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.

MLB and the Perils of Economic Fascism

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Major League Baseball is a business. In a free market, businesses are afraid of their customers. In a fascist, state-run economy, businesses are afraid of the government.

Which government? Clearly, MLB is not afraid of Georgia’s Governor and his newfound allegiance to election integrity. The MLB is hopping in place to the city government of Atlanta, the U.S. federal government and the Chinese Communist Party (the last two being perhaps one and the same.)

Somewhere along the line, baseball fans lost control of their game. They lost their power as customers. Because it’s highly probable that a majority of baseball fans support the new Georgia election law attempting to reestablish some integrity in the electoral process. A lot of baseball fans — perhaps most of them — voted for Trump. At a minimum, this should be enough for a business to conclude, “We’re staying out of politics. It’s bad for business.”

We no longer live in that world. Business and politics are now one. Politics and culture are now one. There’s no distinction. Most of us feel helpless, put upon and disgusted. But this is how it goes.

Are companies like MLB counting on people continuing to support sports now that it’s openly politicized? Do they think there’s too much inertia for people to change? I suppose we’ll know eventually.

Maybe sports team owners are worried about public funding for stadiums. But they’re not afraid of Republicans withdrawing funding; they’re only afraid of Democrats, i.e. Communists. They sense where the power is, and they’re opting for power over customers, and the value of the game itself.

Truly, truly sad.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

MLB Move from Atlanta Proves There Can be No Unity Without Freedom

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Last week’s decision by Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to the passage of the Election Integrity Act, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s defiant response, provides but the latest proof that our country is no longer the “United” States of America. Given the depth of the cultural and political divide, there is only one hope for healing our nation: A return to our foundational principles—for if there is no federalism, there will be no unity.

On Friday, Robert Manfred, the Major League Baseball commissioner, announced that the 2021 All-Star Game will be moved from Atlanta to retaliate against Georgia’s passage of a law aimed to better secure elections. The move followed condemnation—without specification—of the statute by several Georgia-based corporations, such as Delta and Coca-Cola.

Our commander-in-chief also encouraged the move, telling ESPN in a Wednesday interview that he believes “today’s professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly” and that he “would strongly support them” pulling the All-Star Game out of Atlanta.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki later tried to walk back Biden’s pronouncement, saying the president “did not dictate that Major League Baseball move their game out of Georgia. He was conveying that if that was a decision that was made, that he would certainly support that.” Psaki’s spin fell flat, however, as Twitter commentators highlighted the inconsistency.

Psaki could also not explain why Biden was willing to put pressure on duly elected state lawmakers in Georgia over their prudential political choices, when he has not been willing to put pressure on Beijing in relation to the Olympics despite China’s use of concentration camps.

Following Friday’s announcement, rather than cower or cave, Kemp defended his state’s recently passed Election Integrity Act. The law “expands access to the polls and ensures the integrity of the ballot box, Kemp said at a Saturday press conference. “Then, why did BLM move the All-Star game yesterday?” the Georgia governor rhetorically asked: “Because Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams have spent days lying to Georgians and the American people,” Kemp stressed.

“The truth is that Joe Biden hasn’t read the bill,” Kemp continued, adding that “Even The Washington Post has given President Biden four Pinocchios for his false attacks on our new law.”

Kemp then moved to offense, highlighting that both Delaware (Biden’s home state) and New York (the headquarters of MLB) restrict voting more than Georgia now does under the new law. Delaware does not allow “early voting and requires an excuse to vote absentee,” Kemp noted. Georgia offers “17 days for early voting versus New York’s 10 days,” while “New York requires an excuse for absentee voting while Georgia does not,” Kemp added.

These zingers exposed the problem MLB bought itself by reportedly caving to the company man: No matter the state selected to host the All-Star Game, there will be some objectionable election law provision.

course, Biden and the other Democrats pushing falsehoods about Georgia’s election law will use Kemp’s response and the disparity in voting regulations among the states to push for passage of H.R. 1, the so-called “For The People Act of 2021,” in Congress.

Biden and a corrupt media already branded Georgia’s voting provisions as the second coming of Jim Crow, with Big Business and the MLB willingly accepting that characterization. How then can anyone play, work, operate, or sell in New York, Delaware, or any other state with similar “racist” laws?

So, H.R. 1 is on deck, and the pressure will soon build for the Senate to pass this radical bill that, among other things, would require states to accept absentee ballots received up to ten days after an election, restrict election officials from verifying voter identification and eligibility, and “prohibits witness notarization or signatures requirements for all absentee ballots.”

Fighting passage of H.R. 1, which will destroy election integrity if signed into law, is a must-do for conservatives. Likewise, the right must support Kemp’s defense of Georgia’s moderate law while making MLB and corporate interests understand they do not hold a veto right over state legislative actions, whether by boycott or otherwise.

But none of that will solve the problem facing America—that we are a divided country with vastly different cultural and political views. Refusing to buckle and boycotting will further splinter our nation, but surrender is no longer an option.

What is an option, though, is a return to our first principles: to federalism, to a federal government of limited and enumerated powers (and in turn limited spending so frugal states aren’t bailing out socialist states), to state’s rights, to a free press that acts like one, and to corporations that don’t act like Big Brother.

Really, this Red States Accord is the only option if we wish to achieve unity again. And the events of the last week prove it.

Margot Cleveland, The Federalist

He is Risen!

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From the day Mary Magdalene met Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane after Jesus arose from the dead to her pounding on the door of the upper room where Jesus’s disciples were hiding from the Jewish leaders and Roman authorities these three words “He is Risen” have been the heartbeat of every Christian.

Jesus’s promise of His resurrection to His followers while He was alive came crashing down when he died on the cross.

For 3 1/2 years of Jesus’s ministry, He engrained into His disciples “destroy this temple,” speaking of himself, “and in 3 days I will raise it up” the religious leaders of Israel did not understand Him even Jesus’s inner circle Peter, James, and John were doubtful.

So here we are again, as it has been for over 2000 years, and most of the world still in doubt of Jesus’s resurrection, why? because the secular world did not then and does not now understand that Jesus is God.

The Apostle Peter touched on it briefly when he was asked by Jesus who He was: “But what about you?” Jesus asked Peter. “who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

So what changed the tune of eleven men from cowering in their sandals and hiding out like criminals in an obscure place called the upper room afraid of a Roman cross to men full of zeal and vigor who turned the world upside down for Christ.

“An Empty Tomb”

Lee Strobel in his best selling book “A Case for Easter” says: “The empty tomb took the fear of death and turned it into a declaration of life.”

Resurrection Sunday is all about life given to you and me freely and the sting of spiritual death no longer part of our vocabulary.

The world looks at Easter and the church and says “what’s the big deal?” Why are you so excited about one day out of the year?

And the Church declares “ wouldn’t you be if you had eternal life?”

He is Risen, He is Risen Indeed!!

Thanks for Listening

Adam Lustig

Mike Lindell has Irrefutable Proof of Stolen Election

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We have all been listening to Mike Lindell for the past few months about how he had irrefutable evidence of election fraud. Another BOOM is what I figured. We are all getting pretty tired of the hype. I wasn’t going to bother watching it but my wife did and then we watched it together.

Maybe there is nothing we can do about it, maybe there is, but the fact is that he really does have irrefutable evidence of the election fraud. That’s why not even George Soros’ factcheck.org will touch it. They “debunked” the first one, but they are hoping that people who check don’t realize that Mike has a second video.

Not many people have the time to watch an hour long video, so that will limit the audience.

That’s why I am going to outline the most imporant parts so you can get the bullet points in a couple of minutes.

This is the real thing. The election was stolen, and it was stolen online in real time and if we don’t do something about it our country is lost.

Dr. Douglas Frank holds a Ph.D in Surface Analytical Chemistry with over sixty scientific publications including a cover page article in Science magazine in 1990 and was on the cover of the Naturwissenschaften, in Europe.

He determined that 2010 US Census data was used to inject phantom voters into the 2020 election rolls. He proved it by going house-to-house to 1600 houses to audit 2020 voters and determined that 32% of the “voters” did not live at that address. THIS WAS NATIONWIDE, IN ALL 50 STATES.

Mike Lindell TV Releases Irrefutable Election Theft Proof on New Television Special That Features World Renowned Physicist

https://lindelltv.com/mike-lindell-tv-releases-irrefutable-election-theft-proof/

Every precinct/county in the country has a voter registration database.

In most states you can download the voter registration database for free but some states charge hefty fees.

The voter registration database shows all registered voters and their voting histories.

There were lots of (too many) voters who only voted once, in November 2020.

Hired people to go house-to-house to 1600 houses to audit 2020 voters and determined that 32% of the “voters” were “phantom” and did not live at that address.

Votes can be manufactured by having a computer algorithm that votes for registered voters who never show up to vote.

The only way to know for sure if a “voter” actually voted is to ask them.

The night of the election (and for several days before and after), White Hats were monitoring computer intrusions into the voting machine network and collecting times and MAC/IP addresses of the intruders.

You can graph the number of registered voters by age from the voter registration database.

The numbers of people who voted in each age bracket should always be substantially less (~80%) than the number of registered voters in that bracket.

Small discrepancies are disregarded by “experts”

90% or more is highly suspect.

Hamiltion County, Ohio had 95% of the population registered to vote with some ages having more voters than residents of that age.

The percent of votes cast (red curve) for each age group were exactly the same, mirroring the registered voter curve. This is almost impossible in even one county, but it happened in all 88 counties in Ohio, which could only be accomplished through a computer algorithm.

The same key was used for all 88 Ohio counties. The key is the algorithm that turns registrations into “voters.” What this means is the same percentage of each age group voted in every county in Ohio.

This is the key that converted registrations to ballots in every county in Ohio. Dr. Frank took the average of fourteen Ohio counties to create the key that worked for all 88 Ohio counties. The curve is a 6th order polynomial, which makes it much easier to construct the key because only 6 numbers are required instead of 82 numbers for age 18 through 100. Along with the turnout number the algorithm can predict every county in Ohio. This allows the intruders to set up the alogorithm ahead of time.

The Stark County, Ohio voter curve shows two sharp shoulders at approximately 75 and 80 years of age. All 88 counties show this same pattern of 75 and 80 year old voters. This pattern holds up not only in Ohio, but in EVERY STATE tested so far. The gray curve is the predicted voter results from the algorithm, the red curve is the actual voter results. The correlation coefficient between the two is 1.0000, meaning it is a perfect fit.

This could only be accomplished with constant interaction between the voting machines and a supercomputer somewhere on the Internet. When Dr. Frank saw Mike Lindell’s first video all the pieces fell together. Mike’s group has all the evidence on the computers that were doing this, they just didn’t know what those computers were doing. Dr. Frank’s discovery fills in what they were doing.

The two-shoulder pattern in voting for 75 and 80 year olds shows up in Pennsylvania District O4 voting records.

The 2010 US Census data for Pennsylvania District 04 has those same two shoulders.

Q: What are the odds?

A: Zero.

2010 Population was used by the algorithm to determine phantom registrations

Graph: Registered Voters vs Population.

Bloomfield County Colorado; registrations greater than population because population decreased since 2010. More people voted than even lived there.

More people registered in 20 Colorado counties than live there because they used the 2010 US census in the algorithm and population decreased in those 20 counties.

Jackson County, Colorado; more phantom voters than live there because population decreased since 2010.

Knocked on doors and determined that 32% of voters did not live there.

Anybody can get their county’s voter registration database and conduct their own audit of people who only voted in the 2020 Presidential election.

THIS IS THE BIGGEST CRIME IN HISTORY. WE MUST GET RID OF THE COMPUTERIZED VOTING MACHINES.

It’s Obama

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Any honest person with a lick of sense that’s paying any attention whatsoever knows Joe Biden is not in charge of his own mind, much less in charge of running the nation. The real question then is, if it is not Joe, who is it? Certainly it is a group of people, a cabal, if you will, however, there are a few major players and one in particular whose ideological DNA is all over everything.

In a Frontpage magazine article on March 18, 2021, Daniel Greenfield makes the case that the central power figure over the Biden Administration is Nancy Pelosi. The Article is entitled: “There is No Biden Administration—Only an imminent 25th Amendment crisis and soldiers in the streets. In the article Greenfield writes the following:

“…Obama was the teleprompter-in-chief, but Biden is also the telecommuter-in-chief.

Biden’s face is everywhere, but there’s no real sign that he’s actually running anything. Instead the Biden administration seems to be exactly the kind of mess that the 25th Amendment was designed to prevent in which a non-functional president is the figurehead for the cabinet members and the special interests who are actually calling all the shots.

The Potemkin village that is the Biden administration was built in two tiers with establishment cabinet members who appear more moderate presented for Senate approval while extremists were being placed in key positions to set policy on everything from civil rights to Iran.

The big policy momentum though isn’t coming from the Biden administration, but from Pelosi.

The Obama administration called the shots, not Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. The Biden administration is filled with Obama’s old people, but there’s no leader in the White House to push forward an agenda. That’s why the most powerful elected official in the country isn’t Joe Biden or Kamala Harris: Nancy Pelosi has become the closest thing to POTUS…” [End]

While I usually agree with Greenfield on most things, I can only concur on these statements with a caveat and a few deviations and clarifications. If we are speaking of “elected officials”, then yes, it is likely Greenfield is mostly correct. However, I believe that, if he is not the powerful, the most influential person in control is none other than Barack Obama.

Certainly Pelosi drives domestic and social issues; but where is her presence on foreign policies? Pelosi concerns are with spending, grabbing power, destroying opponents and seizing control over every aspect of life and personal ownership in America. Highly driven by social issues, such as empowering sexual perverts and criminals, Pelosi focuses mostly on social issues an agendas which empower illegals, radical groups, and other leftist organizations and cronies. Her goal to create a state of dependency and rule over all those outside of the ruling class. Her main objective is a complete overthrow, the hope of destroying America and replacing the current system a totalitarian Marxist regime. On geopolitics, Pelosi is almost nowhere to be found.

Indeed, Pelosi is the most visible person wielding power in Washington, however, most likely she is not the most powerful. Others speculate that Kamala Harris is calling the shots. She is not. She lacks in every way everything it takes to be a leader or have a coherent plan, or thought for that matter. Neither did she ever do anything of substance to earn her place in the system. She was chosen, as Joe was, to be manipulated once she is in the position Joe is now—just another empty puppet waiting for a hand to fill it and make it appear as though it is acting on its own. Susan Rice is another suspect, but while she is sinister enough, most likely she too is being instructed by higher ups.

Although it is difficult to pin power on one individual—the insurrection has longtime been working; it is vast and has too many players and appointments to even know—The most powerful are not the players you see, but the ones you don’t. And arguably the most powerful person in control in Washington, at least in terms of the policies that are coming down from the administration, is a man who by law is prohibited from being in the most powerful position: Barack Hussein Obama.

Here are the tell-tale indications: Clearly, the take down of America is pure Alinsky, the man instrumental in establishing community action organizations and trained Marxists community organizers. Overload the system until it fails. That is precisely what is happening, both financially and with the surges of foreign illegals, not only merely flooding over the borders, but receiving government support for the invasion. Spending is already beyond recovery. Obama excels it the Alinsky area of policy making.

Empowerment and normalization of sexual perversion: There are many Democrats embracing radical changes, empowerment, and normalization of sexual deviations, too many to point the finger at one person. However, although the actions are not beyond Biden, the speed, extremity and degree to which they are being forced is coming from another source. This is something not exclusive to Obama, but something he certainly would promote with vigor, especially in the darkness of anonymity.

Foreign policy is the dead a giveaway. Back to the Iran deal and empowerment and funding of state sponsors of terror and terrorist organizations. Obama is in affinity with Islam. But how and why? He doesn’t seem religiously devoted. The answer is really quite simple:

Obama worships himself. He is a homosexual and also a hardcore leftist; this should make for a complicated relationship with Islam; but it doesn’t. Further complicating Obama’s relationship with Islam is the status of Allah as, ‘The Greatest’; this is in conflict with Obama’s narcissism and him seeing himself in that place. However, it is Obama’s narcissism that is actually the key of comprehending his Islamic sympathies.

Obama is a religion and a god unto himself. He sees no other living God. He worships no other God. He is god. Men who worship God seek to become a part of God through obedience. If Obama viewed himself as subservient to Allah, he would follow the Koran, which he does not. Nonetheless, Obama was raised Islamic. It is a part of who he is, and remember, he worships himself. Obama serves Islam, not to be a part of Islam, but because Islam is a part of him. Because he worships himself and Islam is a part of his past, he must regard Islam whether he follows it or not. Otherwise, he must disregard a part of himself. One mistake Obama is making that gives him away is that he is hiding too much. That’s not characteristic of the man who uses the word “I” possibly more than anyone else in the world.

This article could keep going until it became a book, but let it just end with this:

Joe is a half stuffed Manchurian marionette. Almost everyone knows that. Obama has the strings and is hiding in the box above the stage. Now that Obama is hidden from sight, he is no longer constrained by the fear of destroying his public image. He is going all out nuts. There is no reason for him to pretend he’s not an extremist. He can now do every insane radical thing he was afraid to try before with no consequences to himself. Obama doesn’t give a flip about Joe. He will get all he can out of Joe while he can and move on to Kamala, who is also mentally incoherent, but is manipulable.

Obama is a hidden puppet master, he can now go insanely mad mostly undetected. Joe is a decoy and Kamala is a backup decoy, this is Obama’s illegal 3rd term. And don’t be surprised if Democrats push for overturning presidential term limits before it’s over so Obama could run again. Although, I’m certain his true aspirations are to be KING of the World after a global ‘Reset’.

Biblical News

Demented Thinking About Biden

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The president has dementia.

I’m a cartoonist and a writer, and I am most assuredly not a gerontologist. I did not go to medical school. If I am not an expert in aging and cognitive decline, how do I know President Biden has dementia? The same way you and I and everyone else know things to be true despite our lack of credentials: experience and pattern recognition.

I don’t need to be an ornithologist in order to identify a blue jay.

I’m not a doctor, yet I was right and my doctor was wrong when I told her I had a hernia and she said I didn’t; I’d had one on my left side in 1999, and this felt like that but on my right. Knowing your own body sometimes counts for more than formal education.

I didn’t go to New York University film school. Despite my lack of official accreditation in cinema, I know, as do you, that Meryl Streep is a better actor than Brendan Fraser. We know this to be true because we have seen a lot of movies.

When my car’s wheel well issues a rubbing sound that gets faster when I accelerate, I know it’s probably an issue involving brake pads, ball bearings (if the car has significant mileage) or wheel alignment. I’m not a mechanic. But I’m 57; I’ve driven since I was 15 and had enough rubbing sounds to have learned what it probably means.

When I watched Biden’s first presidential press conference last week, I didn’t have to be an M.D. or a Ph.D appended to my name to recognize the clear, painfully obvious signs of dementia. My mother died of Alzheimer’s a little over a year ago. The president looked and acted like my mom about two years before she died: valiantly struggling to hold it together, moments of lucidity and occasional brilliance alternating with terrifying brain freezes, random rambling in search of connection and reaction, and cringy rhetorical crashes when the fremdschamen-o-meter shot to 11.

It took five reporters a question and four follow-ups to make Biden understand that he was being asked whether he favored the elimination of the filibuster, a question at the top of political news since he came into office. Here’s what the commander in chief finally came up with: “If we could end it with 51, we would have no problem. You’re going to have to — the existing rule — it’s going to be hard to get a parliamentary ruling that allows 50 votes to end the filibuster, the existence of a filibuster” (my emphasis added).

Abdicating journalism, corporate media outlets dutifully transcribed Biden’s response despite its glaring wrongness. Whether or not the filibuster as we know it survives has nothing, nada, zip to do with a Senate parliamentarian ruling. Paradoxically, a simple 51-vote majority could kill the filibuster.

Biden’s answer was — had to be (there’s no other possible explanation) — the product of dementia. Before, after all, Biden was as intimately knowledgeable about Senate rules and procedure as any human being on Earth. He served 36 years as a senator and eight years as vice president/president of the Senate — a total of 42 years. There was no world in which Biden would have said anything so totally, crazily, amazingly incorrect. Not drunk, not asleep, not at all.

Dementia frustrates. As its victim’s inner life becomes harder to articulate to others, the victim occasionally lashes out in disproportionate anger. We’ve seen this more and more with Biden, watching a famously affable guy with a patented aw-shucks grin deteriorate into nervous hardness and even rage.

And dementia befuddles. It mixes your knowledge and memories and opinions into a blender; though you often sound OK, what spews out of your mouth increasingly approaches randomness. That’s what happened to Biden during his presser. He obviously conflated two bits of news: the parliamentarian’s ruling that a proposed minimum wage increase be stripped from the coronavirus relief bill, which grabbed news attention, with the question about the filibuster. Vice President Biden would never have done that. Sen. Biden wouldn’t have either. He knew/knows this stuff too well.

Everyone forgets stuff. It happens more with age. What’s happening to Biden isn’t the occasional senior moment, nor is it stuttering — as Biden himself has said. Biden crashing and burning on a question about Senate procedure would be like me messing up questions about Photoshop or Central Asia, two things that have been central to most of my life. If I start mixing up RGB and CMYK and Ashgabat and Astana, topics I know forward and backward and about which I am obsessed, that will point not to “whatever; no biggie” but to worrisome cognitive decline.

Biden supporters who deny the visible signs of Biden’s mental deterioration are acting no more rationally than the Trumpies who made excuses for the former president’s crazy behavior. You can feel relief that Trump is gone and believe Biden to be an improvement while conceding that Biden isn’t up to the job and should step down in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris. This is the U.S. presidency. Good enough is anything but.

The fact that “Biden has dementia” is a Republican National Committee/Fox News talking point does not make it incorrect. Denying obvious truths — Trump is a racist jerk; climate change is real and caused by mankind; masks help fight COVID; Biden has dementia — makes you look stupid and silly, and no one should listen to you.

Trump’s war against truth was toxic. His supporters and enablers undermined decency and logical rhetoric, essential foundations of civil discourse. Democrats who refuse to watch Biden’s dismal, unscripted public appearances, who fail to question the president’s unwillingness to face the press at the same rate as his predecessors and who omit mention of his frequent mental breakdowns are no better than Trump and the Republicans.

Ted Rall, UNZ Review

 Why the COVID Vaccine Isn’t Alleviating Much Fear

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There’s a way to tell if your fear is rational, or indicative of disorder.

If your fear is rational, and you take steps to alleviate the fear, and the fear diminishes — that’s a good sign.

If you take steps to alleviate the fear and your fear remains — or even intensifies — that’s an unhealthy sign.

Throughout the last year, I have watched people go through this pandemic syndrome. This time last year: “I am scared to death. I certainly can’t leave my house, unless I have to.”

What will it take to encourage you to leave the house? “A vaccine,” was the most common answer, in spring 2020.

Now we have a vaccine, in spring 2021. Confidence in the vaccine is so strong that everybody feels compelled to get it, without question — and to have a guarantee that everyone else get one too. The same people who think it’s perfectly fine for the FDA to take 20 years to approve a life-saving drug now suddenly are just fine with bypassing all kinds of approval for the vaccine. Why so trusting?

A year ago, all that mattered was the vaccine. “Once I can get a vaccine, I can mostly go back to normal.”

So what happened? Millions are getting the vaccine. But many, I find, are still staying home. Or leave home, but only fearfully. They project this fear onto the blaming of others. “Well, if everyone would wear five masks, like we’re told to do, and if everyone would get the vaccine, then I wouldn’t have to be so scared.” It’s other people’s fault you’re scared.

But the anger at others is just a mask for the remaining, totally unaddressed fear. And even if it were somehow possible to guarantee that every single person on the planet will get the vaccine, and every single person on the planet can be forced to wear 5 masks, the fear would still not diminish. In fact, it would probably grow.

Self-refuting logic is a sign of irrational fear. If you really believed the COVID vaccine made you safer, you would not feel tempted to stay home; and you would not feel greater fear because some didn’t take the vaccine.

What makes fear of coronavirus so irrational is not the perfectly legitimate desire to avoid a virus, even a virus that is usually non-life-threatening. What makes the fear of coronavirus irrational is the faulty premise we don’t apply to ANY other ailment: a ZERO tolerance of risk.

When you strive to do the impossible, which is what “irrational” means, you end up doing things that only make the fear worse. The quest for ZERO risk, with regard to viruses, is untenable at this point in time. The more people look for that elusive zero risk, the worse the fear will become.

Imagine if an edict were written as follows: “Until we have a 100 percent guarantee that there will be ABSOLUTELY NO TRAFFIC FATALITIES, EVER AGAIN, then all driving must cease.” When, exactly, do you think people would be able to start driving again?

Irrational fear is self-reinforcing. The more steps you take to alleviate the irrational fear, the worse the fear becomes. Each ridiculous and self-refuting step — designed to bring about ZERO risk — leads to an intensification of the fear. The remedies for addressing the fear become more and more irrational, untenable and even unjust.

If you were an evil dictator and wanted to compel a society to bring itself down, turning citizen against citizen, then instilling such irrational fears would be a brilliant, though evil, way of going about it.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Vaccination Passports: The Cornerstone of a Totalitarian State

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Vaccination passports, like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want everyone to be forced to carry, are profoundly un-American.

This data-driven authoritarianism, if it comes to pass, will wash away what remains of the rule of law and the Constitution, and annihilate the American way of life.

First, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) inflicted their possibly lab-designed Wuhan Virus on America, and now we get their Social Credit System, their totalitarian digital architecture for society as well.

America’s placeholder president, the Communist Chinese ventriloquist’s dummy who fantasizes about becoming the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt, wants these vaccination passports badly.

POTUS 46* signed Executive Order 13998 on January 21 directing government agencies to “assess the feasibility of linking COVID-19 vaccination to International Certificates of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (ICVP) and producing electronic versions of ICVPs.”

The Biden-Harris administration is now working on a “vaccine passport” for Americans to carry to prove they have received a vaccination against the novel coronavirus, according to the Washington Post.

“The passports are expected to be free and available through applications for smartphones, which could display a scannable code similar to an airline boarding pass,” the Jeff Bezos mouthpiece reports. “Americans without smartphone access should be able to print out the passports, developers have said.”

Five administration sources supposedly told the “Democracy dies in darkness” fabulists that COVID Czar Jeff Zients is working with unidentified private entities to institute the program. A reported 30 international airlines are said to be demanding vaccine passports.

New York State is already moving forward with a “excelsior pass,” which is expected to be required in order to access “arts, entertainment, and event venues.” Individuals will be forced to display a QR code on their smartphones to partake in cultural enrichment.

“This is going to hit all parts of society, and so naturally, the government is involved,” Andy Slavitt, acting director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said during a White House briefing on the ongoing pandemic.

Most Americans have no idea what a social credit system is.

“China’s social credit system is about power and conformity,” U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) explains in a Fox News op-ed. “It’s an attempt to shape citizens into the CCP’s ideal subject: don’t ask questions, disobey or think for yourself.”

It also resembles the Left’s “cancel culture” in the United States in that they both share the goal of “ensuring conformity to one ideology.”

Under the CCP’s social credit system, “‘bad’ behavior lowers a person’s score and can make it difficult for them to buy, sell, travel, get loans or send their children to college. ‘Very bad’ behavior, such as political dissent, can get someone and their family members blacklisted, making it difficult for them to function in society,” Green writes.

To enforce their national blacklist, the Chinese Communists have created a unified record system to allow the government to track individuals and businesses and assess their trustworthiness. It is not at all like the U.S. credit reporting agencies Experian, Trans Union, and Equifax, which don’t have the iron fist of a totalitarian government backing them.

The Chinese system punishes those who engage in religious worship, play loud music, eat on public transportation, violate traffic rules such as jaywalking, fail to show up for restaurant or hotel reservations, fail to correctly sort waste, and smoke tobacco. Conversely, the system rewards those who donate blood, donate to charity, perform volunteer work, and use social media to praise the government. Those with favorable scores are rewarded with reduced waiting time at hospitals and government agencies, discounts at hotels and on energy bills, job offers, and better interest rates at banks.

Punishments include denial of high-speed rail tickets, denial of admission to private schools, slow Internet connections, and exclusion from prestigious work. Derogatory information about individuals deemed untrustworthy is publicly available and easy to locate. Debtors’ names and faces have been displayed before movies at movie theaters and on large screens on government buildings.

The system is related to China’s mass surveillance systems such as Skynet, which uses facial recognition and other technologies. Skynet, by the way, just so happens to be the name of the fictional all-encompassing artificial intelligence system from the Terminator movie franchise that becomes “self-aware” and attempts to eradicate humankind by nuclear attack.

“It’s easy to look at China’s repressive regime and think that it could never happen here,” Congressman Green continues, listing examples of social media censorship and social media companies’ successful efforts to prevent President Donald Trump from winning reelection.

“Yet after hearing demands from the far left to silence conservative voices, and after watching big tech and big business band together to deplatform conservatives, I’m beginning to think America could be like a frog boiling slowly in a pot,” he writes.

“What are the signs that the U.S. has its own social credit system? What else do you call it when a Democrat senator demands Republicans be put on a no-fly-list for how they voted, or when an editor is forced to resign for allowing a Republican to publish an opinion piece in the editorial section of his newspaper?”

But would a vaccination passport system morph into a Chinese-style Social Credit System here in America?

Liberal thinker Naomi Wolf says this kind of “biofascism” could easily happen.

Wolf told Steve Hilton on Fox News Channel that a mandatory vaccination passport would be “the end of human liberty.”

“How does [China] keep a billion people under the thumb of a totalitarian regime? The CCP can find any dissident in five minutes, and that can happen here literally within months.”

“I cannot say this forcefully enough: This is literally the end of human liberty in the West if this plan unfolds as planned,” she said.

“‘Vaccine passport’ sounds like a fine thing if you don’t understand what these platforms can do. I’m the CEO of a tech company, I understand what this platform does. It is not about the vaccine or the virus, it is about your data. What people need to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that platform with no problem at all.

“What that means is that it can be merged with your Paypal account, digital currency. Microsoft is talking about merging it with payment plans, your networks can be sucked up, it geolocates you wherever you go. All of your medical history can be included — this has already happened in Israel.

“And six months later, we’re hearing from activists that it is a two-tiered society and basically activists are ostracized and surveilled continually. It is the end of civil society and they are trying to roll it out around the world. It is absolutely so much more than a vaccine pass, it is — I cannot stress enough that it has the power to turn off your life, or to turn on your life, to let you engage in society or be marginalized.”

Illegal aliens may not need a real passport to get into America, but actual Americans may soon need a vaccination passport to travel inside America if they don’t take action.

America needs to get back to being America, not this nightmarish dystopia we are rapidly becoming.

Let Us Be Clear Once and For All: Socialism Is Not at Root About Economics!

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For the Conservatives, Capitalism is moral only to the extent that the capitalist lives to serve others. Self-interest can be smuggled silently in but not as a moral right or as a moral ideal. This means that “creeping socialism” always has the advantage and thus creeps unabated.

Over and over for decades, Conservatives have made the point that socialism does not “work,” that it does not create wealth but rather leads to poverty. This is true. Despite promising nirvana, “utopian” (socialist) communities and countries based on communism and socialism always failed economically.

Conservatives (including Wall Street Journal op-ed writers, right-wing think tanks, and pro-free enterprise economics departments) keep repeating the obvious and assert that people simply need better economic education to set them straight. Yet Conservatives keep losing every battle; the left repeatedly responds by ignoring their argument and rationalizing socialist failures.

The rationalizations run the gamut:

  • Previous socialist programs were not run correctly.
  • The moral ideal was right, but people are just too corrupt to practice it—there is a flaw in human nature.
  • The failure was caused by a plot by the U.S. (usually the CIA).
  • Socialism takes years to come to fruition and will triumph at some unspecified, future date….and so on.

What is striking is that no matter what the economic failures, true socialists rarely give it up. Why not. Because it has a moral base. Ayn Rand has made it clear that, “The power of morality is the strongest of all intellectual powers…men will not act, in major issues, without a sense of being morally right.” (quoted in Binswanger, 1986, p. 315).

Morality trumps economic facts if there is a conflict. This is true even if one’s accepted code of morality is objectively wrong. Millions have died fighting for Communism and Nazism (national socialism), including murdering millions of victims and keeping millions of others in hopeless poverty.

What is the problem with Conservatives (for more details, see Binswanger, 1986, pp. 95-100)? The Conservative argument is based on a contradiction: Capitalism is practical because most people want to live better, but morally it is defended by altruism, the premise that one must live only for the sake of others. Thus, Capitalism is only permissible so long as one lives, or claims to live, for “the public good.” For the Conservatives, Capitalism is moral only to the extent that the capitalist lives to serve others. Self-interest can be smuggled silently in but not as a moral right or as a moral ideal. This means that “creeping socialism” always has the advantage and thus creeps unabated. The hapless Conservative defense is routinely: “Hey, let us not overdo it. Let us have some capitalism. The welfare state will work better if capitalists have permission to function.” Socialists face no such internal contradiction; sacrifice for and of others is the morally right thing to do even when everyone stays poor, cf. Cuba and Venezuela. (See Locke, 2020, for a detailed discussion of Venezuela).

The socialist’s indifference to poverty reveals that there is a deeper moral (objectively anti-moral) layer than altruism which means sacrifice for the benefit of others. Since others do not actually benefit, the deeper standard is the destruction of economic freedom as an end in itself. This is pure nihilism, destruction for the sake of destruction: better to have everyone grovel in poverty than to let one person make a profit. Socialism is based on hatred for human life. In socialist societies, the worst people, power lusters, rise to the top, but they only rise because socialism gives them a moral sanction.

What then would change a socialist’s mind? Convincing them that socialism is anti-life and that Capitalism, which is based on individual rights, is morally good, i.e., that every individual has a right to their own life, which includes the right to trade freely with others, based on self-interest, and profit from it (i.e., without fraud or coercion). This would mean that capitalists would be admired, both practically and morally, rather than reluctantly tolerated as a necessary evil or totally forbidden. Economic education will only be embraced by people who think that Capitalism is not just practical but morally good. Moral education is needed as the proper base for economic education.

Some might ask about the puzzling situation of a Communist dictatorship, China, openly fostering Capitalism (though with numerous controls). This is a historically unprecedented event. So, what explains it? It is not based on respect for individual rights since communists deny them. It is based purely on power lust. For centuries China was backwards in relation to the west. Now they have decided to be imperialists, and they saw that the only way they could get the needed power was to create wealth which would give them the ability to intimidate or dominate other countries by using economic and military force together, e.g., massive exports, cyber-crime, building a large, military including a nuclear arsenal, trying to forcibly take over international waters in the South China Sea, threatening and harming fishing vessels from other countries, seizing islands they do not own to build military bases, stealing copyrighted and military technology from foreign countries, bullying countries which displease them (Australia), invasion (Hong Kong, Tibet), continual military threats (Taiwan), loaning money to poor countries, who will not be able to repay them, as a means of gaining power over them, cooperating with other dictatorships such as North Korea and Iran which are also building nuclear weapons to attack the U.S., etc.

China recently acknowledged that their use of Capitalism was only a strategic move until full socialism could be established. China, right now, is the single biggest threat to world peace and freedom. The old-line Marxists said capitalists would buy or make the rope that will be used to hang them. China wants to make their own rope and hang us with it. It remains to be seen how all this will turn out. Our weapons are: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, our military might, Capitalism, and our commitment to freedom as a moral ideal–if we can keep them.

Edwin Locke, Capitalism Magazine