Category Archives: Politics

Trying Men’s Souls

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“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” –THOMAS PAINE

XI Puts on Mao Suit and Flies Many Jets in Honor of 100 Years of 中国共产党

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It must be nice to live in a country where your leaders encourage you to be proud of your race and history.

RT:

China’s Mighty Dragon J-20 stealth fighter jets flew over Beijing’s historic landmark in their largest display yet – a show of might to commemorate the founding of the Communist Party 100 years ago.

Beijing showcased the power of its air force during centenary celebrations for the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Thursday. The 15-strong fighter jet fleet flew in three V-shaped formations, with five planes forming each arrow.

In an interview with the Sina news outlet, J-20 pilot Cao Cheng detailed the symbolism of the demonstration and explained how the fleet flew in uniform precision: “Each wedge team has five fighter jets organized into three squadrons … which symbolizes that the People’s Air Force is invincible and has invincible courage.”

He added that all the members of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force had practised tirelessly to pull off the feat.

The number of fighter jets that took part in the air show is unprecedented, the largest number having previously been five. Those aircraft had been taking part in the National Day military parade in 2019, which was also held in the Chinese capital.

And what a fleet!

The helicopters flying in the shape of “100” is also impressive.

Very lovely.

Much happiness for tender family affairs.

I think this issue of “Chinese communism” should be addressed at length, again. I’m not going to do that right now, because I’m exhausted.

But I will say: China is not a communist country, and the so-called “Chinese Communist Party” is not a communist party.

Mao Zedong tried to do communism.

Then he backed up on it. Then he died in 1976, and China became a beast of productivity.

China is the most futuristic country on earth. While American smart meters are turning off the air-conditioning in 100 degree weather in Texas and New York is sending notices to turn off the microwave so the power doesn’t go out, everyone in China is rich and living in luxury.

Elon Musk recently said it. I check his Twitter account obsessively and the memes are horrible (literally the worst I’ve ever seen), but he’s right about this.

You have to go to China to really understand that this is an ultra-futuristic society of tremendous wealth and prosperity, as well as national pride and sense of national identity.

Obviously, China could not have undergone the massive project of modernization that they’ve undergone since the death of Mao if it was a communist system. Communism, as we are aware, leads to mass starvation and general doom.

The Chinese system is called “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” The number one “Chinese characteristic” is “mercantilism,” which is basically the opposite of communism.

I doubt that even one in twenty Chinese people could explain to you any of the basic concepts of Marxist-Leninist theory. And they are well educated. The Chinese education system purposefully doesn’t teach about it, because everyone has a grandparent that has a horror story about the 1960s and the attempts at collectivization. This is not considered by the nation to be a definitive aspect of their society, but rather a weird experiment that went sideways.

As of right now, Xi Jinping is effectively the Emperor. There is really no difference between his role and the traditional role of the Emperor. He is following the Confucian ideal of “philosopher king,” even.

Every Chinese bookstore has books of his sayings on display, and every week he makes new philosophical statements about how you should love your family and be respectful to women and your co-workers.

The only relationship that China has to “communism” is some of the wholesome and cutesy aesthetics here and there.

Like this picture from the celebration:

(Note the lack of masks!)

But you say “what about the fact that it’s called the communist party????”

Well, actually, if you think it is called that, then you don’t understand the Chinese language.

It’s not really called that.

It is called: “中国共产党.”

Those are characters. Not letters and not really words. The entire structure of the language is totally different.

“中国” means “China” and “共产党” is translated as “communist party” in English. The word is “Gòngchǎndǎng.” That is “gong,” “chǎn” and “dǎng.” A direct translation, as it would be spoken in Chinese, would be “The Party of People Working Together to be Productive.” That is how it sounds in Chinese, and that is how people hear it in Chinese. In the Chinese mind, there is no reference to Marx, collectivization, abolition of property, or anything else that is associated with Marxist communism.

To give an example of how Chinese translations are manipulated – back in the 1950s up through the 1990s, the leader of China was called a “Chairman” in the English media. Then, when the West thought China was going to become a “democracy,” they all of a sudden changed the word to “President.” The word in Chinese, “主席,” remained the same. It means something like “the seat of the lord.”

But by changing the word from “Chairman” to “President” in the translated English media, it gave the impression that there was some massive political shift in China, that they had somehow rearranged their entire governmental system, and were no longer alien to us.

Now that China is an enemy again, I wouldn’t be surprised if they started calling Xi “Chairman” again. Of course, if they did that, people might ask if he’d changed his title, and then people would maybe start to figure out the way this translation issue is manipulated.

You should remember this fact every time you see one of these assholes on TV saying “CHINESE COMMUNISM.” They are purposefully trying to confuse you by dragging up imagery of boogiemen from the 20th century.

I hope that helps.

Andrew Anglin

A Republic…and We Lost It

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To say that we’re not functioning as a republic is not “throwing in the towel”. Human beings have free will and may resist or overthrow tyranny at any time. They did so in 1776. It has also happened at other places and at other times. People could do so again in 2021, 2022 or 3058. Our Constitution provides for a new convention of states, and secession (of counties, not only states) is a preferable alternative to the outright tyranny of additional lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, gun confiscation, massive wealth redistribution, chaotic open borders, rigged elections, selective enforcement of laws according to Party membership, defunding police, and all that is yet to come under the current anti-liberty regime. We can resist.

Nevertheless: We ARE living under a tyranny. Throwing in the towel would consist of saying, “It’s hopeless, man can never be free.” The last several hundred years show how close we can get to being free. It was a glorious era. Those alive today have lived at the peak of man’s finest hour, in terms of freedom and its benefits, such as the unparalleled prosperity of capitalism. But we can’t pretend we’re still a free people when clearly we no longer are. Self-delusion is not necessary to avoid “throwing in the towel”. As Ben Franklin reportedly said, he and the founders of the USA gave us a republic, “if you can keep it”. We have lost it. Stop pretending. But it will always be possible to get it back, now or whenever enough people choose to assert their freedom. Like they mean it.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Can a Liar Really be Victorious ?

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“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.” — AYN RAND

Please Stop Talking about Black People and White People’

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I am going to say it. 

Something that few people appear to be willing to say.

But yet, something almost everyone believes. 

Please stop talking about “White” people and “Black” people.

Millions of us just don’t care what color you are. 

This racist nonsense is destroying America. 

Please stop saying that “White people don’t see Black people as human beings.” — CNN’s Don Lemon.

Please stop saying that “racism is unconscious in everyone.” — Aruna Khillanani, speaker at Yale University who “fantasizes about killing white people with a bounce in her step.”null

Please stop calling people with lighter skin “psychopathic.” — BET’s Mark Lamont Hill.

Please stop talking about people who look different than you as being “less than” human — Comedian Nick Cannon.

Please stop your virtueless virtue signaling by posting emojis of an upraised Marxist fist in honor of a holiday that ironically stands for American freedom rather than the bondage of communism.

Please stop your smug self-elevation and feigned deprecation of pretending that just because you’re white, you are somehow “privileged.”  

Please stop your “humble” self-flagellation of “repenting for distant uncles and aunts (white) who lived in Tulsa” during a time of riots that they, and you, had nothing to do with … The Wesleyan Church’s JoAnne Lyon.

Please just stop.

Stop your racist rhetoric. Stop focusing on color. Stop destroying our unity. Stop dividing our nation. null

Your message is destructive. Your demagoguery is dangerous.  

In my book, “Grow Up: Life Isn’t Safe, but It’s Good,” I offer this:

“If you do not believe that there is a concerted effort to divide our nation, I have some oceanfront property in Nebraska to sell to you. Our intelligentsia — our country’s cultural and religious elites — think that if they can get Americans to focus on ourselves, our grievances, and our victimhood, that the nation’s very fabric can be taken apart strand by strand. Or, as Solomon told us, ‘A cord of three strands is not quickly broken,’ but a cord of one is defenseless. In other words, divide and conquer.” 

Evidence of this strategy is pervasive. In addition to the not-so-thinly veiled racism we see every day from secular talk heads, just look at the contemporary Church’s divisive rhetoric, such as what I cite above. The transparent enablement of us-against-them is rampant in our pulpits coast to coast. 

Sunday morning’s repeated homily from our religiously woke and righteous in one of segregation rather than integration. Theirs is a sermon that divides by race and gender and whatever else can balkanize us into competing groups with irreconcilable demands. Rather than warning of brimstone and fire, they pound their pulpits angrily about “us against them.”

The moralizing is shallow. The polity is immature. The piety is selfish. It is the antithesis of Christ’s admonition to die to self. It is the opposite of St. Paul’s call to set adolescent ways aside and “grow up.” 

Again, from my book “Grow Up: Life Isn’t Safe, but It’s Good”: 

“Adolescents are, by nature, individualistic and insular. Adults, to the contrary, see the wisdom of promoting unity rather than division, integration rather than segregation, us rather than me and mine, a United States rather than divided states. Adults care more about a common cause of personal righteousness than the divisive demands of personal rights. Adults see the value of hundreds of hands working together, rather than one person’s hand smugly clapping in midair.”

The church of all places should understand that our identity isn’t found in race or gender. It isn’t found in personal grievances or our narcissistic infatuations. What is so confusing about Saint Paul’s clear admonition that “we are neither Jewish nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, barbarians or Scythians,” but one in the body of Christ? 

The progressive fixation on color – on “black people” and “white people” will inevitably result in more exclusion rather than inclusion, more segregation rather than integration, more anger and resentment, more hate, move vice, less virtue, and much less love. Churches preaching this nonsense are pumping spiritual carcinogens into a cultural cancer that grows more malignant with each passing day. 

Do not let these people divide us.  

Strength is found in unity. 

A cord of one strand can be broken. A cord of three cannot. There is only one race, the human race. 

We are one nation under God, indivisible.

There is no “I” in team, and those who think there is always lose. 

• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery) and, most recently, “Grow Up: Life Isn’t Safe, But It’s Good” (Regnery, 2021).

Let’s Put Independence Back in Independence Day

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America’s cities and towns will soon fill with parades, fireworks, and barbecues. They will be celebrating the Fourth of July, the [246th] birthday of America. But one hopes that the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America’s leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created this country.

What we hear from politicians, intellectuals, and the media is that independence is passé, that we’ve reached a new age of “interdependence.” We hear demands for mandatory “volunteering” to serve others, for sacrifice to the nation. We hear demands from trust-busters that successful companies be punished for being “greedy” and not serving society. But this is not the message of America. It is the direct opposite of why America became a beacon of hope for the truly oppressed throughout the world. They have come here to escape poverty and dictatorship; they have come here to live their own lives, where they aren’t owned by the state, the community, or the tribe.

“Independence Day” is a critically important title. It signifies the fundamental meaning of this nation, not just of the holiday. The American Revolution remains unique in human history: a revolution–and a nation–founded on a moral principle, the principle of individual rights. Jefferson at Philadelphia, and Washington at Valley Forge, pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.” For what? Not for mere separation from England, not–like most rebels–for the “freedom” to set up their own tyranny. In fact, Britain’s tyranny over the colonists was mild compared to what most current governments do to their citizens.

Jefferson and Washington fought a war for the principle of independence, meaning the moral right of an individual to live his own life as he sees fit. Independence was proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence as the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” What are these rights? The right to life means that every individual has a right to his own independent life, that one’s life belongs to oneself, not to others to use as they see fit.

The right to liberty means the right to freedom of action, to act on one’s own judgment, the right not to have a gun pointed at one’s head and be forced to do what someone else commands. And the right to the pursuit of happiness means that an individual may properly pursue his own happiness, e.g., his own career, friends, hobbies, and not exist as a mere tool to serve the goals of others. The Founding Fathers did not proclaim a right to the attainment of happiness, knowing full well that such a policy would carry with it the obligation of others to make one happy and result in the enslavement of all to all. The Declaration of Independence was a declaration against servitude, not just servitude to the Crown but servitude to anyone. (That some signers still owned slaves does not negate the fact that they established the philosophy that doomed slavery.)

Political independence is not a primary. It rests on a more fundamental type of independence: the independence of the human mind. It is the ability of a human being to think for himself and guide his own life that makes political independence possible and necessary. The government as envisaged by the Founding Fathers existed to protect the freedom to think and to act on one’s thinking. If human beings were unable to reason, to think for themselves, there would be no autonomy or independence for a government to protect. It is this independence that defines the American Revolution and the American spirit.

To the Founding Fathers, there was no authority higher than the individual mind, not King George, not God, not society. Reason, wrote Ethan Allen, is “the only oracle of man,” and Thomas Jefferson advised us to “fix reason firmly in her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God.” That is the meaning of independence: trust in your own judgment, in reason; do not sacrifice your mind to the state, the church, the race, the nation, or your neighbors.

Independence is the foundation of America. Independence is what should be celebrated on Independence Day. That is the legacy our Founding Fathers left us. It is a legacy we should keep, not because it is a legacy, but because it is right and just. It has made America the freest and most prosperous country in history.

First published in Capitalism Magazine in 2007. Copyright 2007 Ayn Rand Institute. All rights reserved. A version of this article was first published in 2007. Capitalism Magazine is republishing it again because its message still remains relevant today.

Happiness and Serenity Don’t Flourish Under Dictatorship

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You cannot be psychologically healthy in an unfree society–especially in a dictatorship, which we are becoming. Mental health requires stability, reason, integrity. You need a government that will protect your physical self and property, as an absolute. Our present government does so selectively, as we’re seeing in cities where racist terrorists run free and others are fined or jailed for going to church or operating a business. Trump supporters who are nonviolent are arrested and prosecuted with “January 6” as the excuse, while violent thugs are lifted to the status of heroes.

This is not an atmosphere for serenity and rationality, two key components of mental health. The cultural and political elites are dividing us, pitting us against each other. I normally might like you, but I see you wearing a face diaper and know you’re an idiot. You might like me and benefit from knowing me; but your race and my race are different, and the elites have pounded into our psyches that we may only relate to each other as victim and victimizer–by virtue of race alone. The list goes on. It’s increasingly impossible to expect a mentally sane society, or even to aim for one, when so much in our government and cultural influences are rotten to the core.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Democrats Have Issued A Death Sentence for White America

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For the left, free speech was simply a means to gain power. The left claimed free speech for their subversive intentions. Now that they have achieved control on what can be said, denying freedom of speech to the rest of us is the way they control the narrative.

It is extraordinary that big business, long championed by conservatives and libertarians—the main groups whose speech is censored and suppressed often with lost of employment—is in league with the left in using censorship to control what Americans hear and think and in requiring white employees to submit to indoctrination that they are racists and must step aside for the black people they have oppressed.

You can see the “step aside” everywhere—university admissions, employment, promotion, the right to loot and burn down shopping districts of blue cities, and even in corporate advertisements. Despite the fact that white persons are still 60-70% of the US population only black models are used in corporate advertisements unless the corporations are pushing interracial marriage, which is a way to eliminate whiteness. In these ads the women are white and the men are black. https://counter-currents.com/2018/03/the-war-against-whites-in-advertising/.

It is certainly not more profitable to market to black persons than to white persons. It is as if US corporations do not want to reach white consumers in their ads. Anti-white ideologies have prevailed even over corporate greed! That should scare you to death.

Two decades ago when I pointed out that President George W. Bush’s assault on habeas corpus defied the US Constitution and returned Americans to the dungeons of the medieval era people were too focused on the “terrorist threat” to see the real threat.

No one wanted the US Constitution—a “mere scrap of paper” according to President Bush— to interfere with the “war on terror” and revenge on the Muslims who were framed in a false flag 9/11 in order that the Middle East could be destroyed for Israel.

When I pointed out that President Obama’s assertion of the power to execute American citizens on suspicion alone without due process of law amounted to murder by arbitrary power, no one wanted to hear any criticism of “America’s First Black President.” Criticism of Obama was considered racism.

Now it is the First Amendment that is being banned as racist. Free speech allows people to speak facts. But facts contrary to the ideological narrative are racist and cannot be spoken. In destroyed America today wokes even forbid the use of gender pronouns. If you call a female “female” or “her” you are in violation of speech codes, have committed a hate crime against transgendered, and are a candidate for being censored and cancelled.

And this country is said to be “indispensable,” “the light of the world,” the arbiter of truth and freedom, the hope of the world even as the US Constitution, which once gave hope to the world, is destroyed.

In America today white Americans no longer have the protection of the US Constitution. White Americans are oppressors to be “eliminated” in order that black people can escape oppression.

If you want to see your near future, read The Camp of the Saints.

America has failed itself as a country and its people as citizens. There is no community, no unity. White liberals in blue states look down on Republicans in red states as “white supremacists,” “domestic terrorists,” and misogynists. Blacks and “people of color” are taught by white liberals to hate white people. Blue school boards require critical race theory—a denunciation of white people and Western civilization—to be programmed into kids in taxpayer funded public schools and universities. The private schools and universities also preach the evils of whiteness.

Today in the Disunited States the main function of public and private education is the demonization of white people and Western civilization. Instead of being enculturated, American youth are taught hatred of their country and guilt for being white. They are brainwashed against themselves and their country.

The US, to which the allegiance of its population is being destroyed, masquerades as a superpower, the exceptional country whose hegemony is justified by its exceptionalism.

But this alleged “exceptionalism” is belied by the US teaching its soldiers, the main fighting component of which consists of white males, that they are racist, misogynist pigs who oppress and abuse women and blacks. If the indoctrination succeeds, how can this military force oppress people of color in the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America?

If this indoctrination does not succeed, how can the anti-Americans in Washington who rule us expect a white male military, whom Washington has shown that it hates, to fight for Washington?

Is appointing a black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff enough? Are officers’ hopes of making major and lieutenant general, and becoming in retirement consultants to the Pentagon and defense contractors enough?

Will they all sell out their country for money?

Where are the Smedley Butlers today?

The United States is the Constitution. If the Constitution is destroyed, the United States is destroyed. That destruction is almost complete.

Separate School and State

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For the life of me, I just cannot understand why so many Americans favor public (i.e., government) schooling. Everyone knows that government produces the worst of everything and that the free market produces the best of everything. So, why leave something as important as the education of one’s child in the hands of the government? 

It’s not a matter of whether public schoolteachers and administrators are dedicated, competent, and passionate about their work. It’s about a bad system. When you have a bad system and good teachers, the bad system is ultimately going to win out. 

It is impossible to measure the damage that is done to children’s minds in public schooling. Every child from birth to six years of age has an instinctive desire to learn. Children have a natural awe of the universe, looking around wide-eyed and absorbing everything they see or hear. 

That comes to a halt when children enter the public-schooling system. That’s because the system slowly but surely smashes it out of them. A natural desire to learn is replaced by a mindset of regimentation, obedience to orders and commands, and deference to authority. By the time children graduate high school, they hate school and can’t wait to get out. 

The state’s education system is really army-lite. The system is based on conscription, in that parents are forced to submit their children to it. Sure, some people can afford private schools, but oftentimes such schools are simply a privatized version of public schooling, especially since they have to maintain a state license to stay in existence. Homeschooling is an option for some parents but even they oftentimes have to get their teaching approved by state officials. Most parents default to the public-school system.

Some children manifest a natural revulsion against the system. State officials diagnose them with attention deficit disorder and prescribe drugs. Unfortunately, characterized by the deference to authority mindset that was inculcated in them by their public schools, many parents go along with this. The child becomes a drugged automaton who gradually gets his mind “straight.”

How can parents do this to their children? I find it totally befuddling. It’s got to be that they just don’t realize what is happening, That’s because they themselves are products of the system.

None of this should surprise anyone. Public schooling is one gigantic socialist system, and everyone knows the type of shoddy products and services that socialism produces. Like other socialist systems, the state centrally plans the education of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people. Central planning is a core feature of socialism. It produces what Ludwig von Mises called “planned chaos.” What better term to describe public schooling?

The textbooks, curriculum, and class schedule are selected by the government. The government determines when the bells are going to ring, signaling that it’s now time to change classes. Woe to the student who fails to comply.

Funding of public schooling is through the coercive apparatus of taxation. How good can a system be when people have to be forced to fund it? 

Genuine education is a seeking process. People become passionate about something and they devote their efforts to learning about it. In the process, they become exposed to other things. Public schooling, on the other hand, is a cramming and memorization process. Students quickly learn that what matters are grades, not learning. 

In a free-market educational system, entrepreneurs would be competing against each other to provide the best educational vehicles for children. Parents would have an array of constantly improving educational products and services from which to choose. Parents would be free to treat each child as a unique individual and tailor his education accordingly. 

A free, independent-thinking, and educated society necessarily depends on the separation of school and state, just as our ancestors separated church and state. A free-market educational system would be the best thing that could ever happen to us.

This post was written by: Jacob G. Hornberger

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.