Category Archives: Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beth Baumann, Townhall.com

Ayn Rand on Metaphysical Value Judgments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Children Need Protection from Transgender Activists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wen Wryte, American Thinker

Who Appoints the “Cancelers” in the Cancel Culture ?

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

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

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

America’s Coming Bankruptcy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neil Patel, townhall.com

The Case for Closing Public Schools…Indefinitely

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah Lilly, American Thinker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One would think so. Explanations are needed.

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

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

What is going on here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2021 Creators.com.

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

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

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

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Universal Freedom: The Only Hope for Health Care

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Richard E. Ralston, Capitalism Magazine

Trumpism Will Extend Far Beyond the Man Himself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gabe Kaminsky, The Federalist