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Passover Marks The Beginning of Western Civilization
Passover begins at sundown Saturday evening, March 27.
You think you know the story. Perhaps. But, after more than 70 years, I barely know it myself.
There’s the Cecil B. DeMille version: Yul Brenner is oppressing the Jews in Egypt—conscripting them for construction projects along the Nile. With the help of frogs and locusts, Charlton Heston leads them out of slavery into technicolor freedom.
Seriously, the Passover seder is the world’s oldest continuously celebrated ritual. There are the candles and wine, the matzah and bitter herbs. (“And they embittered their lives with servitude.”) There’s the Haggadah with the four questions: “Why is this night different from all other nights?”
The celebration lasts for eight days, during which we abstain from certain foods. The theme is remembrance: Remember what God did for you when He took you out of Egypt. Each Jew must feel that he was personally redeemed. Telling the Passover story is a commandment. The Haggadah says, “The more one tells about the Exodus, the more he is praiseworthy.”
Passover is just the beginning of the story. The end is nowhere in sight.
After the first Passover and the departure from Egypt, there’s the encounter at Sinai and the giving of the Law. In the DeMille version, Moses says to Pharoah: “Men shall be ruled by Law, not by other men.” Whose law? The one from the ultimate lawgiver.
Western Civilization started at a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula, where the 12 tribes assembled received not just the 10 Commandments but the entire corpus of Jewish law. Before that, time was static. There was no progress, no movement toward a conclusion.
From Sinai came the Promised Land – more than 1,000 years chronicled in the Bible. From Sinai came the kings and prophets. Judaism and Christianity started there. (Without Passover, no Easter.) The Jews went into 2,000 years of exile and their morality was spread into Europe and eventually worldwide by Christians – hence, the Judeo-Christian ethic.
The settlers who founded America were inspired by the vision of Sinai. Many gave their children Biblical names.
For them, this was the Promised Land. (For the Great Seal of the United States, Benjamin Franklin proposed a scene showing Moses leading the Children of Israel through the Red Sea.) Eventually, the colonists came to see George III as the Pharoah of the Exodus.
The Declaration of Independence didn’t spring full-blown from the brow of Jefferson. The seeds were planted at Sinai. “That all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” The doors to the Supreme Court chamber depict twin tablets with the Roman numerals one through ten, a reminder of our origins in a far older code of law.
But while Passover bids us to remember, the pagan culture we find ourselves immersed in tells us to forget.
Pharoah says to Moses, “Who is the Lord that I should heed Him and let Israel go?” So too says the party of the Democrats. America’s elite calls appeals to our roots religious fanaticism, and asks why we should follow men with sandals and staffs, any more than men with wigs and buckle shoes.
Forget this invisible God, progressives say. Worship our Gods: multiculturalism, equality and choice. Washington, D.C. is their golden calf.
Passover is called the festival of freedom. Patriots have never been more concerned about the preservation of our freedoms. But the Passover story reminds us that freedom isn’t free.
After the Exodus, God didn’t say to the Israelites: “Zie gezunt – go, enjoy. The beaches of Tel Aviv await you.” He led us to Sinai and gave us the Law, which was the culmination of the Exodus. For without law, we are forced to submit to the rule of men.
In America, today, there is no law. Instead, we have mindless regulations, (Wear a facemask. Maintain social distancing.), confiscatory taxation and spending like we possessed the riches of the store cities of Pithom and Ramses.
Our courts deliberately misinterpret the Constitution to advance their ideology. Flaunting the laws of Sinai has become a secularist commandment. (“Thou shalt exalt fornication and perversion.”)
Passover is the tale that never ends. There’s always a new Pharoah, a new House of Bondage, a new journey through the Red Sea and 40 years in the desert to reach the Promised Land. And they did it all without stimulus spending.
Passover reminds us of the eternal struggle (freedom and slavery) and the eternal balance (rights and responsibilities, liberty and sacrifice).
The seder ends with “Next year in Jerusalem.” But the City of David isn’t just a physical place. It’s also an ideal to strive toward – a time when the Law is universally acknowledged and Pharoah is finally defeated.
Don Feder,frontpagemag
West Virginia Passes Broadest School Choice Bill
For a state that couldn’t pass a modest measure on Education Savings Accounts just two years ago, it’s a breathtaking turnaround. What changed?
In February 2018, public school teachers brought West Virginia to its knees. Seeking pay raises and better health plans, unions had declared a “work stoppage” in all 55 counties, shuttering every public school in the state. The “stoppage” — which was in fact an unlawful strike — dragged on for nine school days, costing children nearly two weeks of instruction. Under pressure, the Republican legislature rushed through a pay raise to pacify the unions.
The victorious teachers of West Virginia quickly became the darlings of the socialist left. Jacobin magazine, which had extensively covered the strike, ran a victory-lap interview entitled “What the Teachers Won.” News coverage touched off copycat strikes, beginning in Arizona and spreading to other states. The “Red for Ed” movement was born, uniting unions, socialists, and other far-left radicals in dreams of an American labor renaissance.
Flush with victory, West Virginia teachers’ unions got bolder. The next year, they went on strike again, taking aim at broader education policy. The Republican Senate had passed a bill granting teachers their second pay raise in two years, but they tied it to something for parents: school choice.
It wasn’t much—open enrollment, Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) for special-needs students, and permission for three charter schools statewide. But West Virginia was one of the last remaining states without school choice, and “Red for Ed” wasn’t letting that go without a fight.
The 2019 strike lasted only two days. The West Virginia House of Delegates quickly caved, scuttling school choice and passing a “clean” pay raise for teachers. But 18 Republicans in the state Senate stood firm. No school choice, no second pay raise, they said. Their stand forced the governor’s hand. A special session in June resulted in the passage of modest school choice measures. Open enrollment survived; so did the three charter schools. ESAs did not.
For Republicans, it seemed a small win in exchange for two costly, bruising strikes. Unions were confident that the vast majority of West Virginians were on their side.
“Educators across the state are livid at these developments and dead-set against school privatization,” wrote the Trotskyist World Socialist Web Site. “In this, they are joined by virtually all of the state’s workers and youth. . . . Eighty-eight percent of West Virginians support their public schools and oppose charters.” Leftists vowed a reckoning in the 2020 election for those 18 villainous Senate Republicans. ‘It’s a Game-Changer’
That was then; this is now. Last week, with very little noise or fanfare, the West Virginia legislature passed the most expansive Education Savings Account program in America. While ESAs in most states are only open to a small percentage of children, the new West Virginia Hope Scholarship will be available to 90 percent of schoolchildren in the state. Every child currently enrolled in public school is eligible, plus those newly aging in.
“It’s a game-changer,” says Garrett Ballengee of the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy, a conservative think tank and proponent of the bill. “If you add up every single ESA utilizer in the rest of the country, there are only about 20,000 of them. The Hope Scholarship will automatically open it up to ten times that many children in West Virginia alone.”
Applicants for the Hope Scholarship will receive 100 percent of their state education dollars — $4,600 annually — in lieu of public schooling. (County and federal funds will remain in the system.) The scholarship is usable for private school tuition, homeschool curriculum, or other education expenses. Gov. Jim Justice, a vocal opponent of ESAs as recently as 2019, has signaled he’s likely to sign.
For a state that couldn’t pass a far more modest measure just two years ago, it’s a breathtaking turnaround. What changed? Elections Have Consequences
State Sen. Patricia Rucker, the Republican chair of the Senate Education Committee and chief architect of the ESA effort, has a few theories about what made the difference. First, she believes the majority of West Virginians never opposed school choice in the first place; they were simply afraid to say so.
“During the strikes, I saved a folder of all the people who wrote to me in support of the education reform. I kept all of their emails,” Rucker told me in an interview. “The vast majority of them said something like, ‘Please don’t use my name. Don’t tell anyone I wrote to you.’ They were so scared and intimidated by the teachers’ unions.”
In 2019, I wrote about the climate of union intimidation that was silencing the state’s parents and teachers. When Justice commissioned a “listening tour” to gauge public opinion, the West Virginia Department of Education co-opted the effort and manipulated its findings. This lead to the much-repeated assertion that 88 percent of West Virginians opposed charter schools. But when the 2020 elections came around, voters finally spoke for themselves.
“I knocked on thousands of doors during my 2020 reelection campaign,” Rucker said. “Out of all those people, I only spoke to about five educators who were opposed to our education reform — that’s it. Most of the people who spoke to me about education were in favor of choice. Even the vast majority of educators I spoke to said, ‘I didn’t have any problems with charter schools. I think it would be good for us to have that opportunity.’”
The proof was in the poll returns. Despite fierce opposition from unions and their moneyed interests, all but two of those 18 education reformers returned to the Senate in 2020, and several more were added to their number. It was an affirmation that educational choice can be a winning political issue, even in states with a strong union presence. Contrary to their tightly controlled narrative, teachers’ unions hadn’t been speaking for the people. They had been shouting the people down. Pandemics Have Consequences Too
The COVID-19 lockdowns undoubtedly played a major role in further widening the rift between teachers’ unions and the people. As parents suddenly faced a public school system that refused to open its doors, it became harder to understand why that system should retain exclusive control over tax dollars meant to educate children.
Public opinion polls confirm a major surge last year in support for measures to fund students directly. Remarkably, although these bills are almost exclusively advanced by Republican lawmakers, public support for school choice appears to be evenly distributed across the political spectrum. Last week, one Democrat lawmaker in Kentucky reluctantly crossed the aisle to vote against union interests on school choice, citing overwhelming support from his constituents.
“In light of COVID, people are beginning to see that different children thrive in different environments,” Ballengee said. “Some kids have done really well in virtual schooling, some have done really well in hybrid, and for some these have been an absolute disaster. It’s brought home what we’ve been saying for so long: kids need different environments.”
Rucker believes the unions’ unyielding stance against school reopening has eroded their support among teachers as well as parents. “The media has really overplayed the unions’ voice about school reopening, as opposed to average teachers’ voices,” she said. “The vast majority of teachers I’ve heard from wanted to go back to school. They recognized that they weren’t reaching their kids through these virtual options. I would venture to say that there is a lot less union membership among West Virginia teachers these days. You can sense it.”
One indicator of this lack of union energy: after the riotous education showdowns of 2018 and 2019, the Hope Scholarship bill sailed through the West Virginia legislature with hardly a whimper of protest.
“This year when we pushed real reform, much more substantial than two years ago. It’s been very quiet,” Rucker said. “The unions don’t like the bill, but our phones aren’t ringing. We aren’t getting emails. It’s nothing like last time.”
The West Virginia United Caucus, a far-left teachers’ coalition, was active throughout the strikes and well into 2020, pushing hard against school reopening and advancing a left-leaning slate of educators to head the state’s largest teachers’ union. They haven’t published a tweet since Election Day. Funding Kids, not Institutions
“West Virginia now has the broadest-based ESA in the entire United States,” Rucker says. “It’s not the most money, but it’s the most inclusive – and in most areas, it’s enough to send a child to private school. This really is a game-changer for students and families. We’re focused on funding kids now, not institutions. We’re funding each student to get the best possible education they can get.”
Rucker is gratified by West Virginia’s 180-degree turnaround: an erstwhile union stronghold suddenly leading the way toward educational freedom. Legislatures in 29 states have considered education choice bills this year. It remains to be seen whether Republican lawmakers elsewhere
Are Whites Privileged or Persecuted ?
Two Georgetown University law professors in a private conversation between themselves expressed concern that the students at the bottom of their classes were black. I believe the professors had some concern for the black students, but I am confident their main concern was “what are we going to do?”
In American universities and public schools today black under-performance of quota admission students is a serious and major problem for white professors and teachers. If the lowest class grades are concentrated in the black population of a professor’s class, the university’s powerful diversity police will investigate. Moreover, the diversity police will have to find at least insensitivity and a lack of concern if not racism. The diversity police will do this because they have to justify their existence and budget and because they like to exercise power. Moreover, if they don’t find a problem of some description, the black student union will cause an uproar, and the diversity police will become part of the problem.
I suspect the two professors were feeling out the situation. The question before them was: “How are we going to survive black underperformance in our class?” Do we flunk one or two of the worst performers and work the rest of them in with the class with a B here, a C there, so that there is no pattern that can be ascribed to us as racism? If we do this, we simply pass the problem on to the next professor, and it can continue until it becomes the bar association’s problem when Georgetown’s law graduates sit for the bar exam.
Or can we risk flunking any black student or even giving one a D? In other words, the professors’ dilemma is: we have to throw out standards in order to avoid being fired for racism.
Male professors were first up against this problem with feminism. I remember an academic telling me that he never flunked a woman, because she had the option of alleging that he had made a pass at her and flunked her because she refused. He said a C was the lowest grade he would risk giving a female student who had flunked the course. He said that over time the female students who were not up to standard learned how to communicate to him that they could be trouble if their grades were not satisfactory.
Georgetown University fired the white female law professor for saying, factually, that blacks were at the bottom of her class in grade performance. The white male was forced to resign because he failed in his obligation to report the female professor for her “racist” statement. And people think America is a free country. Academic freedom along with the First Amendment bit the dust some time ago.
Georgetown University, like most American universities, is very unfriendly to white people, both faculty and student unless the white faculty or student is a woke creature. This is proven by Georgetown University’s response to a private conversation between two white professors . The university administration, of course, made a destructive mistake. Consequently, at Georgetown University any non-white student can claim to be “offended” and thereby exercise power over the faculty and the administration. To be “offended” is a power play. Georgetown University, like most every other university and corporation, has proven that it is incapable of standing up to such a power play. Any person of color failing in performance has more power than the president and trustees of the university. At Georgetown University deans themselves have been suspended for “offending” the special privileged. Yet we continue to hear about “white privilege.”
Where is this “white privilege.” Obviously, it is not in the educational system. Is it in the capitalist corporations where white employees have to take “sensitivity training” as a condition of employment and learn that they are “systemic racists” and cannot discipline underperforming people of color?
Is it in government employment where Biden has reimposed “racial sensitivity training” on white civil servants, guaranteeing that they cannot discipline people of color?
Is in in the US military where even special forces have to submit to racial sensitivity training despite the fact that they are ordered to kill people of color in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, and are being prepared for war against “the yellor peril?”
Woke professors who lead the charge against their white colleagues are not made safe by their turncoat behavior. These despicable woke people should find a copy of Jean Raspail’s novel, The Camp of the Saints, and become acquainted with their fate. Probably they cannot find a copy in the Georgetown library where it is likely to have been removed as “offensive” or “racist.” Whatever term does the job to get rid of truth.
Today, universities are nothing but truth-killing organizations. All anyone can learn in an American university is to hate “white racist America.”
Before long the valedictorian of every university graduating class will be a black female. White gentile students will be at the bottom of the graduating classes. This will prove that racism has been overcome.
Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ Review
States Just Need to Say No
I’ve never attended Mardi Gras, but I have experienced the pirate-themed mega-party known as Gasparilla in Tampa. And I watched d a lot of people “breaking the law.”
I witnessed hundreds of revelers drinking alcohol from open containers. I bumped into countless publicly intoxicated partiers. I even saw women exposing their breasts in exchange for 10 cent plastic beads. And I could go on. There were much debauchery and “illegal” activity.
I also saw a lot of cops.
But I didn’t personally witness one arrest.
Mostly, cops just looked on as thousands of people flouted the law. In fact, many of the cops seemed somewhat amused by the antics.
Try engaging in any of the above activities in downtown Tampa on a normal Tuesday night, and you will quickly find yourself taking up residence at the Hillsborough County Jail.
Sure, police make some arrests and issue a few citations during Gasparilla – 11 arrests in 2019. Yes. You read that right. Eleven. Did I mention an estimated 300,000 people attended the event?
Fact — hundreds of thousands of revelers cram into downtown Tampa for Gasparilla, and huge numbers of those people break one or more laws with impunity. Simply put, the relatively small number of cops could never hope to control the masses and force compliance with the law. So they sat back and generally just tried to contain the mayhem.
This illustrates an important reality: as more and more people simply ignore a command, those trying to enforce it find it increasingly difficult to do so. It boils down to a simple matter of resources, manpower and scale. A few hundred cops cannot enforce their will on 300,000 people.
Herein lies the secret to our nullification strategy. States don’t have to actually do anything. They just have to stop helping the feds enforce federal laws or implement federal programs. The laws may remain on the books, but they become impossible to enforce. For all practical purposes, noncompliance renders them null, void and of no effect.
State and local non-compliance with federal acts, rules, regulations, and the implementation of federal programs, creates the same dynamic for federal agencies as Mardi Gras or Gasparilla does for local law enforcement. When enough states refuse to comply or cooperate with the enforcement of a federal act, D.C. finds it increasingly difficult to impose its will.
James Madison understood this dynamic. That’s why his blueprint to stop federal overreach in Federalist #46 was “a refusal to cooperate with officers of the union.” Madison said a single state refusing to cooperate would create “impediments.”
” And were the sentiments of several adjoining States happen to be in Union, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. “
In fact, the federal government depends on state and local cooperation for virtually everything it does – from enforcing drug laws to implementing its many programs. During the run-up to the 2013 federal government shutdown, the National Governors Association sent a panicked letter to congressional leadership begging them to avoid the shutdown. In this email, the governors affirmed the feds need the states.
“States are partners with the federal government in implementing most federal programs. A lack of certainty at the federal level from a shutdown therefore translates directly into uncertainty and instability at the state level.” [Emphasis added]
Did you catch that?
Most federal programs.
That means states can refuse to serve as cooperative partners and shut down most federal programs.
There is great power in the word no. Cops can’t control Gasparilla partiers. And the feds can’t control states. State governments just need to stand up and assert their authority. They need to say no.
This article was adapted from an excerpt from Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty.
Why Civilization is Going Down the Tubes
The root of all evil is neither money nor “selfishness”. The root of all evil is the failure to THINK. The ultimate tragedy for an individual — or for a civilization — is an inability to think.
Freedom is disappearing because civilization is faltering. Civilization is faltering because mass numbers of people don’t know how to think. One reason we all must know how to think? So we can acquire, retain and utilize rational, objective knowledge. When we lose the ability to think, we have to default to SOME kind of objective standard. Our minds and nature require it. Generally, that standard of default (when thinking is gone) is “other people.”
Hence, the spectacle of millions of people getting vaccines, while still wearing masks, and most of these people thinking it’s foolish — yet doing it anyway. Hence, the spectacle of millions of people falling for socialism, including inflationary and currency-busting government spending, on a scale of madness never before seen in human history. Hence the censorship, the gun confiscation and all that’s coming.
Why the acceptance of lunacy by millions of people who aren’t insane? Because other people are doing it. “Everyone else seems to think it’s OK. So I guess I’m missing something. Who am I to judge? Who am I to think?” Of course, these other people are all thinking the same thing. Nobody thinks independently. And the only people who do “think” independently are the irrationalists — the woke, the crazies, the tyrants. They’re not really thinking. They’re just asserting, feeling, raging and controlling.
That’s how and why the lunatics and the despots are taking over. So long as the majority of us will not or cannot THINK, we’re at the mercy of the lowest sociopathic scum and the mentally deranged who dominate our cultural elite. It never had to be. And it doesn’t have to remain this way. But somebody has got to start THINKING.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
How Moral Cowardice and Conformity Destroy Civilization
The weak are afraid. They obey respectfully, and grudgingly, because they fear rocking the boat. They fear condemnation by others, even if the condemnation only comes from a shrill, loudmouthed and mentally imbalanced minority.
Worse than the weak are those who RELISH the opportunity to obey. They rush to put on masks, condemn Dr. Seuss, and follow the pack of similarly mindless humanoids in the pursuit of deliberate ignorance. These are the kind of people who provide the social- psychological fodder for the destructive regimes of Nazism, Communism and the possibly worse tyranny now forming in the former USA.
How long do we plan to wimp out and keep letting these losers determine the course of human history? The thing they fear most is to be called out for exactly what they are. If millions of us stood up and shamed them into the embarrassment and submission they have earned, we might restore our freedom faster than anyone thinks. Fear is what’s destroying us. And our adversaries–embodied by the brain-dead, stumbling freak show currently occupying the White House–are so unworthy.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Biden Dazzles in First State of the Union Address
President Obama, President Harris, Madame Speaker, members of Congress, the senator who was a Mormon, General. . . the guy who runs that outfit, Dr. Anthony Fauci, CEOs Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Bezos, his highness Bill Gates, and fellow Americans — I speak tonight on the state of the union and guess what, here’s the deal:
First, I want to recognize all those who took part in the most extensive system of voter fraud in American history. Without your hard work and dedication, Joe Biden would not be where he is today.
I also recognize those who entered the United States illegally because they are already Americans. So it’s only right that you vote in our elections. You will be needed in 2022 and 2024, so despite the pandemic, I will bring many more of you into the United States, so our nation is more unified with yours.
Any disunity in America is all due to Donald Trump, who put up a wall to keep you out. African Americans who voted for Trump should understand that, guess what, you ain’t black. Sorry, that’s just the way it is and I choose this truth over facts. Be sure and get it right next time, and remember, poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.
Trump took us out of the World Health Organization, so I restored the ties, and the funding. The USA is now more unified with the WHO and its great leader Tedros. As I recognize, the WHO always knows what is best for the United States and all the nations of the world. Just kind of a simple thing.
I have also unified us more with China by giving President Xi Jinping a free hand with the Uighurs, in Hong Kong, and with Taiwan. As I recognize, the People’s Republic of China operates under different norms, so what they do is okay with me, even if it violates human rights and adversely affects the United States.
As I said on the campaign trail, the Chinese are “not bad folks” and “not competition for us.” On my watch, the United States will continue to fund the Wuhan Institute of Virology, whatever its role in the pandemic that has killed so many of us and wrecked our economy.
I mean, c’mon man, we will build back better. Everybody just kick back and make sure you have the record player on at night. That is very important in tough and dangerous times, at home and abroad.
In Syria, thanks to my administration, bombs are falling from the sky again and Iran is on the rise again. I hope to rejoin the Iran deal, to follow up on all that money President Obama wisely sent the mullahs. C’mon man, when the Iranian leaders say “death to America” they don’t really mean it. That takeover of our embassy, and all those hostages, that was a long time ago.
I was against Trump’s hit on Soleimani, and I assure you that on my watch nothing like that will ever happen. My focus will be on domestic terrorists. If you support Trump, you are a domestic terrorist and my administration will be coming after you. If you don’t like it, you are full of shit, just like that arrogant Michigan autoworker I put in his place.
My fellow Americans, I also want to deal with this conspiracy theory that I am a puppet of the far left and just a placeholder for President Harris. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It’s also a lie that I have any physical or mental difficulties. So guess what, I am in the best shape of my life, with no impairment whatsoever. Right now I’m just feeling a little bit tired, so here’s the deal.
I must remain in office to fulfill my campaign promise to raise your taxes. That promise is what got me elected, and in tough economic times, keeping taxes high is very important. I mean, do I look like a radical socialist? C’mon man, as I once told some American troops, clap for that, you stupid bastards.
Keep on choosing truth over facts. As Dr. Fauci says, remember to wear two masks, not just one. God bless America and good night.
Lloyd Billingsley
* * *
Whatever Happened to Beto Getting Rid of “the Gun Problem”, Joe?
When Joe ran for President from his basement, he promised–before crowds of 5, 7 or even 10 people–that he would dispatch Irishman-turned-Latino Beto O’Rourke to “take care of the gun problem.” Not sure what happened to that promise, but the Democratic Communist reasoning remains as follows:
Get rid of guns. Simply outlaw guns, and they will disappear. Make ownership of guns a felony, after 90 days, as Delaware has already started to do. With the end of guns, there will be no crime. If there IS still crime, it simply won’t be reported–as that would embarrass the rulers. Social media will shut down people who talk about the rise in crime, after guns are gone. Lastly, with the disappearance of crime, we can eliminate police. Police are all racist pigs, anyway, say the rulers. We’ll use the now totally WOKE national guard and federalized police thereafter, not to protect citizens from common criminals, but to protect the despotic government from threats of dissent and rebellion.
Think I’m exaggerating? Watch what happens. It will probably be worse than I’m predicting, based on events of the last year.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
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THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 