Author Archives: theartfuldilettante

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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.

Florida’s Governor DeSantis Emerges as American Leader

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As I reported on April 4 ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/04/04/hats-off-to-florida-governor-ron-desantis-an-american-leader/ ), Disney, once upon a time a respected and trusted company, is today a lobby for sexual perversion. The Florida legislature passed the “Parental Rights in Education” bill into law, and Disney’s CEO, Bob Chapek, has taken issue with it. As far as Chapek is concerned, the rights of a tiny minority of sexual perverts take precedent over parental rights. Chapek thinks parents have no right to protest the public education system brainwashing their children into sexual perversion and transgenderism.

It turns out that Disney had purchased via campaign contributions from a previous legislature the right to govern itself independently of the county governments in which Disney resides. When Chapek announced that Disney’s goal was to have parental rights ” be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts” and to support organizations working to make that happen, Florida Ron DeSantis reminded Chapek that Florida “is governed by the interests of the people of the state of Florida—it is not based on the demands of California corporate executives.” The Florida government has made it clear that Disney’s unique privilege is subject to repeal.

Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Floridians, including a majority of Democrats, favor parental rights over sexual perverts’ rights. Families are canceling their Disney memberships and are calling on social media for boycotting Disney. No parent concerned about their children should ever support Disney by taking them to a Disney venue.

State Representative Spencer Roach said that “CEO Bob Chapek needs to be removed,” and that “a man obsessed with sexualizing 4-year-olds should not run a company that built its brand on preserving the innocence and magic of childhood.” Rep. Roach’s opinion is that if Disney wants to keep its special privilege, Chapek has to go.

Disney’s special privileges and its CEO’s belief that the company can control Florida law shows how “free market capitalism” really works. It works by corporations buying governments and regulatory authorities.

Chapek’s use of Disney to lobby for the rights of sexual perverts shows how far America has sunk into degeneracy. What is the position of Chapek’s board and shareholders? Are they as degenerate as he is, preferring perverse sexual indoctrination of children? Has the American educational system at all levels succumbed to “wokism,” thus overthrowing the traditional moral principles and behavior that defined the United States of America?

The American people are losing their country morally and spiritually. Integrity, traditional principles, traditional ways of judging people by their character, appropriate behavior, politeness, manners, personal and family relations have all been sodom and gomorrahized. When I look back over my years, almost everything good about America has been destroyed.

It is amazing how long it took for “progress” to be understood as the destruction it is. DeSantis sees it and steps forward as a leader. The question is: are the American people too far gone to recognize the leadership that they need?

Among the superpowers, the US is the only country incapable of producing real leadership. How is such a badly led country going to compete against China and Russia?

Paul Craig Roberts

Florida Governor DeSantis Emerges as American Leader

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As I reported on April 4 ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/04/04/hats-off-to-florida-governor-ron-desantis-an-american-leader/ ), Disney, once upon a time a respected and trusted company, is today a lobby for sexual perversion. The Florida legislature passed the “Parental Rights in Education” bill into law, and Disney’s CEO, Bob Chapek, has taken issue with it. As far as Chapek is concerned, the rights of a tiny minority of sexual perverts take precedent over parental rights. Chapek thinks parents have no right to protest the public education system brainwashing their children into sexual perversion and transgenderism.

It turns out that Disney had purchased via campaign contributions from a previous legislature the right to govern itself independently of the county governments in which Disney resides. When Chapek announced that Disney’s goal was to have parental rights ” be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts” and to support organizations working to make that happen, Florida Ron DeSantis reminded Chapek that Florida “is governed by the interests of the people of the state of Florida—it is not based on the demands of California corporate executives.” The Florida government has made it clear that Disney’s unique privilege is subject to repeal.

Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Floridians, including a majority of Democrats, favor parental rights over sexual perverts’ rights. Families are canceling their Disney memberships and are calling on social media for boycotting Disney. No parent concerned about their children should ever support Disney by taking them to a Disney venue.

State Representative Spencer Roach said that “CEO Bob Chapek needs to be removed,” and that “a man obsessed with sexualizing 4-year-olds should not run a company that built its brand on preserving the innocence and magic of childhood.” Rep. Roach’s opinion is that if Disney wants to keep its special privilege, Chapek has to go.

Disney’s special privileges and its CEO’s belief that the company can control Florida law shows how “free market capitalism” really works. It works by corporations buying governments and regulatory authorities.

Chapek’s use of Disney to lobby for the rights of sexual perverts shows how far America has sunk into degeneracy. What is the position of Chapek’s board and shareholders? Are they as degenerate as he is, preferring perverse sexual indoctrination of children? Has the American educational system at all levels succumbed to “wokism,” thus overthrowing the traditional moral principles and behavior that defined the United States of America?

The American people are losing their country morally and spiritually. Integrity, traditional principles, traditional ways of judging people by their character, appropriate behavior, politeness, manners, personal and family relations have all been sodom and gomorrahized. When I look back over my years, almost everything good about America has been destroyed.

It is amazing how long it took for “progress” to be understood as the destruction it is. DeSantis sees it and steps forward as a leader. The question is: are the American people too far gone to recognize the leadership that they need?

Among the superpowers, the US is the only country incapable of producing real leadership. How is such a badly led country going to compete against China and Russia.

Paul Craig Roberts

Don’t Say Gay: Another Leftist Smear Campaign

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“Don’t Say Gay” is a dishonest, leftist smear campaign — like all propaganda campaigns from any dictatorship. The Flordia law does not forbid parents from discussing homosexuality or anything else with their kids. It only says that certain aspects of sex education should be left out of the classroom. It’s also a way to prevent government-run schools from encouraging children to consider themselves transsexual — and perhaps even take medical steps toward “changing genders” — without parental consent.

Who would have thought we’d ever reach a point like this? It’s still illegal to vote or join the military until you’re 18; it’s still illegal to drink alcohol until you’re 21; but it’s OK to engage in hormone treatments/psychological “counseling” without parental knowledge and consent at the age of six or ten. It’s all something worse than madness.

Unfortunately, the Flordia law cannot succeed at what it intends to do, even if a Biden-stacked/RINO Supreme Court fails to strike the law down (which it almost certainly will.) Why? Because this is what happens when government gets involved in education. Education and state must be kept separate. Education must be 100 percent private. If it’s not, then government holds a monopoly over what is taught, and how it is taught.

The same people who would never accept state-run newspapers/websites or state-run churches keep signing on for state-run education, somehow thinking the results will be different. ANY totalitarian knows that the way to rule a society is to first get hold of its children. For several generations now, leftists (even when conservatives like Ronald Reagan were in office) have been doing so. Witness the results — a generation of millennials mostly socialist/woke and in many cases unable to cope with their own fragile emotional states. The present schools are now gearing up to produce something even worse: a generation of American Maoists in preparation for a completely totalitarian regime not unlike the Soviet regime of the past or the Chinese Communist Party regime today. Frankly, we’re just about there. Recalcitrant parents in Virginia, Florida and in other places are the only things left standing in the way. Is it any wonder the Biden regime openly threatens to imprison them, first by labeling them “domestic terrorists”?

If anything leads to civil war and/or breakup of what remains of the USA, it will be the battle over education. Leftists in total control of the federal government are NOT going to surrender. They WILL jail American parents, including parents in Florida, if they don’t get their way. They care nothing for gay people or “transgendered” people. You cannot care about the rights of groups when you have ZERO regard for the rights of man. They are totalitarians through and through, and these poor, ignorant saps in the LGBT “community” fall for it.

The transgender and “gay” issues are just wedge issues for the seizure of power. Communists and fascists like Hitler have always used these tactics. It’s the federal government’s way of saying, “Hey, I can do ANYTHING I want to your kids. I dare you to try and stop me.” Governor DeSantis in Florida is that rare kind of Republican who dares to try. But short of total privatization of education, decent and rational people will never win the war. And, quite frankly, short of secession from our rotten federal leftist regime — corrupt beyond all repair, at this point — Florida will not get its way, sadly.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Kremlin Never Learns

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Thinking that Ukraine had agreed, or was about to agree, to be a neutral country, Russia pulled its troops out of the Kiev area. These troops had surrounded Kiev and occupied its suburbs. When the Russians left, a propaganda blitz erupted in the Western whore media and government councils that the Russians had been defeated and, angry at their defeat, slaughtered civilians, thus committing war crimes like the US committed in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Vietnam, etc.

The difference is that Washington is permitted to commit war crimes, because they are not really war crimes, just acts of promoting democracy.

Another difference is that Washington’s war crimes are real, whereas Russia’s are propaganda creations.

Nevertheless, although innocent, the Russians deserve their beating, because they are so foolish as to continually set themselves up for demonization. How is it possible that after all that has happened, the Kremlin did not comprehend that Russia’s withdrawal, meant as an encouragement to negotiations, would be reported as a defeat and a war crime? Does the Kremlin have any competent advisors? The Kremlin, despite all statements to the contrary, evidentially still thinks the West is honest and will report truthfully the facts and respect Russia’s effort to find a peaceful solution. It is mind blowing that no one in the Kremlin understood that once the Russians withdrew, bodies, dead or play-acting, would be shown on Western media as proof of Putin’s war crimes.

I don’t know why Bloomberg News is so fiercely Russophobic, but here is Bloomberg’s totally false report of Russia’s withdrawal from Bucha. The rest of the Western media is the same or worse:

“President Joe Biden said Vladimir Putin should be tried for war crimes as the U.S. and European Union consider more sanctions to further punish Russia—this time for an alleged mass killing of civilians that’s fueled global outrage. The EU condemned atrocities committed against Ukrainian civilians that were discovered as Russia withdrew from around Kyiv, including allegations of torture and executions. Ukraine said more than 400 dead civilians have been found in the towns around Kyiv. In a statement on behalf of the 27-nation bloc, EU chief foreign envoy Josep Borrell blamed the occupying Russian forces for the dead bodies seen strewn across the streets of Bucha. ‘The Russian authorities are responsible for these atrocities, committed while they had effective control of the area,’ Borrell said. ‘The massacres in the town of Bucha and other Ukrainian towns will be inscribed in the list of atrocities committed on European soil.’”

Ukraine, allegedly considering its surrender terms in negotiations, declared the Russian withdrawal to be a Ukrainian military victory with Russian forces driven out by victorious Ukrainian freedom fighters. This is not a narrative that puts pressure on Ukraine to agree to Russia’s demands.

The Russian government has demanded that the UN Security Council investigate the real situation in Bucha, thus setting Russia up for another propaganda blow from the US dominated UN.

There is not a single statement by Washington’s puppet, Ukraine president Zelensky, that supports the negotiations that the Kremlin is conducting. The Kremlin prefers to lose its wars in pointless negotiations. Why doesn’t the Kremlin just go ahead and surrender?

The Russian intervention in Ukraine, had it been properly conducted, could have ended the provocations of Russia that will eventually end in nuclear war. But the Kremlin, determined to show its goodness, failed to recognize that the Satanic West could not care less about facts and good intentions. What Putin’s well-intentioned and limited intervention in Ukraine has achieved is the total demonization of Putin and Russia with the President of the United States calling for Putin to be tried as a war criminal just as were German officers and officials following World War II, despite the evidence. Just as with the Nuremberg Trials, real evidence is not required. In the Western whore media assertion alone rules.

The war underway is a propaganda war, and the Kremlin has lost. The Kremlin’s inability at psyops makes Russian military superiority almost pointless.

Washington’s wars are conducted ruthlessly. Everything is bombed and blown to pieces, including weddings, funerals, kids’ soccer games. The West doesn’t understand war that doesn’t blow everything up. What Russia could have accomplished in 3 days is now in its 41st day. The narrative of Russian aggression is set in stone, and the Russian military has been made to look ineffective. The chance to end the provocations with quick and decisive action was lost.

Will the next provocation be Finland’s entry into NATO, will it be another go at color revolution in Central Asia, or will it be a war crime tribunal with Putin, Lavrov, and Shoigu tried and convicted in absentia?

In the midst of all of this, the Kremlin continues to keep the economies of its NATO enemies alive by exporting its gas.

NOTE: The opinions in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor. A/D

Why Biden and his Cronies Should All be Arrested

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“Biden: Putin Should Face War Crimes Trial for Bucha Killings”

Me: Biden is a war criminal and should face trial for the following:

Deliberately raising the price of fuel to unsustainable levels, setting millions on the road to unnecessary and avoidable impoverishment;

Deliberately devaluing the currency through generation of unsustainable, inconceivable debt and spending;

Destruction of the American military through elevating anti-Americans to the status of top generals who deliberately lost Afghanistan;

Indirectly and deliberately strengthening our enemies such as China, Russia and Iran, making nuclear, chemical and biological warfare a greater possibility than ever before;

Forcing experimental vaccinations on the population through illegal, unconstitutional executive orders, vaccines for which the companies making huge profits on them face no liability whatsoever, an unheard of policy post-Middle Ages;

Imprisoning alleged January 6 protesters with no due process, and no hope of even a biased trial in the foreseeable future, if ever–the most brazen violation of our original Constitution’s spirit and explicit requirements since 1776;

Classifying parents of children in government-run schools as “domestic terrorists” for peacefully challenging and petitioning the government to alter its course curriculum.

For these, and many other reasons, Biden, his family and all connected with him should not merely be impeached, but arrested, tried and convicted in accordance with their offenses against the American people, the Constitution and the rights of man.

Anything less than this — and America is going down. We simply cannot let this stand and expect life as we used to know it to be restored.

Putin may well be an SOB. But so is Biden. And he — and the people Biden works for — are a more direct threat to OUR country and OUR freedom than Putin could ever hope to be.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason