumphant comrades in arms. Their peoples shared the joyous prospect of building, in honor of their dead, the only fitting monument-an age of just peace. All these war-
weary peoples shared too this concrete, decent purpose: to guard vigilantly against the domination ever again of any part of the world by a single, unbridled aggressive power.

THIS COMMON PURPOSE LASTED AN INSTANT AND PERISHED. The nations of the world divided to follow TWO distinct roads.

The United States and our valued friends, the other free nations, chose one road.

The leaders of the Soviet Union chose another.

The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.

FIRST: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

SECOND: No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow nations.

THIRD: Any nation’s right to a form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

FOURTH: Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And FIFTH: A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

In the light of these principles the citizens of the United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through the aftermath of war, toward true peace.

This way was faithful to the spirit that inspired the United Nations: to prohibit strife, to relieve tensions, to banish fears. This way was to control and to reduce armaments. This way was to allow all nations to devote their energies and resources to the great and good tasks of healing the
war’s wounds, of clothing and feeding and housing the needy, of perfecting a just political life, of enjoying the fruits of their own free toil.

The Soviet government held a vastly different vision of the future.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

There’s Always a Harvard Intellectual at the Center of Every American Di…

Posted on October 8, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

Eisenhower’s Chance for Peace Address

Posted on October 7, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

The LEFT always wants to change the Supreme Court because they fundamentally disagree with the EQUAL PROTECTION of the law because they are the victims of capitalism. You are to go to prison for discrimination against even gays or transgenders, but discrimination based entirely upon material wealth is OK because they want to confiscate what anyone has that is more than what they have.

Socialism Violates the Ten Commandments … You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.…

The LEFT is anti-religion on every level, as evidenced by the fight for ABORTION with no restrictions or limitations. The killing of children in Gaza is horrible, but not killing infants. They have rejected the very existence of any God, just as Marx did. The slogan IN GOD WE TRUST was put on the currency after the Civil War, for it was religion that freed the slaves – not the LEFT. This is a sad testament on our society and why it cannot survive intact.

Even Zelensky has outlawed not only speaking Russian, but he has outlawed their Orthodox Christianity and the Pope has condemned Zelensky for outlawing their region. At the same time, he now claims to be a Jew but has his children baptized and never mentioned he was Jewish before being President.

The biggest problem we have is that events such as the Rescue the Republic ensures the destruction of the United States because it merely illustrates the great divide and polarization implying there is even a possibility to rescuing the republic.

The polarization is so great, and the media is so compromised that there is no possible way that the United States can survive as a “united” confederation. As communism fell, it is our time for the collapse due to these same Marxist ideas that have undermined our very foundation of freedom.

What Will Happen When Good People Get Really, Really Angry?

Posted on October 6, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

“Former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod argued that Vice President Kamala Harris voters will be clever enough to navigate voting in the wake of the devastation from Hurricane Helene, while saying that rural Trump voters will have a harder time getting to the polls.” [Fox News 10-5-24]

He’s openly admitting it. He’s BRAGGING, in fact. How sick and evil do these people have to be until more of us act and feel appropriately? These aren’t political shenanigans. It’s genocide in rural America. It’s open cleansing of the population so that the whole country will become leftists. Yes, they’re that evil — and they’re even telling you so.

The one thing we have not yet seen in the developing American civil war: What it looks like when justifiably angry people begin to express their rage. Perhaps North Carolina will be the trigger.

Senator Rand Paul says: “Mao and Stalin and Hitler didn’t come to power promoting tyranny. They came to power promising equality.”

And probably “joy” too.

Obama is our Mao and Stalin. Harris and Biden are two of his puppets. For a preview of what’s coming, look at how they’re murdering people in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. In one form or another, they are coming for all of us, except those of us willing to submit and comply 100 percent.

Today’s Stalin and Mao are in DC

Posted on October 6, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

Once upon a time, politicians (especially Democrats) worked to create the image they CARED about flood victims, and the like. It was disgusting, but a thin veneer of accountability compelled them to fake it. Today, Obama’s henchpersons, Biden and Kamala, simply laugh or brush it off — or simply lie.

Under Mao and Stalin, millions were sacrificed for the sake of the political careers of the rulers. On the exact same premise, tens of thousands of Trump voters in rural North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee are being sacrificed. It’s not just that they’re being denied FEMA and federal support that would be heaped on New York or California. They’re being denied the right to privately attain aid from volunteers who could fly in supplies and aid. Local authorities are stopped, as well.

Under Communism, the government holds a monopoly on assistance; it performs incompetently, and doles out the aid based on political factors. Under America’s Obama-Biden-Kamala regime, it’s exactly the same.

That’s why I have been writing for 4 years that these leftist totalitarians in power are capable of ANYTHING. Believe me yet?

Our Government is Sadistic Beyond Imagination

Posted on October 4, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

I heard on Sean Hannity yesterday evening that Biden is creating chaos in the storm-ravaged hills of North Carolina because he wants to have a p.r. appearance to benefit the Commiefascist whore who ousted him. (Why does he care about her?)

If it were up to me, the military would dump Joe, Dr. Biden and Hunter in the North Carolina wilderness and allow them to fend for themselves. (Kamala and her woman-beating husband, too.) I really mean that. I would do it.

Personally, I don’t believe in FEMA, nationalized flood insurance or government-run, taxpayer-funded charity for victims of floods and storms. Those things were not in our Constitution, because we never were intended to be a socialist country. However, that’s the system we now have, and trillions have been spent on it in taxation and (indirectly) inflation. So where’s the help? None for North Carolina and Georgia, the rural areas hardest hit by these storms. They’re begging for money from the Imperial City whose priorities are 100 percent with funding illegals and foreign dictators. And just think: North Carolina and Georgia are swing states.

If the conditions are not ripe for the American version of a French Revolution RIGHT NOW, then it’s hard to imagine they ever will be. Our political rulers are undiluted scum, and they are irredeemable.

Transportation Secretary Buttigieg won’t let private planes in to the hurricane stricken rural areas. It’s either the govenrnment — or nothing — when it comes to providing aid. And (inexplicably) the government won’t provide any aid. It’s evil and sadistic beyond imagining.

While we’re at it, let’s dump Pete Buttigieg into the rain-soaked, powerless wilderness and let him fend for himself.

*******************

Lame duck puppet Biden clearly supports the dockworkers’ demand for a 65 percent increase in pay. He must know this will cause prices on goods to soar even more than the hyperinflation already fueled by the government’s unsustainable debt and spending.

If you had a plan to destroy America by bankrupting its middle class through destroying purchasing power, you would do everything Obama-Biden-Harris are doing. And millions of Americans (most of them middle class) who vote for Obama-Biden-Harris applaud their own destruction. “We may starve. But at least we won’t have Trump.”

Madness beyond the imagination of any dystopian writer or student of psychopathology.

Seattle Public Schools cancel gifted program ‘cohorts’ for equity reasons

Posted on October 3, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

By Hana Kim

Updated April 4, 2024 6:30pm PDT

SEATTLE – Many parents within Seattle Public Schools are flabbergasted by the district’s decision to shut down 11 schools dedicated to highly capable learners.

They include three elementary, five middle schools, and three high schools. The “cohorts” at these schools keep the students together so teachers can focus on their advanced needs.

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There are hundreds of students learning at these schools, far above their grade level.

According to the district’s website, starting this fall, all neighborhood schools will start to incorporate highly-capable students.

The district’s plan is to completely phase out “cohorts” by the 2027-2028 school year.

The website says students will not be separated into “cohorts” and will go to neighborhood classrooms in order to address “historical inequity.”

Typically, these schools have more white and Asian students, and other races are underrepresented.

Fox News previously reported that the school district’s gifted program was among the least diverse in the country.

Parents at Cascadia Elementary say progress has been made in recent years with more enrollment of underrepresented kids into their school.

Mom Simrin Parmar says she wholeheartedly supports the goal of equity, but she believes the move will make things worse, not better.

“It will not help those kids to just cut the program wholesale. We weren’t servicing enough of them. You don’t help by cutting the program. What we should be doing is identifying more children from underrepresented groups that aren’t getting a fair shake in the testing and doing more to fix that and providing these services to more kids across the city,” Parmar said.

She says the district should look to expand diversity within the gifted program.

“They are thriving, they are learning so much. They are curious and they are being pushed” Parmar said.

Parmar also says the HC model serves kids of all different backgrounds and challenges.

“I can say there are children who will test gifted academically but then again they have other learning disabilities, ADHD, dyslexia, other related more serious disability” Parmar said.

“If they do this, it will be the bell curve getting ignored and watering down the teaching,” parent Eric Feeny said.

The district on its website promising the program is not over, that it will get better.

“All teachers will provide teaching and learning that is delivered with universal design for learning (UDL) and differentiated to meet the needs of students within their grade level,” the website said of the decision.

But there are still so many unanswered questions on how the district will provide that differentiated learning in real time with one teacher.

“I think the district consistently under-communicates most of its initiative, partially because they don’t have the bandwidth,” Feeny said.

From a budget perspective, parents also say the changes don’t make sense. Parmar says it costs the district around $7,000 per Cascadia Elementary student, which is about 50% less than many neighboring schools.

“SPS is scrapping all HC programming and replacing it with empty promises, zero plan, and zero funding. I’m sad to watch so many families leave the public school system, but I can’t blame them,” Kiley Riffell said on social media.

Riffell has two daughters who attend Cascadia. She says it’s been a game changer due to an emphasis on innovation and a deeper level of instruction.

Unless there are significant resources pumped into every classroom, parents say teachers will be overburdened with large class sizes and dramatic differences in academic needs.

“Until you have a better system, don’t give out a fake system or half solution,” Feeny said.

Many students who are already in the HC program will be able to continue on with higher learning for now. The district’s decision is not immediate but it will impact current kindergartners.

FOX 13’s request for an interview with Superintendent Dr. Brent Jones or anyone else with the district has gone unanswered.