You can’t save a person from himself. You can’t rescue a person who doesn’t wish to be rescued. The same applies to a nation. If a nation — even a great and special one, such as America — does not wish to be rescued, or to rescue itself — then nothing will change. It will simply have to play out.

Even if we had honest national elections, we could not vote our way to rationality. You have to be rational to know HOW to vote. Ignorance has led a majority of people to conclude that either they don’t need freedom, or that freedom will always exist because — well because it’s America. They fail to realize how rare and vulnerable freedom is.

Elections will not turn magical thinkers into realistic thinkers. Magical thinking and ignorance got us into this mess. Elections will not matter, and politics will not matter, until people start to think rationally and intelligently.

The bad news is that most are not at present, and have not for some time, thought especially rationally or intelligently. The good news is that the choice to do so is always there. It will be a painful process of hitting bottom. Many will not come through. But some will, and things will someday be better. When? Only time and the choices of people will tell.

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

New Hampshire is considering writing secession into its Constitution, once the federal debt goes above $40 trillion. Vermont and Texas are also considering secession.

Is the USA breaking apart?

Here’s what I think will happen: The U.S. debt will continue to rise. At some point, the federal government will be inoperable, if the wokesters, climate alarmists and medical fascists don’t wreck it all first. Hyperinflation may render the American dollar worthless, or at least impoverish much of the middle class by present standards. Lots of things can happen. When it does, secession will almost be beside the point. It will be economics that brings about the end of the American republic.

We will probably see a bunch of different little republics in places that used to be a unified republic. Socialist Vermont — they will have old school socialism. California will be an American version of Communist China. New York will split into red and blue. NYC will be all out dystopian, as is already happening. Pennsylvania and Illinois will similarly split between urban and rural. Ditto for the Pacific Northwest, which will split rural vs. Communist urban. States like Texas will be semi-capitalist, semi-free with religious overtones, although the cities of these former red states will reject religion and be more socialist. Who knows? There may be some good to it all. We will certainly see diversity. Crime will be horrible in the cities and contained in rural, conservative areas via local militias and well-armed citizens.

One thing is for sure. Look at Washington DC. Look at Congress, and even much of the Supreme Court. Fauci, the Deep State. It’s a mess! It’s the fall of the Roman Empire on steroids. Biden could be our puppet Nero. We cannot and will not go on like this. This country is just one nasty recession or depression away from an irreconcilable breakup.

Right now, it’s basically Social Security and Medicare holding the federal union together. Without national borders or any remote consensus anymore on the Bill of Rights, even the First and Second Amendments, it’s hard to see a republic lasting another century or even 50 years. America, even now, seems more like an abstraction than a reality.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

In between all the activities that characterize our summer beach resort, it helps to stand back and take a look at what matters (and what doesn’t matter) to you. In fact, this sort of self-reflection should be a part of your everyday life, especially after experiencing a crisis or difficulty. This recommitment to meaningful things might take some time and conscious effort, but it’s worth it.

A friend of mine, an active, energetic man in his 80s, was recently involved in a car collision. He was slightly injured and more than a little shaken, and his car was totally demolished. Suddenly without transportation, he lost much of his cherished independence. Family and friends helped out, but he deeply missed his daily routine.

After a few weeks of isolation and boredom, he realized that he had to recommit to his priorities. He asked himself if it was still important to live his life as he had previously, and if so, then what was he going to do about it. By the time he got over the initial trauma, he had made the crucial decision to not withdraw from the world, to confront the situation, find a new car, and bring back his favorite pleasures.

There are issues uniquely associated with aging, such as deciding at what point you’re not able to do the things you used to take for granted. But the issue of recalibrating priorities applies to all of us. Crisis doesn’t have to be negative. I’ve written about how people choose to retire and live an easier life, and then experience an emotional upheaval because they don’t know what to do with their days. Another example of this is a newly graduated college student who experiences a crisis about “where to go from here.”

