[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[11] πρόσεχε σεαυτῷ, μὴ ἐπιλάθῃ Κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ σου, τοῦ μὴ φυλάξαι τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ κρίματα καὶ τὰ δικαιώματα αὐτοῦ, ὅσα ἐγὼ ἐντέλλομαί σοι σήμερον· [12] μὴ φαγὼν καὶ ἐμπλησθείς, καὶ οἰκίας καλὰς οἰκοδομήσας καὶ κατοικήσας ἐν αὐταῖς, [13] καὶ τῶν βοῶν σου καὶ τῶν προβάτων σου πληθυνθέντων σοι, ἀργυρίου καὶ χρυσίου πληθυνθέντος σοι, καὶ πάντων ὅσων σοι ἔσται, πληθυνθέντων σοι, [14] ὑψωθῇς τῇ καρδίᾳ καὶ ἐπιλάθῃ Κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ σου τοῦ ἐξαγαγόντος σε ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου, ἐξ οἴκου δουλίας·
[11] Observa et cave nequando obliviscaris Domini Dei tui et neglegas mandata eius atque iudicia et caerimonias quas ego precipio tibe hodie [12] ne postquam comederis et satiatus domos pulchras aedificaveris et habitaveris in eis [13] habuerisque armenta et ovium greges argenti et auri conctarumque rerum copiam [14] elevetur cor tuum et non reminiscaris Domini Dei tui qui eduxit te de terra Aegypti de domo servitutis...
[11] Beware that thou forget not the
LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: [12] lest -- when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; [13] and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; [14] when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery...Deuteronomy 8:11-14
Communism is not a reaction against the failure of the nineteenth century to organize optimal economic output. It is a reaction against its comparative success. It is a protest against the emptiness of economic welfare, an appeal to the ascetic in us all... The idealistic youth play with Communism because it is the only spiritual appeal which feels to them contemporary.
John Maynard Keynes, 1934
For him [Michael Shellenberger] and so many others, environmentalism offered emotional relief and spiritual satisfaction, giving them a sense of purpose and transcendence. It has become a substitute religion for those who have abandoned traditional faiths, as he explains in his concluding chapter, "False Gods for Lost Souls." Its priests have been warning for half a century that humanity is about to be punished for its sins against nature, and no matter how often the doomsday forecasts fail, the faithful still thrill to each new one.
John Tierney, "Bookshelf," Apocalypse Never, by Michael Shellenberger, The Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2020.
Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.
Sherlock Holmes, "The Naval Treaty," Memories of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892.
"I want to know, for example, why beauty exists," she [Gabrielle] said, "why nature continues to contrive it, and what is the link between the life of a tree and its beauty, and what connects the mere existence of the sea or a lightning storm with the feelings these things inspire in us? If God does not exist, if these things are not unified into one metaphorical system, then why do they retain for us such symbolic power?..."
Anne Rice (1941-2021), The Vampire Lestat, 1985.
Τοῦτο τοίνυν τὸ τὴν ἀλήθειαν παρέχον τοῖς γιγνωσκομένοις
καὶ τῷ γιγνώσκοντι τὴν δύναμιν ἀποδιδὸν τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέαν
φάθι εἶναι, αἰτίαν δ᾽ ἐπιστήμης οὖσαν καὶ ἀληθείας ὡς
γιγνωσκομένης μὲν διανοοῦ...This reality, then, that gives their truth to the objects of knowledge and the power of knowing to the knower, you must say is the idea of the good, and you must conceive it as being the cause of knowledge [ἐπιστήμη] and of truth [ἀλήθεια] in so far as known.
Plato, Republic, 508e, Republic II, translated by Paul Shorey, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1930, 1969, pp.102-105, color added.
Πολυμαθίη νόον ἔχειν οὐ διδάσκει· Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε καὶ Πυθαγόρην αὖτίς τε Ξενοφάνεά τε καὶ Ἑκαταῖον.
Learning of many things does not teach intelligence; if so it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus.
