Why do leftists still not stand for the national anthem? They’ve got Biden. They’ve got Communism. They’ve got unlimited government, unlimited spending, green fascism, medical fascism, a ruined military, and enforced woke-ism.

They’ve got the country they want. So why don’t they want to salute the flag?

On the subject of kneeling for the national anthem and the lesbian athlete (Megan Rapinoe) who won’t do it … Leftists have historically said, “My government does not have a right to make me salute the flag.” That’s true. But these same people who don’t want that government force in one area, such as the flag or national anthem, welcome and applaud government force with regard to tons of other things — participation in Medicare/Social Security (not an option); vax mandates; mask mandates; paying off student loans of strangers; criticizing or questioning transgenders; on and on and on. Leftists welcome force in these areas, but dislike force when it strikes them wrong. They want freedom to smoke pot, mutilate one’s own genitals, call yourself a “he” if you’re a “she”, and to have someone else buy you an abortion. But they don’t seem to value freedom in too many other areas.

Can you name even one other area where leftists WANT freedom? Basically, the leftist idea of freedom is freedom to do whatever they want, and freedom to STOP you from doing anything that you want to do. This isn’t merely hypocrisy; this is the ugliest kind of tyranny. As for standing for the national anthem, we’re not talking about government force when it comes to a private association (such as a sports group you voluntarily enter) requiring you to do this. Regardless, being compelled to salute a flag is meaningless if it’s done against one’s will, or as an unthinking duty. But the same leftists who think they’re taking a principled stand are very happy to impose all kinds of coercion or meaningless duties on the rest of us.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Scientists and other people who believe this are wrong. For a detailed validation of free will, see my book The Illusion of Determinism: Why Free Will Is Real and Causal.

Determinists claim that everything you believe, want, do, and feel is determined by factors outside your control. Radical determinists say that everything you did today was pre-determined by a chain of causal laws starting at the time of the Big Bang, thirteen billion years ago. Talk of being a meaningless speck in the universe!

What is the error? Determinism entails a form of self-contradiction. Let me start with a 1986 quote from a world-famous physicist, the late Stephen Hawking:

Yet if there really is a complete unified theory [of physics], it would also presumably determine our actions. And so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we are drawing the wrong conclusion? Or no conclusion at all? (pp. 20-21)

(It bears nothing that Hawking did not have a viable solution to the dilemma, as I point out in my book, pp. 81-81).

The determinist believes, as Hawking says, that humans are powerless to make choices. This means that their belief in determinism was forced on them by causes beyond their control. They could not help believing it. This also means that forces beyond their control also determine the beliefs of anyone who disagrees with them. The debate becomes a contest between the equivalent of robots. This is a dead end. If determinism is true, we could never validate anything. The belief in determinism could never be validated because nothing could be validated.

Can we identify and validate what free will consists of? Freedom of action is not too far from the definition, but it is not the most fundamental choice. Let’s look beyond freedom of action to determine what causes action itself, above the level of one’s automatic bodily processes and automatic sense perception.

The answer is the rational faculty—that is, the choice to engage in conceptual thought. Thinking requires hardware and a brain. It must be stressed that thoughts and neurons are not identical. Physical entities can be colored and have mass, shape, and extension. Thoughts have none of these attributes. Ideas or thoughts can be unclear, confused, scary, or logical. Neurons have none of these attributes. The two cannot be identical even though consciousness depends on, that is could not exist, without the brain.

Consciousness as such is best viewed as an emergent property of the brain and nervous system. It exists on two levels: sense perception and conceptualization. Sense perception is not volitional; it is the automatic result of sensory material being processed by the brain. The process is subconscious, but the result is awareness of some aspect of reality.

Volition emerges at the conceptual level. Concepts are formed by integrating the material of the senses. For example, one can observe that certain structures have walls, a roof, doors, and often windows, and that people live in them. To form the concept of house, one ignores (abstracts out) the fact that the various attributes exist but differ in amount (in size and shape), and then one gives the concept a name and a definition (a structure serving as a dwelling). This is the basis of language. More complex concepts integrate lower-level concepts. Concepts can be integrated into thoughts and reasoning. What is unique to the conceptual or rational level of consciousness is that it is turned on or off by choice. Free will is the choice to think or not to think. It is not automatic; it requires self-generated effort (Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand).

You can validate free will easily. Pick up a book and choose to start reading. At some point you may find that you drift off; you lose focus, zone out. But you have the power to notice this, to decide whether you really want to understand what you are reading, and if so, to re-focus. Or you may decide what you are doing is not worth the trouble and turn to something else. You can also choose not to think about what you are reading because, even though you know it is important, it makes you feel anxious. This is evasion. Evasion, too, is a choice.

It must be noted that free will as such cannot be proved. Why? Because free will is a precondition for proving anything. Robot regurgitations are not knowledge. Free will is, thus, an axiom of epistemology. It is self-evident to introspection and cannot be refuted without contradiction.

Edwin Locke

Leftists prosecute, burn buildings, riot, defame character, dox, impeach, imprison, fine, sue and execute.

Conservatives do none of these things.

Maybe this is why we’re losing everything?

Conservatives don’t like to hear this. “We should turn the other cheek.” It’s ironic. Conservatives were not the ones who advocated appeasement of the Soviet Union; or of Hitler. Yet we treat today’s mortal enemies — on the left — as if they are capable of being reasoned with. We do so as they overtly imprison our candidates for no reason, declare any form of dissension an “insurrection” punishable by prison or death, censor our speech, strip us of our Second Amendment rights and slowly, progressively complete the nationalization of private industry. Oh, and threaten to perform sex change surgery on our children without our consent, and to imprison us as terrorists if we object.

It’s a timeless principle we have got to relearn: Appeasement does not work. Leftists are violent. Even the “peaceful” ones advocate the use of force — guns, police, imprisonment — when you fail to do everything they believe you must do. Appeasement of violent foes with mere words and complaints has not stopped them, and will not ever stop them. Suing them in a court system where they predetermine the rules and the outcomes in their favor has not stopped them, and will never stop them. Voting for alternative candidates in a system rigged by them and where the outcome is so predetermined by them that they no longer bother even to campaign has not worked, and will not ever work.

I don’t know about you. But it seems to me that it’s time for something different. I’m not persuaded by the argument, “We can’t become like them.” This is war. If we don’t fight back at some point, then our lives and values will all perish right before our eyes. If you let your house become infested with roaches, the roaches will prevail. If we had let Hitler overrun the world, we’d all be living as Nazis now.

Get your heads out of denial. Today’s leftists and their enabling cowards — the RINOs, the Fox News types — ARE that bad. In fact, they’re even worse than you think.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Trump Faces 78 Charges, State and Federal — So Far. How likely is he to escape every single one of them without conviction? Even one conviction can mean jail time, as these are felonies.

It’s time for Trump supporters, non-RINO Republicans and anyone else who still considers America and its Constitution valuable what they will do when the primary political opposition is imprisoned by the Party in power. How will you respond? Or will you respond at all? The choices were difficult in 1776, 1861 and 1941. Today, it will be no different.

This is not a Netflix or HBO series. You are living through the imminent demise of the greatest republic in human history.

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“This is a very sad day for America,” said Trump yesterday, when arraigned in D.C. “When you look at what’s happening, this is a persecution of a political opponent. This was never supposed to happen in America. This is the persecution of the person that’s leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Biden by a lot. So, if you can’t beat them, you persecute them or you prosecute them. We can’t let this happen in America.”

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

“But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.”

Ayn Rand, Anthem

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From Russell Kay, a reader, who gave consent to post this:

Against my better judgment, I’m gonna explain to you what’s going on in our country, and why it’s getting so bad:

America lost its freedom in 1871, when our Civil War debt was sold out to the City of London, and started being operated instead as a Corporation by the Central Banking system. You can LITERALLY find this information if you look it up.

