All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind’ and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment—on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict “It is.” Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say “It is,” you are refusing to say “I am.” By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: ‘Who am I to know?’—he is declaring: “Who am I to live?”

This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.

Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional.

Thinking is a delicate, difficult process, which man cannot perform unless knowledge is his goal, logic is his method, and the judgment of his mind is his guiding absolute. Thought requires selfishness, the fundamental selfishness of a rational faculty that places nothing above the integrity of its own function.

A man cannot think if he places something—anything—above his perception of reality. He cannot follow the evidence unswervingly or uphold his conclusions intransigently, while regarding compliance with other men as his moral imperative, self-abasement as his highest virtue, and sacrifice as his primary duty. He cannot use his brain while surrendering his sovereignty over it, i.e., while accepting his neighbors as its owner and term-setter.

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

The lockdowners probably had no idea what they were about to unleash. On paper, their plans all seemed fine. Keep people apart. Make them stay home. Only essential workers should go to work. Government can do the rest. Church, theaters, sports, bars, schools – everything has to give way to rule by disease mitigators.

Let the kids play computer games. Let the offices operate through Zoom. A bit of time off never hurt anyone, and, besides, there is Netflix. We’ll beat this virus by hiding from it, and then it’ll get bored and go back where it came from. The model builders will be heroes. We only need to demonstrate the power of computers over even the awesome and previously uncontrollable forces of nature. The virus will relent in the face of our intelligence, power, and resources.

What they did not expect were riots in the streets, toppled statues, secession movements, the rise of political extremism on all sides, the fueling of race conflict, and the spread of nihilism. What’s happening all over the world feels like revolution.

Once you lock down a population by executive fiat, based on obvious ignorance and fear, you send a signal that nothing much matters anymore. Nothing is true, permanent, right, wrong. Might as well tear it all down. You literally unleash Hell.

There is plenty of historical precedent for this but one episode has long intrigued me. It concerns the rise of Brutalist architecture after World War II. The movement was about stripping adornments from buildings, forgetting about beauty, eschewing aesthetics of the past, and designing for temporality and functionality only.

Brutalism, which began in Germany as a successor to the Bauhaus movement following the Great War, is the movement that eventually gave us all the ghastly government buildings in the U.S. that were put up in the 60s through the 90s. They are concrete, sparse, and just slightly horrible to the eye because they are meant to be. It was a movement that rejected aesthetics. It wanted and demanded the raw truth: a building is to be occupied. It should only be “essential” and nothing more.

After World War II, the question concerned what should replace that which was bombed and destroyed in wartime, the worst example of which was Dresden, which faced unbelievable destruction. Eventually that city and all its glorious architecture was restored. But the shock that governments could just smash everything in sight, that nothing is sacred, was a lesson that impacted a whole generation of designers. Throughout the rest of Germany and most of the rest of Europe, the U.K., and the U.S., the lesson was: buildings should be bombable. That way, nothing of value is lost.

That is the spirit that drove the Brutalist school to be so influential. Many old buildings, from the Middle Ages through the early 20th century, were constructed with high aspirations, including theological ones. But the war demonstrated that everything is temporary. Nothing is really true or sacred. God is dead else countless millions would not have been slaughtered. Our postwar architecture should embrace the reality that we learned in wartime, which is that nothing much matters in the end. Everything can be bombed. Nothing is beyond destruction. Hence the past should die and everything new should be expendable.

This is nihilism. It is an expression of despair. It is a cry against the idea that the future and past should have any relationship to each other. Might as well tear down the monuments. Burn buildings. Have riots in the streets. And while we’re at it, let’s forget logic, rationality, the lessons of history, and even humane concern for others. Our governments, democratically elected, clearly care nothing for the rule of law, empathy, morality, and lack all humility, so why should we not believe the same things and behave the same way?

The rage that pent up between March 15 and June 1, 2020 expressed itself in many ways. You know this from your own life. Think of the relationships that have been shattered, how you took out your anger on those you love, and they on you, and how you said and did things that would have been unthinkable this time last year. The lockdowns made everyone a bit pathological. I’m not talking only about the spike in suicides and drug overdoses. I’m speaking of the casual cruelty that people dabbled in over these months, the way in which our old codes of manners, discipline, character, and integrity suddenly seemed irrelevant. Truth and lies blended in a confusing mush.

After all, if governments can really lock us in our homes, slice and dice the population into essential and nonessential, close our houses of worship, force us to mask our faces, and demand that we hop around like grasshoppers to avoid each other, what does that say about the codes of morality and human decency we’ve built up over generations? If governments don’t care, why should we? To some extent or another, everyone has dabbled in this form of nihilism over the last 75 days.

For many people, this has tumbled into destructionism itself.

In the best of worlds, what is true and right should not hinge on government’s treatment of essential rights. In reality, it makes a huge difference. If governments care nothing for our freedom of movement and our economic rights, why should anyone really? This is the essence of the Brutalist view of life. Just get it done. We only need essentials. Everything else is expendable. Nothing else matters, not context, truth, decency, the past, the future.

You could say to me that the riots and destruction and the sheer insanity all around us are not obviously connected to lockdown. I disagree. The protestors, rioters, statue topplers, and building burners might not articulate the precise reasons for their behavior. But if you look carefully, what you see is people crying out with a demand that governments and establishments pay attention to what the people want. People matter. Volition matters. We cannot be locked down. We are not animals and nor will we be treated as automatons in agent-based models.

We won’t be part of someone else’s idea of history. We are history.

In this way, governments have pushed us all into adopting a Brutalist theory of life, if only because they made the first move and now we have no choice but to fight back. Brutality will be met with brutality.