Heraclitus of Ephesus, Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφεσίος, according to Diogenes Laertius, "Heraclitus of Ephesus," The Presocratic Philosophers, G.S. Kirk & J.E. Raven, Cambrige University Press, 1964, Fragment 193, p.182.
Have you ever stood and stared at it, Morpheus. Marveled at it's beauty, it's genius? Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious. Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.
Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) to Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), The Matrix, Warner Brothers/Village Roadshow Pictures, 1999.
Success breeds failure. That's a lesson taught by America's current woes, the stumbling attempts to cope with the novel coronavirus, and the all-too-familiar scripts for responding to police misconduct and violent riots. What worked once upon a time no longer proves functional; policies that once enjoyed consensus now evoke multivarious complaints; procedures that long proved availing suddenly seem dysfunctional.
Michael Barone, "Success breeds failure" or "What Success Brings," the New York Post, June 20, 2020.
A Denver councilwoman caused a stir when she declared that white-owned businesses should pay reparations.
Candi CdeBaca, a 37-year-old Democratic Socialist who is facing a run-off election in June, told a business forum Thursday that white-owned businesses should pay an additional race-based tax, which would be given in turn as reparations to minority-owned businesses.
“Capitalism was built on stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen resources,” CdeBaca told the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance, 9 News reported.
She said business improvement districts could levy the racial tax.
‘You could be collecting those extra taxes from white-led businesses all over the city and redistributing them to black and brown-owned businesses,” she said.
"Denver Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca says white-owned businesses should pay reparations," The New York Post, May 6, 2023 -- since capital industry doesn't actually need to own land, and pays for labor and "resources," one wonders under what delusions Candi CdeBaca labors, or how "black and brown-owned businesses" are themselves free from the evils of captialism. And she certainly doesn't understand anti-discrimination law.
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, A 289, Lewis White Beck translation.
In 2020 an apparent majority of the American electorate voted to destroy their country and to ruin their own lives. They may not have thought they were doing that -- and I would be curious what many of them thought they were doing -- but there was plenty of evidence at hand that the program of the Democrat party had these goals.
Americans elected a government of those who hate them, hate their country, and, probably at some level, hate themselves. And then they have the gall to say that they are against "hate" -- often saying so on yard signs -- this is called "projection" in psychology. It also expresses the nauseating self-righteousness and "virtue signaling" characteristic of the Left. And in 2022, many voters seemed perfectly happy to vote for self-destruction all over again.
Indeed, in the Midterm elections of 2022, this often happened. In New York, Kathy Hochul was elected despite voicing no interest in dealing with the laws and District Attorneys that have unleashed criminals and crime on the public. Black voters, who tell pollsters that they want more police in their neighborhoods, not fewer, gave Hochul 90% of their votes, ensuring that nothing substantive will be done about crime. There is some kind of disconnect there.
First, Chicago voters voted out their incompetent Mayor, Lori Lightfoot; but then on April 4, 2023, they turned around and, by 51.4%, elected Brandon Johnson, another pro-criminal, communist ideologue. He will continue the destruction of the city, and of the schools, since he is a tool of the teachers unions. Why bother getting rid of Lighfoot if you simply get someone else who is probably worse? Too few voters have wised up. Unfortunately, the 48.6% of voters who had wised up must live with the same consequences -- unless they flee, as many in Illinois have.
Black voters may think that Democrats have their best interest at heart; but it is a trick. Democrats sell them out at every turn. No demographic is more in favor of charter schools and vouchers than black parents, but Democrat politicians are in total hock to the teachers unions, which oppose charters and vouchers. Democrat politicians, like Maxine Waters, who doesn't even live in her district, are simply kleptocrats who grow wealthy off the misery of their constituents. They pay no price for betraying black voters, leaving their children in violent, worthless schools, and letting criminals run free in their neighborhoods (but not Maxine's neighborhood). Kim Klacik's campaign ads showed her walking through devastated Baltimore neighborhoods, but black voters reelected the indifferent establishment Congressman (Kweisi Mfume, né Frizzell Gerald Gray) anyway. Let's keep those neighborhoods devoid of hope or opportunity, let alone safety. That's Democrat politics.