Trump said he was gonna Drain the Swamp; the collapse of the system is exactly that; the whole System as we’ve known it IS the Swamp; we MUST see it fall to understand what their plan was the whole time.

The majority are showing they are utterly spineless and want to be blindly obedient; this is not news. They don’t want freedom, and never did; it’s just fun to posture and say they support it. They don’t, and the Milgram Experiments proved that. This is why Republicans keep caving to Democrats….the rank and file, I mean. Most humans are utterly spineless, and the minute adversity comes along, they fold like a cheap playing card.

Trump was put in to take out the entire syndicate, and the whole thing is TEN TIMES WORSE than almost any American believes, and even YOU Dr. Hurd will be utterly shocked when it all comes out.

IF Trump had gone after them full-force during his first term, the propaganda outlets FINANCED by the Central Bank would’ve torn him to shreds, and the Swamp would not be collapsing the way it is now.

Sadly, it has to be this way. Take the time now to see all those around you, and how weak willed they really are, so you understand better what you’re dealing with, moving forward. See who REALLY wants improvement, and who just shrugs their shoulders and accepts Biden, knowing deep down they’re ok with it, cause they’ll accept anything. Hell, if they were given a choice between two open child molestors, they’d honestly say “well, those are the choices we have”, not “give us new choices”; they’re. THAT. WEAK. Learn this, and you’ll go far, rather than being disappointed when they do exactly what they’re gonna do.

Thank you for your time.

If you think it can happen to Donald Trump, but not to you — then you’re badly mistaken.

Similarly, if you think it can happen to Donald Trump, but not to someone like Nigel Farage, across the pond — you’re already mistaken.

Consider this story, from MSNBC, of all places:

“It’s the biggest financial scandal you’ve barely heard about in the U.S.: Two British bank executives have lost their jobs and others may follow in an uproar over politicized decisions to close customer accounts. This is a cautionary tale for Americans about what happens when good banks go woke.

“The mess engulfing Coutts & Co. started in late June when Nigel Farage said the exclusive private bank was closing his accounts. Mr. Farage is a prominent politician on the British right, having been the prime mover behind the 2016 Brexit referendum and expressing economically and socially conservative views before and since.”

Wow. Nigel Farage was a serious contender for British prime minister, at one time. Regardless, he played a historic role in mobilizing the majority of British people to leave the communistic, collectivistic European Union, a socialist entity disproportionately financed by the British (as Margaret Thatcher predicted would happen more than 3 decades ago).

Read on:

“Mr. Farage asserted he was being de-banked for political reasons, a claim the bank initially denied. Alison Rose, CEO of Coutts’ parent company NatWest, told a BBC journalist that Mr. Farage had fallen below Coutts’ hefty minimum-balance requirements.

“It turns out Mr. Farage was right. He obtained a copy of a 40-page record of the bank’s internal discussions about his accounts. Coutts staff concluded that continuing to bank Mr. Farage would create “significant reputational risks” for Coutts owing to his sometimes inflammatory opinions on issues such as race relations, Russia and climate policy. The dossier records employees conceding there were commercial grounds for keeping Mr. Farage’s accounts open otherwise.

“Banks are so heavily regulated that they can’t help but be mindful of politics in business decisions. NatWest is still 39% owned by British taxpayers following a bailout in 2008, and the left-wing Labour Party is widely expected to win an election next year. Nowhere in the dossier did Coutts employees openly consider that they might soon be regulated by politicians opposed to Mr. Farage, but it’s hard to imagine the thought didn’t cross someone’s mind.”

This brazen favoritism is too much even for the far left MSNBC reporter, who concludes:

“This danger will grow as politicians lean more heavily on banks to implement their policies. Would a bank maintain accounts for a critic of net-zero climate policies if the bank is under pressure from Washington to advance the climate agenda?

“Normal businesses can choose their customers, but it’s a long time since a bank was a normal business. The left in particular treats banks as utilities. The Farage affair exposes how dangerous this is, and not only in Britain.”

It started decades ago with bank regulation. If banks had stayed private, none of this could have happened. It escalated after the 2008 financial crisis, when governments went from regulating to partially owning the entire banking industry, thanks to earlier regulatory policies (regarding lending) that created the whole crisis in the first place.

It should come as little surprise that since governments now largely own all the banks, governments feel free to impose their will on people who keep their money in those banks. It should come as little surprise that since government now owns not just certain banks, but the entire banking industry, that people who disagree with the government — including you and I — have no place to run when the government kicks us out of their banks for having incorrect political, social or ideological views.

Castro, Stalin and Mao imposed censorship by armies and guns. Today’s American, British and other so-called democratic governments don’t need the armies and guns (although they would not hesitate to use them). All they need is to take away all your money. The government of Canada has already done that to people who opposed vax mandates, mask mandates and lockdowns, several years ago.

It’s time to stop calling where we live “the free world”. And it’s time to start figuring out how to get our freedom back.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

In a new scathing op-ed, former President Trump detailed many of the insanities coming from his political opponents as they pushed the completely unproven idea of Trump-Russia collusion. He made the case that despite all the grief he and many close to him have been subjected to as a result of the Russiagate Hoax, the true victims of the madness are the American people. 

After kicking off with a brief introduction establishing the piece’s premise, the former president took us back to his run for office in 2016, discussing campaign promises including his vows to end mass illegal immigration, globalist trade deals, the sellout of the US to Communist China, and to “stand up to the permanent bureaucracy and the corporate media.”

Former President Trump also promised to end the “neocon addiction to endless foreign wars.” He notably is the first US President since Jimmy Carter to start no new wars. 

It is for these reasons, Trump argues, that “an unelected cabal” of the US government’s top ranks worked with Hillary Clinton, their comrades in the media, and others in order to hatch “the de-facto coup attempt known as the Russia Hoax.”

“For nearly three years, they carried out a massive disinformation campaign and lawless persecution based on the monstrous lie that I was a traitor to my country,” he explained.

Trump offered a mountain of evidence to support his accusation of this witchhunt, first pointing to the $1 million offered for the fake “Steele Dossier” on Trump’s supposed treason. Any doubts that the FBI had not made the massive monetary offer to British spy Christopher Steele were thrown to the wayside after FBI supervisory analyst Brian Auten confirmed during a legal testimony this event took place at an overseas October 2016 meeting. 

The former president also observed that a former FBI lawyer has admitted to intentionally creating false evidence in order to justify spying on Trump before he had even entered office. 

Trump argued that this “sickness was driven from the very top,” as FBI Director James Comey had routinely badgered agents to enact further surveillance and warrants of Trump, repeatedly asking, “Where is the FISA, where is the FISA?” He also pointed out that the Durham Report revealed that Barack Obama and Joe Biden were aware of Clinton’s plans to “vilify” him by pushing Russian scandals.

“They knew the truth, yet they put our country through hell.”

Despite all the hurdles Trump says he, his family, staff, and many others around him faced, he maintained that “the real victims were the American People,” as this “hoax” has worked to survey US democracy, threaten national security, and put American freedoms in peril. 

“At a critical moment when we should have been reducing tensions with Russia, the Russia Hoax stoked mass hysteria that helped drive Russia straight into the arms of China,” opined Trump. “Instead of having a better relationship with Russia as I worked to build, we now have a proxy war with Russia, fueled in part by the lingering fumes of Russiagate delirium.”

“Ukraine has been utterly devastated, he continued, “Untold numbers of people have been killed. And we could very well end up in World War III.”

In his concluding remarks, Trump stated that perhaps the “most dangerous” of all the damage that has come from the Russia hoax is the normalized “weaponization of law enforcement against the Left’s political enemies.”

Backing up his point about the American people suffering from this new sort of quasi-legal system, Trump said that radical leftists and their friends in the media “now cheer as Biden’s DOJ demands the FBI investigate parents at school board meetings, deploys heavily armed teams to arrest pro-life activists, and pursues an all-out persecution of Joe Biden’s leading opponent for the presidency.”

Trump wrapped up with a call to action for the American people. In his view, there is but one choice for the American people: “either the Deep State destroys America, or we destroy the Deep State.”

Sweep aside those parasites of subsidized classrooms, who live on the profits of the mind of others and proclaim that man needs no morality, no values, no code of behavior. They, who pose as scientists and claim that man is only an animal, do not grant him inclusion in the law of existence they have granted to the lowest of insects. They recognize that every living species has a way of survival demanded by its nature, they do not claim that a fish can live out of water or that a dog can live without its sense of smell—but man, they claim, the most complex of beings, man can survive in any way whatever, man has no identity, no nature, and there’s no practical reason why he cannot live with his means of survival destroyed, with his mind throttled and placed at the disposal of any orders they might care to issue.

Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose of morality is to curb man’s instinct of self-preservation? It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live.

If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a “moral commandment” is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists—and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.

Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual

I am curious why almost nobody on the “right” thinks Trump will be convicted or imprisoned, despite dozens if not hundreds of felony charges he’s facing. The reasons given typically center on the illegitimacy of the charges. Yes, I agree the charges are bogus. I agree the federal DOJ is now an entirely politicized pack of legalized gangsters, further supported by Hunter Biden’s total escape from responsibility for crimes he essentially has admitted to, laughing off charges between cocaine sniffs.

If the legal system is weaponized, and if Trump’s regaining the Presidency so he can pardon himself is highly unlikely due to election fraud, then how is he to walk free? Money will not solve this.

I ask this as someone who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and will gladly do so again in 2024, though I do not believe any Republican will win due to unchallenged, uncorrected fraud. I ask not because I am negative, or defeatist, but because I know — with undiluted certainty — that denial and evasion are NEVER the way to win a war or destroy evil.

On social media Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that despite his father’s assassination in 1968 leading to the Secret Service protecting presidential candidates, that agency denied him that very protection.

“Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me,” Kennedy wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Friday. “Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, the Biden Administration just denied our request.”

“I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F Kennedy Jr is not warranted at this time,” Kennedy reported Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying.

The Biden regime and all leftists are SAVAGES in suits.

Biden is not campaigning. No Democrat, aside from RFK, is challenging him. That is incredibly revealing. It’s exactly what happens in Soviet or CCP or Putin style dictatorships. None of it surprises me. But for most Republicans and conservatives, the band plays on. It’s a staggering denial fest. Wake up, conservatives and liberty lovers.

I am curious why almost nobody on the “right” thinks Trump will be convicted or imprisoned, despite dozens if not hundreds of felony charges he’s facing. The reasons given typically center on the illegitimacy of the charges. Yes, I agree the charges are bogus. I agree the federal DOJ is now an entirely politicized pack of legalized gangsters, further supported by Hunter Biden’s total escape from responsibility for crimes he essentially has admitted to, laughing off charges between cocaine sniffs.

If the legal system is weaponized, and if Trump’s regaining the Presidency so he can pardon himself is highly unlikely due to election fraud, then how is he to walk free? Money will not solve this.

I ask this as someone who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and will gladly do so again in 2024, though I do not believe any Republican will win due to unchallenged, uncorrected fraud. I ask not because I am negative, or defeatist, but because I know — with undiluted certainty — that denial and evasion are NEVER the way to win a war or destroy evil.

On social media Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that despite his father’s assassination in 1968 leading to the Secret Service protecting presidential candidates, that agency denied him that very protection.

“Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me,” Kennedy wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Friday. “Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, the Biden Administration just denied our request.”

“I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F Kennedy Jr is not warranted at this time,” Kennedy reported Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying.

The Biden regime and all leftists are SAVAGES in suits.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason