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.

Help Wanted…Forever

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Business owners can’t find people to staff their businesses–hotels, restaurants, stores, offices. Why? Because fewer are working than ever before. What started as “COVID relief” is morphing into a guaranteed minimum income. TRANSLATION: Being paid NOT to work. Many find this appealing. Of course, it won’t be appealing if everyone stops working. Because once everyone stops working, and everyone opts for the ever-increasing guaranteed minimum income, there won’t be things to enjoy, because there will be no businesses. So those of you who think you have it made, living off the government, remember–we are not living under full Communism yet. We are presently in the transition to Communism. Once the full impact of zero production and zero capital accumulation takes effect, you’re not going to see anything like the prosperous world of 2019 and before. You’re going to wish people still had to work.

It won’t be so cool then, you lazy snowflakes.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Officer Chauvin’s Show Trial Will Bring the End of Law and Order

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The United States now has attributes of the 20th century totalitarian regimes that it opposed. The New York governor is implementing the hated Soviet internal passport that prevents freedom of movement, and the illegitimate Biden regime is working with private firms to create a nationwide internal passport.

American elections mean no more than Soviet ones. As Stalin said, it is who counts the votes that matters.

Washington’s foreign policy is more aggressive and bloody than the Third Reich’s.

Soviet show trials are now the new normal for American “justice.”

As an example, consider the highly orchestrated show trial of Officer Chauvin accused of George Floyd’s death currently underway. Yesterday, the second day of Officer Chauvin’s trial was “eye-witness day.” Eye-witness Donald Williams told the prosecutor, Steve Schleicher, that “I believe I witnessed a murder.” Eye-witness Alyssa Funari said, “I was upset because there was nothing that we could do as bystanders except watch them take this man’s life in front of our eyes.” Eye-witness Darnella Frazier said, “When I look at George Floyd I look at, look at my dad. I look at my brothers, cousins, uncles, because they are all Black. I have a Black father, I have a Black brother, I have Black friends. And I look at that and I look at how that could have been one of them.”

I believe these witnesses are describing what it seemed like to them. Donald Williams believes that he witnessed a murder. It certainly can look like that to everyone who does not have all the information. Thanks to the media, all the information is missing.

Among the missing information is the medical examiner’s report that finds three times the fatal dose of fentanyl in George Floyd’s blood. The medical examiner reports “No life-threatening injuries identified. No injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngeal structures.” The medical examiner reports extensive heart disease: Arteriosclerotic heart disease, multifocal, severe; Hypertensive heart disease.

Fentanyl causes breathing problems and death when overdosed.

As police audio/video show, Floyd complained to police of breathing problems prior to being restrained on the ground. He complained of breathing problems while sitting in the police car.

When Officer Chauvin arrived, he recognized a drug overdose problem and called for medics, an inexplicable decision if he intended murder.

Officer Chauvin restrained Floyd using a police-approved technique that has been used many times without killing anyone. Chauvin restrained Floyd in order to prevent Floyd from agitated behavior that would exhaust the little oxygen able to get into his system. The knee-hold does not prevent the flow of oxygen.

Practically alone among the print, TV, radio, and Internet media, I reported the facts of the situation. See:

In contrast, the visual “evidence” was constantly hyped all over the media. What people thought they saw was not the explanation.

The public was primed to misunderstand George Floyd’s death by previous instances of police brutality against blacks. The presstitutes only report police brutality against blacks, not the more numerous instances against whites, so the public sees it as a racist response to blacks. Officer Chauvin is partly a victim of the one-sided reported incidents against blacks.

As my readers know, I am a long-standing critic of police brutality against the public. I forecast that the police brutality together with the one-sided reporting was brewing racial problems by being misrepresented as racism. When I reported the medical examiner’s report, some readers wanted to know why I had changed from being a police critic to being a police apologist. I am not for or against the police. I am for truth and against lies and misrepresentation.

The truth is Officer Chauvin’s true defense, but it is unlikely to play a role. The presstitutes have presented the prosecutor with the case of his career. He is not going to let facts get in the way of Chauvin’s conviction. Neither does the judge want the vilification that a fair trial would bring. The jurors all understand that if they let Officer Chauvin off they will be outcasts and suffer violence to themselves and their property. The entire community knows that unless Chauvin is convicted, their city will again be looted and burned. Indeed, the many cities that experienced the George Floyd protests feel the same way. A person already convicted by the media cannot be let off even if innocent. What is the purpose of the eye-witnesses when all have already seen many times the scenario they describe and have their minds made up?

In former times when America had a justice system and a responsible media, media was careful not to convict a suspect or defendant prior to the jury doing so. To be convicted by the media was reason for dismissing the charges on the grounds that there was no prospect of an objective jury. But in America today, it is conviction that is the focus, not innocence or guilt.

Eye-witness Donald Williams feels that he witnessed a murder. No doubt every juror feels the same way prior to the trial. Evidence, even if presented, is unlikely to get anywhere with people already convinced by the constantly replayed video of Officer Chauvin with his knee-hold on George Floyd.

What I have noticed over the years, especially recent ones, is that facts have lost their importance. Facts have given way to emotional responses based on feelings. It is how Americans feel about whatever, not the facts, that determines the response.

It would take a heroic jury to find Chauvin innocent. His conviction will constitute another blow to law and order. White and Asian police officers will protect themselves by avoiding interaction with black criminals. I suspect that black officers will also. Otherwise, their kids will be beat up and their homes firebombed. The emboldened criminal population that is being created will be hard to contain.

Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ Review

Coronavirus in an Alternate, Rational Universe: What Might Have Been

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In a rational and free society, the reaction to coronavirus would not have been hysterical or tyrannical. People would have been left free to decide for themselves how to avoid getting this virus. All would have been fine — at least as fine as it has been, with none of the economic and social upheaval and decline. Of course, Donald Trump would likely still be President, and the country would not be under the stranglehold of an emerging one-party dictatorship, including the obliteration of the Bill of Rights itself.

So I guess it depends on what your definition of success is.

In such a free and rational society, any businesses or enterprises — large or small — would be free to have mask mandates or whatever they want. None of them would have done it, because it would have been bad for business and utterly unnecessary. If these things WERE necessary, no government mandates would be required, because it would be bad for business not to have masks and social distancing in stores and restaurants. There’s a reason why we never had lockdowns, mask lunacy, and multi-trillion dollar spending bills before, and why we survived flu or virus pandemics without them: They weren’t needed.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The One-Party State

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The left may or may not comprise a majority among professed supporters of the Democratic Party, though among elected officials in the federal government, the left is now in complete control. There are 50 Democratic Senators, almost all of whom at one time or another supported the filibuster in the US Senate. The Senate was established to be a deliberative body, one less subject to current passions, and purely majoritarian impulses in one party. The Electoral College was another feature of both the founders’ belief in federalism, the importance of states and a role for different geographic regions, and interests. Now, at most a handful of Democrats in the Senate (probably fewer), are willing to preserve the only remaining rule which provides a meaningful role for the minority party. Should America’s political future ride on the disposition of one West Virginia Senator? If Joe Manchin is turned, then we will have new states in the union, permanent Democratic majorities in the Senate, Supreme Court packing, and immediate passage of every bit of radical legislation in the left’s dream box including assaults on the principles of federalism, which provides for states to exercise power in various areas, such as voting rules. The recently passed stimulus bill prevents states from reducing taxes if they accept federal stimulus money. The assault has begun.

Those on the left are certainly a minority among all adult Americans. But the Democrats now control the presidency, and both Houses of Congress with very small majorities, and the left controls the elected Democrats and are pressing their advantage. In the meantime, the opposition party, the Republicans, seem unable to focus their effort on the great challenge ahead to slow down the express train of new policies, and spending and rules. These initiatives are designed to reward and enrich those who are part of the governing coalition, to make the minority party a permanent minority and to make published opposition to the new “progressive and anti-racist” vision, unavailable to readers, and socially unacceptable if not criminal.

Barack Obama’s decisive win in the 2008 Presidential race was believed by the left to be the signal that their day had come. Obama won the popular vote by 9.5 million and picked up more than two thirds of the Electoral College votes. Democrats won an 80-seat margin in the House, and 59 Senate seats, which soon became a filibuster proof 60 after Arlen Spector switched parties. Obama himself said his election would change America. The conventional political wisdom was that demographic changes in America would allow Democrats to build their majorities and continue to win going forward. Mostly non-white legal immigrants, and higher birth rates among non-white groups would drive down the white share of voters, the only group among whom Republicans were still a majority.