We might also note that Democrat politicians cannot honestly take the oath of office for anything they might be elected to. That is because such oaths always include an engagement to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." But they don't believe in the Constitution. They hate it. They reject its founding, its principles, and all the civil rights built into it. As we have seen elsewhere, they condemn it all as "racism"; and they openly want to destroy it. Now they even say that anti-discrimination laws are "racism," since their program is always to punish white people, Jews, and Asian-Amerians. But people still vote for them.
A nice twist comes with Kristina Ishmael, a federal Department of Education deputy director, who says that democracy itself is “also built on white supremacy.” Since it is supposed to be Republicans who are "threats to democracy," Ishmael must not have gotten the memo. But it is probably honest. Democrats don't believe in "democracy" unless they win every election. To them "democracy" is only real in a one party state, like Cuba, or California.
Since Kathy Hochul is already obviously corrupt, making sweetheart deals with campaign doners for State contracts, the corruption at the heart of New York politics will continue; and, obviously, nothing will be done about the taxes and regulations that have motivated large numbers of New Yorkers to flee the State. Voters in New York City, while voting more crime for themselves, also added a bunch of racist "racial equity" stuff to the City Charter, which will motivate further harrassment of business and its exodus from the State -- while shoplifting is so common and tolerated that drug stores and other small retailers are simply closing, leaving retail "deserts" in many, especially poor, areas.
Similarly, the vicious and despicable Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, won reelection, carrying Democat majorities in the State legislature with her. Michigan will be headed further down the same hell hole as New York and Illinois -- where, as it happens, the vicious and despicable governor, J.B. Pritzker, also won reelection, riding on the back, apparently, of a new law that will abolish most cash bail, as in New York, and limit the ability of police to enforce many laws, such as removing tresspassers from private property. Things were quite bad enough in Chicago already, with its own indifferent and incompetent Mayor, Lori Lightfoot. Apparently, not enough children were being killed by stray bullets. They want more.
The voters also gave the whole State government to the Democrats in Minnesota. Poor Minneapolis was the epicenter of the political plague that spread after the death of Geroge Floyd in 2020. The city has not recovered from the rioting, arson, and looting of the time; and what used to be called "Minnesota nice" has now become the racism and anti-Americanism of "Progressive" and Leftist ideology, with the living center of infection perhaps in the person of the America- and Jew-hating Representative Ilhan Omar, who was just reelected to Congress with 75% of the vote. With her, the infection has certainly gone deep in the unfortunate people of Minnesota. The rot is in the bones -- in a State that already ranks 45th among the 50 for its tax climate, hard on the heels of New Jersey, New York, California, etc. for the worst of the worst. This is where liberal white citizens claimed they would not call the police, despite being victims of crime, because they would be more likely to killed by the police than protected by them. Indeed, in 2017, Justine Damond was fatally shot by officer Mohamed Noor after she had called 911 to report a crime. This did not make national news because, after all, Damond was white and Noor was a Somali immigrant. Nothing to see here.
Most remarkable is the election of John Fetterman in Pennsylvania to the U.S. Senate. A man supported by his parents all his life, never having held a real job, elected as mayor for a small Pennsylvania town, for which he did nothing, Fetterman advocated releasing murderers from prison. Elected Lieutenant Governor, Fetterman actually did help release criminals from his position on the Parole Board. Running for Senate, he suffered a stroke, which has left him barely able to form complete sentences or engage in conversations. The press helped conceal his brain damage and savaged one reporter who actually reported on his dementia; but it became fully obvious in the one debate he agreed to have with his opponent, TV doctor Mehmet Oz. But, aparently, the ideal Democrat candidate is now one, like the clearly senile President Biden, with brain damage. He's the one Pennsylvania voters want in the U.S. Senate. Release the murderers. Ban fracking. Gasoline is still far too cheap. The idiots at MSNBC even suggested him as a 2024 Presidential candidate. Pennsylvania voters also elected a Democrat candidate who had died. No "Ableism" there! Since the dead tend to vote for Democrats, perhaps a political system of the dead is the Democrat future.
The saying is that people get the kind of government they deserve; and, of course, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania voters are going to get plenty of what they deserve, as when California voters failed to recall comical hypocrite Gavin Newsom, apparently so that they could keep enjoying the squalor, crime, blackouts, and poverty of Democrat government. They've all voted for crime and poverty, and they are sure to get plenty of both.
The tragedy is that the rest of the country will continue suffering from their folly. There is no telling how much more damage to the Nation the Democrats could have done if they were able to continue controlling Congress -- it will be bad enough as it is, with Republicans, including the RINO's, only having the House of Representatives. The puzzle, at the same time, is how citizens of a democracy can end up deliberately voting for Bad Government. Perhaps they have forgotten what Good Govenment is supposed to be, as, say, defined by Jefferson. That is certainly not what the schools have been teaching. What voters may now expect is an endless supply of free stuff from Government, based on Cargo Cult Economics. This was always one of the dangers of Democracy.
Perhaps Democrat voters have also "transitioned" from mere liberal guilt to self-hatred also. They are certainly being told, by the good and wise of the "privileged" Ruling Class, that if they are white or Asian, straight or hard-working, Christian or Jewish, then self-hatred is warranted. Someone in the past, who might have looked like them (except for Muslims), might have owned slaves. Or they might have been in or from a country (except a Muslim one) that outlawed homosexuality. Or they might have been in or from a country (except a Muslim one) where women, or those "identifying" as women, did not have equal rights. So, their lives deserve to be destroyed. And that is what they vote for -- simultaneously expecting endless free stuff. This is the level of critical thinking in the "Critical Theory" crowd.
What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist, Versuch einer Kritik der Christentums [Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1986, p.12]; translation by Walter Kaufmann (1921-1980), The Portable Nietzsche [the Viking Press, 1954, 1965, "The Antichrist," p.570].
"Law-abiding people," Dubois had told us, "hardly dared to go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, home-made guns, bludgeons... to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably -- or even killed. This went on for years... Murder, drug addiction, larceny, assault, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were the parks the only places -- these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark."
I tried to imagine such things happening in our schools. I simply couldn't. Nor in our parks. A park was a place for fun, not for getting hurt. As for getting killed in one -- "Mr. Dubois, didn't they have police? Or courts?" Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers [Berkley Madallion Book, 1959, p.91]. Heinlein here presciently foresaw the crimewave of the 1960's. Unfortunately, much of this sounds more like the 2020's than the 1960's. Students at Columbia University used to be warned not to enter Morningside Park after dark. After crime had been suppressed in the 1990's, these warnings were forgotten. Then on December 11, 2019, new student Tessa Majors was murdered by three teenagers in the park -- just as described in 1959 by Robert Heinlein.
A soulless thief pick-pocketed a dead man crushed by a truck in Manhattan — as ghoulish onlookers cheered her on, video obtained by The Post shows.
The woman was recorded apparently pick-pocketing the body of a pedestrian who had been crushed under a tractor-trailer in Midtown — and the sickening crime has left police unable to identify him or notify his family of his death, sources said.
The gruesome crash occurred as the victim, who police said was believed to be in his 50s, was crossing Eighth Avenue at West 44th Street around 11:30 a.m. Thursday.
Video shows the thief, wearing white pants and a black jacket, shimmying under the truck toward the dead man and smoothly reaching for his wallet.
Giddy onlookers — seemingly unbothered by the sight of the dead man — egged her on.
“Go ahead, gangsta! Go ahead!” one man says as he watches the roadway robbery unfold.
Stunned witnesses called the cops on the brazen burglar, but officers have been unable to apprehend the alleged perp, who is wanted for grand larceny, police sources said. "NYC thief pick-pocketed dead victim who was pinned under truck," The New York Post, October 8, 2022. One might wonder if this is even the result of a kind of "Death Wish," the instinct that Freud postulated after seeing the carnage of World War I. Since Death Wish also became the name of a 1974 Charles Bronson (1921-2003) movie, and then series of movies, which were inspired, if that is the right word, by the wave of crime in the City of New York from the 1960's to the '90's, this might be particularly apt after the Democrats have unleashed a new crime wave, not just in New York, but in many cities, pretty much all controlled by Democrats -- Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, New Orleans, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angleles, Seattle, Portland, etc. -- across America -- but not, curiously, Miami (which now has the lowest crime rate in decades). The Death Wish seems to be part of Democrat ideology itself.
We might also remember the movie Little Murders [1971], directed by Alan Arkin and starring Elliott Gould, based on a play by Jules Feiffer. The grim, tragicomic despair of the movie looks like just the thing for our times. Elliott Gould is a photographer who now specializes in photographing s**t. Today, he would have no difficulty doing a lot of that in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, etc., where the worthies of local government tolerate crazy people and drug addicts using the public streets as their toilet. Gould's wife having been murdered, he joins his father-in-law in randomly shooting people out their apartment window, laughing all the time. Today, they might well be released without bail, should they even get arrested.
But the origin of this "Death Wish" is perhaps not so mysterious. It has been in preparation at American universities for decades, a combination of race hatred and communist ideology, concealed under a rubric of "anti-racism." The racist part is to subsitute race for all explanations of anything. George Soros claims that the greater number of black men in prison than others is obviously the result of injustice and racism. That more crimes are committed by black men, whose victims are usually black also, would be obvious to anyone looking at the crime statistics; So we get books like the one at right, by Peniel E. Joseph, the "Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values, Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, and Associate Dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin." "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" ("DEI," or, more appropriately, "DIE") requires, of course, the abolition of capitalism, civil rights, and Constitutional government, replaced by a totalitarian dictatorship, as in Cuba -- whose tyrannical form we see frankly described by Ibram X. Kendi.
Ignoring what is obvious, in the facts of the matter, effectively displays power -- and if you can't persuade, then riot -- and the ultimate proof of power is not just to force people into silence, it is to make them confess things against their will that they don't believe. This humiliates as well as controls, which is why sanctions against academics or employees who have sinned against the Inquisition typically require apologies and abject confessions of wrongdoing -- which victims mistakenly believe will get them off the hook, when it actually condemns them to perpetual servitude, alienation, and bad conscience.
But that all this is just a smokescreen for communism should be obvious from two considerations: (1) Socialism is regarded as self-evidently true (supposing that there is truth) at any American university; and (2) disagreement will not be tolerated. Opposing voices will be silenced, threatened, and driven off any college campus. Thus, communism is "socialism + totalitarianism." The "democratic socialism" of someone like Bernie Sanders cannot persuade when he obviously was a fan of the Soviet Union and Cuba for decades -- killing his own Presidential run in 2020 by renewing his praise of Cuba.
The "democratic" part of "democratic socialism" no more means actual democracy than it did in the name of the "German Democratic Republic," i.e. East Germany -- a police state where one out of every 63 East Germans collaborated with the secret police. We already see this kind of informing on college campuses, where professors who read parts of Huckleberry Finn [1884] to classes can be "ratted out" to the administrative Inquisition.
The economic success of certain minorities, like Americans from China or India, let alone those of Jewish ancestry, doesn't need to be explained because anyone raising the issue about them can be silenced. And if anyone points out that half of all persons arrested in New York City in the 1850's were Irish, the only conceivable answer is just that the Irish were, obviously, the "oppressed." Not that they were, like, more violent than other ethnic groups. "Fighting Irish" is just a stereotype.
Meanwhile, the children of successful minorities, from India or East Asia again, can be discriminated against in admissions to colleges, just as Jews were before World War II, and for the same reasons. Economic success, after all, is not the result of virtue and hard work, but it is only the result of political power. And if such minorities were successful before they had any political power, this just means that they should be excluded and crushed now, so that the anomaly is no longer obvious.
