Category Archives: Politics

Reality Isn’t “Mean” … It Just IS

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I received a kind email from a reader who enjoys my columns. (Thank you, by the way!) She remembered I wrote that how you feel is determined by how you think, and asks if that concept doesn’t open the door to rationalization and fooling yourself. She continues: “I have a friend who lives in her own little world. She remembers what she wants to, revises facts, and refuses to discuss (or acknowledge the existence of) anything that might upset her. She is ‘happy’ all the time, in spite of what’s really going on. So how do you tell the difference between fooling yourself into feeling better and actually changing your thoughts for the better?”

Dear Reader, you answered your own question. “What’s really going on” is called reality. And the first rule of living is to pay attention to facts and reality. Many people spend their lives fleeing reality. Some do it with drugs and alcohol, some with compulsive spending or gambling. Still others, like your friend, do it by rewriting the facts to fit her wishes. But in the end, facts are stubborn things, and they have a way of creeping into your life no matter how much you ignore them.

Some people call reality “mean.” But what’s the alternative? Things are what they are, regardless of what you want them to be. Granted, when you ignore unpleasant facts long enough, it can be upsetting to suddenly confront them. But if one stays in reality, the facts won’t cause so much anxiety.

You are correct that changing the way you think can open the door to fooling yourself — IF you lack a connection to reality. The facts are out there, and rational thinking is the antidote to living in your head. By revising the facts to make herself happy, your friend is violating the number one rule of realism.

At this point, some people, including (sadly) some mental health professionals, will say, “All that reality is unhealthy and cold. It’s emotionally repressive.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. The whole purpose of being realistic is to experience the glory of serenity. Feelings help us experience the valuable things in life. But there’s no serenity if your emotions are built on self-delusion.

The rational person doesn’t repress her emotions, but she doesn’t ignore the facts, either. She doesn’t buy something she can’t afford by saying, “That’s OK. I’ll pay for it somehow.” She does things thoughtfully, and knows why she’s doing what she’s doing. Of course, she sometimes makes mistakes (we all do), but because she’s in touch with reality she can correct them before they get out of control.

Does this sound cold and repressed? I don’t think so. There’s nothing wrong with being in charge of your own mind and your own life. The emotions you feel are real, and not manufactured by fantasy. You have a sense of well-being that wouldn’t exist if you were impulsive and in a constant state of disarray, “cleaning up” after bad decisions and poorly thought-out whims. Pilots, surgeons, ship captains and scientists use highly technical instruments to ensure that they are, in fact, dealing in the here-and-now. Is that emotionally repressive? Of course not.

There’s nothing technical or complicated about thinking. It’s just observing facts, correcting contradictions, throwing in a little common sense and applying reason to everyday challenges. The bottom line (and the reward) is that what’s going on inside your mind squares with what’s happening out there in the real world.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

Janet Yellen Suddenly Dislikes Inflation. Watch Out!

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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday the U.S. faces “unacceptably high” levels of inflation. She says that bringing down costs is a “top priority” for her “administration.”

But her boss is Joe Biden. Joe Biden blames Putin, Trump, eats ice cream and tells people to drive way overpriced electric cars and suck it up.

If this is her boss, why should we pay any attention to what SHE says?

What caused inflation in the first place? Every economist you read will say it’s an increase in the supply of money by the Federal Reserve. Some economists say this is a GOOD thing. Others, like von Mises, George Reisman and Milton Friedman explain it’s a bad thing, because it’s anti-market and it devalues the currency. In short: Exactly what’s happening.

Regardless of one’s theoretical position or value judgments, inflation is an increase in the supply of money by the federal government (via the Federal Reserve). Why does the federal government have this kind of power? The Constitution gives it no such power. It didn’t get that power until around 1913. Since then, we have had a never-ending boom and bust cycle and a Great Depression, a Great Recession and multiple recessions far worse than anything experienced prior to 1913. I repeat: Why does the government have this kind of power? What good does it do real people?

Yellen would have us believe that her ice cream slobbering boss has it as a “top priority” to reduce inflation. But Biden has repeatedly said that inflation is NOT caused by too much government spending (unprecedented spending in 2020 and 2021). In fact, Biden insists, the only solution is way, way, way MORE government spending. Thanks to two genuinely moderate Democrats in the U.S. Senate, we have not yet got that; if we had, inflation would probably be even worse.

The solution to inflation will almost certainly involve a painful recession, kind of like the one we got in 1981-83 when the government last wiped out most severe inflation. But beyond that sad inevitability, the only REAL solution to inflation is the same solution for just about everything else: GET THE GOVERNMENT THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY. We shouldn’t have a Federal Reserve controlling the money supply in the first place; it should be done by a free market, via a gold standard or whatever combination of things people in a free, voluntary-based market decide to do based on their own individual or business situations.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Why does Government Always Fail US?

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Why is it that a major airplane crash gets so much press coverage? The main reason is that it is so rare. A century ago, flying in an airplane was very risky; now there is almost no way you can spend your time in greater safety. Why this remarkable change?

Early on, those in the airline industry realized that to greatly increase the number of potential passengers, they had to change the perception that flying in a little metal tube far above the earth was dangerous. To change the perception, they changed the reality. Whenever there was a crash, or even a failure of an aircraft part or system, government and industry experts spent the necessary time and money to find out why, and then made the necessary corrections so it would not happen again. Decades of failure identification and then mitigation have resulted in the safest transportation system ever devised by man.

Contrast this model with failure in government. Government failures, starting with war, public health, crime, the economy and almost everything else the government touches continue on and on with endless empty promises from the political class that “we are never going to let this happen again.”

Airplane pilots and mechanics undergo rigorous training before being given responsibilities for people’s lives — and their knowledge, skills and health are monitored and evaluated on a regular basis. There are numerous procedures to identify potential problems with key personnel and aircraft parts and systems to make sure action is taken before a tragedy occurs.

There are no 80-year-old pilots in commercial aviation for good reason. We retire senior military officers from direct line command after so many years because they tend to lose their sharpness, among other things, yet we have no age limit or test of cognitive skills for the commanders-in-chief.

Businesses normally hire, promote or fire people on the basis of the expertise they bring to the job and their ability to fulfill the goals of the company. Only in government are people routinely hired for their political connections rather than their expertise or demonstrated past accomplishments. The result is the U.S. now has a secretary of energy who appears to know little about energy or even understands the laws of supply and demand. The Secretary of Transportation seems to know little about transportation, nor does he have any background in the field. Similar comments can be made about many other members of the Biden Cabinet.

Part of the problem is the incentive structure where people are often rewarded more for saying what those in political control want them to say, rather than what good theory and data would indicate. The Fed is supposed to be independent, but often Fed chairs — and other members and even staff — are bullied by presidents, members of Congress and even editorial writers, leading them to make erroneous inflation and other economic forecasts. If the Fed got out of the forecast business and instead used the mean projections of leading private sector forecasters who have good track records, performance — and policy — would likely be improved.

Government agencies often suffer from mission creep, leading them to intrude into areas where they have no or little expertise while decreasing their focus on the core mission. The Fed was originally established to ensure price stability, and then creating full employment was added to their mandate — even though the goal of price stability can conflict with the goal of full employment. Now, the Biden administration has added environmental sustainability and worker diversity to the Fed’s task — not only for its own actions but for those it regulates. These additions are both vague and subjective.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has just announced that all businesses that it regulates must now prepare reports to explain the environmental impact of all of its various activities. This may well double or more the costs of businesses complying with SEC mandates. The new mandate is not explicitly based on congressional delegation of authority to the SEC, nor does it contain any commonly agreed-upon methodology for such reporting.

Fortunately, there is hope for improvement. The Supreme Court has just ruled that the EPA was not given the authority by Congress to regulate all CO2 emissions.

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One major way to improve government governance is for Congress to make the dozens of administrative agencies that have acted like independent authoritarian governments strictly limited in mission to only what Congress has explicitly granted. And that these agencies can no longer serve as prosecutor, jury and judge for alleged offenses that those they regulate may or may not have committed.

If people are discriminated against because of gender, sexual preference, race, national origin or religion and they have less liberty than many of their fellow citizens, they may seek redress. Likewise, if a government imposes financial restrictions or financial reporting requirements on certain citizens but not all, they have lost some of their liberty — particularly if the restriction is not based upon competent cost-benefit analysis, which is also true if a government restriction interferes with a fundamental right explicit in the Constitution.

Governments increasingly employ diversity officers. Is it not equally important for governments to employ “liberty protection officers” — to help restrain the excesses of government employees and agencies?

• Richard W. Rahn is chair of the Institute for Global Economic Growth and MCon LLC.

How Did Truly Bad People Rise to the Top in America

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Why do bad people get ahead? They didn’t. The fact that moronic, empowered criminals make it “to the top” simply means: What we assume to be “the top” no longer is.

