What is Capitalism ?

Capitalism (from the Latin word capta, meaning “head”) is a social system based on individual rights that unleashes the power of the human mind.

The term capitalism is used here in the broader political sense, i.e., a free society, and not in the narrower economic sense, i.e., a free-market.

Capitalism is not just an economic system that can be grafted onto any political structure, but is a complex, integrated social system that depends on a specific ethical, political, legal, economic, and cultural foundation:

1. Morality: Rational Self-Interest

Capitalism is based on the moral philosophy of rational self-interest (rational egoism): a code of morality based on what a rational being requires to achieve happiness living on earth. Such a moral code is part of an integrated philosophy that in Ayn Rand’s words holds up “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute”.

2. Politics: Individual Rights

To rationally pursue one’s own happiness (self-interest) in reality requires only one thing from others: freedom from coercion. Capitalism regards the individual as a sovereign being with an inalienable moral right to take the actions necessary to support one’s life, so long as one respects the equal freedom of others to do the same.

3. Legal System: Objective Law

Capitalism operates according to a rule of objective law in both form (a republican government operating with a separation of powers and a written constitution to limit those powers) and function (government’s function is the protection of individual rights by banning the initiation of physical force and fraud).

4. Economics: Free-Market in Goods, Services, and Relationships

Freedom protected by objective law, applied to the sphere of production and trade, results in a free-market in material — and spiritual — values. In such a division of labor society, one pursues one’s own self-interest by specializing in the production of goods and services for mutually beneficial trade with others.

5. Culture: Peace, Prosperity & Progress

Culturally, this freedom in the economic and personal sphere leads to innovation in the arts, technology, and sciences, leading to peace (by banishing force from all relationships), progress (by unleashing the power of the rational mind, the source of all progress), and prosperity (by the ability to create more wealth with less time, work, and resources).

Capitalism Magazine

Propaganda

But propaganda is extremely weak, as is shown by its failure after forty-four years to convert people in the Eastern bloc to communism. Illusion requires incessant repetition in order to mimic the appearance of reality. Propaganda works only through constant reiteration. It is only in quantity that corrupt values, false perceptions, and bogus facts can be sold. Truth, by contrast, though its lot is never easy, makes its way with but a few friends, or even a single utterance. It does not need the apparatus of salesmanship, because reality itself is waiting to confirm it. Hence the power of the beleaguered prophet, or the mothers of the “disappeared” demonstrating daily in Argentina or El Salvador, or the witnesses by the tracks where the White Train carried nuclear explosives to Trident submarine bases: normal people with no economic stake never choose to suffer this much just to lie.

Walter Wink, Future of Freedom Foundation

Will COVID Numbers Now Shift for Biden’s Benefit ?

How much of the past year was about the actual coronavirus rather than a political weapon to damage President Trump and remove him from office? The answer is obvious. We have had viral pandemics before, including a seasonal influenza, without mask mandates, social distancing, business closures, travel restrictions, and hysterical media coverage.

Much of the hair-on-fire reporting is over cases and deaths. As I have previously written, a positive test is not the same as a case, and a death with COVID is different than death from COVID.

What if these definitions suddenly change in the upcoming weeks, once Joe Biden is in the White House, creating the impression that getting rid of the Orange Man caused the case and fatality numbers to suddenly plummet, not because of anything Biden did, but simply because he isn’t Trump?

Rewriting history is a popular pastime for the left. Just ask George Orwell or observe current events including the social media purge and cancel culture. How might this play out with COVID?

Start with testing — the PCR test which is overly sensitive. From that bastion of right-wing conspiracy, the New York Times,

The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be contagious.

This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the patients are.

In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.

In addition, a positive PCR test is not necessarily a case of COVID. There is a “case definition,” something the corporate media is willfully ignoring. According to the CDC, a case requires, “presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence.” Notice the AND, meaning not simply a positive test.

The result is that case counts are wildly inflated and are being used to drive lockdowns, business and school closures, mask mandates, and other measures that may not be necessary or even helpful.

What if the definitions conveniently change in the upcoming weeks?

As reported by Zero Hedge last week, “The FDA today joined The WHO and Dr. [Anthony] Fauci in admitting there is a notable risk of false results from the standard PCR test used to define whether an individual is a COVID case or not.”

Did Dr. Fauci just realize this? After decades working in public health and infectious diseases, test sensitivity is something he understands only too well. If he knew, did he say or do anything?

In an interview last July, Dr Fauci acknowledged that the PCR test is overly sensitive,

“What is now sort of evolving into a bit of a standard,” Fauci said, is that “if you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more … the chances of it being replication-confident are minuscule.”

If true, a sizable proportion of patients may have been unwittingly receiving positive test results that have little bearing on either their individual health or their risk of spreading the virus to others — suffering, in the process, much avoidable anxiety and disruption to everyday life.

Why didn’t Dr. Fauci make this case early during the pandemic, when he was active in the coronavirus task force and appearing almost daily with President Trump briefing the media and the nation?

Any bets that once Biden is ensconced in the Oval Office these test criteria are suddenly deemed overly sensitive and revised, miraculously reducing the case counts which are breathlessly reported daily on cable news? All of a sudden, COVID will be going away, only because the Orange Man is out of the White House and Brilliant Biden is now in charge, with no mention of the rule change.

Will COVID death criteria change in a similar manner? I predict they will. Early in the pandemic, Dr. Deborah Birx acknowledged that there was no distinction made between death with COVID versus death from COVID.

So, I think in this country we’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality. There are other countries that if you had a preexisting condition and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem some countries are recording as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death. Right now…if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.

How soon until the CDC suddenly realizes the distinction and starts reporting deaths more realistically, as other countries do? Again this will support the narrative that all the 2020 COVID deaths were due to President Trump and it took a change of presidential leadership to miraculously reverse the death toll.

The dropping case and death numbers will also be attributed to Biden’s vaccine rollout, which he had nothing to do with, ignoring Trump’s organization and facilitation via Operation Warp Speed. Changing the rules mid-game creates new winners and losers, just as we saw in the 2020 presidential election.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is providing a preview of the great COVID shift. After locking down his state for most of the past year, destroying the economy, he now sounds like President Trump.

He recently tweeted a reversal, just in time for the new Biden administration:

We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass. The cost is too high. We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy, but we must do it smartly and safely.

What changed? A Democrat replacing a Republican in the White House, meaning new rules and gaslighting.

Although this is the likely media narrative, perhaps the numbers won’t shift quite yet. Many on the left are using the inflated death and case numbers to their political advantage, imposing draconian lockdowns, business closures, and ultimately control over the people they supposedly represent, of course exempting themselves from the rules they impose on their subjects.

They travel, dine, and get their hair done as if we live in normal times, while forcefully preventing those they govern from enjoying the same freedoms. Perhaps this taste of absolute power will be difficult for American politicians to give up.

Let’s see what happens during a potential Biden administration. Once the pandemic has served its purpose, Democrats using COVID as an excuse to finish fundamentally transforming America, the rules of the game may change, providing “proof” that the new rules, ushered in under wise Joe Biden, have finally tamed the COVID beast.

As George Orwell said, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Watch the past year’s COVID tragedy suddenly pivot to a new and more useful narrative.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and freelance writer. Follow him (while you can) on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Parler, and QuodVerum.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/will_covid_numbers_now_shift_for_bidens_benefit.html#ixzz6jRW3mo4Q
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Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/will_covid_numbers_now_shift_for_bidens_benefit.html#ixzz6jRVjtgJH
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The Transformation of America Into a One-Party State

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

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

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

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

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

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

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