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.

Ayn Rand on Education

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http://aynrandlexicon.com/lex

Today’s colleges and universities give lip service to “tolerance,” fawn over “diversity,” and purport to be open and welcoming to all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Conservatives are shunned, canceled, threatened, fired, or assaulted as the case may be. Professors and students openly rejoice in the physical misfortune — or even death — of those who do not share their radical political agenda. “Activists” demand the removal of statues of historic figures… if they haven’t already defaced and toppled them. Even as they savage the past, colleges are repeating it by increasingly racially segregating their students and initiating separate, racially-based departments, dorms, and graduation ceremonies.

Colleges are degrading or eliminating their grading and behavioral standards in an effort to “help” minorities. How patrician and racist is that? They argue that absolutely everything is racist, unaware that by doing so they have refuted their own claim. Many are in favor of slavery reparations, or the massive transfer of wealth from those who never owned slaves to those who never were slaves. They are pushing to defund the police. And eliminate political opposition.

Big Academia is also wildly infatuated with the proposition that there are an infinite number of genders, that sexuality is a “construct” on a “spectrum,” and that drag queens are sacrosanct, the backbone of our civilization, so the avoidance of one or more is akin to a criminal act.

Universities have come to believe sexuality is Black and white, too, insofar as it is somehow different for each race, and therefore also requires separate classes, teachers and venues. Their fervent embrace of transgender theory has led at least one to teach that Jesus was “non-binary.”

Telling the truth about almost anything is now strictly verboten on campuses across the fruited plain. Universities have threatened to expel students for saying “a woman is a woman” and “a man is a man.”

Colleges aid and abet students in their attempt to repeal truth and cancel history. Which has led to some students’ avowed desire to repeal the Constitution. And professors to state that free speech is “racist.”

Universities haven’t just been given a free ride, they have been lavishly, almost obscenely, funded in recent years. Some have endowments making them wealthier than many nations. Grants, loans and debt forgiveness have allowed them to rapidly raise their tuition rates to obscene levels as well, even as they have the gall to denounce capitalism, business, and the “greedy rich.”

It is time for these indoctrination centers to be defundedc– and deprived of the free ride and unearned esteem they have been granted for the past several decades — if we Americans are to once again live up to the ideals that made us great.

But a threat to the nation? Really?

What would you call an institution that rewrites history, denigrates and attempts to destabilize the country it is supposed to serve, seeks to resegregate society, and wishes to erase all distinctions between men and women?

Higher Education a Threat to America

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This is unspeakably sad, as these self-same institutions once existed in large part to challenge and enlighten students and introduce them to the great works of Western civilization and the foundational principles of American society and Judeo-Christian ethics. They taught students how best to think, not what to think. Like a free and impartial press, these institutions were once beneficial– indeed critical– to the health of a free democratic republic. We have neither now.

Today’s colleges and universities serve only to further the goals of their elitist benefactors by indoctrinating their charges into a ubiquitous and homogenous Marxist mindset, one at loggerheads with the notion of a free, democratic republic based on the rule of law and governed by, of, and for the people.0

Today’s colleges and universities give lip service to “tolerance,” fawn over “diversity,” and purport to be open and welcoming to all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Conservatives are shunned, canceled, threatened, fired, or assaulted as the case may be. Professors and students openly rejoice in the physical misfortune — or even death — of those who do not share their radical political agenda. “Activists” demand the removal of statues of historic figures… if they haven’t already defaced and toppled them. Even as they savage the past, colleges are repeating it by increasingly racially segregating their students and initiating separate, racially-based departments, dorms, and graduation ceremonies.

Colleges are degrading or eliminating their grading and behavioral standards in an effort to “help” minorities. How patrician and racist is that? They argue that absolutely everything is racist, unaware that by doing so they have refuted their own claim. Many are in favor of slavery reparations, or the massive transfer of wealth from those who never owned slaves to those who never were slaves. They are pushing to defund the police. And eliminate political opposition.

Big Academia is also wildly infatuated with the proposition that there are an infinite number of genders, that sexuality is a “construct” on a “spectrum,” and that drag queens are sacrosanct, the backbone of our civilization, so the avoidance of one or more is akin to a criminal act.

Universities have come to believe sexuality is Black and white, too, insofar as it is somehow different for each race, and therefore also requires separate classes, teachers and venues. Their fervent embrace of transgender theory has led at least one to teach that Jesus was “non-binary.”

Telling the truth about almost anything is now strictly verboten on campuses across the fruited plain. Universities have threatened to expel students for saying “a woman is a woman” and “a man is a man.”

Colleges aid and abet students in their attempt to repeal truth and cancel history. Which has led to some students’ avowed desire to repeal the Constitution. And professors to state that free speech is “racist.”

Universities haven’t just been given a free ride, they have been lavishly, almost obscenely, funded in recent years. Some have endowments making them wealthier than many nations. Grants, loans and debt forgiveness have allowed them to rapidly raise their tuition rates to obscene levels as well, even as they have the gall to denounce capitalism, business, and the “greedy rich.”

It is time for these indoctrination centers to be defundedc– and deprived of the free ride and unearned esteem they have been granted for the past several decades — if we Americans are to once again live up to the ideals that made us great.

But a threat to the nation? Really?

What would you call an institution that rewrites history, denigrates and attempts to destabilize the country it is supposed to serve, seeks to resegregate society, and wishes to erase all distinctions between men and women?

Eric Utter, American Thinker

How to Fix Our Culture

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The best way to reform our culture? 100 PERCENT DEFUND ALL COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. No more state and federal funding. Period. Make them sell Communism on the free market. Make them persuade people to pay $100K a year to be taught that Marx understood economics and that Dr. Seuss is evil. That will end WOKE-ness in three days flat. I guarantee it.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

What Drives the Global Elite on Their Maniacal Mission

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When you consider what has happened in the United States in the last nine months, incredibly, it doesn’t even seem like our own nation anymore. People rioting in the streets during the summer are described by the lamestream media as “peaceful protesters.” District Attorneys let hardened criminals out of jail. Grammar schools indoctrinate our children, teaching them to hate America.

The Lunatics are Running the Asylum

Governors mandate lockdowns of their citizens while flagrantly breaking their own rules. A presidential administration, run by who knows who, is undermining the “1776 Project” — which was designed to offer a balanced perspective on American history — while supporting the misdirected “1619 Project,” which was launched by The New York Times and claims that the real founding of the U.S. started when slaves were first shipped across the Atlantic.

On and on it goes: Thousands of strange assertions, end runs around the law, and media flights of complete fantasy. The creepy, illegal, unpatriotic, absurd positions of the Left are unfolding at an increasing pace. Whether it’s defacing property, pulling down statues – even of Gandhi, Grant, and Lincoln – desecrating church symbols, renaming schools, defaming Dr. Seuss, or re-assigning the sex of a plastic toy potato, the Left knows no bounds.

Those in a position to call them out, our elected representatives, as well as opinion makers, too often say little or nothing.

The March to Madness

Exactly what sort of madness leading up to this March is occurring? Is there a common denominator to all of the heartless and heart-sickening behaviors that we’ve witnessed for months on end now, and realistically, on a lesser level, for years? Actually, the answer is yes.

Every activity of the Left, from tiny to gargantuan and in one form or another, is designed to diminish the strength, status, and sovereignty of the U.S. Whether it’s seeking to overrun the country with illegal immigrants, pack the Supreme Court, smear Supreme Court nominees, besmirch local officials, cancel the careers of people who’ve made one errant statement, even if that statement was 30 years ago, all such activities have a common denominator. The common denominator is to vanquish the opposition thoroughly, vanquish the U.S. Constitution, ignore due process, overturn the right of habeas corpus, contort “one person one vote,” and much, much more so that as a nation we are left in tatters.

‘We Know What is Best’

As the U.S. declines, the global elite believe that they move closer and closer to their goal of having a one-world government. Headed by global elites – Leftist multi-million dollar career politicians and Leftist billionaires, who pull the strings around the world – such a government supposedly will produce the utopian society the Left fervently desires.

Utopias don’t exist, however, could not work if they did, and would end up enslaving their citizens. Read Utopia by Sir Thomas More, Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, The Republic by Plato, or any other treatise on supposedly ideal societies. You will quickly understand that the elite invariably will regard the citizenry with disdain, nothing more than serfs – worker drones – who are to act according to how they are manipulated and who will do exactly what they are told.

By any measure, the global elite’s decades-long quest for a one-world government is exceedingly far from American ideals. Indeed, it so distant from what our Constitution guarantees and so far from the spirit of the Declaration of Independence that it is beyond chilling.

A Chilling Vision

If America falls, the whole world falls, except for the Chinese Communists. They will control at least half of the globe, and their form of government is going to be worse than what the global elites have in mind. The Chinese are already experimenting with creating biologically enhanced “super soldiers,” more powerful than the average soldier.

They already have imprisoned thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people in slave labor camps. They already have surveillance cameras in their larger cities to a degree that you cannot imagine. In time, it might be shown that they intentionally released the Wuhan virus on the world. Who can say right now?

The global elites and the Chinese Communists must be contained and stopped. It will be a monumental task, but we stopped Hitler and Mussolini, we overcame the monolithic Soviet Union, and we can prevail now as well. It will require Gen Xers and Millennials to break away from the Left’s cultural stranglehold. And as they do, they will find that at least 75 million Trump voters will be on their side.

Jeff Davidson, townhall.com

The America Haters

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It’s just a matter of the America-Haters convincingly repeating their Hate-America litany as the truth often enough before the masses of American people start buying into it. The reasoning they use to express and justify their hatred of America and Americans is secondary. It could be through their contempt – Americans are crass and boorish people, not sophisticated like Europeans, or through their criticalness – their Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School which is aimed at discrediting America and the American way of life, or through their envy – Americans are greedy, rich and dishonest people, therefore their wealth must be taken from them and fairly distributed, or through their moralism – America is an evil nation made up of people many of whom have descended from past slave owners, therefore restitution is in order, or through distorting and rewriting America’s history by maximizing the image of black Americans and minimizing the importance of white Americans, or through condoning the expression of physical violence and provocation against America and passively supporting mob riots, looting and the destruction of private property of America’s cities, and through concocting any other possible issue that can generate divisiveness.

Whatever America-Haters have to say about America is in the form of a destructive emotional attack. Therefore, it never would occur to them to have anything to say regarding what is positive about America. This omission exposes their emotional need to destroy America and it is enough to indicate that their ideas about America are not only distorted but symptomatic of a severe disturbance in their ability to have perspective about their object of attack and to see America clearly.

While the America-Haters are well on their way to destroy America at any cost, the clueless masses of Americans cannot see the hatred and malevolence behind the America-Haters facade. Given the lack of public recognition and understanding of how to effectively respond and expose their destructive agenda in this emotional plague crisis situation, it is possible for these America-Haters to achieve their ultimate political goal – the complete breakup of this great and exceptional nation through their relentless, non-stop social and political agitation, and turn America into a defunct, communist-style, dictatorship. If this comes to pass the forces of the emotional plague in America that have conducted this operation unrecognized in front of everyone will have achieved a monumental victory.

Charles Konia, M.D.

Vote-a-rama Ends with Senate Narrowly Passing $1.9 Trillion American Rescue Plan

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The United States Senate on Saturday passed President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, dubbed the American Rescue Plan. The bill was passed 50-49 after “vote-a-rama,” which occurred an all-night session. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) was absent for the votes because of a family funeral back home.

The legislation nows heads back to the House of Representatives. The lower chamber has to vote on the bill before it heads to President Joe Biden to sign into law.

The 27-hour long session was the longest in recent history. A large chunk of time – 10 hours and 44 minutes – was used to read the 628-page bill out loud, which came at Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) request.

The bill includes another round of stimulus checks. Individuals making less than $75,000 will receive a $1,400 check. Couples earning less than $150,000 will receive a combined $2,800. As an individual or couple’s income increases, their stimulus amount decreases. Those payments, however, would phase out at $80,000 for individuals and $160,000 for couples.

One area of contention was extended unemployment benefits, which Democrats needed moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to sign off on. Eventually, a deal was struck for $300 per week unemployment benefits, which was extended until Sept. 6. The House’s version called for $400 a week in unemployment benefits, but those benefits would expire on Aug. 29. Families making less than $150,000 would receive the first $10,200 of unemployment benefits taxfree.

Beth Baumann, Townhall.com

Ayn Rand on Metaphysical Value Judgments

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The key concept, in the formation of a sense of life, is the term “important.” It is a concept that belongs to the realm of values, since it implies an answer to the question: Important—to whom? Yet its meaning is different from that of moral values. “Important” does not necessarily mean “good.” It means “a quality, character or standing such as to entitle to attention or consideration” (The American College Dictionary). What, in a fundamental sense, is entitled to one’s attention or consideration? Reality.

“Important”—in its essential meaning, as distinguished from its more limited and superficial uses—is a metaphysical term. It pertains to that aspect of metaphysics which serves as a bridge between metaphysics and ethics: to a fundamental view of man’s nature. That view involves the answers to such questions as whether the universe is knowable or not, whether man has the power of choice or not, whether he can achieve his goals in life or not. The answers to such questions are “metaphysical value-judgments,” since they form the base of ethics.

It is only those values which he regards or grows to regard as “important,” those which represent his implicit view of reality, that remain in a man’s subconscious and form his sense of life.

“It is important to understand things”—“It is important to obey my parents”—“It is important to act on my own”—“It is important to please other people”—“It is important to fight for what I want”—“It is important not to make enemies”—“My life is important”—“Who am I to stick my neck out?” Man is a being of self-made soul—and it is of such conclusions that the stuff of his soul is made. (By “soul” I mean “consciousness.)

Is the universe intelligible to man, or unintelligible and unknowable? Can man find happiness on earth, or is he doomed to frustration and despair? Does man have the power of choice, the power to choose his goals and to achieve them, the power to direct the course of his life—or is he the helpless plaything of forces beyond his control, which determine his fate? Is man, by nature, to be valued as good, or to be despised as evil? These are metaphysical questions, but the answers to them determine the kind of ethics men will accept and practice; the answers are the link between metaphysics and ethics. And although metaphysics as such is not a normative science, the answers to this category of questions assume, in man’s mind, the function of metaphysical value-judgments, since they form the foundation of all of his moral values.

Consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly, man knows that he needs a comprehensive view of existence to integrate his values, to choose his goals, to plan his future, to maintain the unity and coherence of his life—and that his metaphysical value-judgments are involved in every moment of his life, in his every choice, decision and action.

Children Need Protection from Transgender Activists

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Transgender ideology is a threat to children, and also to their right to childhood. Childhood should be a time of innocence and learning to grow into an emotionally well-adjusted, intellectually competent, morally capable adult. Transgender activists seek to sexualize and politicize children long before puberty, telling them they have a right to transition even though their bodies and minds are not fully-formed, and against their parents‘ objections.

Transgender ideology treats children as if they have the same rights as adults and ignores the fact that they are vulnerable to all kinds of suggestion and manipulation. This undermines the principle that we should value a child’s protection above all other considerations, protecting children from the negative effects of their own ignorance, impulsiveness, and enthusiasms, and from those adults who may seek to pursue their own interests at the expense of a child’s well-being and welfare. It amounts to a war on childhood and on responsible parenting.

But trans activists have already labeled attempts by some state legislatures to head off the undermining of protection for children as a ‘war’ on trans people.

These state legislatures are actually seeking to protect children. Children are being targeted for life-changing and irreversible medical procedures to prevent their natural development, the long-term implications of which they are not mature enough to understand.

Some medical professionals have expressed concerns, but they are not being listened to because the ideology of transgenderism is now firmly embedded in the medical profession.

The slightest indication of confusion about sex and the expression of sexual identity can be seized upon as an indication of transgenderism and cultivated as such by activists. This is a form of grooming. Most children are not in a position to resist this unless they have very wise, committed, and resourceful parents to protect them.

Transgender ideology presumes that children can have a clear and firm conviction as to their ‘gender identity’ and can decide on those grounds that they are in the wrong body and they are really of the opposite sex. But the logic is faulty.

Gender is supposedly not biologically determined. Medically qualified trans activists advocate puberty-blocking hormone treatments and gender-reassignment surgery to address an incompatibility between a subjective, non-biologically determined gender identity and the child’s biological sex. But if gender identity has nothing to do with sex or biology this can only make things worse not better. We know that adults identifying as trans already have a significantly higher incidence of mental illness. And this risk continues after transition.

Which is a clear indicator that transition did nothing to address the underlying psychological problems. Perhaps this is why trans activists are so angry and resentful.

But the same approach is being advocated for vulnerable, impressionable, confused and anxious children who get caught up in the spider’s web of transgender ideology.

How can any doctor know for sure that a child’s adoption of a transgender ‘identity’ is not a passing fad? Certainty is impossible. While a child is growing towards adulthood, different genes will express themselves and all manner of psycho-social influences will impact. No one — not even the parents, let alone the child — can possibly know in advance exactly what this process will involve or what the eventual outcome will be. Parents can only hope for the best whilst doing everything they can to bring this about.

The child, meanwhile, is experimenting at being the kind of person he or she imagines best expresses his/her aspirations. But those aspirations may change drastically over the course of growing up. What children need is guidance, support, and protection. This should come primarily from their parents but also those in loco parentis. Children are prey to all sorts of misguided ideas and need protection from themselves as well as from those adults who might do them harm, and this protection should remain in place until children have reached maturity and can take responsibility for themselves.

Doctors who offer transgender interventions to children argue that the developing body and mind of a child can offer unequivocal evidence of the desirability of transitioning before maturity is reached. But transgenderism is not viewed as a pathology by transgender activists; not even the medically qualified ones. This view is becoming increasingly prevalent.

But if transgenderism is not a pathology, what is it? A lifestyle choice? So why all the rush to intervene in the lives of children who are confused about their sexuality? If these children are not ill or disordered, what is the medical justification for altering their minds and bodies (with hormones and surgery) even before they are fully formed? Even if the child desires this outcome, is it wise to gratify this desire before mental and physical maturity is attained?

And yet medically qualified transgender activists seek to do just this.

This is an example of what I term ‘pathological irrationality’ — the kind of reasoning that undermines the very idea of reason itself. The logic of transgender ideology is riddled with contradictions.

In what sense is it defensible to hold that children are competent to make life-changing decisions that are irreversible, the consequences of which will be with them for the rest of their lives, and which in any case might not be necessary at all and simply reflect a lifestyle choice, which in itself might be a passing fad? The doctors ‘treating’ such children are literally ‘playing God’ because they are taking upon themselves the role of omniscient benefactor when in fact they are not omniscient. They cannot possibly know for sure that what they are doing is for the long-term benefit of their patient. But at present they can act with impunity whilst the child carries all the risk and suffers the adverse consequences for life.

Concerns about the well-being and welfare of children motivate the child protection laws, policies, and practices. Why should such protections be sidelined in the case of medical interventions in the lives of children in the name of transgenderism?

If the child later has a change of heart, will that child be justified in judging that they have been mutilated by adults who took advantage of their vulnerability? Even if what happened was with the child’s consent, this consent will have been influenced by the medical transgender activists who have a vested interest in changing children from one sex to the other to suit their political agenda. But if they turn out to have changed a child into the opposite sex who then decides that this was the wrong thing to do after all, then in reality what happened was the taking advantage of a vulnerable, suggestible child to gratify the adults involved.

This is a child protection issue, one that is created by transgender activists who refuse to acknowledge that children have a right to a childhood unmolested by adults with a political agenda. What is really needed is much stronger protection, so that children are allowed to be children without being manipulated into making decisions that may irreversibly ruin their lives.

Wen Wryte, American Thinker

Who Appoints the “Cancelers” in the Cancel Culture ?

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We talk a lot about “cancel culture”. But WHO does the actual cancellations? Is it some modern-day fascist Communist monk, squirreled away in some remote part of the California wilderness? Or in a Silicon Valley office? Is it one person, or a committee? What criteria cause Dr. Seuss to get cancelled, and not something else? And why now? Who decides? What gives these “cancelers” intellectual and moral stature over and above all of us? Who are these cancelling men/women/gender-neutral gods behind the curtain?

We know one thing with absolute certainty: They’re counting on fear and intimidation. That’s all they have. They’re hoping our fear of being disapproved of by others, who also have no idea why Dr. Seuss and their favorite pancake syrup are now abhorrent abominations of immorality, will override our reason, our integrity, our simple common sense and our desire to live in freedom. All these horrible cancellation creatures have for power is our own weakness. The moment we get — and STAY– really strong inside is the moment they perish from their own obvious depravity and insanity. Never forget that. The root of this civil war is not political; it’s psychological, and ethical. They only acquire power outside if we remain weak INSIDE.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

America’s Coming Bankruptcy

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Did you know America is going bankrupt? Most people don’t. Maybe the saddest part about our country’s state of affairs is that all our vitriol and dysfunction has come at a time when we aren’t even addressing our biggest problems. It would be one thing if America collectively decided we have to be honest about where we are as a country and we were in the middle of a charged debate about how to fix it. Instead, we are fighting about trivial things while pretty much everyone in the country, on all sides of the political spectrum, has decided our real problems are so bad we may as well ignore them. Have you ever had a friend who’s had some horrible, embarrassing event in their life? The last thing you want to do is mention it. That’s America and our debt problem. It’s so bad that we don’t talk about it anymore.

It was a full 10 years ago that we were so focused on our debt that then-President Barack Obama was forced to set up a national commission to deal with it. The bipartisan commission led by former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson came up with a series of recommendations, including tax hikes and reforms to our entitlement programs. They were attacked by both the right and left, and none of the solutions were enacted into law, but at least we were trying.

When the Bowles-Simpson commission was formed, America was about $13 trillion in debt. Today, we owe more than double that, more than $26 trillion. Those numbers are so big nobody understands them. To put it in perspective, our entire economic output in 2020 was $21 trillion. If America could magically not spend a dime — nobody bought anything, including food or other staples — and we put it all toward paying off our federal debt for an entire year, we still wouldn’t pay it off. In more personal terms, our federal debt now amounts to more than $81,000 for every single person in the country, or over $227,000 for the average household in America.

If the problem is twice as bad as it was 10 years ago, why don’t we even discuss it anymore? It’s as if we are so close to the iceberg that it’s too late to avoid it. Let’s just keep the band playing and enjoy things while we can. It’s all going to be our kids’ problem. This is, of course, a fundamentally anti-American sentiment. The goal of leaving things better for your kids is as American as apple pie. We are certainly not doing that any more.

Our national desire to wish our problems away is so severe that we have even come up with an intellectual framework for it. Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT, is the belief that deficits and debt don’t really matter for a sovereign country that can print its own currency. Need more money? You just keep printing more. It’s like magic. The bill never comes due.

MMT proponents ignore or explain away the downside to the constant printing of money and issuance of debt, including our creditors losing faith and no longer buying our bonds, hyperinflation and the consequences for the dollar as an exchange traded currency. Despite these huge flaws, it’s amazing the extent to which MMT has caught on as a convenient political excuse to continue ignoring our imminent debt disaster.

What will happen in a debt crisis; why are we ignoring this obvious and impending catastrophe; and what should we do about it?

At some point, as we continue to borrow money, the interest we pay on our debt will be so high we will not be able to afford the rest of our budget. The solution will be to borrow more. As the borrowing binge grows, those buying our bonds will grow worried and demand a higher return. This, in turn, will create a vicious debt cycle, which has already happened in many countries around the world. The result is catastrophic reductions in spending and increases in taxes to try to satisfy creditors to keep the money flowing. The only reason we haven’t seen it yet in America is we are such an economically powerful country that our creditors have not yet lost faith in our ability to pay it off. If that day comes — and unless we make changes, it eventually will — the crisis is going to hurt all Americans.

We are ignoring our looming debt crisis because it’s not a winner politically. Both parties contributed to the problem. The Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations will all be to blame. Republicans, traditionally the party of fiscal responsibility, have lost all credibility on the issue. After shutting down the government over spending under Obama, they spent happily at record levels under Trump.

It’s attractive for politicians to keep taxes low and spending high. Each of our last four presidential administrations has benefited from this dynamic. Wall Street and global business, which dominates Washington policymaking, has also benefited greatly. These corporate actors care about their next financial quarter a lot more than our country’s state of affairs 10 or more years down the road. This period will be looked upon by historians as the saddest time in our history: a once-great country behaving so selfishly and with such short-term interests that they sold their children’s futures away with barely any debate.

The biggest cop-out in Washington is the presidential commission. It rarely accomplishes anything. Yet our situation is so bad that another bipartisan commission may be our best bet. The commission should include both corporatists and populists. As much of a cop-out as this is, we are not prepared to begin debating real solutions (which will involve some pain). Shining a light back on the problem may be all we can accomplish today. We should start.

Neil Patel, townhall.com