For corrupt, goofball, social climbing sociopaths to rise to the seat once held by Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln, something had already gone horribly wrong. Be real.

America as we know it is over. That’s ok. The spirit and reality of the Constitution and the individual rights it once protected are timeless and eternal. The good guys will rise again. But not here and now, not in the existing, poisoned system. We have to withdraw from the sewer represented by these awful people and find a way to start over.

I cannot predict how and when; but we can be certain it will happen.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Camp of the Saints is the Book of Our Time

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The Camp of the Saints is an accurate description of the fate of the Western World. We are experiencing that fate now. If you dare to know your future and that of your children and grandchildren, you can read this novel that correctly predicted our future in 1973. The book was a best seller, but the rot had already set in. Today the book is suppressed. You can read it here:

Click to access Camp_of_the_Saints.pdf

The white ethnicities are the most insouciant of all peoples. They comprise a small minority of the world population, and every white country is wallowing in guilt about people of color and have opened their borders to immigrant-invaders.

The Israelis have no problem putting up a wall to wall off Palestinians from the Palestinians’ own country, but President Trump was prevented by the Democrat Party from walling off millions of immigrant-invaders coming across the Mexican border unimpeded into our country. The Democrats think that the peoples of color will vote for them, thus insuring their rule. They will for awhile, but it will dawn on the peoples of color that they don’t need the white Democrats.

The British now have their former colonial subjects as ministers of state and could soon have an Indian prime minister. The population of London, the British capital, is minority ethnic English.

Germany, whose women were massively raped by Russian, French, and British soldiers following Germany’s defeat (the Americans didn’t have to rape as they had the silk stockings, cigarettes, and chocolate that the women wanted), is only partly German, and this watered down population has been infused with Turks and refugees from America’s Middle Eastern and African wars.

Parts of Paris are now Muslim. In France mosques, not Christian churches, are being built.

Canada is a Tower of Babel, as is the US where Spanish is now a rival language to English. Efforts to make English the official language failed. In the US if you telephone a bank, credit card company, utility, or almost any large business, you are answered in English and Spanish. In other words, the people who created America are now only a part of it.

Even nordic Sweden is overrun, and newspapers report that 25% of Swedish ethnic women are afraid to leave their home in fear of being raped by immigrant-invaders.

Italy is overrun, just as was Rome. Indeed, all of Europe is overrun.

Russia, the world’s largest country, is a collection of ethnicities. The white population was devastated by World War II.

People accustomed to poverty breed easier than overtaxed white ethnicities struggling to maintain a middle class living standard, a more difficult feat to achieve in the Western world than previously. Demographics project a nonwhite Western world. And the situation seems to have worsened as a result of fertility problems caused by Covid “vaccine.”

Considering that peoples of color have been taught by Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and all the rest along with the New York Times “1619 Project” that world history consists of the oppression of peoples of color by white racism, the future for white minorities looks bleak.

What is extraordinary is that the few white leaders who found the courage to sound the alarm have been demonized and driven from the political and intellectual scene. As far as the white intellectual world is concerned, there is no greater crime than the defense of white people. It is simply not permitted. White school districts teach critical race theory to white kids. In other words, white children are raised and educated to have a negative attitude toward white people, meaning themselves and their parents. When white parents sometimes object at school board meetings, they risk being beaten by white cops and arrested. Democrat school districts have tried to impose laws that prevent parental input.

So, what we have is every white ethnicity fighting as hard as it can to terminate itself.

It might happen sooner than the white liberals hope. A handful of Zionist US neoconservatives, who are accused, probably correctly, of using US foreign policy, which they control, in Israel’s interest, have the US and the NATO puppets headed, via the Ukraine conflict, into war with Russia. As neither Washington nor Moscow can accept defeat, the conflict would end in nuclear Armageddon.

One would think that the remains of the white ethnicities, threatened as they are internally by their guilt-driven immigration open borders policy, would unite in avoiding a conflict that will eliminate the white population from the Earth.

The war that is being orchestrated, a war that will result in any white survivors being species visited in a zoo, is being orchestrated by the neoconservatives who are wedded to US hegemony to protect and expand Israel’s geographic interests.

It is extraordinary that in the United States there is no foreign policy debate, much less one that approaches the debate during Cold War I. Objective Russian experts such as Steven Cohen no longer exist. To get the grant that keeps him in business, a foreign policy professor must adhere to the narrative: Russia evil; US good.

White people did their best to destroy themselves in World War I and World War II. In World War III they will succeed.