A lot of this stems from not having a clear idea of what to do with your life, which can result in not knowing what to do with your days. My elderly friend knows that he wants to be independent. He wants to avoid assisted living, and he wants to drive. Because he’s basically healthy, the issue of knowing what to do is common sense. But when it comes down to the everyday decisions of how to spend his days, practical choices must be made. Should he live as a shut-in, skulking around with the blinds closed and feeling sorry for himself? Or should he demand more, reestablish his routines, and drive back out into the world? His overall goal of independence was unchanged by the temporary upheaval, and by refocusing, he figured out how he wanted to spend his day-to-day existence. All that was left was to make it happen.

A similar thing can take place with our hypothetical college graduate. He or she has quite literally spent his or her entire life in school. It provided structure and routine. Suddenly, they hear over and over, “You have your whole life ahead of you!” But lacking that structure, next month and next year can be difficult to face.

My point is this: Making decisions requires that you first know your priorities. Regular readers of this column know that I urge people to “introspect” by having a serious conversation with themselves about what makes them happy. This is vital to identifying and shaping our priorities.

Will you immediately get everything you want? Maybe not. Possibly our graduate will have to do something for a while that he doesn’t want to do. Maybe my senior friend will have to rely on grocery deliveries for a few more weeks until he finds a car he likes. But if the priorities remain firm, life will flow steadily in the right direction. From a psychological point of view, any alternative will almost certainly result in anxiety.

My experience counseling people over the years has proven that individuals who know what they want are happier than those who don’t. Nobody knows you better than you do, and nobody can (or should) make life decisions for you. The saying “freedom requires responsibility” might be even better stated: “Having choices means being responsible for knowing what you want.” We’re all responsible for evaluating what we want and how we plan to get it. The self-confidence it brings will be well worth the effort.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

There are many reasons for any sane person to regret the existence of Hamas, the savage Sunni Muslim militia that controls the Gaza Strip in Southern Israel. Founded in 1987, the group has specialized in terror attacks against Israelis while maintaining vigorous side-concessions fomenting anti-Western sentiment and keeping their own populace in a state of wretched poverty.

Such are the convoluted workings of providence, however, that the world may eventually find itself grimly grateful for what one percipient observer called “the Sabbath Massacres”: the barbaric slaughter perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which left some 1,400 dead, thousands wounded, and more than 200 kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.

The main reason to be grateful for this horrific carnage follows from the revelation it afforded. In the first place, by acting with such savage and sanguinary abandon—deliberately targeting the young and helpless, the old and infirm, raping, mutilating, beheading—Hamas in effect signed its own death warrant.

We’ve seen all the usual suspects fulminating against Israel, “the Zionists,” “the Jews.” A prominent Hamas spokesman called Ghazi Hamad said in an interview that the Sabbath Massacre of October 7 was only the start, that there would be many more and similar attacks “until Israel is annihilated.”

But that is idle, impotent imprecation, of a piece with King Lear’s aposiopetic rant against his daughters [I somehow wrote “sisters”: thanks to an alert reader for that correction]:

– No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall – I will do such things, –
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.

One of the most brilliant spokesman for the the Israeli Defense Force, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, was right when he described Hamad as a “rotten, vile, and cowardly terrorist.” Doubtless Hamad would slit the throat of any Israeli he chanced across. But he is likely to chance across very few, if any. As Conricus has explained in patient if steely detail, the IDF is going to dismantle Hamas piece by piece, tunnel by tunnel, terrorist by terrorist.

The Israelis will, as they have always done—and in sharp contrast with the procedure of Hamas—proceed deliberately and methodically, taking care to minimize civilian casualties wherever they can, but without bowing to the illegal emotional blackmail of using civilians a human shields, a regular practice of Hamas, which, in blatant contravention of the Geneva Conventions, builds command centers and rocket launchers under or adjacent to hospitals, schools, mosques, etc., and which employs ambulances as taxis across war zones, another violation of the rules of war.

But the main point is that, in sharp contradistinction to the many other times that Israel has responded militarily to Arab or Palestinian aggression, this time all signs are that they will finish the job. In the past, Israel has been cowed by “world opinion,” that marshy will-o’-the-wisp that emanates from such sinkholes as the United Nations and the news rooms of such discredited entities as The New York Times and CNN. But this time I predict, the extreme savagery of the October 7 attack—an attack that killed more Jews than any episode since the Holocaust—has put steel in the Israeli response. Hamas’s days are numbered, and the number is not large.

That is one real if paradoxical reason to be grateful for the attack by Hamas. They did not heed Gertrude Stein’s sage admonition to know how far to go in going too far. They went all the way, and they will pay the ultimate price for their horrible bloodletting.

The other chief reason that this grisly event may inspire gratitude alongside revulsion is that it seems to have shaken the world awake, disrupting the pathetic radical-chic infatuation with this species of violent, anti-Western guilt mongering. Yes, Western colleges and universities, especially the richest and most pampered of them, are full of anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian animus. From Harvard to Stanford, from Columbia and Cornell to Georgetown and the University of Pennsylvania, students and faculty are making fools of themselves by mouthing such goads to genocide as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.”

But these little eructations, along with the carefully coordinated mass rallies in major cities throughout the Western world, conceal an inexorable process of disenchantment. Much publicized has been the withdrawal of financial support by scores of major donors to the university industrial complex. The loss of money may sting at some few campuses. For most, it will be but a rounding error. What will matter much more is the loss of that much more precious form of spiritual currency, legitimacy.

Whatever else it accomplished, the murderous attacks perpetrated by Hamas tore the mask off the “poor, suffering Palestinians” and revealed the entire operation as the bloodthirsty, anti-civilizational impulse we have long known it to be. For that, at least, we must be grateful for this excruciating moment of clarity.

Roger Kimball

Tuesday, November 5, 2024, is barely a year away. How will it look?

Not long ago, Election Day found hundreds of millions of Republicans, Democrats, and independents with heads full of knowledge about candidates and causes. Beyond the infirm and the absent, Americans walked with dignity into their precincts at schools, firehouses, and libraries. And on one glorious autumn day, we decided en masse — in Congress and the White House.

Today, the same crowd that cannot tell a man from a woman has demolished this beautiful picture, too.

Election Day teeters on extinction. Americans now vote across Election Quarter. Elections start about Labor Day and end around Black Friday.

Not good!

But this need not be. And Americans who want to restore Election Day have as a powerful weapon: The Law.

Federal elections are required to occur on “the Tuesday next, after the first Monday in November.” This date is not based on something that Mark Twain whispered to Ulysses S. Grant. It is neither optional nor suggested.

According to 2 US Code § Section 7, that Tuesday “is established as the day for the election…of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress.”

Under 3 US Code § 21 “election day” “means the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November,” for choosing the President and Vice President except “as necessitated by force majeure events that are extraordinary and catastrophic.”

Those caveats were shoehorned in last Christmas, amid the Yuletide spending orgy co-hosted by senators Chuck Schumer (D – New York) and his loyal manservant, Mitch McConnell (R – Kentucky).

So, absent total calamities, all of today’s early-voting nonsense violates not one but two federal statutes.

Early voting is against the law! 

GOP attorneys should be in every state, banging on the doors of federal judges, and demanding they scrap every Democrat-inflicted “temporary,” COVID-era, early-voting scam.

• Down with mass-mailed, no-excuse absentee ballots!
• No more drop boxes!
• Goodbye, ballot harvesting and vote trafficking!
• Sayonara, early voting — as many as 40 days before Election Day in Michigan and 46 days in Minnesota!
• Farewell, late voting, with absentee ballots blowing into tabulation rooms like autumn leaves, until damn-near Thanksgiving.

(GOP employment of such methods must be necessary, temporary, and swiftly prohibited.)

Thanks to Public Interest Legal Foundation for filing a federal lawsuit in North Dakota to require that all ballots arrive for counting by the time polls close on Election Day.

It’s bad enough that votes get stuffed into ballot boxes. They should not get stuffed into turkeys.

America must reinvigorate Election Day, which is when citizens voted until Obama & Co. started to demolish this hallowed tradition, just as Democrats grind their rusty cleats into every neck they can find.

Democrats will whine that restoring Election Day is a Right-wing, Mega-MAGA Republican plot to suppress black votes and steal elections.

Yaaaaawn

When Democrats spew this lie, Republicans should remind them that such racists as Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, LBJ, JFK, and FDR all won the White House — and their Democrat comrades held Congress — while they followed the same Election Day rules that they would denounce as pure bigotry today.

Conservative activists, donors, leaders, and groups should adopt this cause.

Republicans should deploy battalions of attorneys to unleash this strategy to the GOP’s advantage. A level playing field would cripple modern Democrats.

I hereby volunteer to assist anyone who will litigate this vital matter.

Specifically, I would be thrilled to be the lead plaintiff in relevant federal lawsuits. I would be honored to be the Clarence Earl Gideon, Ernesto Miranda, or Dick Anthony Heller on the lawsuit that finally obliterates the Democrats’ election-theft machine. (RELATED: DEROY MURDOCK: Biden’s Busted Border Is A Giant Red Carpet For Terrorists)

If GOP lawsuits fail, they fail.

But if Republicans win, they win — big league!

Republicans will know neither loss nor victory until they try. The GOP needs to fight this all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. If not, Democrats will keep stealing elections until they achieve the one-party neo-Marxist dictatorship that they crave.

Republicans have everything to win. What the Hell do we have to lose?

Make Election Day Great Again!

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.

Many people assume that mental health is a matter of either medicine or moral weakness. The medicine side assumes that pills can eradicate mental illness. The moral side assumes that troubling emotions stem from weakness of character. Both sides are wrong.

Troubling emotions originate from faulty reasoning and mistaken assumptions. A perfect example is the “Heaven’s Reward” fallacy, one of the most destructive ideas to be foisted upon the human race. In short, it wrongly suggests that doing good will somehow lead to personal rewards. Any skilled cognitive psychotherapist will tell you that doing good does not necessarily lead to personal gain. For example, being a martyr and sacrificing for others does not automatically lead to happiness.

Unfortunately, some mental health professionals are no different than their clients in assuming that “good” is defined as self-sacrifice. They might say, “Don’t be a martyr,” but they then take for granted that morality consists of self-sacrifice. This insidious premise is never questioned, and it gets already unhappy people into even more trouble. It’s an error that no medication can resolve. And I see the troubling effects almost every day in my office.

The healthy approach is to assume two things: First, that the purpose of life is to be happy. Second, that one must take sensible steps to achieve and maintain some measure of happiness. Many people spend their lives trying to determine what those steps are.

If you go through life giving in to others and/or doing what you think they want you to do, there’s no reward at the end of that phony rainbow. The only “reward” is that the moment you betray yourself, you’ve lost much of your ability to be happy. And you have no business wondering, “Why am I so depressed?”

Some will say that concern for your own happiness is “selfish,” and therefore bad. To those, I reply, “Is it selfish to go to the doctor to treat a medical ailment?” And conversely, “Is refusing to go to the doctor yourself – but making sure other people go – a selfless and therefore moral thing to do?” The answer is obvious.

The problem is that some think they must give up happiness in order to be good. This sets morality and personal fulfillment at war with each another, i.e., the more you give up, the better you are. Beware! Many clever politicians, self-proclaimed religious “leaders” and other moochers of body, mind and spirit stand ready – with hands outstretched – to piously collect those sacrifices from you.

If aliens were to land and observe human beings, I suspect they’d make the following discovery: “These humans want to be happy. Everything they do centers on the quest for survival and the pursuit of fulfillment. Yet for some reason, they believe that self-sacrifice – the lessening of happiness – is the central purpose in life. And they idolize those who pretend to embody this ideal. What a strange bunch, these beings.”

And even stranger, there’s no reason we have to be that way. In fact, it’s a tribute to us that we have achieved so much happiness in the face of so much ethical and psychological opposition. We’ve spent most of our history under some form of political dictatorship or authoritarianism. Even the original American republic, the brightest light of freedom in history, is now suffering the threat of the same authoritarian fate.

It’s a fate of our own making. It’s a fate determined not by any external agent, but by the flawed premises (and resulting emotional states) of billions of people. Again, I see it almost every day in my office, and I see it every time I turn on the news.

For all my sadness and anger over this condition that need not be so, I’m optimistic that people can survive so much of the damage they do to themselves and still emerge at least occasionally triumphant. Human beings are meant to be free and happy. But we must first convince ourselves that that’s a noble and worthy goal.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

The outpouring of hate in the West is a continuation of a long tradition of blaming the Jews for everything—including their own misfortunes.

Reich Marshal Hermann Goering was the Minister of Economy in the Third Reich. There are records of a meeting he held with top insurance executives shortly after the Kristllnacht attacks of November, 1938. The large-scale destruction of homes and businesses led to enormous losses for the Jews. It was said that three years of Belgian glass production would be required to replace all of the windows shattered by the Brown Shirts and their civilian partners. During this meeting, the insurance representatives pointed out that the Jews had active policies, and as things stood, Germany’s insurance companies were on the hook for an enormous amount of money. Goering made a joke about his very large size when he told the worried executives that he would be a fairy angel and with the wave of his wand, he would charge the German Jewish community 1 billion reichsmarks to cover the damage “that they had created”. Jewish leaders protested vociferously about the new tax, but to no avail. The Jews were forced to cough up the billion marks and were left as the cause of their own suffering and destruction.

This national-level story fits well with that which my late father told me. Before his father and other Jewish World War I veterans of Forchheim were taken off to Dachau on 10 November, 1938, they were given brooms and wheelbarrows to clean up “the mess they had made” with the dynamited synagogue. The active bombing of the local synagogue by clearly identifiable SA Brown Shirts had now been converted into the destruction of a Jewish house of worship at the hands of the Jews themselves. After they cleaned up the area, the Jewish men were taken to Dachau, where my grandfather stayed until his release on 30 December, 1938 for the Iron Cross he possessed.

When one sees the massive protests in favor of Hamas and against Israel in London (100,000 people), Brooklyn (7,000 people), and in other big cities and on campuses throughout the US, he realizes that the age-old “blame the Jew for his problems” is alive and well. If one engages these terror supporters, they will tell you that the Israelis (=Jews) got exactly what they deserved. They are occupiers! But the pogrom took place in 1948 Israel and not in any disputed occupied territory. But in their eyes, all of Israel is an occupation, and thus anything done to any Israeli anywhere in the country is “resistance” in their demented parlance. Raping young girls? Cutting off baby heads? Tying up parents and setting them on fire in front of their children? As far as our modern social justice warrior and her Muslim boyfriend are concerned, it’s all fair. The Jews brought this upon themselves and they deserve it. There are no signs of mercy for over 200 people in Hamas captivity, some of them westerners. There is no inkling of pain in seeing young men and women mowed down in a music festival. Jew-hatred is all-immersive. And when they say “intifada from London to Gaza”, they are not looking just at the Jews. All non-Jews need to be dealt with, though they want to harm the Jews first.

The Jews being blamed for the evil brought upon them by others is not a new theme. The infamous blood libel of using the blood of non-Jewish children for making matzahs was passed down in Europe from generation to generation for hundreds of years. Jews were blamed for going meekly to the concentration camps at a time when no one had imagined such mass killing was possible. After the fact, everyone was suddenly a genius. Somehow the Jews were supposed to fight without knowledge of what was waiting for them, without weapons, and without support from other countries that did not want Jews to emigrate in their direction. Ever see the Ukrainians killing Jews alongside Wehrmacht soldiers? Obviously it was the Jews’ fault for being loyal Ukrainian citizens.

