In terms of results in the measurable form of jobs created, lives enriched, communities built, living standards raised, and poverty healed, a handful of capitalists has done infinitely more for mankind than all the self-serving politicians, academics, social workers, and religionists who march under the banner of compassion.—Nathaniel Branden
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/uEo3rnU12jw
Top pathologist Dr. Roger Hodkinson told government officials in Alberta during a zoom conference call that the current coronavirus crisis is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”
Hodkinson’s comments were made during a discussion involving the Community and Public Services Committee and the clip was subsequently uploaded to YouTube.
Noting that he was also an expert in virology, Hodkinson pointed out that his role as CEO of a biotech company that manufactures COVID tests means, “I might know a little bit about all this.”
“There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians, it’s outrageous, this is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public,” said Hodkinson.
The doctor said that nothing could be done to stop the spread of the virus besides protecting older more vulnerable people and that the whole situation represented “politics playing medicine, and that’s a very dangerous game.”
Hodkinson remarked that “social distancing is useless because COVID is spread by aerosols which travel 30 meters or so before landing,” as he called for society to be re-opened immediately to prevent the debilitating damage being caused by lockdowns.
Hodkinson also slammed mandatory mask mandates as completely pointless.
“Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever,” he said.
“Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue signalling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous. Seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people – I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense – seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge base to put the mask on their face.”
The doctor also slammed the unreliability of PCR tests, noting that “positive test results do not, underlined in neon, mean a clinical infection,” and that all testing should stop because the false numbers are “driving public hysteria.”
Hodkinson said that the risk of death in the province of Alberta for people under the age of 65 was “one in three hundred thousand,” and that it was simply “outrageous” to shut down society for what the doctor said “was just another bad flu.”
“I’m absolutely outraged that this has reached this level, it should all stop tomorrow,” concluded Dr. Hodkinson.
Hodkinson’s credentials are beyond question, with the MedMalDoctors website affirming his credibility.
“He received his general medical degrees from Cambridge University in the UK (M.A., M.B., B. Chir.) where he was a scholar at Corpus Christi College. Following a residency at the University of British Columbia he became a Royal College certified general pathologist (FRCPC) and also a Fellow of the College of American Pathologists (FCAP).”
“He is in good Standing with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, and has been recognized by the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta as an expert in pathology.”
In case the above video gets deleted by YouTube, a backup via Bitchute is available here.
Paul Joseph Watson
ACCORDING to his biographer, Mary Sennholtz, “Leonard Read was one of the most notable social philosophers of our time. His name will forever be associated with the rebirth of the freedom philosophy.” In Gary North’s words, “the libertarian movement … can be traced to Read’s vision.”
The primary reason for those evaluations is that in 1946, when the prospects for freedom in the world were bleak, Leonard Read established the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), which North called “The granddaddy of all libertarian organizations,” and which inspired the formation of many other free-market organizations throughout the world. As not just FEE’s founder and leader but its heart and soul, Leonard Read traveled widely giving speeches, produced a wide array of pro-freedom pamphlets, and participated in hundreds of seminars to advance individual liberty—self-ownership and the solely voluntary arrangements it enabled.
He also wrote prolifically, including almost 30 books. And the core of his message was summarized well by Jacob Hornberger: Leonard Read took an absolutely uncompromising approach to the principles of freedom. He argued that man’s purpose on earth, whatever it is, requires the widest possible ambit for human growth and maturation. Therefore, he believed, a person should be free to do whatever he wants in life as long as it is peaceful.
Read’s foundation for his beliefs came from moral philosophy. As described by Bettina Bien Greaves: He reasoned that if it is moral to respect the life and property of individuals, then it is immoral to violate their rights to life and property; if it is moral to deal peacefully with others, then it is immoral to use force, fraud, or threat of force to impose one’s wishes on others; if voluntary transactions among private-property owners are moral, then to hinder or prevent voluntary transactions among willing traders is immoral.
No one, neither private individual nor public agency, should take property by force or coercion from one person for the benefit of another. These principles led Read logically to believe in the morality of private-property rights, a free-market economy, and free trade, and to the conviction that government intervention that violates private property, hampers free markets, and interferes with free trade is immoral.
Consider the following selection of Leonard Read’s shorter wisdom on liberty: We do not want nor can the people prosper under any form of governmental planned economy. The rise of civilized societies is the result of freedom.
In an essentially free society … no person imposes his will by force upon any other person … then knowledge, ideas, insights are free to emerge from many millions of potential sources. Creativity, in this event, has no external inhibition! Not enough knowledge exists in any discrete individual to rule a single person, let alone a society.
When the responsibility for one’s own welfare is surrendered to government, it follows that the authority to conduct one’s life goes where the responsibility is reposed.
Before a life can be valued for its own sake—not simply a means to someone else’s goal—that life must retain its own power to choose, along with its own quality, its own dignity.
Doing politically what we reject doing individually in no manner alters the immorality of the act; it merely legalizes the wrong … to anyone who believes in the right to life and to one’s honestly acquired property—no moral absolution is gained by legislation.
The person who attempts by force to direct or rearrange the creative activities of others is in a very real sense a slave-master. Given … the unrestrained freedom to act creatively … there will be as much good done by each for others as there is good within us to give.
Justice and so-called social justice are opposites … to promote the latter is to retard the former.
Speaking from the Republican National Committee in Washington D.C. Thursday afternoon, Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell detailed foreign corruption behind Dominion Voting Systems, the same software used during the 2020 presidential election in the United States.
“There is no doubt it has been used to alter elections in other countries,” Powell said, explaining the system was developed at the direction of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez to remain in power.
“The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election…we have one very strong witness who has explained how it all works. This affidavit is attached…it is a stunning, detailed affidavit because he was with Hugo Chavez when he was being briefed on how it works,” Powell said. “He has seen it operate and as soon as he saw the multiple states shut down the voting the night of the election he knew the same thing was happening here.”
During the 2020 presidential election, Powell alleges Dominion voting systems were used to flip votes from Trump to Biden.
“One of its most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden,” Powell said. “Notably, the Dominion executives are nowhere to be found now. They’re moving their offices overnight to different places. Their office in Toronto was shared with one of the Soros entities.”
As far as where the campaign goes from here, Powell explained the legal team isn’t giving up and in fact, is just getting started.
“This is stunning, heartbreaking, infuriating and the most unpatriotic acts I can even imagine for people in this country to have participated in, in any way, shape or form. And I want the American public to know right now, we will not be intimidated. American patriots are fed up with the corruption from the local level to the highest level of our government and we are going to take this country back. We are not going to be intimidated. We are not going to back down,” she continued. “We are going to clean this mess up now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it and we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom.”
Katie Pavlich, Townhall
Libertarians tend to have two special character traits.
First, we’re a bit contrarian. We stand alone, if we must.
Second, we’re logically consistent. We cannot stand hypocrisy.
In our quest for intellectual consistency, we seek principles. In human action, we seek moral consistency. In other words, we seek to live by those principles.
Our principles guide us. They help us sort out tough situations before all the data arrives. Here are some of the more common principles libertarians live by…
The Self-Ownership Principle: Each person owns themselves. If someone else owns you, you’re a slave.
Zero Aggression Principle: It is always wrong to initiate force to achieve a social or political goal.
Law of Equal Liberty: Each person is free to do what he or she wills, so long as they don’t infringe on the equal freedom of another.
Natural Law: The Creator endows each person with rights, at birth, so we must all respect those rights in others (see: The Declaration of Independence)
Maybe your preferred principle is not listed here. But chances are, that principle, as well as the ones listed above, are…
Personally chosen statements of behavior.
In other words, these principles represent your values. You selected them as an expression of your ethics. Since you chose them, you also enforce them. But we all slip sometimes. Hopefully, you’re forgiving of yourself in those moments where you don’t live up to values.
Likewise, when others around you do not embrace and abide by them, those principles are non-binding.
But there is a “higher principle” for society. It’s higher because it can be repeatedly observed in nature. It’s the Principle of
Human Respect…
Human happiness, harmony, and prosperity diminish when a person experiences violence, theft, or fraud.
This principle, unlike the others, has an “If X, then Y” relationship. In other words, when violence is used to achieve a personal, social, or political goal, the socially desirable benefits of human happiness, social peace, and/or wealth decline. You can test that proposition.
Let’s be clear, each of the principles listed above is wonderful. But the Principle of Human Respect identifies a “cause and effect” relationship that is as consistent and observable as gravity.
Nearly all political philosophies resort to coercive force to achieve their Utopias. Libertarians uniquely recognize that it’s wrong, on both an individual and a political level, to use threats backed by violence to pursue your (conservative or progressive) goals.
Only the Principle of Human Respect explains why we’d be happier and more at peace if everyone lived by any of the libertarian “principles.”
———-
Jim Babka is the Editor-at-Large for Advocates for Self-Government and the co-creator of the Zero Aggression Project.
The US welfare state is much larger than commonly believed. The federal government alone funds and operates more than 100 anti‐poverty or welfare programs, at a cost of more than $700 billion annually. State and local governments contribute an additional $300 billion to these programs, meaning we spend more than $1 trillion per year on welfare. In fact, since Lyndon Johnson first declared “war on poverty” in 1965, anti‐poverty programs have cost taxpayers more than $23 trillion (on an inflation‐adjusted basis).
The question isn’t whether all this spending reduced many of the worst deprivations of material poverty. Of course it did, and does. As George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen notes, under most classical economic theories, “a gift of cash always makes individuals better off.” $23 trillion is a huge sum of money by any measure. Regardless of how dim a view one takes of government competence in general, it would be virtually impossible for the government to spend $23 trillion without benefiting at least some poor people.
Measurements of poverty that fully account for welfare benefits, both cash and non‐cash, show that the real poverty rate is far lower than the official census‐bureau estimates. And, even a quick eye test shows that the sort of deep poverty that was widespread as recently as the 1960s–where large numbers of the poor lacked electricity or running water, or where malnutrition was widespread–has been all but eliminated.
This has led some to argue for continuing or even expanding the welfare state. But that would be the wrong lesson to draw. There remain ample reasons to question our current approach to fighting poverty.Among them:
Given the escalating cost of anti‐poverty programs, it is fair to ask, even if those programs provide short‐term benefits to the poor, whether they are sustainable into the future without seriously endangering economic growth. After all, one cannot redistribute wealth that doesn’t exist.
Even if welfare spending is a relatively small portion of overall federal spending, especially when compared with programs for the elderly like Social Security, Medicare, it nonetheless imposes a significant burden in the form of taxes or debt. Measured as a percentage of GDP, federal welfare spending has increased more than fivefold, from just 0.83 percent of GDP in 1965 to 4.4 percent today.
Moreover, even if future welfare spending can be accommodated without increasing debt or taxes, such spending will likely occur at the expense of other forms of government spending that are more likely to lead to economic growth. Most social welfare spending is pure consumption‐based spending, rather than anything that could even tangentially be considered an investment. As such, it is far less stimulative of future growth.
Finally, as Tyler Cowen points out, both the poor and taxpaying non‐poor will reduce their labor force participation in a welfare state. As a result, future economic growth may be slower than it has been in the past. Any policy that encourages more otherwise‐able workers to drop out of the labor force would further slow growth.
Hundreds of years of history show that a growing economy lifts more people out of poverty that any government program. Yet, the welfare state perversely reduces that growth. This means not only more impoverished people in the future, but also fewer resources with which to provide welfare benefits. That, in turn, means higher taxes or debt, which will further slow growth, and so on, in a vicious cycle. Thus, even if we agreed that our current welfare policies were beneficial and wished to continue them, they may not be economically optimal.
As noted above, the federal government alone runs more than 100 anti‐poverty programs. Some 70 of these provide benefits directly to individuals, while the remainder are targeted to low‐income communities. On top of this, there are a multitude of state and local programs. These programs come with overlapping (and often contradictory) eligibility rules, work requirements, and other restrictions, rendering the American welfare state a patchwork system of unaccountability and opaqueness.
It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to determine which programs are effective and which are not, a problem compounded by their being overseen by at least nine cabinet departments, six independent agencies, and dozens of congressional committees. Moreover, the systems complexity can mean that similarly situated individuals can receive wildly different benefits, based solely on their ability to navigate the system. And, while fraud and abuse are smaller than many believe, there is still far too much waste and duplication.
It seems obvious that a successful welfare state would promote–or at least not inhibit–behaviors that have been proven successful at lifting people out of poverty and reducing long‐term dependence, notably work and marriage. However, our existing welfare programs too often create precisely the wrong set of incentives.
Take work, for example. The interplay of taxes, welfare benefits, and the costs of employment can mean that someone leaving welfare for a job faces some of the highest marginal tax rates of any group. As soon as an individual earns outside income, welfare benefits begin to phase out. At the same time, the new worker must now pay taxes (payroll taxes, for instance, start with the first dollar of income). And, the worker will now incur expenses for such things as transportation, work clothing, and child care. In some states with very high welfare benefits, people can actually be left worse off financially in the short term by taking an entry‐level job.
It is impossible to walk through many poor neighborhoods, from inner cities to isolated rural communities, and believe that our welfare system is working the way it should. These are areas where the government has spent heavily to reduce poverty. A high percentage of residents are receiving some form of government assistance. And as a result, the poor may well be better off financially than they would be in the absence of government aid. Yet no one could honestly describe those communities or the people living in them as thriving or flourishing in any sense of the word. By that measure, at least, our welfare programs are a failure.
Perhaps The Economist put it best:
If reducing poverty just amounts to ushering Americans to a somewhat less meagre existence, it may be a worthwhile endeavor but is hardly satisfying. The objective, of course, should be a system of benefits that encourages people to work their way out of penury, and an economy that does not result in so many people needing welfare in the first place. Any praise for the efficacy of safety nets must be tempered by the realization that, for one reason or another, these folks could not make it on their own.
If we were to consider welfare according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we do a mostly successful job of tending to the base of the pyramid–people’s essential physiological needs. Nearly all Americans have food, shelter, clothing, and so on. But the higher up the pyramid we go, the less our welfare programs accomplish. In the end, we do next to nothing to assist people with needs on the social, ego, or self‐actualization levels.
That is because satisfying those needs requires a degree of autonomy and self‐sufficiency that is compromised by reliance on government assistance. People cannot be said to have control over their own lives if they are perpetually dependent on others.
Adding to this, welfare programs are painfully paternalistic. The vast majority of welfare is provided not in the form of cash, but as “in‐kind” benefits like food, housing, or health care. The government decides how the poor should budget or spend their money. Moreover, legislators often attach a variety of demeaning conditions to benefits. Work requirements are widespread, and might even be justified, but some state legislators also have attached restrictions preventing the poor from purchasing seafood or limiting the number of daily ATM withdrawals they can make.
Finally, we should recognize that welfare is not the only way to help the poor. It is possible to achieve similar or even greater levels of poverty reduction through other mechanisms.
For example, private charity is capable not only of dealing with material poverty but can often do a better job of dealing with underlying problems. Americans, after all, are extraordinarily generous. In 2015, we donated $373 billion to charity. Roughly $265 billion of that, or fully 71 percent, was given by individuals (the rest came from corporations, foundations, and other organizations). More than 83 percent of adult Americans make some charitable contribution each year. True, a substantial portion of that giving went to entities like universities, hospitals, and the arts, rather than to direct human services to the poor. But even so, Americans voluntarily gave tens of billions of dollars to help the poor. And it wasn’t just money. We also donated more than 3.2 million hours of our time. Roughly 65 percent of Americans perform some form of volunteer work. And that doesn’t include the countless hours given informally to help friends, family members, neighbors, and others outside the formal charity system.
Additional giving may be necessary to replace the welfare state, of course, but numerous studies have documented a “displacement effect,” whereby government programs crowd out private giving. For example, a comparison of charitable giving across countries confirms the finding that government welfare spending reduces private charitable efforts. Among rich countries, those with lower social expenditures as a share of the economy see a higher portion of their population donate to charity.
At the same time, other reforms–of education, of the criminal justice system, of barriers to economic participation–can reduce the need for welfare. Nothing will do more to reduce poverty than allowing the poor to become full participants in a growing economy.
Libertarians share a goal with those across the ideological spectrum: to reduce poverty and enable every American to rise as far as their individual talents will take them. Our answer to poverty has largely been to create more and more programs, while throwing more and more money at the problem. That has failed to truly empower the poor. There are better alternatives.
Michael D. Tanner
You present to a physician with severe abdominal pain. He examines you and concludes that your ingrown toenails are the cause of your abdominal distress. He prescribes that you soak your feet in warm water but that does not bring relief to your abdominal pain. Then he suggests that you apply antibiotics to your feet. Still no relief. Then the physician suggests that you wear sandals instead of shoes. Still no relief. The point of this story is that your toenails can be treated until the cows come home, but if there is improper diagnosis, then you are still going to have your abdominal pain.
The former superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, Meria Carstarphen, last year said, “White students are nearly 4.5 grade levels ahead of their black peers within Atlanta Public Schools.” In San Francisco, 70% of white students are proficient in math; for black students, it is 12% — a gap of 58%. In Washington, D.C., 83% of white students scored proficient in reading, as did only 23% of black students — a gap of 60%. In Philadelphia, 47% of black students scored below basic in math and 42% scored below basic in reading. In Baltimore, 59% of black students scored below basic in math and 49% in reading. In Detroit, 73% of black students scored below basic in math and 56% in reading.
“Below basic” is the score a student receives when he is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and grade level skills. How much can racism explain this? To do well in school, someone must make a kid do his homework, get a good night’s rest, have breakfast and mind the teacher. If these basic family functions are not performed, it makes little difference how much money is put into education the result will be disappointing.
In 2019, the racial breakdown of high school seniors who took the ACT college entrance exam and met its readiness benchmarks was 62% of Asians, 47% of whites, 23% of Hispanics and 11% of blacks. That helps explain a 2016 study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce “African Americans: College Majors and Earnings.” It found that black college students were highly concentrated in lower-paying and less academically demanding majors like administrative services and social work. They are much less likely than other students to major in science, technology, engineering and math, even though blacks in these fields earned as much as 50% more than blacks who earned a bachelor’s degree in art or psychology and social work.
James D. Agresti, the president and co-founder of Just Facts has just published an article titled “Social Ills That Plague African Americans Coincide with Leftism, Not Racism.” Agresti writes: “Among all of the afflictions that disproportionately impact people of color, violence may be the worst. In 2018, blacks comprised 13% of the U.S. population but roughly 53% of the 16,000 murder victims.” The clearance rate for murders, where a suspect was identified and charged, declined from 92% in 1960 to 62% in 2018. For example, in Chicago, the clearance rate fell from 96% in 1964 to 45% in 2018. In Baltimore, the 2019 clearance rate was 32%. In 2015, when Baltimore experienced the highest per-capita murder rate in its history, the average homicide suspect had been previously arrested more than nine times. When crimes remain unsolved, it gives criminals free range and black people are their primary victims. By the way, most law enforcement occurs at the local level. The governments at these local levels are typically dominated by Democrats.
According to statistics about fatherless homes, 90% of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes; 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father figure; 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes; 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes; and 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions have no father. Furthermore, fatherless boys and girls are twice as likely to drop out of high school and twice as likely to end up in jail. Dr. Thomas Sowell has argued, “The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.”
The bottom line is that while every vestige of racial discrimination has not been eliminated, today’s discrimination cannot go very far in explaining the problems faced by a large segment of the black community.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.
Biden has appointed a radical slavery reparations advocate to his Treasury Department transition team. Mehrsa Baradaran, a UCLA professor, advocates reparations as the way to correct “white supremacy.” As I have reported, scholars have concluded that there are probably as many and perhaps more white descendants of slaves in the US than black descendants.
Baradaran misuses the word, “reparations.” Reparations are what a harmed person is paid by the person that harmed them. No living white person has ever owned a slave, and no living black American has ever been a slave. So what Baradaran is advocating is that white Americans be dispossessed so that black Americans can take their assets. In other words, she is advocating a racist act of theft. Her racism against white Americans has not kept her off of Biden’s Treasury transition team or from being a UCLA professor who brainwashes students. As the Democrats intend to open the floodgates of nonwhite immigration, every person of color who enters the US will benefit from the dispossession of white Americans.
But as I also have told you. Facts no longer matter in America. They do not matter in the universities and educational system any more than they do in the media and politics. We live in a world spun out of lies concocted to demonize white people. The punishment for telling the truth is to be cancelled, which is what has happened to the few honest journalists and professors and is what is happening right now to President Trump. White Americans are so brainwashed that they sit there sucking their thumbs while a coup unfolds before their eyes.
Democrats are dumping huge amounts of money into the runoffs for the US Senate in Georgia. Having stolen the presidential election, if the Democrats take these seats, the Democrats will have the entire government, and what is left of the US will be dismantled.
Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ
THOMAS Paine played a central role in the American Revolution. As John Adams said, “without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.” Common Sense was the most widely read pamphlet of the American Revolution. And Paine’s Crisis essays were read by a larger fraction of the population than now watch the Super Bowl.
Its first essay (opening with “These are the times that that try men’s souls”) was read aloud in every army camp. Paine’s writings, which presented “principles … on which government ought to be erected,” inspired Washington to abandon his allegiance to Britain, Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln in ending slavery. But given how far government today deviates from those principles, we might best honor him by remembering them.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Of more worth is one honest man to society … than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices … a punisher.
Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. freedom and security. Were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver, but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by thesame prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least.
Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and the greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind. Governments … pervert the abundance which civilized life produces.… It affords to them pretenses for power and revenue, for which there would be neither occasion nor apology, if the circle of civilization were rendered complete.
Those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.
A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation … must be either delegated, or assumed.… All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation.
We still feel the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches property as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute.
When…[government] operates to create and increase wretchedness in any of the parts of society, it is on a wrong system, and reformation is necessary. When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.
Everywhere one looks there are warning signs, from labels on cigarette packs warning that smoking causes cancer, to ridiculous labels on thermometers that read, “Once used rectally, the thermometer should not be used orally.”
Associate Justice Samuel Alito has delivered some serious warnings that too often are ignored by many who believe the freedoms we enjoy are inviolable.
In an address last week to the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention, Alito touched on several subjects, including COVID, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, free speech, and “bullying” of the Supreme Court by U.S. senators.
Alito made a case for how each issue contains elements that contribute to a slow erosion of our liberties. On tolerance, preached but not often practiced by the left, Alito said: “…tolerance for opposing views is now in short supply in many law schools, and in the broader academic community. When I speak with recent law school graduates, what I hear over and over is that they face harassment and retaliation if they say anything that departs from the law school orthodoxy.” This is not a new revelation, but it bears repeating.
While acknowledging the deaths, hospitalizations, and unemployment caused by COVID, Alito warned: “The pandemic has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty. Now, notice what I am not saying or even implying, I am not diminishing the severity of the virus’s threat to public health. … I’m not saying anything about the legality of COVID restrictions. Nor am I saying anything about whether any of these restrictions represent good public policy. I’m a judge, not a policymaker. All that I’m saying is this. And I think it is an indisputable statement of fact, we have never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive and prolonged as those experienced, for most of 2020.”
Where does this lead? Alito answered when he spoke of “…the dominance of lawmaking by executive fiat rather than legislation. The vision of early 20th-century progressives and the new dealers of the 1930s was the policymaking would shift from narrow-minded elected legislators, to an elite group of appointed experts, in a word, the policymaking would become more scientific. That dream has been realized to a large extent. Every year administrative agencies acting under broad delegations of ‘authority’ churn out huge volumes of regulations that dwarfs the statutes enacted by the people’s elected representatives. And what have we seen in the pandemic sweeping restrictions imposed for the most part, under statutes that confer enormous executive discretion?”
Alito cited a Nevada case that came before the Court: “Under that law, if the governor finds that there is, quote, a natural technological or manmade emergency, or disaster of major proportions, the governor can perform and exercise such functions, powers and duties as are necessary to promote and secure the safety and protection of the civilian population. To say that this provision confers broad discretion would be an understatement.”
Restrictions on how we are told to celebrate Thanksgiving would be another example.
On the erosion of religious liberty, he said: “It pains me to say this, but in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored, right.” As evidence he mentioned how we have moved from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed by Congress in 1993 to the recent persecution by the Obama administration of The Little Sisters of the Poor for their refusal to include contraceptives in their health insurance. The Catholic nuns prevailed in a 7-2 court ruling, but Alito believes the threat to the free exercise of religion remains all too real.
There is much more in his address that should be read in its entirety. Alito’s warnings ring true, but are we listening?
Cal Thomas, townhall.com