To be sure, I’m not endorsing this view of the world. I find it highly regrettable and even immoral. It creates nothing. Still, when governments behave this way, as if freedom doesn’t matter, this is what they unleash. They punish and drive out decency, integrity, and virtue. When you do that, you release unpredictable forces within society that make the world ugly, even terrifying.

There is an answer to this rampant incivility. Don’t let governments and their egregious mismanagement of this crisis wreck your integrity, your capacity for love, your belief in rights, your aspirations for yourself and others. The only way to fight back against Brutalism is with freedom and beauty, and that begins in your own life.

This article appeared first at American Institute for Economic Research and is reprinted with the author’s permission.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and eight books in 5 languages, most recently The Market Loves You. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. Jeffrey is available for speaking and interviews via his email. Tw | FB | LinkedIn

If the 20th century is known as the Age of Anxiety, the current era may become known as the Age of Depression (with a generous side portion of anxiety). What else would historians call our society’s preoccupation with what is wrong in the world? Focusing primarily on supposed flaws is a sure-fire way to diminish self-esteem in individuals. And it works the same for a country.

July 20 was the anniversary of the most awe-inspiring event in our lifetime and among the most historically significant events of all time. When images of conflict, chaos, and coronavirus dominated the news, the world should have celebrated a heroic human accomplishment that unites people of all races, religions, and countries—literally everyone on Earth. Yet the event passed with little mention in the media and no fanfare.

It is a measure of our preoccupation with what is wrong in society that some readers may now be scratching their heads trying to recall what happened on July 20. Hint: it was the day human beings first set foot on another world. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. The Moon landing. July 20, 1969.

Just for a moment, on that one day, we should have shifted our minds from turmoil to tranquility, to Tranquility Base, which retains the footsteps of men with extraordinary courage who rose above the temporary concerns of the human race to remind us all of what the human mind can accomplish.  

Back to the reality portrayed on nightly news broadcasts and newspaper headlines. While the pandemic dominates the media, we go about our daily lives with heightened anxiety and severe restrictions on normal sources of pleasure. A rational approach to this state of affairs must balance the conscious awareness of the state of the world with the need to function effectively on a daily basis and to continue the pursuit of important goals and values.

Here are ten tips for accomplishing this balance.

1. Recognize the signs of depression and anxiety. A hopeless outlook, disrupted sleep, a loss of interest in usual pastimes, significant weight change, fatigue, irritability, and diminished concentration are some symptoms of depression. Headaches, stomachaches, sleeplessness, rapid heartbeat are a few of the more common signs of anxiety.

2. Accept your fears. Often, people deny that they are afraid. That makes them less able to conquer their fears. We cannot master a fear by pretending it is not there. Only when we acknowledge our fears can we begin to take charge of them. By acknowledging fear, we bring it within our control rather than letting the fear control us.

3. Learn relaxation techniques. Certain behaviors help to clear the mind of worries. Deep breathing, meditation, yoga, massage, and exercise can all help to reduce anxiety and induce relaxation.

4. Talk, talk, talk. Talk about your thoughts and feelings and encourage your children to do the same. Anxiety does the most damage when we ignore it or try to bottle it up. Talking about distress helps to relieve it.

5. Agree to disagree. Differences in political positions and in how best to cope with the pandemic threaten to rupture long-standing relationships. Conflicting opinions may taint what are otherwise benevolent relationships. To protect against this, recognize that people who agree on fundamental principles of conduct and political goals can disagree on how to implement such principles.

One should never allow a disagreement about a particular policy, even one with effects as grave and far-reaching as coping with a virus, to overshadow the entire history and basis for a close personal relationship. To do so is to drop the context of the relationship. Rejecting someone on the basis of one stance on policy requires us to shrink our awareness of all the experiences and shared values that form the bedrock of the relationship. This is reminiscent of the vindictive parents I write about inDivorce Poison who encourage their children to reject the other parent on the basis of one alleged misdeed or grievance, as though an emotionally-based response to one aspect of reality should stand in for a balanced consideration of all relevant facts.

Strong relationships can usually tolerate a good deal of conflict and disagreement. But when heated political discussions threaten to overwhelm the basic love and respect between relatives and friends, the most reasonable approach is “agree to disagree.” Such a policy reflects an awareness of the importance and value of maintaining the good will of those who love us and are loved by us.

6. Respect individual needs. Many conflicts in marriages occur because spouses do not recognize and respect each other’s different needs. For example, some people cope best with anxiety by seeking lots of information; other people find that distractions from anxiety-provoking world events help them maintain a reasonable level of comfort. So, if your spouse is tired of hearing about the coronavirus, respect this. Do not confuse it with evasion of reality—it can be a reasonable tactic for coping with anxieties that are stimulated by the risk of events over which we have no direct control.

7. Take positive action. Action helps to offset a sense of helplessness. Initiate video calls. Tackle projects at home and for work that yield a relatively immediate sense of accomplishment. Reach out (virtually) to neighbors who are anxious and alone. Donate to a food bank. Being engaged in benevolent and constructive pursuits reminds us and our children that there is far more to value than to fear in the world.

8. Laugh. I recall that in the days immediately following 9/11, late-night comedy talk shows stayed off the air. When they returned, the hosts avoided their usual comedy format out of respect for the grief-stricken state of the nation. This was understandable, appropriate, and healing. When the humor re-emerged, though, it was more than welcome.

Humor is one of our most potent weapons against stress and depression. It rapidly diffuses anxiety and provides a socially acceptable outlet for hostility. It is also a great outlet for the additional hostility we feel in response to the sometimes maddening drivel we see and read in the news. So try to balance watching the news with your favorite sitcom.  

9. Recognize your limitations. If depression and anxiety are dominating your life, and you are unable to shake either, accept the reality that you need some assistance and get it. Don’t sacrifice your well-being and that of those around you on the altar of a misguided notion of individuality and independence. Even Howard Roark sought help from Henry Cameron.

10. Take things in stride. Get in the habit of seeing unpleasant, even frightening, current events in full context. Catastrophes are departures from the norm. Hold on to a benevolent sense of life by reminding yourself that today’s events are temporary, and that you can rise to the challenge. We have been to the moon in the past. And we will return in the future.

Richard A. Warshak, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice in Dallas, former Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and author of Divorce Poison: How to Protect Your Family from Bad-mouthing and Brainwashing (HarperCollins, 2010). For additional tips, visit: www.warshak.com.

Does the sight of a dolphin make you sad? Does the gentle lapping of the sea only make you think of the plastic water-bottle in your hand? Does a sunset fill you with fear and panic? Do you look at the world around you and in the place of wonder see only death?

You might be suffering from apocalyptic environmentalism – the world’s newest secular faith, which is also a death cult.

Arthur Koestler once wrote of socialism, “Every period has its dominant religion and hope, and ‘Socialism’ in a vague and undefined sense was the hope of the early twentieth century.” But that was then, a century ago. The new religion is apocalyptic environmentalism. “Environmentalism today is the dominant secular religion of the educated, upper-middle-class elite in most developed and many developing nations. It provides a new story about our collective and individual purpose. It designates good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. And it does so in the language of science, which provides it with legitimacy.”

But socialism, that great hope of the masses, was wrong. After all the marching and the philosophizing, they couldn’t make the math work, and it died in the bread lines. So too “apocalyptic environmentalism,” because they can’t make the science work – but will they destroy the world in their attempt to square the circle?

In that spirit, what if everything you thought you knew, that was screamed in your ear all day long and filled your Twitter and Facebook and your browser – what if all of that is wrong? Because that’s what Michael Shellenberger is telling us. And it goes for both sides – the apocalyptic environmental death cult as well as those who say not a care need be given to the world around us (but I am of course focusing this review on the former because they are the audience to whom Shellenberger is directing his extraordinarily well-researched book). Did you know plastics saved the turtle and the whale and the elephant? Did you know that power density is the only possible solution to our energy crisis – and the greatest density is found in nuclear, the only source of energy where all waste is literally put in a cement bucket and stacked in a (relatively small) cave? Even more – the great power unleashed by nuclear could, with the expansion of breeder reactors, double the capacity of our fissile material and reduce the waste to a tiny amount of plutonium; yes weapons grade perhaps (“But what about the terrorists?”), however in such a small quantity we could just shoot it into space. “But what about the aliens?” – now you’re just being silly. Did you know that the use of renewables cannot power Africa – and without power, Africa will continue to burn her forests? Did you know that the wildfires you care so much about are a result of putting houses too close to the forests and of allowing underbrush to build up without proper care and maintenance? Did you know we are not paving paradise – in fact all of construction in the world covers only .5% of the world. Land for agriculture use is going down, land for cattle grazing as well – due to efficiencies. And the deforestation? Global deforestation is being reversed, global population growth is on a decline, global land use is receding dramatically as our world urbanizes.

Why don’t we know these things? We all suffer from confirmation bias. We carefully prune our Twitter feeds until they deliver us only a fire-hose of half-truths, but they are our half-truths!!! I have already been yelled at by a friend for putting a Shellenberger quote on my public FB page (I no longer have a FB account, and my wife manages my public author page – for exactly this reason). I interrupted my friend’s perfect waterfall of self-confirming half-truths; and he called Shellenberger a stooge of greed, attacking not his work, which he has not read, but his integrity. This is what Koestler in The Invisible Writing called a “closed circle” or what in Washington DC is half-comically and half-sadly referred to as a “self-licking ice-cream cone.” Where we fawn over an ignorant 16-year-old girl, and throw invective at a consummate intellectual like Michael Shellenberger.

So what is the problem? “You’re saying everything is just fine. You want to destroy the world!!” you might be thinking. Far from it, for I am an environmentalist – not of the quality and character of Shellenberger, alas, but I do love our world and the beauty she holds. I’m raising my son to be a scientist (he wants to be a marine biologist); we do our best to reduce waste and to recycle plastics. My “environmentalism” has taken more the form of human activism, specifically trying to end the wars (mostly in Africa). Because while countries are at war with themselves, destroying their infrastructure and murdering their citizens, they cannot even begin to solve the epic problems that the use of low-density energy has pushed their environments into. And I wish I could do more. Because we have a lot to do. Overfishing is the worst problem. Only 8% of the oceans are protected, for example. Plastics – though they don’t last a million years, in fact probably only decades because though they are not broken down by bacteria they are by the sun – are still produced in too great of quantities. Rwanda has banned them altogether. We must recover from our terrible 20th century because though we cannot “leapfrog” past denser energy forms which are the motors of development (coal is better than wood, LNG is better than coal, nuclear is better than LNG), we must find a way to help Africa develop without the mess that the 20th century did to Europe and the western world.

But we can’t do that by subjecting the poor to poverty; it is not only immoral but impractical, for Africa’s population is still growing out of control, the only part of the world where that is the case. And correspondingly, that ancient of places is being burned down to create charcoal over which the famished fishermen cook the last minnows they have pulled from the desiccated lake, before they pack everything into a plastic bucket and march with it on their heads to the camps. For let’s be honest with ourselves; “sustainable development” failed. The only path to prosperity is the one we took – and we must not deny the Africans that opportunity.

Because poverty is the greatest polluter, and wealth, the greatest environmentalist.

Unlike the apocalyptic environmentalists, Shellenberger in Apocalypse Never gives us an alternative. “Environmental humanism” he calls it, a return to a love of the wooded spaces, the gloriously tall trees and the deep blue oceans – our love of our wondrous world. And out of that love, the desire to protect and to preserve the natural places for ourselves, because they fill our hearts with joy. “Happily, nobody saves mountain gorillas, yellow-eyed penguins, and sea turtles because they believe human civilization depends on it. We save them for a simpler reason: we love them.”

Yes, things are tough, and we have a lot of work to do. So read this book, and then let’s get busy! Let us all go, with joy, eschewing irrational fear – and glory at being gifted with such an amazing planet and an opportunity to enjoy her as we serve her.

‍This article was first published on Joel D. Hirst’s personal blog.

Walter E. Williams, who many consider one of the greatest modern economists, has passed away at age 84.

My connections with Walter go back to UCLA, where we both got our doctorates (though I was a bit later, and it was my misfortunate we did not overlap). Then I started writing popular articles in defense of Americans’ liberty not too long after he did, which made me very aware of his writing (in fact, I once jokingly told my wife that I didn’t like him because his articles were often too good a substitute for mine). And I know lots of people with connections to George Mason University and stories about him.

Because many were closer to Walter than I, the large outpouring of appreciation and endorsements upon his passing is better done by others. But I believe that I have something worth adding for those who didn’t know about him but whose interest in his work has been piqued by the powerful response to his passing.

In 2016, I published a book titled Lines of Liberty, in which I curated what I felt were the best quotes on liberty I could find, by those who had labored in the front lines to defend it. Walter was not included, like his best friend, Thomas Sowell. But that was only because I had restricted my attention to people who had died, so I could consider the entirety of their work. Now, while I have not yet had time to do more than scratch the surface of his work, offering an initial collection of some of his most important insights may be the best tribute I can offer.

I must say that after many years of thinking about liberty, I can get a thrill out of a well-made, ear-catching argument on its behalf. Reading Walter’s words gave me such a thrill. But it was quickly obvious that there was far too much inspiration and wisdom to fit in a compact space. So I limited my collection to very short statements on only a few of the core issues he dealt with.

Consider my “top ten” lists (so far) in three different areas Walter thought deeply about as just the beginning of wisdom that can be found in Walter’s work, and as an invitation to further consideration.

On Property, Rights and Justice

1. My definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree?…how much of what I earn belongs to you–and why?

2. If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.

3. Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.

4. There is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another.

5. Government has no resources of its own…government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person’s property to give it to another to whom it does not belong.

6. We don’t have a natural right to take the property of one person to give to another; therefore, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to government.

7. Exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another.

8. No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong.

9. The better I serve my fellow man…the greater my claim on the goods my fellow man produces. That’s the morality of the market.

10. The act of reaching into one’s own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else’s pocket is despicable.

Liberty versus Coercion

1. Government is about coercion. Limiting government is the single most important instrument for guaranteeing liberty.
2. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.
3. The true test of one’s commitment to liberty and private property rights…comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.
4. In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.
5. The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
6. Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite backed up by the brute force of government.
7. If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.
8. Substituting democratic decision making for what should be private decision-making is nothing less than tyranny dressed up.
9. It’s government people, not rich people, who have the power to coerce and make our lives miserable.
10. The moral tragedy that has befallen Americans is our belief that it is okay for government to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another–that in my book is a working definition of slavery.

Protecting our Rights and Liberties

1. Always be suspicious of those who…claim their way is the best way and are willing to force their way on the rest of us.
2. People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange…are for control and coercion.
3. Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite backed up by the brute force of government.
4. Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good.
5. What our nation needs is a separation of “business and state”…That would mean crony capitalism and crony socialism could not survive.
6. The best good thing that politicians can do for the economy is to stop doing bad. In part, this can be achieved through reducing taxes and economic regulation, and staying out of our lives.
7. If we care about our remaining liberties we must at some point …let politicians and bureaucrats know we will not tolerate further encroachment on our God-given rights to liberty.
8. The public good is promoted best by people pursuing their own private interests.
9. Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place.
10. If we’re ignorant, we won’t even know when government infringes on our liberties. Moreover, we’ll happily cast our votes for those who’d destroy our liberties.

Walter Williams had a great deal of wisdom to offer, and he passed that wisdom on to many. But there are many more of us who could still benefit from it.

I hope the examples here touch a chord with readers and lead them to further consideration of what he understood.

Walter will be gone, and widely missed, but his insights are not.

Gary M. Galles, FEE

Texas claims that the presidential elections as held (and as directed by government officials outside the legislature) in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan all flagrantly violated their own election laws by materially weakening or doing away with security measures.  Further, according to the U.S. Constitution, the legislature (representing the citizens) of each state has absolute authority and responsibility for how presidential electors are chosen; the will of legislature being expressed through state law.

Texas claims that the violations of election law in these states created an environment where ballot fraud was enabled and likely to occur.  The lawsuit lists the violations of law in each of the defendant states and provides evidence of fraud (the number of ballots handled unconstitutionally) in each of the states sufficient to change the outcome of the ballot counts.

Pennsylvania

Facts:

1. Vote Tally: 3,445,548 for Biden and 3,363,951 for Trump – margin 81,597.
2. Requests for mail-in ballots 70% Democrats and 25% Republicans.
3. Mail-in ballots increased from 266,208 in 2016 to over 3,000,000 in 2020.

Violations of Election Law:

1. The Secretary of State unilaterally abrogated signature verification requirements for mail-in ballots.
2. PA supreme court changed existing deadline for receiving mail-in ballots from 8:00 PM on the day of election to 3 days after the election and adopted a presumption that non-postmarked ballots be considered as valid.
3. Election officials in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties did not follow state law permitting poll-watchers to be present for the opening, counting, and recording of mail-in ballots.
4. The Secretary of State directed election officials to remove ballots before 7:00 AM on the day of election in order to “cure” defective mail-in ballots.  This was done only in Democrat majority counties.
5. Election officials did not segregate ballots received after 8:00 PM on election day breaking the promise made to the U.S. Supreme Court thus making it impossible to identify or remove those ballots.

Evidence of Fraud:

1. Ballots with no mailed date: 9,005 (no evidence they were sent to a voter)
2. Ballots returned on or before the mailed date: 58,221
3. Ballots returned one day after the mailed date: 51,200 (Perhaps not impossible, but highly unlikely for the average voter to receive a ballot, fill it out, place it in the mail and have it returned the next day.)
4. On Nov 2, the day before the election, PA reports that 2.7 million ballots had been sent out.  On Nov 4 that number had increased to 3.1 million — an increase of 400,000 mail-in ballots at election time with literally no reasonable chance of them being used by legitimate voters.

Georgia

Facts:

1. Vote Tally: 2,472,098 for Biden and 2,458,121 for Trump – margin 12,670.
2. Mail-in ballots: 65.32% for Biden and 34.68% for Trump.
3. Mail-in ballots increased from 213,033 in 2016 to 1,305,659 in 2020.

Violations of Election Law:

1. The Secretary of State unilaterally abrogated signature verification requirements for mail-in ballots.
2. The Secretary of State authorized opening and processing mail-in ballots up to three weeks before election day when the law prohibits that until after the polls open on election day.
3. The Secretary of State materially weakened the security requirements for ballot rejection based on signature verification or other missing information.

Evidence of Fraud:

1. Mail-in ballot rejection rate for missing or inaccurate information or for non-matching signatures decreased from 6.42% in 2016 to .36% in 2020.  Rejecting 2020 ballots at the same rate as 2016 would have resulted in a net gain of 25,587 votes for Trump – twice the number needed to overcome Biden’s count.  With a six-fold increase in the number of mail-in ballots, reason would indicate that the rejection rate would increase, or at least stay the same, with so many first-time mail-in ballots.

Michigan

Facts:

1. Vote Tally: 2,796,702 for Biden and 2,650,695 for Trump – margin 146,007.
2. In 2016 587,618 voters requested mail-in ballots.  In 2020 3.2 million votes were cast by mail-in ballot.
3. Democrats voted by mail at a rate approximately two times that of Republican voters.

Violations of Election Law:

1. The Secretary of State unilaterally abrogated signature verification requirements for mail-in ballots.
2. The Secretary of State sent out unsolicited ballots to all 7.7 million registered voters contrary to election law which requires a voter to request a mail-in ballot through a process that includes a signature to be matched with the voter registration.
3. The Secretary of State also allowed absentee ballots to be requested online without signature verification.
4. Local election officials in Wayne County — containing 322,925 more ballots for Biden than for Trump — opened and processed mail-in ballots without poll-watchers present.
5. Local election officials in Wayne County also ignored the strict election law requirements of placing a written statement or stamp on each ballot envelope indicating that the voter signature was in fact checked and verified with the signature on file with the state.

Evidence of Fraud:

1. 174,384 mail-in ballots in Wayne County had no valid registration number, indicating they likely resulted from election workers running the same ballots through the tabulator multiple times.
2. 71% of Wayne County Absent Voter Counting Boards were unbalanced, where the number of people who checked in did not match the number of ballots cast.

Wisconsin

Facts:

1. Vote Tally: 1,630,716 for Biden and 1,610,151 for Trump – margin 20,565.
2. Mail-in ballots increased from 146,932 in 2016 to 1,275,019 in 2020.

Violations of Election Law:

1. The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) positioned hundreds of unmanned illegal drop boxes to collect absentee ballots.  (The use of any drop box, manned or unmanned, is directly prohibited by Wisconsin statute.  Any alternate mail-in ballot site “shall be staffed by the municipal clerk or the executive director of the board of election commissioners…”  “Ballots cast in contravention of the procedures specified in those provisions may not be included in the certified result of any election.”)
2. The WEC encouraged voters to unlawfully declare themselves “indefinitely confined” in order to avoid security measures like signature verification and photo ID requirements.  Nearly 216,000 voters said they were indefinitely confined in the 2020 election, nearly four times as many as in 2016.
3. Strict laws requiring mail-in voters to certify by signature including the signature of an adult witness were ignored or circumvented by election officials.

Evidence of Fraud:

1. One hundred thousand ballots were supposedly missing and directed to be “found” after election day.

Conclusion

Significant violations of election law that were put into place to protect against election fraud is sufficient to invalidate the results of the elections, apart from whatever evidence is able to be gathered in a short time to show actual numbers of fraudulent ballots.  Reason would indicate that there is a high number of fraudulent ballots that are impossible to identify, which is why the election laws pertaining to mail-in ballots were established to begin with.

There is no remedy to correct the Nov 3^rd election because ballots that did not adhere to election law cannot be identified as separate from those that did.  An accurate count of legal ballots that were cast cannot be made.  Therefore, as directed in the Constitution, it falls to the legislature of each state to choose electors as has been done in the past.  Failing that, each state may determine not to submit any presidential electors.

The Texas lawsuit claims the odds of Biden overcoming Trump’s lead and winning any of the states after the point indicated was one in a quadrillion.  And therefore, the odds of winning all four was one in a quadrillion to the fourth power.  The lawsuit did not provide information on how that number was determined.  This may seem an exaggerated to some.  It is enough to state that the odds of winning any one of the states was highly unlikely and the odds of winning all four were extremely unlikely.  For example, if the odds of winning any one of the states was numerically much less extreme but still highly unlikely, say something like one in twenty, then the odds of doing that in all four states would be 1 in  160,000.  Twenty beans in a jar: 19 white and 1 black.  Reach in without looking and be lucky enough to pull out the one black bean.  Chances of doing that again is 1 in 400.  Clearly indicative of cheating if someone claims to have done that four times in a row.  As I said the statistical analysis behind the claim of odds of 1 in a 1,000,000,000,000 are not given so I cannot speak to that.  But even if the odds were orders of magnitude better than that, they were still astronomically small.  At any rate, the merits of the lawsuit do not depend on any certain level of odds of Biden overcoming a lead that had been established by 3:00 A.M. the day after election.

Robert Madsen, American Thinker

Three HUGE questions right now:

1) Will the Supreme Court invalidate the provably illegal election results from states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan — where their own constitutions, as well as the U.S. Constitution, were violated, e.g., changing election laws without the approval of the state legislatures?

2) If Biden successfully seizes the White House, will Trump supporters and other dissenters finally start to show their anger, rage, justified resistance and defiance against the most brazen tyranny in America since the years leading up to 1776 — and, if so, how?

3) If scenario # 2 happens, will Biden’s regime respond as all dictators throughout history have done, with coercion, intimidation, imprisonment, evasion of rule of law, and murder? Or will there be a civil war? Or both?

It seems surreal and bizarre to be asking these questions. But there is an actual, objective basis for asking them. It’s where we are, for real. Get your heads out of the sand, because regardless of what Trump or anyone else does, it’s not going to get easier any time soon.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

THOMAS Jefferson was the writer of the Declaration of Independence and the most prolific of our founding fathers on the topics of our liberty and the rights that America was created to preserve and protect. He recognized that American government exists only to defend our preexisting rights, that our liberty is to be limited only by others’ equal liberty, that government cannot legitimately take away rights or our liberty to exercise them, that economic freedom is not to be overridden and that American government is to be limited in power and scope. Particularly because his insights are so at odds with the everyday operation of American government, it is worth giving them careful thought.

The principles on which we engaged … issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights.

The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them. Nothing … is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.

A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our own will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.

I do not add “within the limits of the law,” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending to too small a degree of it. The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God.

It is to secure these rights that we resort to government at all. Laws abridging the natural right of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.

The purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors … there are certain portions of right not necessary to enable them to carry on an effective government, and which experience has nevertheless proved they will be constantly encroaching on, if submitted to them.

It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged.

Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.

The equal rights of man and the happiness of every individual are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.

Fortify the public liberty by every possible means. What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance?

The people … are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

The liberals destroyed Western civilization by teaching black Americans to hate white people, their “oppressors.” This made racial diversity and multiculturalism impossible. In the absence of assimilation, the result is disunity.

The left destroyed civilization by defining the working class—“the Trump deplorables”—as the victimizer. This freed the greed-driven elites from working class restraint. Today both the British Labour Party and the US Democrat Party represent the elite. Consider how rich the elite have made Tony Blair and the Clintons.

The liberals threw open the borders of Western countries to immigrant-invaders. As darker-skinned peoples flowed into white countries, liberals taught them that white people are their oppressors. Thus was hatred imported in large numbers into the West where the victim status of “people of color” is used to curtail freedom of speech and freedom of association of white people. Assimilation is considered racist and a suppressor of diversity and multiculturalism and was officially terminated. Thus was the unity that assimilation fosters destroyed.

The white liberal/left will suffer the consequences, just as they do in Jean Raspail’s novel, The Camp of the Saints, along with “the Trump deplorables.”

Of course, not all immigrant-invaders are haters. Some appreciate their improved chances in life and defend the system, but others see political opportunity in victimhood and thus exploit it. Generally speaking, the offense is more effective than the defense. The initiative lies in making charges, not answering them.

The left has destroyed American unity with Identity Politics, systemic racism, and critical race theory and stood Karl Marx on his head by defining the American working class as racist and misogynist oppressors of “people of color” and women. In the hands of the left, the working class has gone from victim to victimizer. The black hat is no longer the capitalist exploiter of the worker. The liberal/left has placed the black hat on the demonized “white racist, sexist, working class.”

The alleged “racial minorities” are actually vast majorities. White people constitute a small percentage of people on earth. Single countries, such as India and China, have more “people of color” than the entire Western World has white people.

The Democrat Party has raised Identity Politics to an ideology and justifies electoral theft as a necessary means to suppress “whiteness” and all its sins and crimes represented in their minds by Donald Trump and “the deplorables.”

Armed with an ideology is what makes Democrats and their militias—Antifa and BLM—dangerous. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “Ideology is what gives evil doing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.”

It requires certainty and audacity for the DNC to organize the theft of a presidential election and for Antifa and BLM to assault strangers, to loot and burn white businesses, and to threaten white neighborhoods. Their certainty comes from their conviction that “whiteness” must be brought to an end. Their audacity comes from their knowledge that white confidence has been impaired by years of demonization and, therefore, they will not be held accountable for their violence.

Just as in Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother needs an enemy of the people, the liberal/left also need an enemy and have created as their enemy “white supremacy.” But where is the enemy’s ideology? Has it been taught for decades in the educational system like critical race theory, systemic racism, and Identity Politics? Where is the Jacques Derrida of the “far right” who is deconstructing the anti-white ideology of Identity Politics? Where are voices in politics, universities, media, and judiciary that are protecting white people from hate speech and crimes?

They don’t exist.

Therefore, the conflict is unequal. The attack on white people is ideology-driven and white people have no defense. Any defense of whiteness is considered by the liberal/left to be ipso facto proof of racism.

The Jewish people, especially the Zionists among them, have made a great deal of how the demonization of Jews led to extermination. Demonization demeans, and it is the tactic that was used in the 20th century to destroy perceived class and race enemies.

It is realistic to expect demonized white people to experience the same fate. The process has already begun: 

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/12/05/mark-zuckerberg-demonstrates-his-virulent-racism-against-white-gentiles-by-denying-them-equal-protection-on-facebook-from-hate-speech/

Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ Review

The nearly universal opinion expressed these days is that the economic crisis of recent years marks the end of capitalism. Capitalism allegedly has failed, has proven itself incapable of solving economic problems, and so mankind has no alternative, if it is to survive, than to make the transition to a planned economy, to socialism.

The nearly universal opinion expressed these days is that the economic crisis of recent years marks the end of capitalism. Capitalism allegedly has failed, has proven itself incapable of solving economic problems, and so mankind has no alternative, if it is to survive, than to make the transition to a planned economy, to socialism.

This is hardly a new idea. The socialists have always maintained that economic crises are the inevitable result of the capitalistic method of production and that there is no other means of eliminating economic crises than the transition to socialism. If these assertions are expressed more forcefully these days and evoke greater public response, it is not because the present crisis is greater or longer than its predecessors, but rather primarily because today public opinion is much more strongly influenced by socialist views than it was in previous decades.

I

When there was no economic theory, the belief was that whoever had power and was determined to use it could accomplish anything. In the interest of their spiritual welfare and with a view toward their reward in Heaven, rulers were admonished by their priests to exercise moderation in their use of power. Also, it was not a question of what limits the inherent conditions of human life and production set for this power, but rather that they were considered boundless and omnipotent in the sphere of social affairs.

The foundation of social sciences, the work of a large number of great intellects, of whom David Hume and Adam Smith are most outstanding, has destroyed this conception. One discovered that social power was a spiritual one and not (as was supposed) a material and, in the rough sense of the word, a real one. And there was the recognition of a necessary coherence within market phenomena which power is unable to destroy. There was also a realization that something was operative in social affairs that the powerful could not influence and to which they had to accommodate themselves, just as they had to adjust to the laws of nature. In the history of human thought and science there is no greater discovery.

If one proceeds from this recognition of the laws of the market, economic theory shows just what kind of situation arises from the interference of force and power in market processes. The isolated intervention cannot reach the end the authorities strive for in enacting it and must result in consequences which are undesirable from the standpoint of the authorities. Even from the point of view of the authorities themselves the intervention is pointless and harmful. Proceeding from this perception, if one wants to arrange market activity according to the conclusions of scientific thought—and we give thought to these matters not only because we are seeking knowledge for its own sake, but also because we want to arrange our actions such that we can reach the goals we aspire to—one then comes unavoidably to a rejection of such interventions as superfluous, unnecessary, and harmful, a notion which characterizes the liberal teaching. It is not that liberalism wants to carry standards of value over into science; it wants to take from science a compass for market actions. Liberalism uses the results of scientific research in order to construct society in such a way that it will be able to realize as effectively as possible the purposes it is intended to realize. The politico-economic parties do not differ on the end result for which they strive but on the means they should employ to achieve their common goal. The liberals are of the opinion that private property in the means of production is the only way to create wealth for everyone, because they consider socialism impractical and because they believe that the system of interventionism (which according to the view of its advocates is between capitalism and socialism) cannot achieve its proponents’ goals.

The liberal view has found bitter opposition. But the opponents of liberalism have not been successful in undermining its basic theory nor the practical application of this theory. They have not sought to defend themselves against the crushing criticism which the liberals have leveled against their plans by logical refutation; instead they have used evasions. The socialists considered themselves removed from this criticism, because Marxism has declared inquiry about the establishment and the efficacy of a socialist commonwealth heretical; they continued to cherish the socialist state of the future as heaven on earth, but refused to engage in a discussion of the details of their plan. The interventionists chose another path. They argued, on insufficient grounds, against the universal validity of economic theory. Not in a position to dispute economic theory logically, they could refer to nothing other than some “moral pathos,” of which they spoke in the invitation to the founding meeting of the Vereins für Sozialpolitik [Association for Social Policy] in Eisenach. Against logic they set moralism, against theory emotional prejudice, against argument the reference to the will of the state.

Economic theory predicted the effects of interventionism and state and municipal socialism exactly as they happened. All the warnings were ignored. For fifty or sixty years the politics of European countries has been anticapitalist and antiliberal. More than forty years ago Sidney Webb (Lord Passfield) wrote: “it can now fairly be claimed that the socialist philosophy of to-day is but the conscious and explicit assertion of principles of social organization which have been already in great part unconsciously adopted. The economic history of the century is an almost continuous record of the progress of Socialism.”2 That was at the beginning of this development and it was in England where liberalism was able for the longest time to hold off the anticapitalistic economic policies. Since then interventionist policies have made great strides. In general, the view today is that we live in an age in which the “hampered economy” reigns—as the forerunner of the blessed socialist collective consciousness to come.

Now, because indeed that which economic theory predicted has happened, because the fruits of the anticapitalistic economic policies have come to light, a cry is heard from all sides: this is the decline of capitalism, the capitalistic system has failed!

Liberalism cannot be deemed responsible for any of the institutions which give today’s economic policies their character. It was against the nationalization and the bringing under municipal control of projects which now show themselves to be catastrophes for the public sector and a source of filthy corruption; it was against the denial of protection for those willing to work and against placing state power at the disposal of the trade unions, against unemployment compensation, which has made unemployment a permanent and universal phenomenon, against social insurance, which has made those insured into grumblers, malingers, and neurasthenics, against tariffs (and thereby implicitly against cartels), against the limitation of freedom to live, to travel, or study where one likes, against excessive taxation and against inflation, against armaments, against colonial acquisitions, against the oppression of minorities, against imperialism and against war. It put up stubborn resistance against the politics of capital consumption. And liberalism did not create the armed party troops who are just waiting for the convenient opportunity to start a civil war.

II

The line of argument that leads to blaming capitalism for at least some of these things is based on the notion that entrepreneurs and capitalists are no longer liberal but interventionist and statist. The fact is correct, but the conclusions people want to draw from it are wrong-headed. These deductions stem from the entirely untenable Marxist view that entrepreneurs and capitalists protected their special class interests through liberalism during the time when capitalism flourished but now, in the late and declining period of capitalism, protect them through interventionism. This is supposed to be proof that the “hampered economy” of interventionism is the historically necessary economics of the phase of capitalism in which we find ourselves today. But the concept of classical political economy and of liberalism as the ideology (in the Marxist sense of the word) of the bourgeoisie is one of the many distorted techniques of Marxism. If entrepreneurs and capitalists were liberal thinkers around 1800 in England and interventionist, statist, and socialist thinkers around 1930 in Germany, the reason is that entrepreneurs and capitalists were also captivated by the prevailing ideas of the times. In 1800 no less than in 1930 entrepreneurs had special interests that were protected by interventionism and hurt by liberalism.

Today the great entrepreneurs are often cited as “economic leaders.” Capitalistic society knows no “economic leaders.” Therein lies the characteristic difference between socialist economies on the one hand and capitalist economies on the other hand: in the latter, the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production follow no leadership save that of the market. The custom of citing initiators of great enterprises as economic leaders already gives some indication that these days it is not usually the case that one reaches these positions by economic successes but rather by other means.

In the interventionist state it is no longer of crucial importance for the success of an enterprise that operations be run in such a way that the needs of the consumer are satisfied in the best and least expensive way; it is much more important that one has “good relations” with the controlling political factions, that the interventions redound to the advantage and not the disadvantage of the enterprise. A few more Marks’ worth of tariff-protection for the output of the enterprise, a few Marks less tariff-protection for the inputs in the manufacturing process can help the enterprise more than the greatest prudence in the conduct of operations. An enterprise may be well run, but it will go under if it does not know how to protect its interests in the arrangement of tariff rates, in the wage negotiations before arbitration boards, and in governing bodies of cartels. It is much more important to have “connections” than to produce well and cheaply. Consequently, the men who reach the top of such enterprises are not those who know how to organize operations and give production a direction which the market situation demands, but rather men who are in good standing both “above” and “below,” men who know how to get along with the press and with all political parties, especially with the radicals, such that their dealings cause no offense. This is that class of general directors who deal more with federal dignitaries and party leaders than with those from whom they buy or to whom they sell.

Because many ventures depend on political favors, those who undertake such ventures must repay the politicians with favors. There has been no big venture in recent years which has not had to expend considerable sums for transactions which from the outset were clearly unprofitable but which, despite expected losses, had to be concluded for political reasons. This is not to mention contributions to non-business concerns—election funds, public welfare institutions, and the like.

Powers working toward the independence of the directors of the large banks, industrial concerns, and joint-stock companies from the stockholders are asserting themselves more strongly. This politically expedited “tendency for big businesses to socialize themselves,” that is, for letting interests other than the regard “for the highest possible yield for the stockholders” determine the management of the ventures, has been greeted by statist writers as a sign that we have already vanquished capitalism.3 In the course of the reform of German stock rights, even legal efforts have already been made to put the interest and well-being of the entrepreneur, namely “his economic, legal, and social self-worth and lasting value and his independence from the changing majority of changing stockholders,”4 above those of the shareholder.

With the influence of the state behind them and supported by a thoroughly interventionist public opinion, the leaders of big enterprises today feel so strong in relation to the stockholders that they believe they need not take their interests into account. In their conduct of the businesses of society in those countries in which statism has most strongly come to rule—for example in the successor states of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire—they are as unconcerned about profitability as the directors of public utilities. The result is ruin. The theory which has been advanced says that these ventures are too large to be run simply with a view toward profit. This concept is extraordinarily opportune whenever the result of conducting business while fundamentally renouncing profitability is the bankruptcy of the enterprise. It is opportune, because at this moment the same theory demands the intervention of the state for support of enterprises that are too big to be allowed to fail.

III

It is true that socialism and interventionism have not yet succeeded in completely eliminating capitalism. If they had, we Europeans, after centuries of prosperity, would rediscover the meaning of hunger on a massive scale. Capitalism is still prominent enough that new industries are coming into existence, and those already established are improving and expanding their equipment and operations. All the economic advances which have been and will be made stem from the persistent remnant of capitalism in our society. But capitalism is always harrassed by the intervention of the government and must pay as taxes a considerable part of its profits in order to defray the inferior productivity of public enterprise.

The crisis under which the world is presently suffering is the crisis of interventionism and of state and municipal socialism, in short, the crisis of anticapitalist policies. Capitalist society is guided by the play of the market mechanism. On that issue, there is no difference of opinion. The market prices bring supply and demand into congruence and determine the direction and extent of production. It is from the market that the capitalist economy receives its sense. If the function of the market as regulator of production is always thwarted by economic policies in so far as the latter tries to determine prices, wages, and interest rates instead of letting the market determine them, then a crisis will surely develop.

Bastiat has not failed, but rather Marx and Schmoller.

Ludwig von Mises