Things did not turn out that way. An unpopular health care bill led to big GOP gains in 2010, and control of the US House, plus big gains at the state level in governors and state legislators, leading to redistricting advantages. In 2014, Republicans won back the Senate. Then came Donald Trump’s stunning victory in 2016. Democrats were supposed to have a blue wall that virtually assured a win in Presidential contests in the Electoral College. Instead Trump broke through in states that had not gone Republican in nearly 30 years, attracting many former Democrats in rural areas, small towns, and once thriving industrial cities. Most Democrats (not just the left) seemed unable to process Trump’s victory and certainly did not accept it. No president in recent history has faced the kind of sustained attacks personally, and on his programs, that Trump did.

At the start of 2020, Trump seemed destined to win re-election. The economy was strong, job and wage growth had advanced broadly through the population, including among Blacks and Hispanics, and the President had reversed some of the perception of a country in decline with one sector of the population, the highly educated, doing very well, and many more struggling and falling back. The President had survived a Russia collusion hoax perpetrated by a hostile media and many Democrats in Congress, and a party line impeachment vote in the House, losing but one Republican Senator on one of two charges at his trial for an offense that had never been viewed as impeachment-worthy before. And then came the Wuhan virus.

Certainly, the Trump administration made serious mistakes, just as prior administrations had with other new health issues when they arose. But the coverage of Trump and his policies to address the virus were unremittingly negative. The left was convinced the virus could defeat Trump and it did. Make Americans miserable, and they will throw out the incumbent. Many states, most of them leaning or heavily Democratic, chose harsh lockdowns which threw people out of work, and closed schools, which led to increased isolation, alcoholism, drug abuse and mental illness, and untreated health issues since people feared going to hospitals or doctors’ offices. Democratic Governors and the current Vice President were among those who argued that vaccines would be unreliable if they were produced by the Trump administration. Of course, the vaccines would not come from Trump, but from drug companies doing miracle work in record time, encouraged by the Trump administration to take risks and by his agreement to pay for vaccines once they were available and received authorization.

Then came the late May death of George Floyd in police custody. Suddenly, America needed a racial reckoning and a toxic dose of it was received. Critical race theory and other anti-racism initiatives were implemented everywhere and quickly at great expense. Corporations made contributions in the billions to groups like BLM, which are anti- white, anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-nuclear family, and anti-Semitic. Otherwise, the group was pretty mainstream.

The infectious disease people who had told their state officials to keep people at home, now thought it important for tens of thousands of people to be out on the streets in close quarters to scream at and harass police, or to “break away from the largely peaceful demonstrations” to set buildings and shops on fire, loot stores, and attack police and others in their way. Practically every major professional organization, non-profit organization, corporation, social media platform, university and media company pledged to do their part to fight racism, since obviously what happened in Minneapolis was evidence of the country’s systemic racism. LeBron James offered his wisdom that Black men felt like they were being hunted by the police.

The reality of course was that about a dozen unarmed Blacks are killed by police in an average year. But nearly 10,000 Blacks were killed by other Blacks in 2020, a more than 25% increase over 2019, virtually all of the year-to-year increase occurring after George Floyd’s death. Heather MacDonald provided all the numbers and analysis one would need to look at crime rates, and police shootings but Google’s You Tube thought it too hot to handle, making it difficult to access her presentation. The attacks on police produced BLM demands to defund the police or eliminate the police, and led to a pullback from active policing in some cities. Gangs and other criminals had more freedom to operate, creating near state of nature conditions in some cities, such as Chicago.

The attempt to de-platform MacDonald, was just a prelude to the major social networking companies’ effort to prevent Trumps’ re-election. This included hiding the New York Post’s Hunter Biden/China connection story just before the November election. The Capitol riots of January 6th made it easy for Silicon Valley to try to destroy the Parler website, ban President Trump from Facebook and Twitter, take down posts which challenged the election results, and treat those who believed fraud had occurred, including US Senators and House members, as insurrectionists, expanding the universe of a few hundred people who behaved horribly on January 6th at the Capitol to include most of the 74 million-plus Trump voters.

The events since President Biden’s inauguration are more evidence of how the left is acting in concert to radically change the country before too many people wake up and notice. Send a stimulus check to people, and they will spend it and think better of the government and its policies. Meanwhile no one outside of a small number of conservative media voices will honestly convey the chaos created by the President’s reckless open borders policy, or the reality that the President may not be all there and others are pulling the strings and using Biden as the moderate, calming cover for a radical playbook.

The Enemy Within is the latest in Horowitz’s long string of books that provide a continuing theme on the attempts by the left to create a new America. What you see is what you get, and Horowitz remains committed to allowing us to see what is really going on, despite the censorship and cancel culture which are thriving. For if we see, we can also commit to engage in the struggle to preserve and build a different America than the one sought by the left.

David Horowitz

Good-Bye American Liberty

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Yesterday I pointed out that no facts known at this time support a Covid passport. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/03/29/new-yorks-covid-vaccine-passport-makes-no-sense/

The Establishment is not interested in facts and has no need of them. The Establishment has the presstitute lie machine. It creates whatever reality the Establishment wants us to live in.

Nevertheless, some facts are just overwhelming. Consider Florida. Long a retirement state, it is a state with a large proportion of elderly and overweight people. For the past year Florida has not been under lockdown or a mask mandate. The state is wide open. Consequently, one would think that Florida would have the hightest number of Covid deaths per 100,000 population.

But that is not the case. Florida’s 154 Covid deaths per 100,000 is in the middle of the 50 states ranking. New Jersey, a lockdown state, has a deaths per 100,000 almost twice Florida’s at 1.78 times. Lockdowned New York’s deaths are 1.66 times higher than Floridas. Lockdowned Massachusetts and Rhode Island Covid deaths are 1.60 times higher than Florida’s.

These numbers are from the official data. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/us-coronavirus-deaths-by-state-july-1.html The conclusion is that Florida, an open state with an elderly and overweight population without dockdown and mask mandates—conditions that according to the medical bureaucrats should have produced the leading high death rate—is in the middle of the pack.

We can safely conclude that lockdowns and mask mandates are pointless. And this conclusion does not take into account the many expert and suppressed opinions that the lockdowns and the masks do more harm than good.

Despite the facts, the corrupt Biden regime, a stolen presidency, is working with private companies who smell the profits to develop vaccine passport systems, which they allege is the only way to return to normalcy. In other words, if you want to get out of jail, you will have to give up your privacy.

Scared people are likely to fall for the propaganda that the passport is a public health measure that will liberate us from lockdowns. But Florida doesn’t have lockdowns or a vaccine passport. Naomi Wolf warns:

“I am not overstating this. I can’t say it forcefully enough. This is literally the end of human liberty in the west if this plan unfolds as planned. Vaccine passports sound like a fine thing if you don’t understand what these platforms can do …

ORDER IT NOW

“It’s not about the vaccine. It’s not about the virus. It’s about your data. And once this rolls out you don’t have a choice about being part of the system. What people have 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, with your digital currency, Microsoft is already talking about merging it with payment plans. Your networks can be sucked up. It geolocates you wherever you go. Your credit history can be included. All of your medical history can be included.” https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/coming-soon-vaccine-passports/

To keep the fear level high the medical bureaucrat who heads the Centers for Disease Control, Rochelle Walensky, preditcted yesterday, based on her feelings, impending doom from a new Covid surge. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/545375-cdc-director-warns-of-impending-doom-on-potential-new-covid-surge?userid=439965

Allegedly, the US has had 30 million Covid cases. Where does this number come from. It comes from financial incentives to hospitals to report every death as a Covid death—see https://www.globalresearch.ca/hospitals-getting-paid-more-label-cause-death-coronavirus/5709720 — and from running the PCR test at such high cycles that the test produces false positives. In other words, the figure is an orchestrated figure in service to an agenda.

Has the public noticed that this year there has been no flu season? The explanation is that the flu cases have been conflated with Covid cases in order to multiply the level of Covid infection.

A population that is so easily manipulated and scared has no possibility of holding on to liberty. Eighteenth century Americans valued liberty—“give me liberty or give me death.” Twenty-first century Americans evidently do not. Their acceptance of lockdowns proves their readiness for the Gulag.

Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ Review

‘It’s everywhere’: Parents Group Fights Left-wing Indoctrination in Schools

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A group of parents alarmed by what they see as left-wing indoctrination sweeping through K-12 schools on Tuesday announced a new online clearinghouse of information designed to help families navigate what’s happening in their children’s classrooms.

Nicole Neily, president of the group, Parents Defending Education, said parents are hungry for information to fight back against a curriculum that increasingly promotes racial and social justice ideology.

“There’s this feeling among some that this is just a New York and California thing, but it’s not; it’s everywhere,” she said. “It’s in private schools and parochial schools

Schools across the country have adopted classwork and instructional models based on critical race theory, which teaches that the U.S. legal and governance systems are inherently racist and retain economic and political power for Whites by oppressing people of color.

In some classes, students are divided into groups according to their status as “oppressors” and “victims,” “privileged” or “resistors,” based on immutable characteristics such as the color of their skin.

The lessons have sparked a series of legal challenges in state and federal courts by parents and students.

Supporters contend the curriculum is a necessary rejoinder to decades of White supremacist thinking that has permeated society. They say the goal must be “anti-racist” rather than not racist and that their approach will educate children about advantages they have been given or handicaps they have been burdened with by systemic racism.

Parents Defending Education describes itself on its website this way: “Parents Defending Education is a national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas. Through network and coalition building, investigative reporting, litigation, and engagement on local, state, and national policies, we are fighting indoctrination in the classroom — and promoting the restoration of a healthy, non-political education for our kids.”

Ms. Neily said thousands of parents are unaware of what’s going on or are deeply disturbed by it but unsure how to fight back, leaving them feeling alone and helpless. She envisions DefendingEd.org as a network of concerned parents who can swap horror stories and seek political or legal solutions.

The website features an “IndoctriNation Map” map, where parents can look up scores of school districts and “learn about parents organizations, incidents and FOIAs.” As more information is gathered, new flags will be posted on the map, the group says.

The “Deep Dive” section of the site provides links to news accounts of lawsuits and other issues that arise in response to the critical race theory wave.

Much of the information targets public schools, Ms. Neily said, though critical race theory has spread far and wide.

Some of the tiniest schools in the U.S., from the Dalton School in New York City to Harvard-Westlake in Los Angeles, where America’s richest families send their children, have made headlines recently for lumping their students into sinister or sympathetic groups based on their race.

“If you want to send your kid to Social Justice Country Day, you’re free to do so, but we must do what we can to not allow the imposition of these top-down solutions,” Ms. Neily said.

Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who serves as Defending Education’s vice president of strategy and investigations, said she believes a tipping point is approaching in education.

“Our country is in a crisis today because of ideologues pumping divisive, polarizing ideas into our classrooms, teaching them to our children,” she said. “Educators have a moral duty to teach our kids how to read, write and think — not dictate what they must think,” she said. “As parents, we must stand together to defend education, challenge radicalization and inspire our children with positive values.”

Many parents feel at sea when they discover what is happening and need a tool to navigate waters that critical race theorists leave deliberately murky, said Christopher Rufo, a national advocate against critical race theory who advises Parents Defending Education.

“Parents across the country are mobilizing against critical race theory in schools,” he told The Washington Times. “All Americans should stand against the principles of race essentialism, collective guilt and neo-segregation.”

The group has filed motions to intervene in court cases, such as one in New York brought by Integrate NYC Inc., which advocates for more critical race theory. The lawsuit charges that New York City’s magnet schools and gifted programs are racist because they do not include enough Black and minority students.

It is one of several lawsuits in the courts pushing for more critical race theory or objecting to its implementation. Some state legislators are looking at laws that would ban education materials and practices based on critical race theory.

It is telling, Ms. Neily said, that critical race theory materials are often slipped into curricula with a minimum of discussion or parental involvement, which creates another reason for a kind of one-stop shopping site for opponents.

“Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and we need to encourage people to show up and demand answers to what in a lot of cases amounts to emotional abuse of children,” she said. “It’s actually a small group of people who want this, and we need to shine a light on what is happening.”

The Washington Times

No, the Derek Chauvin Trial isn’t a Referendum on American Racism

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Since the death of George Floyd, our esteemed media, as well as their Democratic allies, have suggested that Floyd’s alleged murder is representative of broader American white supremacy, that Floyd’s experience with law enforcement is indicative of how American police pose an existential threat to black Americans. They have offered no evidence for this proposition. Not a shred of evidence has been presented to suggest that former police officer Derek Chauvin’s actions the day of Floyd’s death were motivated by race. Not a shred of evidence has been presented to suggest that black Americans live at threat of extermination from whites or police officers: As of 2013, according to Reuters, a black person’s chances of being murdered by a white person were 5 in 1 million, and according to The Washington Post database of police shootings, as of 2019, a black person’s chances of being shot by the police while unarmed were approximately 3 in 10 million.

But facts don’t matter when you’re pressing forward a narrative.

Now that Chauvin is on trial for Floyd’s murder, the facts will once again become secondary to the narrative. Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., said that police reform is dependent on Chauvin’s conviction: “If there was ever a case that you can just not argue, it is this one. This trial has got to come out the right way, and we have to deliver.” Floyd family lawyer Benjamin Crump stated, “Today starts a landmark trial that will be a referendum on how far America has come in its quest for equality and justice for all.”

That’s simply not true.

Bass, Crump and the rest of the establishment media assume that Chauvin’s case is clear-cut — that nobody could possibly vote to acquit. The fact pattern, however, presents serious issues for the prosecution. Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. All three charges are a challenge.

The prosecution first has to show beyond a reasonable doubt that Floyd’s death was caused by Chauvin’s actions. But the autopsy report shows that Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system and had a serious heart problem, and that Chauvin’s neck hold did not in fact cause damage to Floyd’s trachea. That means that while Chauvin’s neck restraint may have contributed to Floyd’s death by ratcheting up his blood pressure, for example, it’s uncertain that it caused Floyd’s death more than, say, the excited delirium from which Floyd may have already been suffering.

Second-degree murder requires that the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Chauvin unintentionally killed Floyd while committing a felony — in this case, felony assault. But felony assault requires “intentional” infliction of bodily harm — that Chauvin wanted to hurt Floyd, not just use a suppression tactic already greenlit by the Minneapolis Police Department.

Third-degree murder — depraved-heart murder — doesn’t actually seem to fit the crime here, since it requires proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Chauvin acted in a way “eminently dangerous to others.” Others — plural. Usually, depraved-heart murder applies to someone who fires a gun into a crowd, not a person who targets an individual.

Second-degree manslaughter requires that the prosecution prove that Chauvin acted with “gross negligence.” But such gross negligence would have to show that Chauvin should have known that his behavior might cause Floyd’s death — an unlikely expectation, since the Minneapolis Police Department actively taught neck holds of the type Chauvin used, and which Chauvin applied only after Floyd resisted arrest and refused to be confined to the back seat of a police car.

The Chauvin case, then, is a legally complex one. But such complexities have been abandoned in favor of narrative. Should Chauvin be acquitted, we are likely to hear that America has proved its racism once again. The only thing that has already been proved, however, is that the “America as white supremacist” lie will remain the media’s dominant narrative, no matter the data.

Ben Shapiro

Self-Respect is More Important than Politics

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We talk about freedom and liberty in terms of politics and government. But freedom and liberty have more to do with psychology than with politics.

Consider the psychology of shaming. If you’re a dictator, you can’t depend on government for enforcement of everything. Sure, you can issue an edict demanding that everyone wear masks, even after they’re vaccinated, “for as long as I say so until I say otherwise.” But it’s the social shaming that really enforces the rule. In states like Florida, the Governor doesn’t even require people to wear masks. But many corporate stores do. The stores can’t totally enforce the mask mandates either, but they can count on shaming to take care of the job.

In order to resist shaming, you must have a strong sense of self. You must have self-esteem, self-respect and personal autonomy. Without these qualities, it really doesn’t matter if you’re living under a dictatorship, or not. Because without self-respect you’ll create your own kind of dictatorship by submitting to everything and everyone. You’ll create your own kind of inner jail, and perhaps start to resent others for the impositions YOU permit.

Dictators love people who are submissive. They can spend less money on jails, police and prisons and more money and energy on the things dictators like.

Events of 2020 and 2021 have shocked me. Even I never realized just how LOW the self-esteem and self-respect of most people are. I look at people wearing masks in their cars (alone no less), or masks on non-crowded sidewalks where even in blue states they’re not required. It doesn’t matter. Millions of people are SO lacking in self-respect and independent thought that they volunteer to advertise, “Look at me. I obey. I conform. Please like me.”

Most of the people doing this don’t really believe wearing masks help. Most grasp the fact that if masks really protect a person, then you don’t have to wear a mask to protect others. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in rocket science to grasp that if vaccinations work (and therefore are essential), then mask-wearing should no longer be required — much less be required indefinitely (if not permanently) into the future. Most people know the absurdity of all this. It’s the SHAMING they’re afraid of. “If I don’t do what I’m told, then I will look mean or otherwise stand out in the eyes of others. THAT I cannot stand.”

A society filled with people who lack self-esteem cannot survive. If more people had even limited self-esteem — and that’s clearly, tragically not the case — then no dictatorship could ever take hold. Instead, dictators are on the march as we’ve never seen before in the United States. Just wait until the the vaccination passports start being required. Oh, and the mask mandates aren’t going anywhere either.

Self-esteem comes from a strong sense that one is able to determine what’s true without authorities — and, even more, that it’s a sacred personal responsibility to do so. I don’t know where that trait went in most Americans. Its absence has created an overwhelmingly clear and present danger to freedom itself.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Say No to Vaccine Passports

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COVID-19 “vaccine passports” will become the next civil-rights crisis of our time. They are un-American, a violation of individual freedom and pose a menacing privacy risk regardless of the entity requiring their use.

Any institution pushing these passports as a “good idea” is trying to destroy liberal democracy. People will be confronted with a stark choice: Either get a COVID-19 vaccination and allow the government to collect data on you or be faced with discrimination.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday said he would take executive action to stop the use of vaccination passports in his state.

It’s completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply be able to participate in normal society,” he said.

“You want the fox to guard the henhouse?” the Republican governor added. “I think this is something that has huge privacy implications. It is not necessary to do.”

Other Republican governors such as Greg Abbott in Texas, indicated on Twitter they would follow Mr. DeSantis‘ lead.

“Shots are highly recommended to prevent getting Covid but always voluntary,” Mr. Abbott wrote.

The privacy implications of a vaccine passport is colossal. It’s not hard to see how a well-meaning certification system could morph into data misuse, be subject to breaches and raise other ethical questions. Yet blue-state governors seem to be pushing them.

New York State was among the first in the U.S. to rollout vaccine passports, and the governors in Connecticut and Hawaii have openly contemplated launching their own.

New York’s system is devised by IBM and dubbed the Excelsior Pass. It collects personal information like your name, date of birth, ZIP code and keeps details on your most recent vaccine date or negative COVID-19 test. It’s already being deployed to gain entry to events at Madison Square Garden, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it “heralds the next step in our thoughtful, science-based reopening.”

Although New York’s passport is limited in the information it’s collecting so far, what’s to bar it in the future from not including information of where you’re employed, where you live and include GPS tracking information — all of which is not difficult to obtain digitally. Who is to say how this information can be shared and with what third-party entities?

Additionally, what if a person can’t get a vaccination because of their own medical history? Like if they had a bad reaction to the first shot or if their medical provider recommended against it for a specific reason? Should they be restricted from seeing a movie, going to the grocery store or entering a theme park?

The Biden administration is working with the private sector and states to organize the passport effort, although they said there would be no centralized universal vaccination database and no federal mandate to have one.

Still, there’s a slippery slope argument to be made. More states within the U.S. need to come out like Mr. DeSantis and diametrically oppose the use of such a passport among private businesses.

The Washington Times

Ayn Rand on History

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Contrary to the prevalent views of today’s alleged scholars, history is not an unintelligible chaos ruled by chance and whim—historical trends can be predicted, and changed—men are not helpless, blind, doomed creatures carried to destruction by incomprehensible forces beyond their control.

There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man’s rational faculty—the power of ideas. If you know a man’s convictions, you can predict his actions. If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course. But convictions and philosophy are matters open to man’s choice.

There is no fatalistic, predetermined historical necessity. Atlas Shrugged is not a prophecy of our unavoidable destruction, but a manifesto of our power to avoid it, if we choose to change our course.

It is the philosophy of the mysticism-altruism-collectivism axis that has brought us to our present state and is carrying us toward a finale such as that of the society presented in Atlas Shrugged. It is only the philosophy of the reason-individualism-capitalism axis that can save us and carry us, instead, toward the Atlantis projected in the last two pages of my novel.

Just as a man’s actions are preceded and determined by some form of idea in his mind, so a society’s existential conditions are preceded and determined by the ascendancy of a certain philosophy among those whose job is to deal with ideas. The events of any given period of history are the result of the thinking of the preceding period. The nineteenth century—with its political freedom, science, industry, business, trade, all the necessary conditions of material progress—was the result and the last achievement of the intellectual power released by the Renaissance. The men engaged in those activities were still riding on the remnants of an Aristotelian influence in philosophy, particularly on an Aristotelian epistemology (more implicitly than explicitly).