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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.

Why Have People Gone Mad

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We live in the most unhinged times since perhaps the Middle Ages.

Consider the vaccine. The very same people who called it a “Trump vaccine” last January 19, something they would never allow near their bodies, now consider the vaccine not only desirable — but something that should be mandatory, put into your body whether you provide consent, or not. Evidently this transformation occurred sometime around noon on January 20. The moment Biden was sworn in, the evil Trump vaccine became the greatest, most transformative medical discovery in all of human history.

Millions of your fellow Americans, shockingly, act and speak like they actually BELIEVE that while this vaccine protects them, they still need every single other person on the planet to have the vaccine — otherwise, the vaccine won’t work in their own bodies. And, on top of it, every single person on the planet MUST continue to wear a mask — one, two or even five masks — not just indefinitely, but perhaps forever. All so THEY can be safe.

It’s too irrational to even dignify. That would be like saying: “I have an infection. I’m going to take the antibiotic. But I demand that everyone else on the planet take an antibiotic too. Otherwise, I won’t get well. If you don’t take an antibiotic too — a brand new experimental one, at that — then you are selfish and therefore evil.” Or if I need heart surgery, you must get heart surgery too — otherwise, my heart surgery will have no effect.

Even in the Middle Ages, the term “unhinged” would seem too kind to describe what’s now, in 2021, happening in all of the Western world (not just America). When you’re talking about the twenty-first century in the post-industrialized, wealthy, most technological and most educated civilization that has ever existed, we know the mistakes are far from innocent.

It’s truly mind-boggling.

The same people who think that there should be a lawsuit against the restaurant who sold the coffee if someone spills hot coffee on your lap from that restaurant; or that gun manufacturers should be held criminally liable for the choices of a sociopath who opens fire in a shopping mall … the same people who are SO litigious that they actually believe these things are just FINE with the fact that the vaccine manufacturers have NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER for anything that goes wrong. The same people who would never, ever drive a car manufactured by a company who enjoyed special legal and criminal immunity from the government are running around telling everyone they can find, “Look at me! I had my vaccination!” — not unlike a five-year-old who just got a gold star for being well behaved in kindergarten. It’s so horrifying to see grown adults act and (not) think this way, it takes your breath away.

The same people who for years have screamed, “My body, my choice” when it comes to things like abortion or sex between consenting adults have no problem whatsoever directly or indirectly (through corporate America) COERCING people into taking part in what can only be described as a medical experiment. Mind-boggling. The same people who will call you a “Nazi” for supporting lower taxes, less government spending, having a police force, permitting people to own weapons or for opposing the outlawing of fossil fuels are more than content to adopt the Nazi policy of forcing people to take part in experimental research for the “sake of society” — which was exactly Hitler’s rationalization for everything he did.

People who opposed President Trump’s “right to try” executive order permitting people to take a risk with new, not-as-tested cancer treatments — and who called you a “Nazi” for supporting his policy — are now quite content to shame or legally sanction you (perhaps even jail you) for refusing to take an experimental vaccine for one version of a virus, a type of illness for which vaccines or other medical treatments have never been effective.

It’s hard to come up with the words to describe what’s happening in this society. And COVID is only one area of insanity. Unhinged? Insane? It’s something worse than that. And it’s far less innocent.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Wokester apocalypse: Public school enrollment plunges in California — and everywhere else

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Have the wokesters finally reached a tipping point?

Leftists of multiple stripes have been making public schools horrible places, and now students are bolting.

In California, that’s making news.  According to the Associated Press:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California public schools have experienced a sharp decline in enrollment this year as the pandemic forced millions into online school, according to data made public Thursday.

The drop came as the state’s school districts dawdled in bringing children back to the classroom, making California one of the slowest in the country to reopen schools.

The California Department of Education data shows that the number of students at K-12 schools dropped by more than 160,000 this academic year, most of them at the K-6 level, to a total of 6 million.

The drop is by far the biggest decline in years and represents the clearest picture yet of the pandemic’s devastating toll on California public schools.

“The annual snapshot of fall enrollment shows a sharp one-year decline as the state and nation grappled with a deadly pandemic that disrupted all aspects of public education,” the education department said in a statement.

But it’s actually happening all over.  Detroit, New York City, Baltimore, D.C., Austin, Tucson, Minneapolis, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Janesville, Wisconsin, Chautauqua County, upstate New York, plus the entire states of New Jersey, Iowa, Vermont, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Hawaii, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Washington, Virginia, and quite likely all of the others are reporting public school enrollment drops.  I didn’t have time to finish going through the list.

In California, it’s white students who are bolting most.  The AP reports that they constitute 22% of school enrollment but account for half of the exits.  They’re moving on to private schools, whose enrollments are up, or to homeschooling, which is available to anyone with a literate and motivated parent.  Or else just moving to a better state.  It suggests that poor black and Latino kids, who form far larger demographic groups within the California districts, might just be not bolting because economically, they can’t.  They may have a parent who has to work in a low-salary service industry job or else live in a household with no literacy skills to facilitate homeschooling from the adults.  Based on other factors, to be cited below, they’d get out if they could, too.

And that’s, according to press reports, all because of the pandemic — which is bee ess right there.

Far from this being the pandemic, which, scientifically speaking, affected children very little, it’s the ruling elites’ barbaric response to the pandemic.  That was visible enough in the state-imposed lockdowns on the public schools, and in the outrageous behavior of the rabidly left-wing teachers’ unions and the campaign cash-fattened politicians who love them.

Lockdowns themselves were terrible.  Besides being unscientific — recall this little incident, cited by Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen: 

[H]is handpicked director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, said last week that “schools can safely reopen” and “vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for the safe reopening of schools,” the Biden White House slapped her down, with press secretary Jen Psaki insisting that Walensky was speaking in her “personal capacity.”

No, she wasn’t. Walensky was speaking in her capacity as a government scientist during an official briefing of the White House covid response team. And her comments came just days after a team of CDC scientists published a review in the Journal of the American Medical Association of numerous studies which show “there has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission.”

…they were also terrible for kids.  Kids’ grades plummeted, and many never showed up for the online Zoom sessions at all.  Worse still, mental health problems rose, and children became depressed, unable to perform the vital task for them of making friends.  For kids, that’s a positively critical need, as children are biologically wired at that age with an openness to making friends, quite unlike older people.  Child depression rose; child suicides soared.  The lockdowns were also exceptionally hard on parents.

The highest declines in enrollments, across all states, and certainly in California, were among the youngest children.  Very young children are unusually unsuited to online learning, and anyone who’s ever taught them (and I have) knows they need to physically interact: to touch, to see, to pass around, to feel, to hear, to sing, to smell, to speak, to raise hands, to dance, to participate, to mush clay, to paint, to move — it’s how they naturally are.  They don’t do virtual, and they don’t like concept stuff.  (It’s why they’re so wonderful.)

That’s just the lockdowns alone.  Parents tried to complain, parents tried to say something, but they always got ignored.

To add insult to injury, there were also the teachers’ unions and the school boards in their pocket, which had to be the last straw for a lot of parents.

Remember these charmers?

Ever wonder what school board members are saying in private about parents with kids in schools unhappy about the forever-COVID school closings?

An unwitting Zoom recording from the Oakley School Board of Contra Costa County, in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area, cleared the air on that: …

Wow.  Just wow.  They not only mocked parents behind their backs, but seemed to bond together as they did it. 

That repugnant group was just the start.

The unions themselves were beyond-vile in their behavior, as RedState contributor Jennifer Oliver O’Connell, in an excellent piece, noted here:

This is a nice way of saying that the California Teachers Unions held parents and students hostage while they made demands for social justice contingent on their return. Demands like funding BLM, and Defunding the Police. While doing this, they still collected bonuses for teaching 45-minute Zoom classes, and maligned parents who wanted their children to actually be taught in person.

What’s more, they not only made strange hostage demands, as well as called for more money, but extended and extended, and extended the lockdowns, as they drew higher pay and worked fewer hours, and Zoomed the bunny-slipper commute, as AT’s Andrea Widburg put it.  They’ve made some final blackmail payout demands as the governor of California is facing a political recall over the closures of public schools.  Reason magazine has them here.

And they had slimey Joe Biden behind them, touting teachers’ unions and proudly holding out his low-achieving wife Jill as a public school teacher now living in the White House.  That had to make parents feel powerless.

For Joe, it was more than shilling for this blackmailing bunch; it was moving the goalposts as their puppet.  As I noted here:

To the extent that Joe Biden drew votes, a very big reason was the expectation from parents and students that he would re-open the public schools, currently on extended shutdown over COVID concerns.  That was his promise, that was a signature issue, with many pixels spilled in multiple spots on Biden’s campaign website supporting the claim that he was serious about re-opening schools.

Now that he’s in office, too bad for those who actually believed him.

Instead of re-opening the schools, Biden’s re-drawn himself a goal line for school re-opening so pathetic, so wretched, so insignificant that it’s actually lower than what’s already going on now in school reopenings. 

School re-openings, it seems, no longer mean school re-openings the way normal people see them.  In Bidenland, school re-openings mean lots and lots more Zoom school, with just lip service, a little grope maybe, to the idea of re-opening.

Now he’s busy imposing Critical Race Theory on all public schools nationally — that’s the stuff that tells whitey he’s the bad guy, or needs to “try to act less white,” even if he’s just four years old.  That likely accounts for at least some of the white exodus from public schools.  (Remember: much of California still votes Republican even if Republicans don’t win).  It’s a phony education that wrecks some kids’ self-esteem, makes other kids hate their neighbors or think they’re victims, and amounts to propaganda at the expense of education.  Who’d want that?

Nice going, Joe.  Now that you’ve elevated teachers’ unions, you’ve got declining enrollment.  Heckuva Job, Bidie.

But let’s get back to California:

Besides lockdowns and teachers’ union blackmail, California’s schools are turning into outrageous dumps of junk thought, and hellish conditions quite independently of Biden’s White House.

California is the one that introduced Aztec worship chants for the little ones to pledge fealty to, in a naked violation of the separation of church and state.

California is also a big-time supporter of males engaging on equal footing in women’s sports, pretty well telling the female athletes that they can play sports, but they aren’t going to win.

According to a 2019 Los Angeles Unified School District Policy Bulletin:

Participation in competitive athletics, intramural sports, athletic teams, competitions and contact sports shall be facilitated in a manner consistent with the student’s gender identity and in accordance with the California Interscholastic Federation constitution and bylaws. Students who identify as nonbinary should be granted the opportunity to participate in athletic activities they find best align with their gender identity.  

A third big one, and it’s been boiling for a while, is the leftist bid to shut down charter schools, which are particularly prized by minority students who would otherwise be stuck in failing public schools.

Who’d Joe Biden appoint to his Department of Education?  A creature from the San Diego public school bureaucracy named Cindy Marten, whose signature issue is crushing charter schools.  Her nomination was opposed by the San Diego–area NAACP, which broke with its national organization on this ground, because, well, they were hearing from people.  According to EdWeek, a trade publication:

The San Diego NAACP, which criticized Marten, notably broke from the national NAACP in 2019 when it opposed a national call for a moratorium on charter schools. Several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates cited that national NAACP position when they called for new limits on charter schools.

The national NAACP has also split with its San Diego branch on Marten’s nomination.

That might explain why, as I argued earlier, a lot of minority kids would also like out and simply can’t get out at this point.

Bottom line here is that parents and kids are bailing.  Public schools are getting fewer takers despite being “free.”

Leftists have been so “high on their own supply” for so long in this age of the pandemic, which benefits them amazingly, that they’ve failed to realize that people are voting with their feet.  They are scrapping for other alternatives, given the public schools’ failures to reflect their values and to care for the mental health of their children and to actually educate.  That’s another thing: the failing public schools’ failure to teach is an ongoing problem.  Who needs this?

Parents and students bailing out on them is an appropriate ending for this selfish, self-absorbed, child-hating bunch.  California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom is attempting to keep school funding at the current levels, despite the drop in enrollment, to shield these perpetrators from any consequences for their atrocious actions, but he’s up for recall now for this awfulness.  He knows it.  For him, the writing’s on the wall. 

It’s also on the wall for these public schools, whether they know it or not.

Monica Showalter, American Thinker

You Can’t Always Blame the Economy

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A reader tells me that her 22-year-old son graduated from college last May and returned home to live. She loves having him here, but also realizes that he needs to get on with his life. In spite of the forest of “help wanted” signs out there, he can’t seem to find a job. He rejects the idea of therapy or counseling, and she asks how he’s supposed to handle this situation. She asks me what she should do.

We’re not supposed to say it any more, but I’ll say it anyway because it’s true: Human beings sometimes feel sorry for themselves. “Poor me. I can’t find a job.” Now don’t get me wrong. I’m the first to be outraged over what our government has done to wreck the private economy. But this isn’t the place for that discussion. We have to deal with reality, and your son is no exception.

We can’t blame it all on “the economy.” Yes, many working-age people are still unemployed, but the others are finding a way to eke out some kind of living. Your son is able-minded and armed with a college degree. He doesn’t yet have a mortgage or other major commitments, but he does have choices. He probably feels, “What else can I do? I can’t buy a car. I can’t pay rent.” Of course he’s perfectly willing to live at his parents’ house. But why isn’t he willing to search for a job – perhaps not in a seasonal resort? Once he finds something, he can ask you for some help until he gets settled in. THAT’S “getting on with his life.”

I won’t speak for you, but if you’re willing to let him live with you rent-free, I’m sure you’d be willing to advance him a couple months’ rent to help him get started – IF he’s willing to put in the effort.

If I were to talk to your son, I wouldn’t let him get away with what psychotherapists sometimes call “stinkin’ thinkin’.” I would challenge him to do the work by writing down, in my presence, all his advantages; none the least of which the fact that he’s young, healthy, has a college degree, and can select any city in which to live. “The economy” might even be an advantage. In economic boom times, he might default to the obvious choice of living and working in the town where he went to college. But in tougher times you’re forced to go where the jobs are. Who’s to say he might not find a new and interesting place and job that he might actually enjoy?

The worst thing your son can do is sit home and succumb to low expectations. You’re right to suggest a counselor (hopefully he won’t hire one of the many who will play into his self-pity). People will often listen to an outsider rather than a family member. Though he may be feeling sorry for himself, he may also be embarrassed to be living off his parents. If that’s the case, then I admire him for not feeling entitled (a popular feeling nowadays, unfortunately). He needs to know that there’s no shame in being stuck, as long as he strives to think his way out of it.

I won’t presume to minimize the reality of economic issues, especially nowadays. But moods and outlook are even more fundamental than economics. Societies don’t get out of their economic slumps unless (and until) they first lift their spirits. What applies to societies also applies to your son. Encourage him to get some help to help himself.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

Ayn Rand: The Sanction of the Victim

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The “sanction of the victim” is the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the “sin” of creating values.

Then I saw what was wrong with the world, I saw what destroyed men and nations, and where the battle for life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality—and that my sanction was its only power. I saw that evil was impotent—that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real—and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it. Just as the parasites around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no power to enforce, just as they were counting on my self-immolation to provide them with the means of their plan—so throughout the world and throughout men’s history, in every version and form, from the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collectivized countries, it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for evil the power of survival, and for their own values—the impotence of death. I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win—and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was “No.”

Every kind of ethnic group is enormously sensitive to any slight. If one made a derogatory remark about the Kurds of Iran, dozens of voices would leap to their defense. But no one speaks out for businessmen, when they are attacked and insulted by everyone as a matter of routine. What causes this overwhelming injustice? The businessmen’s own policies: their betrayal of their own values, their appeasement of enemies, their compromises—all of which add up to an air of moral cowardice. Add to it the fact that businessmen are creating and supporting their own destroyers.

The sources and centers of today’s philosophical corruption are the universities . . . It is the businessmen’s money that supports American universities—not merely in the form of taxes and government handouts, but much worse: in the form of voluntary, private contributions, donations, endowments, etc. In preparation for this lecture, I tried to do some research on the nature and amounts of such contributions. I had to give it up: it is too complex and too vast a field for the efforts of one person. To untangle it now would require a major research project and, probably, years of work. All I can say is only that millions and millions and millions of dollars are being donated to universities by big business enterprises every year, and that the donors have no idea of what their money is being spent on or whom it is supporting. What is certain is only the fact that some of the worst anti-business, anti-capitalism propaganda has been financed by businessmen in such projects.

Money is a great power—because, in a free or even a semi-free society, it is a frozen form of productive energy. And, therefore, the spending of money is a grave responsibility. Contrary to the altruists and the advocates of the so-called “academic freedom,” it is a moral crime to give money to support ideas with which you disagree; it means: ideas which you consider wrong, false, evil. It is a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers. Yet that is what businessmen are doing with such reckless irresponsibility.

America’s Latest Pasttime: The politicization of Everything

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Right now, the most dangerous thing about politics is… politics.

Politics are dangerous to everybody. This is true if you’re scraping spray-painted obscenities off your Trump/Pence yard sign and wearing your MAGA cap at half-mast in mourning. And this is also true if you think AOC and the Green New Dealers have just dealt you a straight flush. (Flush twice – it’s a long way from Congress to your lunch bucket.)

Of course, politics have always been dangerous. Politics are how it’s decided who controls government… Whoever controls government controls the force of the law… And the force of the law is a lethal force.

Fail to pay a parking ticket and you’ll be fined. Refuse to pay the fine and you’ll be jailed. Try to escape from jail and you’ll be shot. Every law, every government rule and regulation, no matter how trivial or picayune, is obeyed at the point of a gun.

That gun is called politics. And what makes politics so dangerous right now is that Americans – Left, Right, and Center (if there even is a Center anymore) – have come to believe that the answer to every question is political.

How much money should we have?
How much money can we have?
What’s a dollar worth?
How many dollars must we pay employees?
Who are the employees required to be?
Who is allowed to employ them?
Who’s a real American?
Who’s just pretending?
Who gets to exercise free speech?
What if they speak too freely?
What should be taught in school?
What should be believed in church?
Which doctor can we go to?
Which car can we drive?
Or do we have to take the train?
And what should the weather be like?

Politics has become our first resort. And resorting to politics every time we face a problem is as absurd as (and identical to) resorting to firearms.

“Grab your shootin’ iron, Pa! Ma’s got bunions!”

It’s safer to rely on people (a podiatrist, for example) than it is to rely on politics.

P. J. O’Rourke, American Consequences

In Opinions: Yes, the War on Drugs disproportionately targets minorities

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When you think of the longest wars in U.S. history, you’d typically think of armed conflict. 

Topping that list is the Afghanistan War and, by extension, the War on Terror. The almost 20-year war defined our entire generation. Most, technically all, of our age group has never known peace. We have never known a nation that is not at war with somebody, and why that is happening is another discussion for another day. 

But when you look at passive wars, wars without guns, there is one that sticks out the most. At the time of this writing, the War on Drugs has lasted 49 years, nine months and 23 days. It is easily one of the longest wars in world history. 

And despite lasting so incredibly long, its central purpose, goal and mission have not changed: target, engage and arrest minorities in the U.S., focusing on Black men. 

Between the 1970s and 2016, U.S. prison rates increased by 500%, leading to the U.S. having the highest tracked imprisonment rates. In 2018, of all federal prisoners in the US, 33% were Black, 30% were white and 23% were Hispanic.

The numbers seem relatively close, right? When you consider only 12% of the US population was Black during the same study period, there are red flags. And it’s not just imprisonment rates that are incredibly racist.

A 2015 report by the US Department of Justice found that Black drivers in Missouri were over twice as likely to be searched during vehicle stops but were found in possession of contraband around 30% less often than white drivers.

A 1995 United States government study found that from 1991 to 1993, 16% of those who sold drugs were Black, but 49% of those arrested for doing so were Black. Despite all of this information, the government has not changed its stance despite all of these studies. And this is because the United States government is using this to oppress minorities in this continue. 

But this isn’t even speculation: John Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s aide on domestic affairs, was the man credited with pitching the plan to the President. In a 1996 interview, Ehrlichman explained what it was like in the room where it happened. 

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying?” Ehrlichman began.

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news,” Ehrlichman explained in the interview.

The Nixon administration lied to the American public “night after night” about these drugs’ dangers and who was using them.

“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did,” Ehrlichman further explained. 

And it is not just Republican Administrations that are engaging in this. Take Bill Clinton’s Administration. The 1994 Crime Bill, which current president Joe Biden wrote, is known for targeting minorities, especially regarding crime. 

Specifically, towards drug legislation, the bill introduced the ‘Three Strikes Law.’ Which by its name seems harmless until you know what’s going on. It required a mandatory life sentence for any felony violent crime conviction after two other prior convictions. Again, this seems straightforward, but it includes serious drug offenses per Section 3559 of Title 18 U.S. Code.

Not to mention there is a direct implication for college students. The law had a clause that removed the approval of Pell Grants for low-income inmates in federal prison. 

So that means if you are an 18-year-old who got caught with weed by a federal agent, you now have a more challenging time paying for college. Keeping you stuck in the situations that likely brought you arrested in the first place.

Not to mention Bill Clinton cut many programs that help poor minority communities, such as public housing. Unfortunately, because many of our parents grew up being fed this false information, the lies persist in American society. And even then, it has focused on the same drugs from the 70s. 

Marijuana, heroin and meth are still the central focus, yet there are far more dangerous and legal drugs. 

Tobacco, alcohol and opioids are all very legal and very deadly. Opioids alone killed 81,230 people during the 2020 fiscal year. For comparison, that’s more than how many people died in the Hiroshima atomic bombing, not including those who died of radiation poisoning.

The War on Drugs is functionally the U.S. government’s biggest failure, spanning nearly five decades, all to put a group of peaceful Americans into prisons.

Kenneth Lockett III

What Happens to Florida if DeSantis Loses ?

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Everyone’s moving to Florida — if not Texas. I get it. Florida has a lot to offer. But the desire of rational patriots to move to Florida rests heavily on the presence of a rational governor — Ron DeSantis. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that he might go away. But he could. It doesn’t matter what a majority wants. We saw that in Georgia, right? We know Donald Trump probably won Georgia, as did the two Republican U.S. Senate candidates. It didn’t matter.

Is it plausible to assume that the entire leftist-political-cultural cabal that forced Donald Trump out of the White House might do the same to Ron DeSantis? I certainly hope not. But you’re living in your head if you think it’s not plausible. Stacey Abrams and her army of frauds are undoubtedly even planning now how to accomplish what they have so far, since 2020, accomplished with a 100 percent success rate. You might say, “DeSantis controls the elections in Florida. He won’t let it happen.” I heard the same about Donald Trump. “He’s in the White House. Do you think he won’t use the federal government’s power to prevent widespread fraud?” All I can tell you is: Donald Trump is gone.

My point, as always, isn’t to be negative. It’s to be REALISTIC. At some point, those of us who still cherish our diminishing freedom will have to accept: Elections are not the answer. I don’t have a simple alternative for you. But with elections now being controlled nationally, and by evil persons (Zuckerberg, Dorsey, etc.) who control 95 percent of the flow of information in the world, elections might not be our best alternative.

So: If you live in Florida, or if you’re soon moving to Florida, what’s your plan — if DeSantis loses? And a socialist-Communist-woke Democrat takes over the Sunshine State?

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The End of Basic Education: Biden Issues Universal Public School Critical Race Theory Order

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The Biden Department of Education has quietly proposed a new rule prioritizing the use of federal tax dollars for K-12 schools that replace traditional education with “culturally responsive teaching and learning” – more commonly referred to as critical race theory. This is the most significant move by the federal government to redefine the nature of state-funded public schools in U.S. history.

Although the current effort to push public schools receiving federal funding to adopt a detailed indoctrination agenda may feel new and overwhelming for parents, the truth is that the Biden attempt is simply the last phase in a decades-long effort to control local schools and press the progressive agenda on our children. With the power of taxpayer-funded purse strings, the federal government sends a message to public schools that if they want financial aid they must “teach” critical race theory and prioritize its ideologically anti-American, anti-traditional agenda over traditional education.

Under Obama, public schools were thrust into the controversial world of Common Core, a series of federal mandates that included “awareness education” involving a progressive view of race, gender, and so-called “equity” (not to be confused with “equality”).

Under Biden, a far more aggressive level of federal control over our nation’s K-12 classrooms will replace history (and objective truth) with identity politics and a warped view of American civics and institutions. In many cases, teachers are told to hide the racially divisive curriculum from parents. In others, students are encouraged to report the words and views of their parents and caretakers as examples of institutional racism. The initial goal is the indoctrination of young minds, but the long view is to aggregate power behind an alien political worldview that fed the dehumanizing machines of the Soviet Union and communist China.

At its core, critical race theory is the false idea that the United States is a fundamentally racist country and that all of our nation’s institutions – the law, culture, business, economy, education – are designed to maintain white supremacy. Politicians and pundits market critical race theory as inclusive teaching, one that promotes understanding and tolerance. When the truth is exposed, they try to repackage it in a series of euphemisms, including anti-racism, equity, or culturally responsive teaching. But the “scholars,” like Ibram X. Kendi and the 1619 Project behind the related anti-racist rhetoric proposed in the rule – the true believers – admit the truth.

Critical race theory curriculum tells students that they fall into one of two categories – the oppressed or the oppressor – based solely on the color of their skin. It tells students that if they are white then they are privileged and racist, and makes them affirm this ideology through classroom discussion and assignments. Some school districts take it even a step further and physically segregate students based on their race for lessons, reducing them to nothing more than a set of racial stereotypes.

This is not healthy. It erases decades of progress. And it pits our children against each other, teaching them to hate one another. Parents must stay alert because this week’s proposed rule is just the beginning. Senate and House Democrats have already introduced bills, including the Civics Secures Democracy Act, which would require schools to promote critical race theory in exchange for more federal money.

The go-for-broke approach of the Biden administration to upend bulwarks of the American constitutional republic, from Supreme Court-packing to open borders to emptying the public treasury to ensuring federal control of elections, reveals the true agenda: the consolidation of power. And nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in its drive to replace history, reading, and writing with noxious doctrine designed to replace both parental control and constitutional rule of law.

Kimberly Hermann is General Counsel for Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based constitutional public interest law firm and policy center. Kim is committed to promoting individual liberty, the rule of law, and accountability in government. She advances these principles through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts.

Rule by Fiat: When Government does What it Wants

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“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” — Ayn Rand

Rule by brute force.

That’s about as good a description as you’ll find for the sorry state of our nation.

SWAT teams crashing through doors. Militarized police shooting unarmed citizens. Traffic cops tasering old men and pregnant women for not complying fast enough with an order. Resource officers shackling children for acting like children. Homeowners finding their homes under siege by police out to confiscate lawfully-owned guns. Drivers having their cash seized under the pretext that they might have done something wrong.

The list of abuses being perpetrated against the American people by their government is growing rapidly.

We are approaching critical mass.

The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

In effect, you will disappear.

Our freedoms are already being made to disappear.

We have seen this come to pass under past presidents with their use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements.

President Biden’s long list of executive orders, executive actions, proclamations and directives is just more of the same: rule by fiat.

Now the Biden Administration is setting its sights on gun control.

Mark my words: gun control legislation, especially in the form of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats, will become yet another means by which to subvert the Constitution and sabotage the rights of the people.

These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.

Nineteen states and Washington DC have red flag laws on their books.

That number is growing.

As The Washington Post reports, these laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”

In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings (the statistics suggest otherwise), these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.

Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.

Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.

With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats… to “stop dangerous people before they act.”

While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.

We’ve been down this road before.

Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.

This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.

This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.

For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

Let that sink in a moment.

Now consider the ramifications of giving police that kind of authority: to preemptively raid homes in order to neutralize a potential threat.

It’s a powder keg waiting for a lit match.

Under these red flag laws, what happened to Duncan Lemp—who was gunned down in his bedroom during an early morning, no-knock SWAT team raid on his family’s home—could very well happen to more people.

At 4:30 a.m. on March 12, 2020, in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that had most of the country under a partial lockdown and sheltering at home, a masked SWAT team—deployed to execute a “high risk” search warrant for unauthorized firearms—stormed the suburban house where 21-year-old Duncan, a software engineer and Second Amendment advocate, lived with his parents and 19-year-old brother.

The entire household, including Lemp and his girlfriend, was reportedly asleep when the SWAT team directed flash bang grenades and gunfire through Lemp’s bedroom window.

Lemp was killed and his girlfriend injured.

No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, had a criminal record.

No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, was considered an “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public, at least not according to the search warrant.

So what was so urgent that militarized police felt compelled to employ battlefield tactics in the pre-dawn hours of a day when most people are asleep in bed, not to mention stuck at home as part of a nationwide lockdown?

According to police, they were tipped off that Lemp was in possession of “firearms.”

Thus, rather than approaching the house by the front door at a reasonable hour in order to investigate this complaint—which is what the Fourth Amendment requires—police instead strapped on their guns, loaded up their flash bang grenades and acted like battle-crazed warriors.

This is the blowback from all that military weaponry flowing to domestic police departments.

This is what happens when you use SWAT teams to carry out routine search warrants.

This is what happens when you adopt red flag gun laws, which Maryland did in 2018, painting anyone who might be in possession of a gun—legal or otherwise—as a threat that must be neutralized.

Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally where the burden of proof is reversed and you are guilty before you are given any chance to prove you are innocent.

Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.

Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.

In fact, U.S. police agencies have been working to identify and manage potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats for some time now.

All you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom, or generally live in the United States.

Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.

You will be tracked wherever you go.

You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

The government has been building its pre-crime, surveillance network in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

To that noxious mix, add in a proposal introduced under the Trump Administration and being considered by Biden for a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) that will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.

It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

Connect the dots.

Start with the powers amassed by the government under the USA Patriot Act, note the government’s ever-broadening definition of what it considers to be an “extremist,” then add in the government’s detention powers under NDAA, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

To that, add tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the picture, toss in the real-time crime centers being deployed in cities across the country, which will be attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

Hopefully you’re starting to understand how easy we’ve made it for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat for a variety of reasons that run the gamut from mental illness to having a military background to challenging its authority to just being on the government’s list of persona non grata. Finally, add in the local police agencies and SWAT teams that are being “gifted” military-grade weaponry and equipment designed for the battlefield and trained in the tactics of war.

It all adds up to a terrifying package of brute force coupled with invasive technology and totalitarian tactics.

This brings me back to those red flag gun laws.

In the short term, these gun confiscation laws may serve to temporarily delay or discourage those wishing to inflict violence on others, but it will not resolve whatever madness or hate or instability therein that causes someone to pull a trigger or launch a bomb or unleash violence on another.

Indeed, those same individuals sick enough to walk into an elementary school or a movie theater and open fire using a gun can and do wreak just as much havoc with homemade bombs made out of pressure cookers and a handful of knives.

Nor will these laws save us from government-instigated and directed violence at the hands of the militarized police state or the blowback from the war-drenched, violence-imbued, profit-driven military industrial complex, both of which remain largely overlooked and underestimated pieces of the discussion on gun violence in America.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, in the long term, all these gun confiscation laws will do is ensure that when the police state finally cracks down, “we the people” are defenseless in the face of the government’s arsenal of weapons.

No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes. In this way, even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

Red flag laws and gun control legislation are no less a threat to our freedoms.

John Whitehead