“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 by 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 every thing its value.”

“The Crisis,” by Thomas Paine, 1776

We on the Right never organized to save this country like the Left did to destroy it. They burned, looted, censored, persecuted, silenced, cancelled but they were organized. We, by contrast and with several notable exceptions, thought that a few good men (and women) could turn the tide. But we cannot because we didn’t organize the tide. We had individuals, not organizations and now we are suffering for it. People like Shapiro, Bongino, Levin, Peterson, and a few staunch conservatives in Congress couldn’t rally the troops enough to change things.

We’re too comfortable and now it’s getting very uncomfortable, with the Marxists tyrants in America going after our guns, our bank accounts, our children, and our liberty. This American experiment is coming to an end unless there is a new birth of patriotism, perhaps with blood, that is organized against the tyranny of the Left.

— J.C. Raines, writing in the comments section of The American Thinker

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With each new Trump indictment, the left’s strategy becomes increasingly clear. It isn’t to bring real criminal charges based on actual violations of the law, or to see justice applied equally and fairly even to a powerful person like Trump. The strategy is to demonstrate power and thereby humiliate and discourage Trump supporters by showing them how powerless they are.

Another aspect of this strategy, as James Lindsay explained in a Twitter thread Tuesday, is to provoke the right into reacting. This is what Lindsay calls “leftist dialectical political warfare,” or, in Trump’s case, “Operation Poke the Bear.” The purpose of such warfare, says Lindsay, is to provoke a reaction that would justify the further consolidation of power on the left.

[from The Federalist]

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…[T]the Democrat effort to criminalize their political enemies has reached its climax in 2023. Republicans have sat and watched as four separate indictments have come down from three separate prosecutors, all with the same purpose: imprisoning Donald Trump and as many of his political allies as they can get away with. Monday’s indictment out of Fulton County, Georgia, is the most extreme yet, seeking to ensnare not just Trump but 18 of his associates for the “crime” of contesting the 2020 election through the courts and legislative process.

The goal of all these indictments is simple: rig the 2024 election in the court system before a single ballot can even be cast, and criminalize the MAGA political movement Trump has built.

[Charlie Kirk]

It’s August. Many young people head off to college.

This year, fortunately, fewer will go.

I say “fortunately” because college is now an overpriced scam.

Overpriced, because normal incentives to be frugal and make smart judgements about who should go to college were thrown out when the federal government took over granting student loans.

Why?

Because our government basically vomits money at everyone who applies.

If private lenders gave out the loans, they’d look at whether they were likely to be paid back. They’d ask questions like: “What will you study? You really think majoring in dance will lead to a job that will pay you enough to allow you to pay us back?”

Government rarely asks these questions. Bureaucrats throw money at students. Many don’t benefit. Many shouldn’t even be going to college. Today, nearly half of the students given loans don’t graduate even after six years.

Many feel like failures.

College is good for people who want to be college professors or who major in fields like engineering and computer science that might lead to good jobs. But that’s not most people. Government loans encourage everyone to go to college, even if they’re not very interested in academics.

Government’s handouts also invite colleges to keep raising tuition. Over the past 50 years, college cost rose at four times the rate of inflation. Four times!

Years ago, I reported how colleges were suddenly wasting money on luxuries like fancy gyms and even day spas. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that it’s gotten worse: The University of Oklahoma bought a monastery in Italy for study abroad students! The University of Kentucky built a theater where students play video games.

“Why not raise tuition?” asks the typical college president. “Uncle Sam pays the bill!”

When I went to Princeton, tuition was $2,000. Now its $60,000.

Colleges have little incentive to cut costs or innovate. Princeton still “teaches” by having professors lecture. Super boring. I slept through many.

Although today, I guess I should thank Princeton because its tedious lectures inspired me to try to find better ways to present information. That made me successful on TV.

Today, student loan borrowers owe tens of thousands of dollars. Last year, the president announced he would cancel up to $20,000 of that debt per person.

Indebted students loved that! A group named the Student Debt Crisis Center called that “a major win for many.”

But it would be a major loss for many more! Canceling debt is unfair to the people who work hard and pay off their debts.

Fortunately, Biden’s plan was struck down by the Supreme Court, which said only Congress has the right to cancel student debt. Congress didn’t.

Now Biden’s trying again. The administration announced they will forgive debt for anyone who’s been making payments for more than 20 years. That’s better, but still bad. Maybe courts will stop this handout, too.

College students take on loans and spend decades in debt because they believe they must get a degree to be hired. But that’s no longer true. IBM, Accenture, Dell, Bank of America, Google and other big companies, recognizing the uselessness of many undergraduate degrees, recently dropped college-degree requirements. So have state governments in Maryland, Utah, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Alaska, North Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia.

Good jobs in the trades, like welding and plumbing, don’t require a college degree. Trade school programs often take less than two years and cost much less than college.

To have a good life or get a good job, you don’t need fancy dining halls, video game auditoriums or a college degree.

College has become a government-subsidized rip-off. It’s good that fewer people go.

John Stossel

People ask me all the time, “So what’s better? Psychiatric drugs or talk therapy?” Regular visitors to this page know that ideas and thoughts are the cause of emotions and actions, and that psychiatric drugs cannot be the primary tool for correcting negative thoughts or actions. At best, they might help to “even out” emotional instability while the client works to correct misguided ideas.

Interestingly, when meds and talk therapy are combined, it’s difficult to determine which contributes more to the subject’s improvement. Many years ago, a client told me, “It’s better to swim with the current than against the current. Psychiatric medication might help me swim with the current, but if I’m going to get anywhere, I still have to swim.” And therein lies the key. Medication is secondary, and the mind must continue to think and function in order for flawed ideas to be changed. Indeed, with or without drugs, I still work together with my clients to correct misguided and false ideas.

Sadly, medication is often prescribed in an effort to bypass that process. A psychiatrist might spend five minutes with a patient, decide the patient is depressed, and prescribe medication. Often, the doctor doesn’t talk with the patient about his or her problems, and might not even refer the patient to a psychotherapist who can get a better idea of what’s going on. This conveys to the patient the false idea that medication is the first and only option.

If, in fact, drugs do “even out” emotional instability while the person takes responsibility for thinking, then the medical path is all well and good. But in almost 35 years of professional counseling, very few people have ever told me that their medication helps, and more have said that it either doesn’t help or that it makes things worse.

Sadly, all of this can lead the patient to believe that he has no responsibility for his mental functioning, and therefore no control over it; thus triggering a vicious cycle of more anxiety and/or depression. If someone simply told him that medication is, at best, a way to calm him so he can think more effectively, he would be a lot better off.

I’m not against anything — medication or whatever — that objectively helps. What I am against is the idea of biological determinism, i.e., that biology is destiny, that genetics and brain physiology determine everything about a person. If this were true, a doctor could just prescribe medication for everything; pretending that the patient’s attitudes and behaviors have nothing to do with how she feels. That sense of helplessness would be more depressing and anxiety-provoking than anything the patient was probably thinking in the first place.

People sometimes tell me, “I’m taking these pills and I’m doing better. But I’m not sure if it’s the medicine or the counseling that’s helping. Or, maybe I’m better because the problem got better.”

Psychiatric medications rarely, if ever, clear up or truly cure emotional problems the way antibiotics heal infections or a cast helps to mend a broken leg. In fact, I haven’t seen a single example of that. There are just too many variables that impact a person’s emotional situation.

The most potent factors affecting a person’s psychological state are ideas, beliefs and the actions one takes as a result of those beliefs. When all is said and done, my advice regarding medication is to take it if it helps. And, by “help,” I mean that it makes it easier to do what you ultimately need to do: To think, introspect and use your mind to reason things out – with or without a therapist. My client so many years ago said it best: “…if I’m going to get anywhere, I still have to swim.”

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

“He, who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”

— Socrates

About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data posted Thursday.

What’s to blame? You guessed it: Guns. That’s what they’re saying.

So if guns are outlawed tomorrow, suicides will stop. But why do so many WANT to kill themselves? Isn’t that the important question?

Nope. Get rid of guns. And all will be well.

Labels are useful, though not always totally accurate. The quick, short answer to the question in the title is “no, it’s not,” and I will elucidate further below. The CCP is no more true “communist” than the Democratic Party in America believes in democracy. Calling the CCP “communist” is a misnomer. Just because they have stated a goal—a “communist” society—doesn’t mean they have reached it, or ever want to (and believe me, the CCP doesn’t).

Communism has been attempted often in history but never practiced successfully. As Ronald Reagan said, “Communism only works in heaven, where they don’t need it, and in hell, where they already have it.” Indeed, communism is, frankly, impossible because it espouses equality of outcomes, which will never happen.

Despite some conservative claims, neither the CCP nor the Democrats are ”communist” in the true sense of the word. There is no “egalitarianism” in either. The CCP is a totalitarian government with many features of Leftist ideology—control of the economy, censorship and silencing of opposition, dictatorial domination of the people, no respect for human life, etc. These also clearly mark the actions and/or aims of the Democratic Party in America. The CCP and Democrats both believe in Leftist ideology. The Democrats are trying to install it in America but cannot fully do so until they get totalitarian control. But, being Leftists, they WILL do the same things in America that Leftists have done elsewhere, if they ever get the power to do so. If not, why not? A Leftist is a Leftist is a Leftist, no matter what rock he slithers out from under.

Folks, egalitarianism is the great lie of the Left and is one reason it will always fails. People are not “equal.” There should be “equality under the law,” but, otherwise, we all have different abilities, talents, intelligence levels, motivations, etc. Stephen Curry and I are not “equal” on a basketball court and never would be, unless maybe you tied his hands behind his back, broke both his legs, and didn’t let him go across midcourt. Then there might be some sort of “equality of outcome.” But that can only be accomplished by distinctly limiting his freedom. Even Thomas More concluded that “utopia” is impossible without government force. If people are free, they will not be equal. If people are equal, they will not be free. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson’s “all men are created equal” had nothing to do with economic outcomes.

Try this thought experiment. Give everybody in America $100,000 to start with. Within a month (if everyone is allowed freedom to use their money as they wish), some people will have doubled their money, and some will have lost it all, with varying degrees in between. Some people (Elon Musk) have a talent for making money. Some people (Mark Lewis) have a talent for losing it. We aren’t equal in all matters. The only way my bank account and Elon’s will ever be equal is by forcibly taking his money away and giving it to me. That’s not freedom.

And communism, in practicality, recognizes this. There is always the “nomenklatura”—the elite—who rule and are rich while the masses struggle to survive—those who aren’t shot. Marxist “freedom” and “equality” are the greatest chimeras ever concocted.

China is a Leftist totalitarian government, not a communist one. “Rightist” totalitarian governments, usually military dictatorships, have existed, but China is a “Leftist” one, not “Rightist.” American Democrats are “Leftists”; some of their more starry-eyed idealists might think they want “communism,” but it will never happen, as they would quickly discover. What Democrats want is what the CCP has—totalitarian control of their country, not “communism.” The CCP may talk “communist” or “Marxist” rhetoric, but they have never had it and never will.

The man I worked for in China who stole thousands of dollars from me was a greedy, selfish, immoral, “bourgeois capitalist” in Marxist terms, the supposed enemy of communism. I was the “proletarian,” the worker, Marxism’s hero, and I was robbed. And even the Chinese government (the court when I sued him) decided for the “rightist, capitalist roader,” not the “proletarian worker.” Don’t tell me that China is “communist” or “Marxist.” The government is totalitarian, and distinctly favors “party members.” The “Chinese Communist Party,” like the “Democratic Party” in America, is only a useful label, not an accurate description.

China fled any supposed “communist” intentions after the disasters of Mao Zedong, who actually didn’t apply “communism” universally either, certainly not to himself. And looking at the 20th century, we discover no Marxist society that succeeded, at least by using Marxism, to materially or spiritually advance their people. Indeed, can anyone name one single benefit any Marxist government has given to the world? Marxism teaches that government is a tool of the rich and powerful (the “bourgeoisie”) to oppress the masses (the “proletariat”). Once the great “socialist” revolution takes place, and “communism” arises and ushers in a Golden Age of equality, freedom, and plenty, government will no longer be necessary and will fade into oblivion. Government will disappear in the perfect Marxist Utopia. Can you imagine the CCP ever giving up power in the name of “communism”? THAT is a hoot.

Here is why Marxism fails: when I was teaching history, I would always tell my students that “the greatest resource in the world is not oil, or water, or some natural element. The greatest resource in the world is the human mind set free—to create, explore, innovate.” Set free from economic (not moral) restraints, for there will be no economic freedom for all if there are no moral restraints on human behavior. Capitalism, not socialism, provides—has provided—the economic freedoms that have created human prosperity the past 200+ years. The CCP knows that, and that’s why it is not a “communist” system.

Totalitarian, yes. Communist, no. Don’t confuse labels and rhetoric with reality.

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/man.html