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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.

The Case for Closing Public Schools…Indefinitely

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For the past year, parents and students across the county, mostly in Democrat-run municipalities, have been experiencing excessive levels of stress due to unending school closures. Red states like Florida, Texas, and South Dakota have been open for months. Meanwhile, the teacher’s unions have a stranglehold on the public schools in Democrat states, refusing to open for a litany of absurd reasons.

Part of me sympathizes with the conservative parents who are struggling to cope with working from home and the online curriculum management of their children. (Though that sympathy does not extend to liberal parents who knowingly voted for this lunacy.) But I am struggling to understand why conservative parents are insistent to return their children to these wretched institutions that are delivering a subpar education and indoctrinating their children with Marxist theory.

Public schools throughout the nation have adopted wholesale the insidious Marxist curriculum of race agitators like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, along with Nicole Hannah Jones’s fictional work that is the “1619 Project.” In Buffalo, New York, teachers and administrators have introduced “anti-racism” lessons that instruct kindergarteners — yes, kindergarteners — that ‘all white people perpetuate systematic racism’ and forces children to watch videos of dead black children. In Oregon, the ‘Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction’ claims that obtaining the ‘right’ answer to a math problem is somehow rooted in white supremacy. And if you think this ridiculous ideology has not penetrated your conservative school district, even deep red Loudon County in Virginia will no longer celebrate Dr. Seuss for ‘strong racial undertones.’

Yet despite the schools’ concentrated efforts to eradicate racism, many of these teachers insist that merely being expected to return to in-classroom instruction is a form of oppression. The largest teachers union, the United Teachers of LA, condemned Governor Gavin Newsom for his proposal to return to in school learning as “a recipe for propagating structural racism.” In La Mesa, California, school board members called in-person learning a form of ‘white supremacist ideology’ and ‘slavery.’

only do they hate you, but they don’t care for the well-being of your children. They know that continuing to keep students out of the physical classroom is causing irreparable harm to pupil’s academic progress, but they don’t care. They aren’t actually worried
about themselves or your children contracting COVID at school, they are simply enjoying the time off. Hence why we see teacher’s union president Matt Meyer dropping his two-year-old off at a private pre-school while insisting it’s unsafe for your child to go to school.


about themselves or your children contracting COVID at school, they are simply enjoying the time off. Hence why we see teacher’s union president Matt Meyer dropping his two-year-old off at a private pre-school while insisting it’s unsafe for your child to go to school.

These people don’t consider themselves to be a vessel for meaningful education. They admit they are nothing more than babysitters and their only instructional objective is to teach progressive dogma. These depraved people will insist that an accomplished individual like Candace Owens is a racist and that communism in the Soviet Union wasn’t that bad because more women were in the labor force. Although I would concede standing in a bread line all day is certainly laborious.

American public schools are no longer meant to deliver quality education, they are a means to propagate progressive ideas by mostly childless and entirely miserable Marxists. To quote Michael Malice, “an ideology full of unattractive people who can’t reproduce have no choice but to raise your children as their own.”

And what do we get in return for all this progressive indoctrination? Pathetic math, reading, and science education stats.

We spend more money per pupil than any other country on earth and we produce results that are mediocre at best.

Pupils today have no knowledge of the most significant people or events of our not-so-distant history. For the students who are not total ignoramuses, gifted and talented programs are being suspended in Boston or the entry exam for such programs is being reformed to be more “inclusive” in New York City. Advanced placement classes used to be a refuge for smart students to work diligently. But according to progressives those classes are full of too many Asians, Jews, and Whites, hence they must be eliminated.

Perhaps you are still under the delusion that in the very least, public school is a place to keep your children safe while you are at work. Think again. In 2018, Project Veritas revealed an undercover video where Union City Education Association President Kathleen Valencia assures the undercover journalist she can help cover up crimes committed by teachers and brags about doing so for another union teacher who had sex with a student. If you thought online teaching might protect your children from such perversions you would still be wrong. In Montgomery County, Maryland just this week, a teacher’s aide masturbated in front of special needs students on a Zoom call. He has since been placed on leave but will not face criminal charges.

And the insanity is only going to increase under Biden. The woke administration is insistent on eliminating female sports and female privacy on campuses by letting transgender women (formerly known as boys) participate in girls’ sports and use the girls’ changing facilities. Teachers already withhold information from parents regarding LGBT instruction in school. In Anne Arundel County, Maryland, staff have been instructed not to inform parents if boy who thinks he is a girl will be sleeping in the same quarters as their daughters.

Why are parents desperate to return their precious offspring to the degenerate hands of the public-school system? This system does not make them smarter, does not teach life skills, exposes children to sexual perversions, teaches them to hate freedom, liberty, our country, white people, and celebrates outright communism.

You are sending them to an entity that virulently opposes your values, hoping they come out not adopting the leftist creed that they are inundated with for hours a day.

Dennis Prager says that sending your kids to college is playing Russian roulette with their values. Unfortunately, that threat has permeated all of K-12 and if you surrender your child to public school in their youth, don’t be surprised when they graduate hating you for it.

Sarah Lilly, American Thinker

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/the_case_for_closing_public_schools_indefinitely_.html#ixzz6oIbP6KV9
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Who Really Imperils Our Country ?

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“That attack, that siege” of the Capitol, FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress, “was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it was behavior we at the FBI view as domestic terrorism.”

“Domestic terrorism,” said Wray, echoing his boss.

For what had been President-elect Joe Biden’s reaction to the Capitol riot?

“Don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob. Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists. It’s that basic. It’s that simple,” said Biden.

Yet, the phrase domestic terrorism conjures up events from our past far graver than a four-hours occupation of the Capitol. Nat Turner’s rebellion. John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry. Timothy McVeigh and Oklahoma City.

The near assassination of Harry Truman at Blair House by Puerto Rican nationalists, Nov.1, 1950. The shooting and wounding of five congressmen from the House gallery on March 1, 1954.

The 1974 bombing of New York’s Fraunces Tavern — where Gen. George Washington said farewell to his officers — also the work of Puerto Ricans demanding independence. Four died there and 50 were injured.

Yet, in the “domestic terrorism” at the Capitol, no protester set off a bomb, toppled a statue, or fired a weapon. Of the four who died that day, all were protesters. Ashli Babbitt, 35, a 14-year Air Force veteran, was shot to death by a Capitol cop as she tried to force her way into the Senate chamber.

A rioter and law-breaker, yes, but a terrorist who deserved to die?

Benjamin Phillips, 50, died of a stroke; Kevin Greeson, 55, of a heart attack. Rosanne Boyland, 34, was apparently crushed in the melee.

Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick died of a stroke the next day. Media reports that he had been hit with a fire extinguisher proved false. In the two months since Jan. 6, no one has been charged in his death.

Was Wray’s FBI alerted in advance of this impending act of domestic terrorism? Apparently, it was.

Writes The Washington Post: “A… report, prepared by the FBI’s Norfolk field office a day before the riot, … warned of specific appeals for violence, including a call for ‘war’ at the Capitol.”

The report quoted a source urging Donald Trump supporters to go to D.C. “ready to fight.”

“Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent, stop calling this a march or rally or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”

What did Wray do with this hair-raising warning? Did he call the D.C. police or Speaker Nancy Pelosi to alert her to what might be coming her way?

No. Wray never saw the Norfolk report. It was not passed up the chain of command to his office until after the riot. It was sent by email to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes the D.C. and Capitol Police, posted on a website and mentioned in a command center briefing in D.C.

Nonchalance seems to have been the FBI’s order of the day.

As acting D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III told Congress, “I would certainly think that something as violent as an insurrection would warrant a phone call.”

One would think so. Explanations are needed.

How can Wray call a breach of the Capitol by a Trump crowd, an “act of domestic terrorism,” when his own subordinates did not regard it as sufficiently serious enough to give him a heads-up?

And is it not hyperbole to use terms like “domestic terrorism,” “armed insurrection,” “coup d’etat,” and “treason” to describe protesters pushing through police lines into the Capitol to disrupt a proceeding?

What is going on here?

The left will not let this go. It is exaggerating and exploiting what happened at the Capitol to paint the right as an ominous threat to American democracy — and itself as the savior of the republic. It seeks to demonize the populist right, cancel its voice, expel it from the public square and redefine it as a conspiracy against America, calling forth new government authority and power to monitor, expose and destroy it.

If assaulting cops and besieging public buildings amounts to domestic terrorism, the rioting, looting, arson and assaults on cops we saw all last summer in Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, Kenosha and Louisville from antifa and Black Lives Matter protestors would more than qualify.

Today, Capitol Hill is encircled with high fencing topped by razor wire and patrolled by National Guard troops. It looks like the Green Zone in Baghdad. Apparently, the physical barriers and troops are there to protect against attacks by QAnon and white supremacists.

Minneapolis is taking similar precautions to protect the courthouse where ex-cop Derek Chauvin is to be tried for second-degree murder in the death of George Floyd.

My guess, Minneapolis, not Capitol Hill, is where the action will be this spring, and it will not be Proud Boys keeping the cops busy, but folks who, if they did vote in 2020, voted Democratic.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

Copyright 2021 Creators.com.

Will Biden Regime Permit a Renewal of Freedom in Mississippi, Florida, and Texas ?

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Texas and other states repealing lockdowns and face diaper mandates … it’s a big deal. Governments almost never repeal controls. That’s a uniquely American thing. The question is: Will fascist governors — Republicans in Maryland/Ohio, and Democrats in NY, California, PA, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Mexico and elsewhere — follow suit? Not a chance. They will find excuses not to do so. And their federal occupation leader in D.C. will support them.

In fact, it remains to be seen if the dictatorial occupation in D.C. will exert its power to reimpose controls in Texas, Florida and elsewhere. It’s not impossible. They have already claimed the right to do whatever the hell they want, unchecked by a Constitution or anything else, when they declare it a “public health emergency”. Remember, members of the party in charge of Congress, the White House and Supreme Court already are making noises about declaring “racism” or “climate change” public health crises. If you think the COVID lockdowns were subjective and intrusive, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Universal Freedom: The Only Hope for Health Care

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“Universal Health Care” is the increasing drumbeat of advocates who want Americans to place all responsibility for their health care in the hands of government.

“Universal Health Care” is the increasing drumbeat of advocates who want Americans to place all responsibility for their health care in the hands of government. They say health care needs require us to put aside such considerations as personal choice and individual freedom as outmoded ideology that should be dispensed with. First drop the context of individual rights, private property, and privacy—then the government is liberated to micro-manage every detail of the medical treatment you are allowed to have.

The loss of freedom may be unfortunate in this view, but is necessary because most Americans cannot afford to pay for health care, or even for a significant fraction of the cost. Of course if that were true, the government could not afford health care for everyone regardless of cost either. However those who might be relieved to learn that they are not responsible for the cost of their own health care would soon discover that they have become responsible for the cost of everyone else’s. There is a much higher price than that: a government that pays for all of our health care would inevitably come to think and act as if it owns our bodies. That is a big bill to pay to avoid the difficulty of paying insurance premiums. The talk about a “right” to health care really means that no one should have the right to any health care at all except through the government.

Many of us find paying for health care challenging. Many more have difficulty making it a priority in our spending—often because we think it should be someone else’s responsibility. Some who sincerely make the effort can’t pay for everything they need. Others, especially the young who know they will live forever, choose not to make provision for their health care even if they can afford it. That does not mean we should resort to the government to force others to provide it, or that everyone in the country should be herded into the gray and barren landscape of a compulsory government medical system. The fact that some people are hungry does not mean that everyone should be forced to obtain their food from the government, and be taxed to pay for it. The existence of the homeless should not mean that everyone be forced to find shelter only through the auspices of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We are told that because we all need health care so badly, considerations such as individual freedom and especially the rights of medical professionals must be over-ridden, even if all physicians must be drafted into government service as if they were property—so their practices can be micro-managed by the medical police. But it is precisely because our health care is so important to each of us that we need to be especially careful to preserve and protect the rights of physicians and other health care providers.

One rationalization of advocates for Universal Health Care is that insurance companies are wasteful and bloated corporate bureaucracies with high administrative costs, but that government health care like Medicare and Medicaid are models of administrative efficiency. This ignores the cost of the more than 100,000 I.R.S. employees who collect Medicare taxes, as well as the tremendous administrative burden to providers of trying to understand and comply with 130,000 pages of Medicare regulations. Yet those regulations have not been effective in preventing billions of dollars in fraudulent payments, as documented in New York Medicaid by several New York newspapers this year. You can save a lot on overhead if you don’t mind pumping out billions of dollars without oversight. The administrative cost of burning money can be quite low. It is not explained how the efficiency of government works for health care and not for the post office. Markets work better than Socialism. One wonders if any of the current health care collectivists noticed the twentieth century as it was going by.

Universal Freedom is the only proper moral and political foundation for health care policy. “Universal Health Care” must be rejected as a government threat to our liberty. American health care must be based on American values.

Richard E. Ralston, Capitalism Magazine

Trumpism Will Extend Far Beyond the Man Himself

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Since today there is a cultural obsession with rendering everything an -ism, it is only fitting that the presidency of Donald Trump would produce the term “Trumpism.” After all, Trump ignited a conservative revolution that had been brewing for years.

The term Trumpism clearly connotes different ideas and meanings depending on whom you ask, but it really is not all that complicated. Trump was a unique political figure during a unique time — and his raunchiness mixed with “America First” policies appealed to voters who felt perpetually alienated by staunch and plasticky politicians wholly unrelatable. Some say Trump was the figure that changed hearts and minds, and this is certainly true for many Republicans who decided to jump ship from the prior era, but in many ways he is merely the symptom of a fervent discontentment across America with corporate and urbanist centrality.

The former president recognized that there was a vast swath of people not getting their voices heard, people the establishment had made to feel small, and he encompassed that voice. He was their shiny object. He was also the fighter for alienated Americans, enduring the endless attacks and namecalling from a Democratic Party so intent on trying to conform citizens to an unyielding orthodoxy of “wokeness” and supposed virtuosity.

Here’s the thing, though. Trumpism will outlive Donald Trump. It will do so because, as aforementioned, Trump was simply one unique figure who represented millions of Americans who felt underrepresented in our power-concentrated republic. Citizens who support his policies, such as border security, a strong national defense uninvolved in unnecessary conflicts, and trade deals that benefit the American worker and manufacturing sector — to name a few — haven’t left the country. They are here and still desiring of change. Trumpism was even mentioned by Trump in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, last month.

“Many people have asked what is Trumpism, a new term being used more and more. I’m hearing that term more and more. I didn’t come up with it, but what it means is great deals, great trade deals, great ones, not deals where we give away everything, our jobs, money. … It means low taxes and eliminated job-killing regulations, Trumpism. It means strong borders, but people coming into our country based on a system of merit,” Trump said. “So they come in and they can help us as opposed to coming here and not being good for us, including criminals, of which there are many. It means no riots in the streets. It means law enforcement. It means very strong protection for the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms.”

Beyond the fact that there are those who indubitably still favor former President Trump’s various policies, Trumpism goes much deeper and to the heart of a culture war that shows no sign of deteriorating.

In Trump’s seemingly carefree and conversational rhetoric, however out of line it may have gotten sometimes, he did not fit the mold of the typically banal politician. This mold has become the norm for lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, participating in an establishment crawl toward what is prim and proper — though far from mainstream — robotically repeating party catchphrases, as opposed to speaking to people like actual humans. Trump’s base — which contains a whole host of Americans who made their foray into politics because of his accessibility — can still be tapped into moving forward.

This is not to say Trump’s often careless and ill-advised rhetoric is strictly a benefit over the collected words from politicians who recognize that the whole world is waiting on their screwup. Arguably, one of Trump’s downfalls was his misunderstanding that there is a line, that he crossed it sometimes, and that Americans rely on the president to be a model citizen who is not always looking to one-up his opponent. That said, Trump was treated like garbage by the corporate media and by Democrats, and thus his hostility can be often understood.

Trumpism was tapped into in the 2016 election in the victory of Donald Trump, but it is far from over. Whether the 2024 presidential election candidate is Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or perhaps South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, it is abundantly clear that Republican voters seek to build on the legacy of the 45th president. After all, in the 2024 presidential straw poll at CPAC, 95 percent of attendees said the GOP ought to continue down the path of the Trump agenda.

Trump may not be in the Oval Office, but make no mistake, Trumpism is here to stay. Whether it be 2024 or 2028 or 2032, conservatives are hungry for politicians who both cut through the nonsense and make an honest attempt to preserve American liberty.

Gabe Kaminsky, The Federalist

Are You Fed up with Your Kids’ Education ?

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Are you unhappy with your children’s K–12 education? Do you believe that your children are subjected to indoctrination? If you answered yes to either question, there are alternative educational options worth considering.

If you live in a state with an education savings account (ESA) education savings account (ESA) or school voucher program, you should take advantage of the program and send your child to an outstanding school that you can afford.

If you do not have access to an ESA or school voucher program, and you are not satisfied with your child’s school, you may want to consider other options, such as a charter school, a state-sponsored or privately sponsored K–12 scholarship, homeschooling, homeschool co-ops, parochial schools, private schools, or online private schools.

Whether or not you are satisfied with you children’s schools, you can always supplement their learning by providing educational content they may not be learning at their schools.

NOTE: Links are provided to provide basic information about school alternatives. The purpose is not to promote or advocate specific schools or programs. For best results, readers interested in improving their children’s educational situation should conduct additional research

Brian Garrison, American Thinker

What Will it Take to Wake Up the Millennials ?

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Memo to Millennials: Free yourselves before it is too late. The $1.9-trillion COVID relief bill recently passed by the House is a ponderous set of shackles being placed on you and your future. Your freedom to act and to choose your own future will be limited because of this gargantuan spending bill. And that is on top of other massive spending bills Congress now routinely passes, like the $3.5 trillion already spent by the Trump administration last year on COVID relief.

Not only is this new COVID spending bill arguably irrelevant in the fight against the virus, as case numbers and deaths fall rapidly around the country, but more importantly, funding this bill requires printing money that we do not have. Yes, that’s right. This Democrat spending bill proposed by President Biden and passed by the Democrat House will not spend money we have. The $1.9 trillion bill literally uses money that the government will have to print to spend. And that’s on top of the regular annual budget that must be passed, which has a projected deficit of over $1 trillion.

While trillion-dollar deficits are never a good idea for the country, they most certainly are not a good idea for younger generations, who will be left paying the bill for years to come. It may not matter to members of Congress, who are busy enriching themselves, or the administrative elite in Washington, who will use their hefty pensions and connections to shield their children from the disastrous effects of our exploding national debt. But what about the rest of us? We can only watch as our children’s freedom to make choices for themselves is destroyed by our profligate leaders.

And what is in this critically important COVID spending bill that the Democrats are ramming through Congress? Only nine percent of the spending in the COVID relief bill is for COVID-related expenditures. Nine percent. That means that the other 91 percent is for handouts to groups and businesses that the Democrat party wants to enrich, like $112 million for an “underground rail project” in Silicon Valley, a payoff to Democrats’ Big Tech supporters; $129 billion for K–12 schools, whether they reopen or not, including $1,400 weekly payments to teachers for not teaching, since teachers and administrators are another Democrat special interest group; $39.6 billion to colleges, a pillar of the Democrat establishment, which are losing money as they refuse to fully open; $750 million for the CDC to spend on global health problems and vaccination efforts (that’s right: not here, but overseas); $350 billion to bail out blue states that have needlessly pummeled their economies with simplistic lockdowns; and countless other pet projects that have nothing to do with defeating the COVID pandemic. Not a pretty picture. Why is the next generation acquiescing with nary a peep?

In addition to saddling Millennials with an enormous debt that will limit their options, in what other ways is their freedom being undermined today? Mass immigration, for one. By allowing millions of illegal aliens to flood across our southern border, Biden and the Democrats are importing competitors for working-class jobs, limiting the freedom of young Americans to find opportunities that will help them begin a lifetime of fruitful employment. But it is not just blue-collar jobs that illegal aliens are taking from Americans; it’s white-collar tech jobs, too. As repayment to Big Tech for its unprecedented support during the 2020 campaign, President Biden has increased the number of H-1B visas that can be issued, which had been curtailed by former president Trump. As has been noted frequently, Big Tech loves these visas because it gives Big Tech cheaper, more disposable workers. By hiring foreigners, these people pay less than they would pay American workers. They can also terminate the workers when they want to, not by firing them, which could open them up to litigation, but by simply not renewing their visas. And these are the companies that are always badgering everyone else about good citizenship and corporate responsibility.

Besides the growing constraints on their ability to act and work, Millennials are also having their freedom curtailed through new limits on freedom of speech. Millennials seem to be blinded to this development by the fact that they don’t agree with much of the speech that is being limited; shutting down “racist” conservative views or conservative “lies” doesn’t much bother progressive Millennials. But once the Rubicon is crossed and all speech is no longer equally free, it’s only a matter of time before the speech that Millennials approve of ends up on someone else’s chopping block. Millennials are so immersed in digital technology that they seem incapable of imagining that the technology they love might be used against them, or that restrictions on their freedom might originate with the tech companies. But restrictions have originated there, and they will continue to metastasize unless Millennials decide to take notice.

If they are in college, Millennials soon discover that they are not free to hear every viewpoint on a particular problem or issue. Unlike the generations that came before them, when they want to make a free decision, someone else will be deciding what they can hear on the subject. Nor are they free to hear the whole truth from mainstream television or print news, or on their digital news feeds from Facebook or other online news sources. How am I less free today? Let me count the ways.

It is a sadly truncated and contingent freedom that is being prepared for Millennials by powerful forces in our society today. Will they ever wake up and resist it?

P. F. Kelly, American Thinker

The Cancellation of Dr. Seuss Should Disturb You, Because You’re Next

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Dr. Seuss has been cancelled. Some of his work has been deemed racist, and we can’t have that. On Tuesday, the entity that oversees the estate of Theodor Seuss Geisel announced it would no longer publish six of Geisel’s books because they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

Among the works now deemed unfit for children are Geisel’s first book under the pen name Dr. Seuss, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” published in 1937, and the much-beloved, “If I Ran the Zoo,” published in 1950. The former depicts a “Chinaman” character and the latter shows two men from “the African island of Yerka” in native garb.

There’s not much point in quibbling over whether these and other such illustrations in the condemned Dr. Seuss books are in fact racist or bigoted, or whether Geisel held racist or xenophobic views. By all accounts he was a liberal-minded and tolerant man who hated Nazis and, as a political cartoonist, mocked the antisemitism that was all-too-common in America during World War II.

He was also a man of his era. Later in life, he regretted some of his political work during the war that stereotyped Japanese Americans, which, as jarring as it might seem today, nevertheless reflected attitudes that were commonplace at the time.

But context and nuance don’t factor into the inexorable logic of the woke left, which flattens and refashions the past into a weapon for the culture wars of the present. What’s important to understand is that this isn’t simply about banning six Dr. Seuss books. All of Geisel’s work is, in the judgment of left-wing academia, an exercise in “White supremacy, paternalism, conformity, and assimilation.” It might be easy for conservatives to laugh that off as nonsense, but they shouldn’t, because this isn’t really even about Geisel.

The Left Is Carrying Out a Cultural Revolution

To grasp how a man known as much for his messages of tolerance as for his artistic genius could be canceled for racism, you have to understand what’s actually happening here. The left’s war on the past, on long-dead authors like Geisel, isn’t really about the past, it’s about the future. It’s about who gets to rule, and under what terms.

There’s a predictable pattern to what we’re seeing now. It’s predictable because it has happened before in much the same way it’s happening now. During China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ‘70s, the Chinese Communist Party, at the direction of Mao Zedong, called for the destruction of the “Four Olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas. All of these stood in the way of Mao’s socialist ideology, so they had to be destroyed.

Children and students were encouraged by the communist government to inform on their parents and elders, to shame and condemn them in public. The guilty were forced to recant in “struggle sessions,” during which they were mocked and humiliated, sometimes tortured, sometimes murdered. Before it was over, millions were dead.

We’re obviously not there yet, but the woke revolutionaries who now run our elite institutions and exert outsized influence in the corridors of power are following this same pattern.

First, they come for the monuments, destroying the icons of the past and re-writing history to turn even our national heroes and Founding Fathers into enemies. The animating ethos of the mobs pulling down Confederate statues is the same as The New York Times editors who gave us the 1619 Project. And because there is no limiting principle to iconoclasm, they have moved on from Confederates.

The City of Charlottesville, for example, having removed or tried to remove every last Confederate monument, is now pleading for someone, anyone, to haul away a giant statue of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The 18-foot-tall bronze statue, which was erected in 1919 and depicts Lewis and Clark with Sacajawea crouched behind them, is free for anyone who can prove he knows how to move it safely—although at this point it’s a wonder the city doesn’t just dynamite the thing to rubble, Taliban-style.

Then they come for the books, destroying any ideas or literature that challenges their ideology—like Ryan Anderson’s 2018 book on the dangers of transgenderism, which Amazon summarily canceled last month. Even seemingly unobjectionable books can be targeted, if not for their content then for the race of their author. Just ask Jeanine Cummins, whose novel “American Dirt” drew the ire of the left last year simply because Cummins, who is white, wrote a book about Mexican drug cartels. The list goes on and on.

So much for statues and books. At some point, the left will come for actual people, because the ideology of revolution demands that dissent—and therefore dissidents—be silenced, by force if necessary.

If you think that’s an exaggeration, recall what happened all across the country last summer when Black Lives Matter “protesters” took to the streets. They didn’t just march and chant, they rioted. They attacked businesses, destroyed entire city blocks, and carried out a campaign of intimidation, harassing, and in some cases attacking random people if they didn’t kneel and repeat the slogans of the revolution. Dozens of people lost their lives in the chaos and violence that ensued.

The people behind the statue-toppling, the digital book burnings, and the street violence won’t stop until all three of these things—history, ideas, and dissidents—have been destroyed. These are all impediments to their cultural revolution, and they mean to eliminate them.

So forget about Dr. Seuss. Forget about the statues and the books. Those things are just the beginning. It could easily get much worse. The woke revolutionaries of the left can’t be bargained with or appeased. They believe this is a zero-sum game, that one side will win and one side will lose. And they’re right.

John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist

Unrelenting Madness in the Decline of a Republic

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Texas repealing mask mandates and lockdowns. Meanwhile, according to Breitbart News, British national health officials and occupation leader Biden are conferring about moving to TRIPLE MASK mandates. This isn’t a virus crisis. It’s a mental health catastrophe. And it’s a civil war. Pick a side. Quickly. #NotMyDictatorship

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Even the skewed Harvard-Harris poll shows 71% believe Antifa is a “domestic terrorist group”. 71% are right. And the 29% who deny it are supporters of ACTUAL domestic terrorism.

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Biden, before a speech, asks, “What am I doing here?” I don’t know, Joe. I do wish you would GO TO HELL.

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Consider the lack of imagination & humor it takes to censor Dr. Suess. How devoid of a soul you must be to applaud it. #NotMyCancelCulture

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From Breaking911 and Ben Shapiro on Twitter: BREAKING: Chinese court rules homosexuality can be called a mental disorder (-NYP)

So much for ‘woke’, huh?

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

10 Big Signs Biden is the Missing President

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America is a nation facing crisis. Whether it is the coronavirus pandemic response, the crisis at the nation’s southern border, or brewing conflict in the Middle East, it is in need of strong and steady leadership.

During this time of immense national challenges, it appears that leadership is not going to come from the President of the United States. Unfortunately, it appears that Joe Biden is the “missing” president.

1. No Biden Press Briefings in over a month It looks like the last time Joe Biden gave a ‘press briefing’ was on January 25th.

That press appearance consisted of a bizarre moment when he awkwardly put on his mask mid-speech. Watch:

If you void this appearance because he only took five pre-screened questions and called it a wrap, it’s been 40 days of the White House press wandering in the wilderness with Jen Psaki. The White House calendar does not list any “briefing” given by President Joe Biden.

2. Biden schedule not posted online, White House visitor logs a secret

“The schedules for the president and vice president aren’t posted online,” Politico reported. “The White House comment line is shut down. There are no citizen petitions on the White House’s website.The White House has committed to releasing visitor logs. But it doesn’t plan to divulge the names of attendees of virtual meetings, which are the primary mode of interaction until the coronavirus pandemic eases.”

So, who is making the presidential decisions? Who is Biden meeting with? Who are others in his administration meeting with? It’s a shroud of secrecy that America’s failed press isn’t doing enough to penetrate.

3. Biden calls lids, early to bed, takes weekends

President Joe Biden has called numerous “lids,” or early wraps of the day, even amid crises like the Texas freeze disaster. A check of his past schedule shows many daily entries ending mid-afternoon or even early morning, such as on February 18th. It is something the American public has come to expect, sadly, due to it being a Biden practice that gained notoriety during his 2020 no-show presidential campaign.

CNN has even made it apparent that Biden is an early-to-bed type.

“Unlike his most recent predecessors — night owls who spent the dark hours reading briefing materials (President Barack Obama) or watching television (President Donald Trump) — Biden is more of an early-to-bed type,” CNN noted.

“He has expressed a preference for a fire built in the Oval Office fireplace,” CNN adds, “and sometimes adds a log himself to keep it going. His dogs, two German Shepherds called Major and Champ, sometimes join him.” Sleepy Joe must find it very cozy.

4. Kamala Harris takes meetings with Heads of State

On President’s Day weekend, while Biden had taken off work to play Mario Kart with his granddaughter, Vice President was taking calls with major heads of state. The National Pulse noted that Biden was missing from a call with French President Emanuel Macron. This is from the White House’s press readout:

Vice President Kamala Harris spoke today with President Emmanuel Macron of France, and expressed her commitment to strengthening bilateral ties between the United States and France and to revitalizing the transatlantic alliance. Vice President Harris and President Macron agreed on the need for close bilateral and multilateral cooperation to address COVID-19, climate change, and support democracy at home and around the world. They also discussed numerous regional challenges, including those in the Middle East and Africa, and the need to confront them together. The Vice President thanked President Macron for his leadership on the issue of gender equality and for France’s contribution to NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover.

Harris also spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. These are not Kamala Harris’s counterparts. And despite being vital to the Democrats’ agenda as the deciding vote in the Senate, she makes sure to attend most of the president’s daily briefings.

“The President’s Daily Brief, a highly classified update on the country’s top intelligence, is back to a daily occurrence after happening only sporadically under Trump,” CNN reported without adding context that he read them anyway. “Joined in the Oval Office by Vice President Kamala Harris — who has used an iPad to receive the briefing, like Obama — Biden is run through the update by a range of intelligence professionals.”

5. No State of the Union Address yet

President Joe Biden was expected to have given his first State of the Union address by now.

Although the mainstream press is issuing “fact checks” to dispute the claim Biden was supposed to have had one by February 20th, the AP earlier reported that he was supposed to have had one by February 23rd. It is now March 1st.

This is the latest any president has given a State of the Union address in his first time since Jimmy Carter, who did not give one at all that year.

Meanwhile, an astonishing 31 million people tuned into former President Trump’s CPAC speech on Sunday, and that is just online viewership. The running joke on Twitter is that this was America’s ‘real’ State of the Union address.

6. Biden is an executive order-signing machine President Biden entered office and immediately issued a record-setting flurry of executive orders, which he signed as if he were a human auto-pen. Those orders were reportedly drafted and fast-tracked with the aid of a DOJ office under the supervision of former Attorney General William Barr, according to former Trump adviser Peter Navarro.

“Trump’s last Attorney General actually also turns out to be Joe Biden’s first Attorney General,” Navarro said. “Because here is what was happening. We had over 30 executive orders queued after election day, ready to go. But we kept running into all of these roadblocks and roadblocks and hurdles. It turns out that Bill Barr’s office of legal counsel was fast-tracking all of these Biden EOs.”

Of course, President Biden could not have had all of these executive orders ready to go by himself on day one. They were drafted for him and merely handed to him to sign.

7. It took nearly 2 weeks to visit Texas

President Biden took his sweet time getting to Texas after brutal freezing cold contributed to deadly rolling blackouts in the state that lasted for days. Despite the Texas governor declaring a disaster on February 12, it took until February 26 for Biden to show up in the state amidst warmer weather. A full two weeks. Trump would have been crucified in the press.

Additionally, Biden refused to entirely fulfill the relief request that was issued by Governor Abbott in response to widespread energy failures that has been attributed with the deaths of at least ten people.

“President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for 77 Texas counties, the White House said Saturday morning, two days after Gov. Greg Abbott had asked for a declaration that covered all 254 counties coping with the effects of a winter storm that knocked out power and heat across the state,” reported the Dallas Morning News. The press yawned, much like Joe Biden.

8. Biden forgets names, mask rules While on his Texas visit, Biden reminded the world once again that his memory seems to be slipping.

“Representatives, uh, Shirley Jackson Lee, Al Green, Sylvia Garcia, Lizzie Pannili, uh, excuse me,” Biden said and winced. “Pannell, and uh, what am I doing here?” he said. Good question.

Biden, since the day he first issued his mask mandate, has often needed to wear a mask in order to keep up appearances. Here is Kamala Harris reminding Biden to take his mask in what makes for some very poor optics.

LOL pic.twitter.com/A085qix2Fh

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 26, 2021

9. Biden loses train of thought in mid-sentence The awkward moment during his Texas visit wasn’t a one-off for Biden. It appears that his ability to keep his train of thought running is diminishing daily.

Out-performed every presidential challenger in US history… pic.twitter.com/3vFPdBjuTo

— Jason D. Meister 🇺🇸 (@jason_meister) February 23, 2021

The mainstream news media tries to blow this off as “stuttering,” but it is not related to the ability to pronounce words. It is related to a fundamental ability to compose thoughts.

Former Secret Service agent and popular conservative podcast host Dan Bongino told Fox News host Sean Hannity on this week that Biden is in “real significant trouble.”

“He is in real significant trouble, Joe Biden,” Bongino said. “And listen to me. everyone around him. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows it. This is the scandal that they’re not telling you – how bad his condition really is… I’m telling you from what I’m hearing from people in my network, everyone knows how bad it is. Everyone. It’s not a mystery, it is the worst kept secret in the White House.”

The American people are in real significant trouble, as well.

10. Biden’s campaign was a predictor of all of this

It is not that Biden’s conspicurous absence is coming out-of-the-blue, either. Neither will be the talk of using the 25th Amendment to remove Joe Biden from office; if and when that day comes.

In October, Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats began pushing a 25th Amendment bill, even before Biden took office. The Democrats would later try to coax former Vice President Mike Pence to sign onto it, which he refused to do.

Then-President Trump commented at the time that the House bill was aimed at future president Joe Biden.

“President Trump… agreed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that her plan for a 25th Amendment commission to evaluate presidential fitness isn’t really aimed at him — saying it was instead a plot to install Kamala Harris in the White House,” he said.

“Crazy Nancy Pelosi is looking at the 25th Amendment in order to replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris,” he tweeted. “The Dems want that to happen fast because Sleepy Joe is out of it!!!”

How right Donald Trump was. Joe Biden has been the “missing president.”

Trump asked at his CPAC speech on Sunday, “Miss me yet?”

Millions of Americans are not only missing Donald Trump as president, they are missing what it’s like to have a president at all.