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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 Transformation of America Into a One-Party State

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Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) warned against the “ill advised” Democratic impeachment effort against the president, noting that there isn’t support for it in the Senate. [Daily Wire]

Going forward–if we’re real about it–there is just one political party in the U.S. I will label it the UNICRAT party. So dissension within the ranks will be interesting to watch. Manchin is going against the grain by daring to question the self-evidently irrational agenda of Big Media, Big Tech, Big Corporate Socialist Fascist Government, and all the rest. Manchin is no good guy. There are NO good guys in this cabal we call a government. Good guys could not stand to be a part of it. Anyone who is good will not last long …

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair wants a “COVID pass” required for all U.K. citizens (and the current prime minister is listening to him, according to Breitbart News). A COVID pass would be a card showing that you had the COVID vaccine, plus conform to anything else the government sees as desirable. Blair would like to see a COVID pass as a requirement for even leaving the house, or at a minimum to be able to travel on an airplane or go to a concert or ball game. The U.K., so insane it’s on the verge of monitoring people in their bathrooms to make sure they’re wearing masks, will surely go this route. Raise your hand if you think this will happen in the United States. And, if you don’t think so, then who will be in any kind of power to stop it? …

Look! Lefties learned a new word: “Seditious”…think they know what it means? …

When, in human history, has a censored, underground movement consisted of 75 million people?

Without free speech, and without honest elections, where are dissenters to go? How can this end well for anyone?

If the President of the United States may no longer speak freely, the United States is no longer a free country.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Walter Williams: The Tragedy of Black Education

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Several years ago, Project Baltimore began an investigation of Baltimore’s school system. What they found was an utter disgrace. In 19 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, out of 3,804 students, only 14 of them, or less than 1%, were proficient in math. In 13 of Baltimore’s high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math. In five Baltimore City high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math or reading. Despite these academic deficiencies, about 70% of the students graduate and are conferred a high school diploma — a fraudulent high school diploma.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District scored the lowest in the nation compared to 26 other urban districts for reading and mathematics at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels. In two city high schools, only one student tested proficient in math and none are proficient in English. Yet, the schools spent a full week learning about “systemic racism” and “Black Lives Matter activism.”

New York City is one of many school systems in the United States set to roll out Black Lives Matter-themed lesson plans. According to the NYC Department of Education, teachers will delve into “systemic racism,” police brutality and white privilege in their classrooms.

Should we blame this education tragedy on racial discrimination or claim it is a legacy of slavery? Dr. Thomas Sowell’s research in “Education: Assumptions Versus History” documents academic excellence at Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School and others. This academic excellence occurred during the late 1800s to mid-1900s, an era when Blacks were much poorer than today and faced gross racial discrimination.

Also, in Sowell’s “Education: Assumptions Versus History” is the story of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, a Black public school in Washington, D.C. As early as 1899, its students scored higher on citywide tests than any of the city’s white schools. From its founding in 1870 to 1955, most of its graduates went off to college. Today’s Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frederick Douglass high schools have material resources that would have been unimaginable to their predecessors. However, having those resources have meant absolutely nothing in terms of academic achievement.

If we accept the notion that rotten education is not preordained, then I wonder when the Black community will demand an end to an educational environment that condemns so many youngsters to mediocrity. You can bet the rent money that white liberals and high-income Blacks would not begin to accept the kind of education for their children that most Blacks receive.

The school climate, seldom discussed, plays a very important role in education. During the 2017-18 school year, there were an estimated 962,300 violent incidents and 476,100 nonviolent incidents in U.S. public schools nationwide. Schools with 1,000 or more students had at least one sworn law enforcement officer.

Years ago, much of the behavior of young people that we see today would have never been tolerated. There was the vice principal’s office where corporal punishment would be administered for gross infractions. If the kid was unwise enough to tell his parents what happened, he might get more punishment at home. Today, unfortunately, we have replaced practices that worked with practices that sound good and caring. And we are witnessing the results.

Editor’s note: Walter Williams, whose syndicated column has appeared in the Tribune-Review and Valley News Dispatch for many years, died Dec. 1 at the age of 84.

The Wisdom of Ayn Rand

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The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics—the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one’s ultimate value, one’s own life—are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride.

Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man’s life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work—pride is the result.

A central purpose serves to integrate all the other concerns of a man’s life. It establishes the hierarchy, the relative importance, of his values, it saves him from pointless inner conflicts, it permits him to enjoy life on a wide scale and to carry that enjoyment into any area open to his mind; whereas a man without a purpose is lost in chaos. He does not know what his values are. He does not know how to judge. He cannot tell what is or is not important to him, and, therefore, he drifts helplessly at the mercy of any chance stimulus or any whim of the moment. He can enjoy nothing. He spends his life searching for some value which he will never find . . . .

The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose—a productive purpose . . . . The man who has no purpose, but has to act, acts to destroy others. That is not the same thing as a productive or creative purpose.

Playboy Interview: Ayn Rand
Playboy, March 1964

Democrats Launch Their Assault on Red State America

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The opening salvo against red state America is the article of impeachment against President Trump introduced on January 11 by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrat Representatives David Cicilline, Ted Lieu, and Jamie Raskin. So much for Biden’s promise to “unify the country.”

What is the intent of this article of impeachment? It cannot possibly be to remove Trump from office. Trump will have left office before the Senate could vote on impeachment. There is no such thing as impeaching a person who is not in office. Clearly impeachment has nothing to do with getting Trump out of office.

How does it unify the country to follow up an election believed by half of the US voting population to have been stolen with impeaching the president who is regarded as the victim of a stolen election? Adding insult to injury will only further enrage 75 million or more Trump voters, and many honest Democrats, who regard the election as stolen. If the Establishment and its Democrat, Republican, and media allies truly believe the election not to have been stolen, why wasn’t the evidence permitted to be examined so that the controversy could be settled instead of ignored? Ignoring the evidence deepens the suspicion as does labeling those who challenged the election “enemies of democracy.” Democrats are now trying to censure Republican members of the House and Senate who supported having the evidence presented to Congress. Why censure someone who wants evidence to be examined?

What many Americans and people abroad do not comprehend is that in the 2020 election Trump officially got 74,222,958 votes. This is the official number, which is understated by the 10 million vote suppression used against him. In “losing,” Trump’s 74,222,958 official votes are more votes than any elected president has ever received with the exception of Biden whose vote count was raised by 10 million fraudulent ballots. How is the country unified by demonizing half of it? Are the Democrats’ threats and reprisals against Trump and his supporters unifying?

I watched the presentations by independent experts to three state legislatures of the detailed evidence showing without any doubt that the election was stolen in the swing states. Some of the experts explaining the election’s theft were people of color as were many of those who signed affidavits under penalty of perjury of the electoral fraud that they witnessed. This information has never been presented by the media to the public, nor has any media, election officials, Department of Justice, or Congress examined the evidence. It is overwhelming evidence ignored.

Whether of not you believe that Biden—the most uninspiring presidential candidate in American history—got 81 million votes (the largest in American history), why do Pelosi and the Democrats want to make themselves even more hated and distrusted by half of the country by impeaching the president whose reelection they stole?

This is rubbing salt in the wound. Half of the country already regards Biden as an illegitimate president and regards the Democrats as power-mad totalitarians hostile to democracy. What does Pelosi achieve by furthering this image of Democrats? She is damning her party and herself. Why?

The answer is to generate fear in Republicans and Trump supporters.

The Democrats are using open unabashed retribution to scare Republicans and Trump supporters into compliance. Everywhere you look Republican members of Congress both House and Senate, Trump’s present and former cabinet members, and present and former members of the White House staff are denouncing Trump and putting distance between Trump and themselves. The latest is Fiona Hill, formerly of Trump’s National Security Council. She denounces Trump for having “put us on the brink of civil war.” Note that for Republican Fiona Hill, it is not a stolen election that puts “us on the brink of civil war,” but the protest against the election theft. This is the position of the Republican Party. In other words, the Republicans have surrendered. They are useless to the people.

As a large number of videos made available online by people who attended the rally show, the Capitol police allowed protestors into the Capitol. The Trump supporters were not smart enough not to take the bait. Once inside, the Democrats had their “insurrection” and “storming of the Capitol.”

It achieved its purpose. It stopped presentation of the evidence showing Congress a stolen election. Scared by the presstitutes one voice proclamation of an attempted coup, the Republicans wilted and ran for their political lives knowing that they would be blamed for “aiding and abetting Trump’s insurrection.”

The Democrats intend to keep them running, and that is what the impeachment is about.

Trump supporters are in for it as well. The FBI, which has been hand-in-hand with Democrats throughout the Russiagate and impeachment hoaxes, is now hunting down those who attended the Trump rally. Those for whom the FBI cannot invent grounds for arrest have their names turned over to the presstitutes who agitate for their firing from their jobs. Already policemen, corporate employees and executives, including a chief financial officer, have been fired for attending the Trump rally, and recording artists dropped because they attended the rally. Dumbshit indoctrinated school children have impoverished their own families by ratting out their parents for attending the rally and causing them to be fired.

Children squealing on their parents to the media is the worst part of the Democrats’ assault on America, because it shows that the liberal propaganda that passes for education in the schools has destroyed solidarity and loyalty in the family. Without the family, there is no society. Essentially, without family there is no country.

In so many ways Americans are now people without a country.

As the blatantly public theft of a presidential election shows, democracy is a dead value among elites and institutions in the United States. The word will continue to be used as cover for oligarchic rule in the interest of the few. All who find the courage to challenge rule by the few will be demonized as “enemies of democracy.” We are already seeing it. President Trump and his “deplorables” are already declared “enemies of democracy.”

Whether or not Americans believe Trump and his supporters are enemies of democracy, many will be caused by fear to go along with it. Otherwise, they will be the next to be outed, fired, and prosecuted.

I am not optimistic. One reason for my lack of optimism is the age of disinformation in which we live. Disinformation is used by the Establishment to conform the public to its agendas. Disinformation is used to reconstruct white society. Disinformation is even used by Trump supporters in efforts to keep alive hope that the stolen election will be overturned or that Trump will win reelection in four years.

Another reason I am not optimistic is that I read comment sections of websites that host courageous and insightful commentators in hope of encountering intelligence and a rising awareness that could result in effective resistance. But what do I find? Inability to comprehend what they have read. Narcissists hiding behind fake names. Nit-picking in place of weighing a well-stated presentation. And the ever-present trolls demeaning the authors with ad hominum accusations that are spread into social media.

I am also not optimistic when I see that Trump, who has experienced the evil power of the Establishment, has not come to the realization that the last blow he can strike against the Establishment is the pardon of Assange and Snowden, two who are persecuted for telling the truth. Perhaps the reason is that many of Trump’s patriotic supporters have fallen for the Establishment’s line that Assange and Snowden are Russian agents who acted against America.

In the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and all of Western Europe, telling the truth is being criminalized. The result will be the destruction of the truth-teller. This is true as well within the universities. Identity politics and Establishment agendas rule. If you cross them, you are out.

Objective truth has been redefined as a “white construct” that serves “systemic racism” and misogynists. White people, especially heterosexual white males, have been assigned the role that Karl Marx gave capitalists. They are hateful, exploitative creatures that must be destroyed by demonization and indoctrination. The process has been going on for some time in the schools and in work place “sensitivity training” sessions.

This is the ideology of the Democrat Party. Imposed ideologies wear down facts.

As the Native American tells the elderly woman in the Clint Eastwood film, The Outlaw Josey Wales, “Hell is coming to breakfast.” White people can expect hell. To see this, all you have to do is to look at Biden’s Department of Justice appointments.

Americans are only now beginning to realize that the expensive educations they have paid for their children have resulted in their children being stolen from them. A friend told me recently that his son and son’s girlfriend had left their brutally lockdowned Democrat state to come to him in a Republican state where life still went on not too far from normal. Having heard their conversations with him and among themselves, he has concluded that they regret that they were born white.

To his dismay, he understands that their regret at having white skin is not because of employment and promotion quotas that limit their success as white people, or the demeaning racial training sessions they have to endue as “systemic white racists.” Their regret is due to their successful indoctrination that, as white racists, they are responsible for the lack of success of black Americans. Perplexed, he asked me, “how can we resist the tyranny that is being imposed on us when the younger generation believes we are quilty and cannot be trusted with our freedoms.

Yes, good question. How?

Note that the outpouring of support for Trump in the Washington Rally, which Democrats easily turned into a liability for Trump, consists largely of older adults. Where were the young people? They stayed home and ratted out their parents.

America’s young were not born into a free society. They have never experienced a free society. They are not socialized into a free society. They have no idea what one is beyond access to the Internet.

It was two decades ago that the Bush regime orchestrated the PATRIOT Act. It was two decades ago that the Republican President of the United States threw habeas corpus out the window and claimed executive authority to detain American citizens indefinitely without presenting evidence before a court. No bar association, no university law faculty, no court, no Congress, and certainly no presstitute media demanded Bush’s impeachment for unilaterally exercising unconstitutional executive authority.

During the subsequent Obama regime, America’s First Black President, who got less votes than Trump did in 2020, executed American citizens without due process of law. No one demanded Obama’s impeachment for his unconstitutional and illegal murder of American citizens.

If cancelling the Bill of Rights isn’t insurrection, what is?

In contrast, President Trump who challenged the media monopoly for its censorship, who challenged the military/security complex for its orchestration of Russia as an enemy, who challenged various “trade agreements” for sending Americans’ middle class jobs abroad—in other words, a rare president who represented the American people—this President was destroyed by the Establishment and its media and intellectual whores.

The corrupt and evil Establishment, acting through the Democrat Party with the backing of the monopoly over all communications and the monetary and power interests of the military/security complex and Wall Street, and strengthened by the Identity Politics hatreds, which extend into the universities, public schools, bar associations, corporations, and judiciary, and the indoctrination seminars that white males are forced to undergo, has achieved more power than Stalin and Hitler could imagine.

Today the United States is not only a threat to its citizens but also a threat to the world. The American Establishment’s belief in its hegemony makes the United States the greatest threat that the world has ever experienced.

The forces in control of the United States deny the existence of objective truth. As the Establishment defines truth, truth is what serves the agendas of the ruling elite.

There is no other truth.

Among other terrors, this means that an accused person can mount no defense. As the trial of the surviving brother of the alleged Boston Marathon Bombing demonstrated, the proof of his innocence according to the FBI’s own evidence was not allowed to be introduced into the trial, only the fabricated “evidence” of his guilt. When this happened, it was clear that the United States government regarded the rule of law as dispensable whenever it interfered with its agenda.

As journalist Ekaterina Blinova instantly recognized, the effect of the stolen election is to create one-party rule in the United States. Of course, the Democrats won’t rule. Rule will be by the interest groups for whom the Democrats will front. As the Republicans abandoned the American people and joined in the denunciation of the “insurrectionist Trump,” there are few voters left who will vote Republican. By its cowardice, the Republican Party has destroyed itself.

What can be done. I am open to answers. If you think about it, you wonder if Americans have the intelligence and awareness to survive. Consider Parler, a social media alternative that does not censor. Why did Parler think it could be independent when it was dependent on Apple, Amazon, and Google? It must be a new high water mark of American insouciance that Parler executives thought the ruling Establishment would allow them free speech. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/09/tech/parler-suspended-apple-app-store/index.html

America is in collapse on all fronts—morally, economically, socially, politically, and militarily. Every American institution is corrupted. America’s collapse will be a large collapse, and it will affect the entire world.

Paul Craig Roberts

Parler is Gone — And With It, All Remaining Dissension

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Parler gone. Take a moment of silence. THIS is what civil war — and dictatorship — look like in the former American republic.

The moment we say somebody’s IDEAS forced someone else to be violent is the moment we have abandoned free speech. When we start pretending that someone’s choice to be violent isn’t a choice, we blame the ideas we dislike as an excuse to silence those ideas. “Incitement” to violence is the claim dictators make — not because they care about anyone’s safety; but because they care about CONTROL.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Ultimate Betrayal

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Western Christians commemorate Jan. 6 as Epiphany, the day Jesus Christ became known to the world through the Three Wise Men, according to tradition. One definition of “epiphany,” per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure.”

So the timing was perfect for Americans to receive just such a powerful revelation about their government. It is a revelation both nauseating and frightening.

What is that revelation? The people Americans elected and trusted to run their government are incorrigibly and irredeemably corrupt.

Congress certified Joe Biden as President in the dead of night Jan. 7 with the rest of Washington, D.C. under curfew and despite massive evidence of electoral fraud in his favor.

Congress thus wrote the latest act of a two-month drama that featured judges in starring roles. Those judges – including Supreme Court justices — arbitrarily used technicalities to deny President Donald Trump the chance to make his legal case as an aggrieved party victimized by fraud.

The only reason — the only reason – for those authorities’ behavior was their own contempt for Trump.

The implications are stunning, and go far beyond any one man or Presidential election. Now, every American — regardless of race, creed, class, gender or any other category — can become a target for the capricious disregard of due process if that American is unpopular with the powers-that-be.

Americans have seen this before. They saw it in Judge Emmet Sullivan’s unprofessional behavior during Gen. Michael Flynn’s trial. They see it now in the lockdowns and mandates issued solely by executive fiat and based on medical quackery, despite scientific evidence showing that masks and social distancing create more harm than good.

But the events of Jan. 6 in Washington drained the last remaining drops of formaldehyde from the nation’s political corpse.

As Congress met to decide Biden’s fate, as Trump rallied thousands of supporters to demand a fair hearing, several protesters breached Capitol security. As a result, Congress had to be recessed and Congressional offices evacuated.

Many entered without resistance because Capitol security — which Congress directly oversees — allowed them to enter. Protesters walked through passages marked by security cords and acted with carte blanche in the empty building.

Regardless of who these protesters were or what cause they represented, people with local experience believe the episode was an inside job — especially given the heavy security normally protecting the Capitol.

“My dad worked for both DOD and Homeland Security,” Chris James tweeted. “You can’t just take over a federal building, and do what we saw today without some help from the inside. This was orchestrated by members of the Senate and members of the capital police.”

“Cosign,” Lisa Edouard tweeted in response to a different comment. “Worked on the Hill. I barely remembered where my Member’s hideaway was located. Total inside job.”

If it was an inside job, it had its desired effect.

At 2:40 p.m., about two hours after the incident started, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered a 12-hour curfew starting at 6 p.m. The overwhelming majority of Trump’s supporters dispersed without incident.

At 6:55 p.m., Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, announced Congress would continue certification. At 8:10 p.m., Sen. Mitch McConnell announced the Senate resumed debate.

Conducting such activity during a curfew meant that not only legislators received special dispensations. So did their staff members, security guards, journalists and any required support personnel.

Besides, the Constitution does not demand that Congress certify a Presidential election in one day. The situation warranted an audit, regardless of any protesters’ behavior.

Though the Electoral Count Act requires Congress to start tabulating electoral votes on Jan. 6, the counting “need not end that day,” said Michael Thorning, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s associate director.

“The statute recognizes that this process could be lengthy and imagines the process could take in excess of five days in some cases,” Thorning said. “The statute does not provide a deadline to complete the counting but requires that the joint session not be dissolved until then and until the results are announced. Even if the counting went beyond January 20th, when a president and vice president’s term would end, the presidential line of succession would be activated.”

But once Congress reconvened, several Republicans who planned to challenge electors from six states where fraud dramatically influenced the results announced that they changed their minds. Only electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania received challenges, and Congress rejected both challenges decisively.

Under such conditions did Congress certify Biden as the winner at 3:41 a.m. Jan. 7.

But reporters failed to examine the suspicious circumstances surrounding Biden’s certification. Instead, they followed the lead of many officials and blamed Trump for supposedly inciting violence.

Reporters also failed to note two disturbing similarities. It was also in the dead of night when Biden received a sudden vertical spike in votes during the Presidential election. The two Democratic candidates in Georgia’s Senate runoff Jan. 5 also received similar nocturnal spikes.

Such extended subterfuge proves Trump’s assertions about the “deep state” and its allies in the boardroom, the newsroom and the classroom.

Americans now can see that this collection of politicians, bureaucrats and judges is an entitled, professionally-inbred caste of grifters who will suck money and power from lobbyists, foreign nations, corporations, foundations and anything else — and try to preserve their privilege at all costs.

If doing so means sabotaging the Constitution or enslaving their fellow Americans, so be it.

That point became even more apparent immediately after Biden’s certification. Congressional leaders desperately want to remove Trump through impeachment or the 25th Amendment, and to prevent him from seeking office again. Social media corporations rushed frantically to de-platform Trump and his supporters, and suppress any views that contradict the prevailing narrative.

Why the panic? Because the powers-that-be fear that Trump will use any information he might have to expose and destroy them.

The next move is Trump’s. What he might do remains unclear. But one thing is certain:

Unless radical surgery is performed — and soon — the metastasizing cancer of unfettered corruption will kill the American republic.

Joseph Hippolito, frontpagemagazine

The “Conservative” Traitors Who Fooled Us

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Kane at Citizen Free Press wrote, “Ann Coulter is dead to me…” She has been in my graveyard since the third time she said she would never support President Donald John Trump again.

She fooled us. So have many others over the years. Conservatives keep falling in love and keep being played.

Consider this story from the Associated Press, “Arnold Schwarzenegger calls President Donald Trump ‘worst president ever’.”

Remember when he was governor of California?

We loved it when he called Democrats girly men. We thought we had our champion. Too bad he was born in Austria and cannot run for president, we thought at the time.

But once again, the Constitution protected us.

Oh and he apologized for the girly men remark.

Paul Ryan was another matinee idol of the right. We loved it when Mittens picked him as a running mate. He was a fiscal conservative.

4 years later, he dumped on Donald Trump. As House Speaker, he may as well have been Nancy Pelosi for all he cooperated with a real conservative president.

By the way, Ryan came to Washington as a pauper. His net worth is now $8 million.

I won’t go into the Jonahs and Kristols in the media who posed as conservatives on TV. We now realize that Liberal Fascism was a tribute, not a criticism.

They fooled us and fleeced us and laugh in our faces. In Kevin D. Williamson’s gawdawful, “The Father Fuhrer” piece, National Review called us Nazis for crying out loud.

Oh how we swooned when General Mattis joined the Trump administration.

Last June, The Atlantic reported, “James Mattis Denounces President Trump, Describes Him as a Threat to the Constitution.”

Colin Powell was another general gone bad, but by the time President Trump arrived, we already knew his conservatism was a gimmick. He supported Obama. Twice.

Jeff Sessions may still be a conservative. Who knows? We do know that his passive-aggressive management of DOJ saddled President Trump with a witch hunt

His replacement, Bill Barr, drank water well. And he made sure no one would pay a price for Spygate.

Readers are welcome to submit their Fifth Columnists either in comments or by email.

Just remember the old saying: In God We Trust; all others pay cash.

Don Surber

The “War on Terrorism” Comes Home

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Last week’s massive social media purges – starting with President Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets – was shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas. The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump’s two “offending” Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later.

Many Americans viewed this assault on social media accounts as a liberal or Democrat attack on conservatives and Republicans, but they are missing the point. The narrowing of allowable opinion in the virtual public square is no conspiracy against conservatives. As progressives like Glenn Greenwald have pointed out, this is a wider assault on any opinion that veers from the acceptable parameters of the mainstream elite, which is made up of both Democrats and Republicans.

Yes, this is partly an attempt to erase the Trump movement from the pages of history, but it is also an attempt to silence any criticism of the emerging political consensus in the coming Biden era that may come from progressive or antiwar circles.

After all, a look at Biden’s incoming “experts” shows that they will be the same failed neoconservative interventionists who gave us weekly kill lists, endless drone attacks and coups overseas, and even US government killing of American citizens abroad. Progressives who complain about this “back to the future” foreign policy are also sure to find their voices silenced.

Those who continue to argue that the social media companies are purely private ventures acting independent of US government interests are ignoring reality. The corporatist merger of “private” US social media companies with US government foreign policy goals has a long history and is deeply steeped in the hyper-interventionism of the Obama/Biden era.

“Big Tech” long ago partnered with the Obama/Biden/Clinton State Department to lend their tools to US “soft power” goals overseas. Whether it was ongoing regime change attempts against Iran, the 2009 coup in Honduras, the disastrous US-led coup in Ukraine, “Arab Spring,” the destruction of Syria and Libya, and so many more, the big US tech firms were happy to partner up with the State Department and US intelligence to provide the tools to empower those the US wanted to seize power and to silence those out of favor.

In short, US government elites have been partnering with “Big Tech” overseas for years to decide who has the right to speak and who must be silenced. What has changed now is that this deployment of “soft power” in the service of Washington’s hard power has come home to roost.

So what is to be done? Even pro-free speech alternative social media outlets are under attack from the Big Tech/government Leviathan. There are no easy solutions. But we must think back to the dissidents in the era of Soviet tyranny. They had no Internet. They had no social media. They had no ability to communicate with thousands and millions of like-minded, freedom lovers. Yet they used incredible creativity in the face of incredible adversity to continue pushing their ideas. Because no army – not even Big Tech partnered with Big Government – can stop an idea whose time has come. And Liberty is that idea. We must move forward with creativity and confidence!

Ron Paul

The Wisdom of Ayn Rand on Statism

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The political expression of altruism is collectivism or statism, which holds that man’s life and work belong to the state—to society, to the group, the gang, the race, the nation—and that the state may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

A statist system—whether of a communist, fascist, Nazi, socialist or “welfare” type—is based on the . . . government’s unlimited power, which means: on the rule of brute force. The differences among statist systems are only a matter of time and degree; the principle is the same. Under statism, the government is not a policeman, but a legalized criminal that holds the power to use physical force in any manner and for any purpose it pleases against legally disarmed, defenseless victims.

Nothing can ever justify so monstrously evil a theory. Nothing can justify the horror, the brutality, the plunder, the destruction, the starvation, the slave-labor camps, the torture chambers, the wholesale slaughter of statist dictatorships.

Government control of a country’s economy—any kind or degree of such control, by any group, for any purpose whatsoever—rests on the basic principle of statism, the principle that man’s life belongs to the state.

A statist is a man who believes that some men have the right to force, coerce, enslave, rob, and murder others. To be put into practice, this belief has to be implemented by the political doctrine that the government—the state—has the right to initiate the use of physical force against its citizens. How often force is to be used, against whom, to what extent, for what purpose and for whose benefit, are irrelevant questions. The basic principle and the ultimate results of all statist doctrines are the same: dictatorship and destruction. The rest is only a matter of time.

he ideological root of statism (or collectivism) is the tribal premise of primordial savages who, unable to conceive of individual rights, believed that the tribe is a supreme, omnipotent ruler, that it owns the lives of its members and may sacrifice them whenever it pleases to whatever it deems to be its own “good.” Unable to conceive of any social principles, save the rule of brute force, they believed that the tribe’s wishes are limited only by its physical power and that other tribes are its natural prey, to be conquered, looted, enslaved, or annihilated. The history of all primitive peoples is a succession of tribal wars and intertribal slaughter. That this savage ideology now rules nations armed with nuclear weapons, should give pause to anyone concerned with mankind’s survival.

Statism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power—to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed. When brute force is the only criterion of social conduct, and unresisting surrender to destruction is the only alternative, even the lowest of men, even an animal—even a cornered rat—will fight. There can be no peace within an enslaved nation.

To be continued–A/D

The Great Socialist Mirage

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As resurgent Democrats move to consolidate their hold over the national political apparatus – presidency, Senate, House – assisted by the corporate media and Big Tech, could their reputed, new-found socialism offer any kind of guide to the future? Could an American socialism, historically-marginalized up to the present, finally end up as a genuine possibility? Might the seemingly invulnerable capitalist behemoth be thrown into a state of siege by the likes of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and their “progressive” squad, all ready for action after four excruciating years of the Orange Menace? Could the events of January sixth serve to heighten such prospects?

We know that something resembling a socialist fantasy has been circulating within leading Democratic circles for the past few years, accelerated by the arrival of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and other squad members, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, and Cori Bush – three of whom (AOC, Tlaib, Bush) belong to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). With the 2016 ascent of Donald Trump to the White House, traditionally problematic references to a politics associated with Marx, Lenin, and Stalin in American political culture seem to have softened, no longer taboo. Nowadays “socialism” has reportedly become fashionable among cool millennials, though its definition remains elusive. A June 2020 Harris poll showed that 55 percent of women aged 18 to 54 would prefer socialism over capitalism, while a surprising four in ten Americans say they would be happy living under socialism.

Since 2015 the ranks of DSA have swollen rapidly (reaching 86,000 in December), mostly owing to the influence of Senator Bernie Sanders, who has always identified as a “democratic socialist” – that is, a leftist far removed from the nightmare of Soviet totalitarianism. We are not talking here about the dictatorial systems of the USSR or North Korea, or even the more recent social chaos of Venezuela. In fact a number of familiar Democratic proposals – Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all, free public higher education – could be integrated into Sanders’ reformist agenda, and that would require no overturning of the modern corporate oligarchy.

Elected in 2018 as a “democratic socialist”, AOC points out that “when millennials talk about concepts like socialism, we’re not talking about these kinds of ‘Red Scare’ bogeymen. We’re talking about countries and systems that presently exist that have already proven to be successful in the modern world. We’re talking about single-payer health care that has already been successful . . . from Finland to Canada to the U.K.” That model, of course, should not be confused with Stalinism — though some FOX commentators do just that. When viewed in Scandinavian terms, 76 percent of Democrats say they would vote for a socialist candidate (presumably with Sanders and AOC in mind), according to a recent Gallup survey.

Senator Ed Markey, co-author of the Green New Deal, appears scarcely bothered by the “socialist” label. Thus: “What I say is: give us some of that socialism for wind, and solar, and all-electric vehicles, and plug-in hybrids and storage-battery technology. And we will be looking at the fossil-fuel industry in the rear-view mirror of history.” Markey, it should be noted, has never been identified as any kind of socialist politician.

Conservatives, for their part, relish framing Democrats as fire-breathing socialists ready to carry out an American-style Bolshevik revolution. The Finnish and Danish models are, for them, largely irrelevant, part of an entirely different universe. Trump, many vocal Republicans, and some FOX pundits routinely claim Democrats want to take the country along the path of socialist (or Communist) catastrophe. Referring to the November election, Trump stated: “Despite all our greatness as a nation, everything we have achieved is now endangered. This election will decide whether we save the American Dream, or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.” Could the Democrats as we have come to know them, however filled with hateful self-righteousness, possibly manage to pull off something than no movement or party has ever pulled off in an advanced capitalist society?

At the Republican National Convention this past summer, Vice President Mike Pence said that “Joe Biden would set America on a path of socialism and decline.” Really, Biden – that most establishment and boring of pols? Others followed the same worn script. RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel announced that “Democrats have chosen to go down the road of socialism”, Lara Trump adding, ominously: “This is not just a choice between Republican and Democrat or left and right – this is an election that will decide if we keep America as itself, America, or if we head down an uncharted, frightening path towards socialism.” Now that Dems have accrued such oversized power, might the ostensible blessings of socialism be on the horizon? Could Biden and the squad improbably wind up the bearers of a new society? If so, I would argue, the guiding theorist will likely turn out to be George Orwell, not Karl Marx.

Judging from roughly a century of European history, ambitious reforms of the sort entertained by many Dems could in fact be adopted without even moderately altering the deeply-entrenched class and power relations of modern capitalism – even assuming party elites are seriously committed to such reforms. At best the outcome would be social democracy now familiar to several European countries – Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Holland, France, etc. From all indications, Sanders would be perfectly happy with that outcome.

A more conservative elite in the U.S. has long resisted this trajectory, a form of expanded social Keynesianism, opting instead for a more emphatically military Keynesianism. Historical socialism, on the other hand, has always meant opposition to capitalism as a system of economic and political power, replacing corporate interests (or “the market”) with public ownership; the main centers of power (transnational corporations, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, military-industrial complex, etc.) would accordingly be overturned. Alas, none of the Dems, including Sanders and AOC, envision a future beyond these centers of power; the best they could offer is reformed capitalism, that is, garden-variety social democracy.

At present the “leftist” (or DSA) strategy is to eventually transform the Democratic party in to something more radical by means of electoral politics, a rather naïve belief considering how wedded to the power structure the Dems have become. The DSA program, according to official statements, looks toward a “humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.” Whatever one thinks of this schema, it lacks the concreteness needed for a viable socialist politics. Put differently, it would easily coexist with requirements for maximizing elite wealth and power.

Problems loom. One of those goes to the heart of the matter: just how far can the Dems, fully aligned with every pillar of the American power structure, be pushed significantly leftward? Deep corporate attachments and dependencies will not be seamlessly pushed aside to satisfy a “more humane social order”, no matter how many enlightened videos are produced by AOC and her comrades of the recently re-labeled #fraudsquad. Decades of experience tells us that electoral activity inevitably dictates moderation, “centrism”. Meanwhile, the continued existence of a massive military-industrial complex – never questioned by any of these Dems — is by itself enough to turn hopes for socialism in to a distant mirage.

In the end there is nothing very progressive, much less socialist, about American Dems in their current incarnation, since we are dealing with a party that ritually gravitates toward oligarchy, authoritarianism, militarism, and, nowadays, intensified social and ideological controls. As the new 117th House was being seated in Washington, the warmonger Pelosi was re-elected speaker, her margin of victory furnished by AOC and other squad members. Pelosi and allies Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, and Eric Swalwell were driving forces behind the Russiagate scheme, the Mueller probe, and impeachment, while taking the U.S. closer to outright confrontation with a nuclear-armed state. With Schumer and Rep. Jim Clyburn, she worked tirelessly to destroy Sanders’ presidential bid. It was Pelosi, moreover, who orchestrated the CARES Act bailout, facilitating the largest upward transfer of wealth in U.S. history – a scandal later matched by the largely Democratic COVID-justified lockdowns.

The sad truth is that American Democrats now veer closer to fascism than to socialism, whatever their ideological pretenses. The power structure, embedded in many trillions of dollars in material resources and monetary wealth, will never be challenged by such bankrupt poseurs. Beneath all their talk of diversity and multiculturalism, all their wokeness, Dem elites are more than anything hellbent on single-party domination, at which point even mild deviations from establishment political norms will be verboten, indeed criminalized. Dissent will no longer be tolerated.

As the corrupt and easily-manipulated Biden enters the White House, the great COVID disaster offers further pretext for heightened authoritarianism and repression, surrounded as he is by a group of lockdown and hyper-partisan fanatics. The January 6th events will provide additional pretext, where needed. As for “democratic socialism”, its Orwellian character should be laid bare for everyone but the pundits at CNN, the New York Times, and Washington Post to fully grasp.

Carl Boggs, UNZ Review