The fact that those on the left blame the Jews and Israel for the fighting in Gaza, for the necessary attacks against Hamas in civilian areas means that Israel cannot get a break. I am at a loss for the IDF spokesman going into detail about Hamas control centers under the main Gaza hospital. Some of the information came from Hamas 10/7 terrorists and their interrogation videos are publicly available. If the IDF put out the information to justify attacking the hospital, then I could understand. Hamas made a war crime of using the public hospital as its base, and Israel has no choice but to attack it. But rather, Israel simply announced how evil Hamas is and at least until this moment has done nothing to get rid of a glowing red military target. There are no bonus points in war for being right. Either you attack your enemy or you go home. If your enemy is under a hospital, then blow him up, hospital and all. If you can’t blow him up, then remove your soldiers and await the next massive attack on your citizens. Either fight to win or go home.

The reason why Israel is so petrified of attacking a clear military target is that they are still shellshocked from the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague. Some warned at the time of the Nuremberg Trials that setting up a new “international law” was sketchy and would cause problems in the future. Fast-forward to today where the US, Israel and other Western countries are the ones usually hauled before the ICC for prosecuting wars normally. Somehow there is some expectation of perfect warfare and anything less is subject to prosecution. A stray tank shell? An airstrike that took out the target and a nearby school? Better get a lawyer. About ten years ago, Israeli politicians and top commanders were scared to go to England or Belgium, for fear of arrest and extradition to the Hague. One politician barely escaped being arrested in England. IDF officers also like to take vacations and are not interested in being stopped at European airports for doing their jobs.

While the left in the West is blaming Israel for the barbaric actions of Hamas, the latter is trying to run away from what it did. A Saudi journalist attacked a Hamas leader about the brutality of the murders and rapes; he claimed that it was non-Hamas people who did it, though videos show otherwise. Another Hamas spokesman was asked about the brutal murders, and he simply removed his microphone and walked out of the BBC studio. Somehow they thought that the filmed barbarity would win them new friends; instead, it got them thrown in with the Nazis and ISIS. So what does one do when he has behaved with such intense evil? He simply blames the Jews for what was done to them.

Alan Joseph Bauer, Front Page Magazine

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Newsmax on Tuesday that “we need … a better approach to mental health,” in order to prevent these horrific mass public shootings.

One thing is for certain. No government body can come up with a “one-size-fits-all” solution for everyone’s mental health. The government can’t do a single thing … EXCEPT something it presently is NOT doing, at least in America’s biggest and most left-wing cities: Arrest, prosecute and KEEP IN JAIL violent criminals.

If the government started doing one of its few legitimate jobs, people who wish to initiate violence against others might, at least in some cases, be a little more hesitant to initiate violence against others.

Something else the government can do is stay out of people’s lives. Stop the social engineering. Stop the funding of charities or other organizations that the politicians believe will help others (or, more likely, themselves). Just STOP. Stop trying to manipulate people into doing what you believe they should do, with other people’s money (or trillions in borrowed money). This applies nationally and internationally. JUST STOP.

Stop giving aid and comfort to giant pharmaceutical companies through subsides or special favors — the most brazen and horrifying example, the rollout of the failed, experimental “vaccine” back in 2021, the same vaccine that now almost nobody will take. Stop wasting money and — worse than that — building up false hopes and false promises. Let the market sort this out. On its worst day, the free market will do 100,000 times a better job than the most intelligent politician (which almost none of them are).

Government: LEAVE US THE HELL ALONE. Arrest and prosecute, through rational due process, violent criminals. Stop arresting or prosecuting based on race; or stop pretending that violent criminals are victims, when in fact they’re just evil thugs.

Essentially, it’s the George Costanza principle: Do the opposite. The government should STOP doing EVERYTHING it’s presently doing; and START doing things it SHOULD be doing, which are very few — but crucially important — things.

It’s as simple as that. But they won’t do it. And the great majority of us will not make them.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason