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.

Biden Plunges from Tyranny Into Sheer Evil With Student Loan Debt Transfer

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People cry, “My body, my choice.” Well, I say, “Your student loan, your payments.”

Transferring student debt (or ANY debt) from those who borrowed to those who did NOT borrow is SLAVERY.

Biden isn’t “forgiving” or “canceling” debt. He’s shifting the burden from those who went to school to those who didn’t. Or to those who went to school and already paid. IT’S WORST THAN TYRANNY. IT’S SHEER EVIL.

Does this mean college is now free?

Why don’t we just make EVERYTHING free and let the government pay UNLIMITED amounts for UNLIMITED goods?

From Breitbart:

Of course, it is not really “debt forgiveness.” It is a debt transfer. The loan payments that will no longer be made by debtors will effectively be picked up by taxpayers. The money borrowed to make up for the lost revenue will need to be paid for in the form of higher taxes or lower spending in the future. The canceled loans migrate from the balance sheets of the borrowers to the collective balance sheet of the U.S. taxpayer, including many who never went to college or have already paid their loans down.

One question is how the Federal Reserve will react. Very likely, it will need to offset the inflationary pressure created by Biden’s scheme with higher interest rates. This very likely means that unemployment will wind up even higher than it otherwise would have and the looming recession will cut deeper and last longer. Part of the cost of relieving ex-college students of their debt will be throwing people out of work and damaging businesses across America.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Leftists, Who Laugh Now, Are Sitting Ducks

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America is an inverted country. Under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the government was supposed to be afraid of the people. Now, it’s the exact reverse. The people are afraid of the government. We are now 180 degrees from how America started, when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and Americans rebelled against the British. The British government was not as bad as the Biden regime. And the Biden regime — along with its successors (Biden’s just a puppet, obviously) — is just getting started.

Today, the American people are afraid of the FBI — now an entirely politicized agency. The people are afraid of the IRS — now an entirely politicized (and armed) agency. Non-criminals are afraid of the police, who are no longer permitted to protect them from murder and theft; while criminals openly shoplift and kill, confident they will walk free after a Soros-picked prosecuter lets them go.

The only people NOT afraid of the government are the idiots (on the left) who support the government. They don’t, in fact, support “the government.” When Trump was in office, they were open insurrectionists. The minute Trump stepped down, they became blind apologists for all things Government.

They merely support their guys in charge. They support their guys in charge of a dictatorship.

Leftists and “Democrats” do not worry about dictatorship, so long as the guys THEY support are the dictators. Presumably, and sadistically, it’s a way for them to hold power over others. “I vote for Joe Biden. He imposes a dictatorship on YOU — not on me. So there.”

But sooner or later the dictator will do something these leftist fools don’t like. It’s only a matter of time. When Castro seized one party control in Cuba, as leftists have now done in America, he had the support of the entire media. He ended up jailing or killing all of them, eventually — except for the few who reported and said exactly what he wanted.

This is how dictators operate. Hitler and every other dictatorship throughout human history have done the same. Criminals and sociopaths are never to be trusted — even when they’re your guy.

Leftists are the ultimate sitting ducks, the ultimate example of, “It can’t happen to me.” They sneer and laugh at what’s happening to Donald Trump and — by logical extension — will happen to anyone who supports him OR opposes the one party oligarchy now in charge of everything.

But their time is coming. It’s only a matter of time. Karma will be a bitch.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Go to Hell, Fauci !

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“The legacy of Dr. Fauci will forever be a grandparent dying alone in a hospital room while he does another photoshoot for a magazine cover.”

@greg_price11 on Twitter

“Fauci has resigned. I’m guessing it’s so he has time to prepare with his lawyers for his appearance at the 2023 Nuremberg Code trials.”

@johnrich on Twitter

“Fauci catalyzed a massive loss of liberty for millions. Thanks to made-up policies — children uneducated, people fired for refusing experimental drug[s], offices & churches closed, productivity lost, Biden elected, big Pharma rich, Fauci’s work is done. How do we get our freedom back?”

@pnjaban on Twitter

Why and How a Culture Turns to Crap

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If you care about what others think, you become their slave.

A slave blindly follows his master. If the opinion of another person — or others in general — is your master, then you might as well have no mind.

It’s worse than that. If you surrender your mind to the mind of another person, you’re giving up on reason. And rationality. And objective reality. And intelligence. Science, freedom — they both go by the wayside if you don’t think rationally, critically and independently.

It has nothing to do with level of intelligence or degrees. It has everything to do with what makes us human.

When you surrender to what “others think”, you’re giving up on everything that makes human beings — yourself, or others — civilized, decent or credible.

Ironically, the “others” to whom you surrender your views and decisions are doing the exact same thing you’re doing. It’s absurd.

Look at today’s culture. If we can all agree on one thing, it’s that culture is going down the toilet.

Culture goes down the toilet because the spokespersons for a culture — the ones who rise to the top in government, media, sports and the arts — are full of crap.

If you want a barometer of today’s culture, turn on The View. “Full of crap” is a polite term to apply to the creatures who cackle banal obscenities to millions of viewers every day, for what seems like centuries now. Yet this — and so much else — is what passes for culture in a society going down the toilet. As recently as the 1980s, it would have been a satire skit on a “Saturday Night Live” episode. Today, it’s where a lot of people get their news and opinion. It’s too hideous to contemplate for very long!

But crap only rises to the top because most people give up on reason, intelligence, rationality and the one thing that makes them possible: INDEPENDENCE.

Independence is the answer. Millions of us had a once-in-a-century opportunity to practice independence in the last couple of years, when we were told to do things that made no sense. The great majority of us — two-thirds or more — blew it.

A culture, like an individual — since a culture consists of people — must learn from its mistakes. It’s the only way to pick ourselves up, reverse from our destructive course, and become the people we’re capable of being. And NOT who most of us have recently been.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Federalist Editor Rips Apart Mitch McConnell’s Remarks About the GOP Having Bad Senate Candidates

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Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gave Democrats a boost recently. Whether it was intentional or not is irrelevant at this point—when the Senate Republican leader says that his party virtually has no chance of retaking the 50-50 Senate, people take notice. The Kentucky Republican’s Eeyore attitude concerns what he says centers on candidate quality. Is that accurate? Even if that’s the case, a) you don’t say that out loud, and b) there is still time to turn things around. 

Yet, Federalist editor Mollie Hemingway was especially angered by McConnell’s remarks, not only for creating an unnecessary firestorm during a period where the political climate is primed for a GOP takeover but also for being inaccurate. She redirected fire toward the Democrats in some key races, citing their flaws and how it’s entirely feasible to construct a winning election strategy to defeat these people in November. 

With McConnell’s remarks, as Hemingway saw it, the man was ceding winnable elections to the Democrats based on Armageddon-like conditions for the GOP that simply do not exist. Mollie also noted that this appears to be a moment where Mr. Mitch cannot see the forest for the trees. Has he forgotten that the voters of the Republican Party nominated these folks? (via The Federalist): 

Of the 14 Senate seats that are in contention, two are considered safe for Democrats, one leans Democrat, two are considered safe for Republicans, one leans Republican, and the remaining eight are toss-ups, according to polling averages.

More than 70 percent of Americans say the country is moving in the wrong direction, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Americans are clearly not happy with the quality of leadership coming out of Washington, D.C.

And in this milieu, Republican voters who care deeply about their country have chosen a slate of extremely interesting candidates, many of them non-career politicians. Particularly compared to the crop of senators currently in Washington, they are all extremely talented and impressive people. This is something to highlight and praise, not lament. Having non-career politicians running is a good thing, not a bad thing,

Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, J.D. Vance, and Blake Masters are successful and impressive people in a variety of careers. Even the more traditional politicians running for re-election — Ron Johnson and Marco Rubio — are among the better senators in office. Adam Laxalt, running against an incumbent Nevada Democrat, is a highly decorated former Naval officer and Iraq War veteran. He was an incredibly successful attorney general in Nevada.

These are not bad candidates! If you can’t work with this level of quality, you can’t work with anyone. And they’re running against a crop of extreme and discredited candidates that a competent Republican leader should have no problem talking about, given the slightest opportunity. John Fetterman, an ostensibly grown man running for the Senate from Pennsylvania, is still supported by his parents. Raphael Warnock, trying to keep his Georgia seat, is a troubled man with an extreme voting record. Mark Kelly has envious funding but an extreme voting record and the personality of a fish.

More importantly, the Republicans won their nominations by running on the policies that have so reinvigorated and expanded the party. They have clear messages about helping out middle-class workers and their families, protecting the country from open borders and wasteful wars, and defending American values and freedom against leftist authoritarians.

It is political malpractice to pout and run them — and the voters who selected them — down. Republican voters came out in droves to nominate these candidates. They like them! McConnell, who is unfortunately quite politically unpopular — but who is the top elected leader of the party — should be taking every opportunity to sing their praises and push a unifying and expansive message nationally.

Not every candidate is perfect, and the Democrats appear to be batting 1.000 because their people get a lot of political cover from the media, even those who aren’t even running for office. Just look at the crack-addled, perverse, and allegedly corrupt activities of Hunter Biden. The FBI even stepped in to smother his dirty laundry from airing in publications. Also, as Hemingway noted, if Mitch can deliver words of adoration for Liz Cheney, he can do so for someone like college football hall of fame player Herschel Walker. 

JD Vance’s past anti-Trump activity was disappointing, but again, as in 2016—the people nominated these candidates for the U.S. Senate. Even if flawed, the nation is adrift, in an economic recession, inflation is at historic levels, and the White House outright looks like no one is running it. The recent raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home is yet another example of this aloofness, though not entirely believable. The Biden White House says that it, the executive, didn’t know about the events leading up to the Justice Department’s August 8 search; the DOJ is under the executive branch. Biden probably knew, or at least his top staffers did, but their storyline is “I know nothing,” which also indicates their governing style. This administration trots out economic narratives that do not align with reality, and more voters see that weekly. 

There’s still a lot of time in this 2022 cycle, and none of it favors the Democrats, especially as the political environment remains radioactive for them. 

Hemingway has no time for Mitch’s pouting. Get off the sidelines and help your party members win their elections. I’d think most in the GOP would agree. 

Matt Vespa