Author Archives: theartfuldilettante

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About theartfuldilettante

The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.

Biden’s Fireside Splat

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Joe Biden avoided talking to the American people longer than any president in the last 100 years. And when he finally did, it wasn’t exactly worth waiting for. If you didn’t watch the 23 minutes of this White House’s revisionist history on the virus, count yourself lucky. It was an exercise in the dismal, partisan, hopeless rhetoric this administration was supposed to rise above. After more than 50 days of silence, all Joe Biden proved by coming out of the White House basement is that he’s a sore and ungracious winner, who isn’t above taking credit for the vaccine successes he inherited.

Naturally, that isn’t how the media saw it. In fact, their glowing reviews (“Biden projects hope”) were confusing to anyone who actually saw the speech. “If you hadn’t watched the president’s… address,” Christopher Bedford writes, “you might think it was something — anything — other than the most depressing, defeated, and resigned speech since President Jimmy Carter held the office. You might think he hadn’t devoted his third sentence to a baseless attack on his predecessor, and the entire rest of his address to death, sadness, loneliness, and despair.” Apparently, when Joe Biden promised darker days ahead, he meant it.

“A year ago,” Biden said, “we were hit with a virus that was met with silence, and spread unchecked. Denials for days, weeks, then months, that led to more deaths, more infections, more stress, and more loneliness.” It was meant to be an attack on his predecessor, which makes it all the more unbelievable. Anyone with half a brain remembers that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who ignored the warnings about the pandemic. So consumed by their impeachment of Donald Trump, they refused to even listen to Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) sound the alarm in late January. And when the 45th president took bold action, closing down our borders to protect Americans, Biden wasn’t silent. He called Trump a “hysterical xenophobe,” accusing him of “irrational fearmongering” — when in fact, the administration’s quick thinking probably saved thousands of U.S. lives.

It was breathtakingly self-serving, as Biden tried to pretend the entire virus response plan was his own — when in fact, “the only thing that has really worked in this entire coronavirus pandemic,” Mollie Hemingway points out, “is developing the vaccine” — which was entirely done on Trump’s watch. The fact that Americans everywhere will soon have access to those shots is because of the last administration, who decided to cut the red tape that liberals love swimming in and create free market solutions. If Democrats had been in charge, we’d still be looking for a firm to develop the vaccine!

It’s also astounding, as several commentators have pointed out, that Biden is taking credit for a vaccine that he spent months disparaging! Now, suddenly, not only are the drugs a miraculous accomplishment — they’re his accomplishment. “Even the media acknowledges the Trump administration’s role in spearheading vaccine development and procurement,” former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted with side-by-side screenshots of ABC News and New York Times’s headlines, “but President Biden REFUSES to say the truth.” By the end of the night, he’d so overinflated his role in the vaccine that even the Washington Post called him out.

He pumped up his vaccine record “a little too much,” the Post said, arguing that his attempt to sell it as a Biden success story were “overstated.” The paper also took issue with the goals he set, quoting Biden: “You may recall, I set a goal that many of you said was kind of way over the top. I said I intended to get 100 million shots in people’s arms in my first hundred days in office. Tonight, I can say we’re not only going to meet that goal; we’re going to beat that goal.” As the Post reminds everyone, “When Biden came into office, there had already been several days of 1 million people being vaccinated — the daily number required to hit 100 million in 100 days. In other words, to hit the goal, he mostly just needed to keep things moving in the direction they were going… [C]asting this as some unthinkable feat goes too far and detracts from legitimate claims to success.”

As if that weren’t outrageous enough, the president spent the better portion of his speech telling his subjects that “maybe… we’ll let you celebrate” on July 4th if people continue to get vaccinated. How wonderful. Our benevolent overlords will let us out of our cells for a few hours on good behavior “if we do our part.” If we don’t, President Doomsday warns, “we may have to reinstate restrictions.” Well, unfortunately for the White House, it’s not up to the president whether Americans have barbeques. And this is July 4th we’re talking about — the day we’re supposed to be celebrating independence from tyrants.

And if Biden is such a cracker-jack problem solver where the virus is concerned, then why is he nominating a man with zero health care experience to head up our COVID response? On the one thing this administration can claim ownership of in the pandemic — HHS’s new leadership — they’ve offered up pro-abortion extremist, Xavier Becerra — confusing even hardline Democrats like Pramila Jayapal (Wash.). “I would have liked to see the HHS secretary have public health experience,” she said. Instead, Americans may be getting a lawyer, who’s only involvement in the medical field is suing Catholic hospitals over their First Amendment rights.

“I am hard-pressed to see any way such a radical and underqualified nominee should fill such a critical post at this crucial time,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. So are we. Help us stop it! Contact your senators and urge them to vote no on Joe Biden’s Secretary of Health and Inhumane Services!

Tony Perkins

America’s Cultural Revolution

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The “woke” revolution is a cultural revolution. China had one too, under Mao, before it went full blown Communist. A cultural revolution is the precursor to a totalitarian dictatorship. It’s an attempt to get people “ready” for the social transformation about to take place.

Wokeness, like all cultural revolutions, is an attempt to impose a new normal, not just with regard to masks and lockdowns, but with regard to EVERYTHING. Getting rid of Aunt Jemima and Dr. Seuss is a way of telling people, “The things you have enjoyed in life, or taken for granted? Those things are all BAD.” They’re trying to condition our thinking, more than to change our minds. They’re trying to get us to associate pleasant, charming and fun aspects of civilization with guilty, shameful and unpleasant thoughts. Consider them left-wing Puritans, more controlling and dark than the most intolerant of Puritans.

Imagine a totalitarian religious dictatorship (Muslim, Christian, it doesn’t matter) taking over the whole country. That’s what this is. It’s happening now. It’s a campaign of intimidation and moralistic self-righteousness designed to replace the attributes of reason, persuasion and common sense. Totalitarians are seeking to reshape people by force. But they know they can’t force everybody to change their minds on everything; so they resort to intimidation. It’s easier to change people through the cultural institutions — sports, television, movies, social media, books, grocery stores, food chains — that they willingly embraced all along. Even if you don’t change anyone’s minds, in a cultural revolution you put people on notice that “now everyone thinks this way…so you had better do so too!”

Wokeness appeals to human weakness. One of the greatest weaknesses in most human beings is a craving to be a part of “the pack” — to replace one’s own observation of reality with the perceived perceptions of everyone else. Mind you, each and every individual is expected now to look to “what everyone else thinks” to ascertain the truth. That’s the toxic core of the Woke Cultural Revolution in America. Its underlying premise is: “You don’t think like a CONSERVATIVE, individualist, capitalistic Bill of Rights Lover … do you?” Hilariously, everyone is looking to everyone else — who’s also looking to everyone else — to figure out what’s true. Nobody has an independent thought. It’s the intellectually and psychologically blind leading the intellectually and psychologically blind.

That’s how we ended up with such widespread and blind allegiance to mask mandates and lockdowns. Cultural revolutionists watched the unthinking conformity to the COVID hysteria, and quickly realized how uncritical and fearful most Americans had become. So they struck Americans at this vulnerable hour: And look how they’re succeeding.

They won’t win in the long run. Irrational fanatics at war with facts, reason, reality and common sense cannot ever win. By definition, their quest is not triumph or achievement; only destruction. They are the cultural equivalent of arsonists or rapists. They can burn down or destroy. But they can create or sustain NOTHING. However, like any arsonist, they can do a hell of a lot of damage in their destruction. If you think they’ll stop at Dr. Seuss, Aunt Jemima, statues of Thomas Jefferson and copies of Gone With the Wind … well, you’re clueless. And right now, they’re literally destroying our culture. Gleefully, brick by brick.

America may go down in this cultural revolution. We are going down, at this moment. Decades or centuries from now, the best of the human spirit will surely rise again. But look at what we lost in 2020 and 2021. And how rational people in the future will properly condemn and mock those of us who let it happen. “Shame, shame, shame,” chant the Cultural Marxists setting America on fire. The actual shame belongs with those of us who remain silent and fearful, as it happens right before our eyes.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Biden’s Address Nothing but a Con-Job

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Low as our expectations were, President Biden still disappointed with his speech Thursday night.

We’re supposed to hope that if all goes well, we can gather with a few others outdoors to celebrate Independence Day? Sorry, sir, we can do that now. And Americans by the tens if not hundreds of millions are.

And in Texas, Florida and other states, they’ll be packing stadiums by Memorial Day — with precautions, sure. But half the country’s done with extreme cautions.

Whether Biden knew it or not (and how would he?), the whole thing reeked of what another president, in a very different context, called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

He made a big deal of upping the vaccine supply, something that was hardwired in long before he took office. Anyone in the Oval Office would have built on the progress already made to do that.

And he’s still pretending his goals for jabs nationwide were bold, when the nation had already met that daily total by Inauguration Day. And in claiming the United States leads the world, he’s ignoring Israel. (But we fear he’s going to be making a habit of that.)

Same but worse for his targets on reopening schools, where he’s actually backtracked. Yet all the science says it should be done yesterday, not weeks or months down the line.

Part of it, we guess, is that he needed to accentuate the negative to justify his $1.9 trillion spending spree, even though most of it has nothing to do with relief, recovery or the virus, but only rewarding his party’s special interests and ideologues.

The whole thing felt like a con job, trying to sell Americans a bridge they already own. Our only question is whether the president knows that, or he simply has no clue.

New York Post Editorial Board

The Wussification Of The West: Shall We Ban Shakespeare For Othello And Shylock?

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The Dr. Seuss book-burning gave a guest on Tucker Carlson’s eponymous show the giggles: “It’s total distraction from the real issues,” claimed one Chadwick Moore. So wrong.

Come to think of it, our much-loved TV host’s defense of the purged Dr. Seuss books fell short of freedom’s standards: “Dr. Seuss was not a racist” was the gist of it.

But before deconstructing Tucker’s defeatist and defensive argument—here is the latest in the saga of Dr. Seuss and the wussification of the West, for lack of a better word.

The New York Times reports that, “Six Dr. Seuss books will no longer be published because of their use of offensive imagery.”

None other than Dr. Seuss Enterprises, “the business that oversees the estate of the children’s author and illustrator,” “had decided last year to end publication and licensing of” the following titles:

  • “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” (1937)
  • “If I Ran the Zoo” (1950)
  • “McElligot’s Pool”
  • “On Beyond Zebra!”
  • “Scrambled Eggs Super!”
  • “The Cat’s Quizzer”

These custodians of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s work simply rolled over. They conceded to cancelling their own books after consulting with the educational idiocrasy.

It took panels of ponderous oafs to conclude that the “whimsical stories [that] have entertained millions of children and adults worldwide” “revealed strong racial undertones.”

Some parents were aflutter, too.

The following headline perfectly captures the “wussification“—that fretful melding of “wimps” and “p-ssies,” en masse—that makes for a Wussy Nation:

“Parents grapple with racist images in Dr. Seuss books.”

Grown-ups “grapple” with things like, let’s see, food and medicine shortages; with the fact that the educational idiocracy that is depriving kids of the literary canon has failed to teach them to read, write and speak English properly.

Or, picture this: Video footage of Kamala Harris being swallowed whole by a python has surfaced. She is being subjected to the crushing peristaltic movements of the giant reptile, as he digests her. You “grapple” with that:

To pull or to publish these ostensibly upsetting images, that is the question. (Adult-humor alert for Wussy Nation.)

But grownups do not “grapple” with Dr. Seuss content!

Tucker’s mistake was his contents-driven defense of these kiddie books:

“Dr. Seuss was not a racist. He was an evangelist against bigotry,” pleaded Tucker. “He wrote an entire shelf of books against racism, and not in a subtle way. They were clearly, explicitly against racism. That was the whole point of writing them, to teach children not to be racist.”

Yawn.

Even if Dr. Seuss was the pedagogic, sanctimonious bore Tucker makes him out to be—actual racism in the targeted literature should be a peripheral issue, or no issue at all.

The Argument from Freedom means arguing process, not content.

Whether he intended it or not, the premise of Tucker’s defense of Dr. Seuss is that if we do detect “legitimate” racism in literature—there is a case for banning it. (Now, Tucker might not have meant it that way, but, this is what the structure of his argument portends.)

By contrast, freedom makes the case for an unfettered free market in ideas, good and bad. Freedom argues for politically impolite books to be published and read freely.

Banning books, moreover, assumes a lack of choice and agency among individual human beings. It’s also predicated on a higher authority that decides for the rest of us which cultural products are fit for our consumption.

The Argument from Freedom means arguing not over the contents of Mein Kampf or McElligot’s Pool, but for their publication irrespective of their content.

Which is why I say freedom’s argument is an argument from process, and not content.

Mein Kampf, and any offensive literature, needs to be available in a free society to free men and women who want it. And not because of history; so that we don’t forget it or repeat it (blah, blah, blah, as I heard it enunciated by Seattle’s radio mouth, Jason Rantz, the other day).

Alas, in the face of the cancellation of people and publications, cancelled conservatives just keep these logically weak and, frankly, loser mea culpas coming. Like the Argument from Hitler, which is a kind of “WhatAboutism”:

“Amazon and eBay sell Mein Kampf, why not Dr. Seuss? I want what Hitler got, Amazon and eBay. Me too. Boo-hoo.”

Tweeted “Musil Protégé”: “Conservatives [inadvertently] condone presentism. As Audrey says in Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan: ‘Has it ever occurred to you that our world judged by the standards of Jane Austen’s time would (look ridiculous)?’”

Most great literature doesn’t meet the sub-intelligent standards of the woke illiterati, who control the intellectual means of production—the schools (primary, secondary, tertiary), the press, publishing houses, think tanks, Deep Tech and the Deep State.

In some of the axed Dr. Seuss books, the typically cartoonish illustrations exaggerate the physical characteristics of a “Chinaman” and one or two African islanders. You know, just the kind of characteristics that, once-upon-a-time, made books about faraway places and people so exciting to kids.

Much of the Western literary canon—indisputably the greatest works of literature ever—is guaranteed to violate woke racial dogma.

Yet, even by Wokepedia’s telling, “Shakespeare is regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s greatest dramatist.”

What next? Shall we ban Shakespeare due to Othello and Shylock?

Ilana Mercer, UNZ review

The Government Has no Rights. Only Individuals Have Rights. Period.

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There’s no such thing as “state’s rights”. And there’s no such thing as government rights, period.

Only ONE kind of rights matter: The rights of the individual.

Federal and state governments exist to SERVE and UPHOLD the rights of the individual — NOT the other way around.

Incredible and absurd as it may seem, people like Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and AOC are in SERVICE to us. They answer to US. Not the other way around.

Yet every single thing these horrible creatures say and do reflects exactly the opposite premise and attitude. They are sociopaths and abusers. They act and legislate as if WE are owned by them. Most of us permit it, and many of us applaud it.

This must change. Unless or until we become as angry at these people as they deserve, we will continue to live our lives in service to a dictatorship. And that dictatorship is going to grow, and grow and grow. It’s growing right before our eyes, in most of the country. It has been a trend for decades, and now it’s exploding, executive order by executive order. The Supreme Court will do nothing. The federal government is rotten to the core, and there’s nothing good left in it. We can accept it now or accept it later. I choose to accept it now; if you don’t agree with me right this moment, I am confident — at least if you cherish freedom — that you will agree with me before the end of this year.

When it comes to the rights of the states versus the rights of the federal government, this is the rule: Whomever better upholds the rights of the individual wins. If none of them do so, then to hell with them all. Blue states have become dictatorships just as much as the federal government presently is. States like Texas, Florida, and South Dakota are much more respectful of the rights of the individual than the federal government will ever hope to be again. Election integrity is gone at the federal level, and in all currently blue states. There will not be another President Trump.

So in the days and weeks to come, when you perhaps see a major conflict develop between Texas and the federal government, and between Florida and the federal government, don’t ask yourself if the state has rights. Ask yourself who has the moral high ground. The Democratic Party is utterly hopeless, way too far gone, thoroughly collectivist, fascist and Communist. They’re done. By “done” I mean every bit as much an enemy of freedom as the Nazis and the Communists were at the peak of their aggression. Read the news daily, for details.

Republicans are a mixture of good and evil. Most of them are not to be trusted, but there are a few good guys on that side. However, don’t be distracted by partisanship. Only one thing matters: YOU are sovereign over YOUR life; and I am sovereign over mine.

The most important right you and I have is the right to be left alone. We have the right to speak freely on our property, and defend our property. We have a right to trade with whomever we wish to trade. Rights are rights.

Proper governments uphold rights; this is the ONLY thing that gives them any legitimacy.

Nothing will ever change the nature or reality of rights, nor give anyone else the moral high ground — no matter how many guns, bombs, or jails they possess.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Ayn Rand on Moral Judgment

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One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment.

Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man’s character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil.

It is obvious who profits and who loses by such a precept. It is not justice or equal treatment that you grant to men when you abstain equally from praising men’s virtues and from condemning men’s vices. When your impartial attitude declares, in effect, that neither the good nor the evil may expect anything from you—whom do you betray and whom do you encourage?

But to pronounce moral judgment is an enormous responsibility. To be a judge, one must possess an unimpeachable character; one need not be omniscient or infallible, and it is not an issue of errors of knowledge; one needs an unbreached integrity, that is, the absence of any indulgence in conscious, willful evil. Just as a judge in a court of law may err, when the evidence is inconclusive, but may not evade the evidence available, nor accept bribes, nor allow any personal feeling, emotion, desire or fear to obstruct his mind’s judgment of the facts of reality—so every rational person must maintain an equally strict and solemn integrity in the courtroom within his own mind, where the responsibility is more awesome than in a public tribunal, because he, the judge, is the only one to know when he has been impeached.

The precept: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” . . . is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself.

There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.

The moral principle to adopt in this issue, is: “Judge, and be prepared to be judged.”

The opposite of moral neutrality is not a blind, arbitrary, self-righteous condemnation of any idea, action or person that does not fit one’s mood, one’s memorized slogans or one’s snap judgment of the moment. Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare that “everybody is white” or “everybody is black” or “everybody is neither white nor black, but gray,” is not a moral judgment, but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment.

To judge means: to evaluate a given concrete by reference to an abstract principle or standard. It is not an easy task; it is not a task that can be performed automatically by one’s feelings, “instincts” or hunches. It is a task that requires the most precise, the most exacting, the most ruthlessly objective and rational process of thought. It is fairly easy to grasp abstract moral principles; it can be very difficult to apply them to a given situation, particularly when it involves the moral character of another person. When one pronounces moral judgment, whether in praise or in blame, one must be prepared to answer “Why?” and to prove one’s case—to oneself and to any rational inquirer.

Morality is the province of philosophical judgment, not of psychological diagnosis. Moral judgment must be objective, i.e., based on perceivable, demonstrable facts. A man’s moral character must be judged on the basis of his actions, his statements and his conscious convictions—not on the basis of inferences (usually, spurious) about his subconscious.

A man is not to be condemned or excused on the grounds of the state of his subconscious. His psychological problems are his private concern which is not to be paraded in public and not to be made a burden on innocent victims or a hunting ground for poaching psychologizers. Morality demands that one treat and judge men as responsible adults.

This means that one grants a man the respect of assuming that he is conscious of what he says and does, and one judges his statements and actions philosophically, i.e., as what they are—not psychologically, i.e., as leads or clues to some secret, hidden, unconscious meaning. One neither speaks nor listens to people in code.

Why I’m Leaving a Great Career in Public Education

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I have worked as a public educator, first as a teacher and then as an assistant principal, for 22 years in a mix of blue and white collar, middle to upper-middle class suburban Metro-Detroit school district. The district I work in is home to the “Reagan Democrats” and its’ residents voted for Barrack Obama and Donald Trump in both candidate’s election and reelection contests. When I first started my career as a young teacher, I knew that many of my colleagues were liberal Democrats and that was not a problem for me. In 1998, despite our political differences, my colleagues and I had some shared values. In particular, these values included a respect for school authority, including our school resource officers (police officers assigned to the high school building I work at), a strong belief in free speech, an insistence on academic freedom, teaching students critical thinking skills, and most importantly — our shared belief in a colorblind society.

Today, these values have been cancelled and reengineered to fit into the spectrum of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) — an insidious agenda that heavily discriminates against conservatives and traditionalists of every race — and is based on the euphemistically termed principles of “anti-racism.” Now, only woke leftist authority is acceptable because all other authority is systemically racist. In schools, this new woke authority is developed in the administrative and teaching ranks through district sponsored anti-racism training — passed off as professional development — given by highly paid “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” consultants. Books and materials on how the police are racist, implicitly biased, and purposely target people of color now fill the libraries and classrooms of our public schools. School staff that advocate for free speech and against the cancel culture are now having their employment terminated, which has created a silencing effect for staff members who would dare speak out against the obvious totalitarian nature of being cancelled for one’s opinions. Indeed, conservative and traditional educators are now living through an Orwellian nightmare in modern-day public education. Gone are the days in which we operated according the principles of a colorblind society that Dr. Martin Luther King fought for. Now, under the new narrative, we must work for social justice and equity to rid our schools of systemic racism. This means equality of outcomes, rather than equality of opportunity that the Constitution guarantees.

According to our woke betters, colorblindness is racist and harmful to people of color, because it prevents people from seeing acts of racism in society. The emphasis on skin color that anti-racism is placing on people, rather than seeing each person as an individual, is creating a silent resentment and division within schools and society at large. This has made it impossible for me to enjoy coming to school and working with students and colleagues. Everywhere I look within the school, I am reminded that my thoughts and opinions don’t matter because of my skin color and “privilege.” If I speak out against the obvious racism, hatred and Cultural Marxism of anti-racism, I will no longer be valued as a worthwhile professional who has spent his life’s work positively influencing students. If the wrong people found out how much I despise “anti-racism” and the Critical Race Theory it is based on, I would unjustifiably be labeled a racist, lose the confidence of my employer, and most likely be encouraged to resign. Challenges to the new woke racial orthodoxy are not allowed to occur, and if they do, the end result is a career cancelled and a reputation tarnished.

As a former teacher of history, I have taught many students about the worst totalitarian movements around the world. As I ponder what is happening to our society and public education, I see many similarities to Mao’s Cultural Revolution. In America’s Cultural Revolution, the radical racialists of BLM and Antifa are leading the charge. These two avowed Marxist organizations are full of indoctrinated and disgruntled youth, like the Red Guards of Mao’s China. The campaign of destruction in many American cities and harassment of people minding their own business led by BLM and Antifa, is comparable to the terror unleashed by the Red Guards on China’s intellectuals, cultural relics, and institutions. In China, as in the cities targeted by America’s Marxist youth, statues were torn down, private property was seized and destroyed, those who disagree politically were beaten or killed and great architectural buildings were burnt to the ground.

When our public schools eventually do reopen fully in every state, I fear that the woke Cultural Revolution we are living through will continue to accelerate and make every aspect of the job more difficult for conservative educators like me to continue working in the public schools. The idea of going through a “struggle session” as a 22-year faculty member of my suburban Detroit Area school district is enough to convince me that the uphill battle conservatives (especially Trump supporters) face is not worth having my financial future and reputation ruined. America’s own version of the Red Guard are given prominence within schools for their “voice” and are being supported by school boards, administrative office staff, building administrators and classroom teachers. And as the indoctrination of our youth by mostly left-wing educators continues with anti-racism curriculum and materials, life in schools and society for conservatives will only get worse and more uncomfortable as we fear the consequences of expressing the truth of our beliefs in America as a land of opportunity for all.

A Disgruntled Administrator, American Thinker

What Meghan and Harry Tell Us About Millions of Ordinary People

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Why does anyone care about the Royal Family, and Meghan and Harry in particular? Because of how the Royal Family relates to themselves.

What stands out about the Meghan and Harry spectacle? Two things: false entitlement; and male emasculation.

There’s nothing unique about Meghan’s and Harry’s form of depravity. They want all the benefits of the thing they despise. They hate royalty. But they capitalize on that royalty every chance they get. They use the very thing they condemn — their status as royal figures — to obliterate any value in the whole enterprise of royalty in the first place. They’re basically telling the world: “We are fugitives from the royal family, because the royal family is evil. And because of our royal heritage, you should support us.” They want the benefits without any of the costs; that puts them in a position to have millions and millions of people — inside and outside of Britain — sympathize with them.

Predictably, they are leftists. Leftism is all about benefits without accountability. That’s the deeper meaning of socialism. And of course they’re rabid environmentalists. Predictably, they want the world to shut down its power while they — as continued elites — will get the benefits of fossil fuels as the rest of us suffer. They want capitalism to end and to be replaced with Communism — knowing full well that the taxation of fellow elites (in or out of Britain) will continue to support them in the manner to which they have become accustomed … and to which they feel more than royally entitled.

Harry also stands out as the picture of emasculation. For his entire young adulthood, he was known as the independent, self-assured, masculine war hero and occasional “bad boy”. Now he’s led around, metaphorically and almost literally, on a leash by a wife he appears to love. My, the self-loathing that must have given rise to a love of that kind!

Will they divorce? Of course they will, eventually. It’s not a question of if; but when. Most celebrities divorce. Parasites necessarily MUST divorce because they feed off the value of others while providing nothing to offer in return. In short, they will drive each other crazy. My best guess is that Harry once possessed some kind of core value, but Meghan is really the soulless hollowed-out piece of nothingness she appears to be.

Regardless, these two twits will always share in common the quest of getting something-for-nothing. It’s a cause that much of the world can relate to, as the entire planet’s pathetic descent into world socialism demonstrates all too tragically well.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Fascism & Socialism: The Same Beast

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It is not uncommon, especially in a polarized political environment currently enveloping our society today, for radical devotees of a political ideology or agenda to label opponents fascists, or call them Nazis, or Hitler or other such names. In fact, usage of these designations is so common they have almost lost all meaning other than to say, “You’re evil, I hate you” and to paint opponents of an opposing ideology as insane bigots so as to make them a stigma in society. Interestingly enough, most of those who so freely throw out such terms to smear their opponents have almost no understanding of what fascism actually is, or the extent to which they themselves are practicing concepts of fascism in so freely throwing out slanders.

To dispel confusion surrounding the term fascism, it is helpful to first understand the origins and history of how it came about. Fascism gets its name from a symbol embraced in Ancient Rome known as the fasces. The fasces was simply a bundle of rods or sticks with an ax at the center which was bound together with leather strapping.

The symbol was a representation of a collective society bound together with the power of the state at the center indicating one central governing power to which the rods (citizens) were bound to become one collective society. The concept itself was not a new one, it was the same as concept as the Tower of Babel over which Nimrod had the rule. Simply stated, the state stands in the place of God so far as what the law is and in the enforcement thereof; and the people support and serve the state to which they are bound.

It was the state in Ancient Rome which held all power, of which Caesar was the head. Like Babel, the form of government the Ancient Romans adhered to was what we now call socialism. The symbol by which Rome was represented was the fasces, hence, fascism. The very same symbol that can be found in many instances in Washington DC in historical monuments. As for the Romans, in the end it was the ever increasing weight of the welfare system and the corruption of too much power in the hands of too few that lead to the eventual destruction of the empire, a cycle which repeats often throughout history.

The reality is that Hitler’s Nazi party was socialist, Mussolini’s Fascist Party was socialist, and even the Communist were, and are today, practicing socialism, and not true communism, which thus far seems to exist only in theory. This is the irony of those who embrace socialism today who call everyone who doesn’t, ‘fascists’ and ‘Nazis’. The truth of the matter is, socialism is fascism and the tendency of socialism is to complete totalitarianism, followed by poverty, creating the necessity of a welfare system, and finally, ending in the collapse and destruction of society. At its best, socialism is baby fascism. However, in time it matures leaving behind its petty childhood and becomes a brutal oppressor.

All collective societies have a totalitarian head sharing one and the same body: Satan. Spiritually, they are necks of the very same multi-headed-beast with many different heads and faces. The nuances and variations of all the different collectivist cultures are superficial and eventually become meaningless, even should they play nice and pretend to be civilized.

Sooner or later all the heads are eventually cut off, even if only to have a new head grow in its place. Socialism, communism, fascism, radical Islam, and every totalitarian system that exists, did, or ever would exist, is merely a different mask for Satan’s system of rule. Just like the Roman Empire, they are all destined to kill and be killed. They are all the same devil behind different faces. Their destiny is to bring poverty, misery, oppression and death, and afterwards come to an eternal end.

Embedded within socialism is the totalitarian temptation. Once given a foothold, hardly has that temptation ever been resisted over time. The so called free world has long been practicing socialism. It is doubtful it will be restored. More than likely, the once free societies that have now embraced the practices will become just another head of the beast until they too are cut off. The US and other Western-styled nations have held back total global poverty. When the fall of these once free nations to socialism is complete, global depression will follow. It will make the Great Depression seem as though it was not really all that great after all, hardly to mention another bloody bout of world war that it will bring along with it.

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Masks are Just Part of the Socialist Uniform

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The Centers for Disease Control released another study showing no statistically significant decrease in “daily case” or “death growth” rates from COVID-19 in areas with mask mandates. This comes after a similar CDC study in October indicated that mask mandates do not appear to have slowed or stopped the spread of the coronavirus at all. Still, the CDC continues to recommend that all Americans wear masks, except in certain private settings when individuals are fully vaccinated, unless the goalpost-shifting Dr. Fauci gets his way.
This whole “masks don’t seem to be having much effect, but wear them anyway” bureaucratic calculus may seem like a frivolous controversy to Americans preoccupied with the pandemic, but for Americans who are equally worried about the State’s steady encroachment into the lives of families, mask mandates are the worst kind of noxious administrative abuse — another iteration of government coercion that constricts a person’s freedom while accomplishing next to nothing. It’s government rule-making for the sake of rule-making whose chief purpose is to demonstrate that it is the government’s job to command and each citizen’s duty to readily obey.
Mask mandates are the perfect metaphor for a government that demands obedience:
Mask mandates are reminiscent of Barack Obama’s belief that wealthy Americans should be taxed at higher rates, even if the imposition of those new taxes produces no net benefit for the federal treasury. By his own admission, Obama’s insistence on increasing taxes for wealthy Americans was not about generating government revenue or reducing government debt, but rather about punishing individual Americans for having acquired too much personal wealth. It was a way for Obama to prove that he takes income inequality seriously while doing nothing about it.

The same way, our American mask mandates are not really about reducing the spread of disease or “following the science,” but rather about insisting that individual Americans prove through their attire that they take COVID-19 seriously, even if masks do nothing about it.

Just as Obama justifies the government’s confiscation of wealth for confiscation’s sake, the CDC justifies the imposition of mask mandates for imposition’s sake. It is the sartorial manifestation of the government’s demand that an individual submit to its power and authority.

And it has unfortunately become the standard operating procedure for the American government.

In poll after poll, Americans have made it clear that they strongly oppose mass illegal immigration. Ignoring their wishes, the Biden administration has set into place policies that have created a border crisis with no end in sight.

In poll after poll, Americans have made it clear that jobs and the economy are more important than recklessly combatting a global temperature change of a few hundredths of a degree over the next century in the name of “climate justice.” Ignoring their assessment, the Biden administration has killed off oil and gas jobs, increased the cost of gasoline at the pump, and handcuffed America’s energy independence in the name of green dreams — strengthening the economies of Russia, China, and Iran while impoverishing millions of Americans.

In poll after poll, Americans have made it clear that they prefer increasing manufacturing and economic diversification at home to depending upon the supply chains and resources of an adversarial China. Instead, the Biden administration has actively discarded the “America First” economic policies of President Trump and reoriented America back toward the globalist initiatives of the last half-century that benefit transnational banks and Wall Street traders while crippling Main Street businesses and making America vulnerable to her enemies.

For Americans who believe that the government spends most of its time doing the exact opposite of what America overwhelmingly prefers, a mask mandate that accomplishes so little in the way of public health seems like the perfect metaphor for the government’s desire to shut up its own citizenry. What Big Tech censorship fails to catch in its net, Big Government catches in its own.

“What were you saying about ending endless wars, America? We couldn’t hear you underneath two masks. Now let’s invade Syria and build democracies everywhere but here at home.”

Mask mandates reflect the American government’s descent toward socialism:

Mask mandates are also an illustration of the sharp philosophical divide straining Americans into two camps guided by conflicting worldviews. In the one are true democrats who believe that all legitimate government power is derived from individual consent, and in the other are true socialists who sanctify the exercise of government power in pursuit of collectivist goals at the expense of individual liberty.

Alexis de Tocqueville contrasted these worldviews aptly: “Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom; socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

When viewed alongside de Tocqueville’s perceptive taxonomy, it is not hard to understand why mask mandates proving to have scant efficacy strike so many Americans as nothing more than the government’s attempt to seek “equality in restraint and servitude.” Whether a scientific study actually supports the hypothesis that coronavirus transmission can be retarded through the use of masks has become irrelevant. All that is important is that government functionaries deem the practice to be in the public’s best interest. An individual is forced to abandon personal reason and judgment for those of the government, a proposition that strikes a true democrat as inherently delegitimizing of any democratic system.

For Americans who believe that society should operate freely from government as much as possible and that government action should be reserved to handle only those problems that a cooperative society cannot accomplish on its own, relatively useless government dictates are absolute poison. They reinforce President Reagan’s biting observation that the “nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Americans with a healthy suspicion of government authority have no trouble understanding this joke. They do not care about the government’s “good intentions”; they detest the government’s insistence on so casually and unnecessarily interjecting itself into the lives of private citizens.

In a sense, mask mandates have become nothing more than dress code loyalty oaths to the same state and local governments that have claimed for themselves the extraconstitutional powers to restrict free speech, religious liberty, personal commerce, and voluntary movement beyond the home in the name of a virus. They represent Americans’ symbolic acquiescence to government’s mass lockdowns and economic shutdowns and their tacit acceptance that government’s unconstitutional power grabs are somehow legitimate.

This symbolism, not the statistically insignificant decrease in infection and death rates in areas with strict mask mandates, is what actually animates those Americans who insist on controlling what covers other Americans’ faces. An American who refuses to participate in virus virtue-signaling is an American who refuses to believe that the economic, educational, and social carnage of the last year was justified.

And that repudiation is just too much for proponents of bigger and more intrusive government to take in stride

J.B. Shurk, American Thinker