All this evil ideology has now spread far into education, business, and even, of all things, sports. Employees are herded into "anti-racism" training, where they are told that white people are evil and America along with them. This sort of thing, racially discriminating against certain employees, violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act; but, of course, the Enlightened don't believe in Civil Rights. Marx said so. It is all bourgeois mystification, keeping power and goodies out of the hands of the oppressed, who deserve them more.
The idea that some people are more productive, for cultural and moral reasons, while others, for similar reasons, are not, cannot be tolerated -- which is why Thomas Sowell is not part of the reading for any "anti-racism" indoctrination. This has to be galling for anyone who grew up in a hard-working family -- like the Korean girl who told reporters than her parents, who arrived in this country with $100, had worked 16-hour days to build their dry cleaning business, only to have it looted and burned out in the 1992 Rodney King riots.
Thus, the purveyors of "anti-racism" ideology may not themselves have a Death Wish, only a lust for power -- and power has very tangible benefits (such as not needing to work 16-hour days in a small business). It is those who are browbeaten, intimidated, and threatened who are told that perhaps they should just die. The Earth will be better off without them anyway -- that "Thanos" character from the Marvel movies may have had the right idea after all -- killing half the people in the universe. But this ideology is popular with so many, the greedy, the guilty, and the cowardly, that it is like cockroaches coming out of the walls. Few want to stand up against it, against threats of firing, ostracism, and humiliation -- i.e. getting "cancelled."
By 2022, the consequences of the Democrat program have become obvious. Or should. From the day Joe Biden became President, the oil and gas industries have been assaulted, with the result that gasoline prices have shot up to around $7 a gallon in some places, after being no more than $2 when he took office. This was deliberate, since Biden promised, many times during the Presidential race, to destroy the oil and gas industries. Yet when confronted with the damaging level of gasoline prices, Biden denies responsibility. Even as new policies continue to attack investment, exploration, and production of oil and gas, Biden and Administration representatives continue to divert blame elsewhere, to Covid or Putin or greedy gas station owners, despite the open purpose of their own policies.
This habit gets called "gaslighting," that obvious truths are denied in favor of some less embarrassing and politically damaging narrative. Nevertheless, some people, presumably Democrats, and other brain-dead Zombies, believe it, just as they believe that Biden isn't a corrupt, senile, mendacious, hair-sniffing old fool. But there was a new element in this. Political lying has assumed a brazen level of shamelessness that does seem unusual. Liars all but glory in it, and one gets the sense that they would rather tell a lie even when the truth would work as well. There is an ideology behind that also, from Nietzsche or "deconstruction," that there is no truth and that lies that serve and display power are preferable. Stalin knew that already, when the Communist "Party Line" could change from day to day or hour to hour, drawing full and instant adulation from the faithful -- Democrats were once against tolerating illegal aliens -- now anyone with such views is called a racist.
As gasoline and natural gas prices skyrocket, a general inflation, the highest in 40 years, grips the economy. Everything costs more, especially food and other necessities. Big spending and easy money, as Milton Friedman would understand, fuel the inflation. Gaslighting is a factor again, as Leftist commentators recommend eating less, eating cheaper foods, or buying a $50,000 electric car that you can spend hours recharging. Americans are overweight anyway. Inflation isn't as bad as under Jimmy Carter, but it's getting there -- only a rising recession seems to delay it.
The lockdowns of businesses and other activities because of the Wuhan Covid Pandemic in 2020 and 2021 exposed the priorities of many politicians. Church services were prohibited, even ones held outdoors, with people sitting in their own cars. The police threatened arrest, or actually did arrest church goers. Church services, it seems, were not "essential" parts of life. Pardon my suspicion that only Democrats would think that way. It was also noteworthy that hostile action was taken against Christians and Jews, but not against Muslims. Christians and Jews protested and went to court, but not, curiously, Muslims.
While bureaucrats and politicians kept getting (well) paid, small businesses and, especially, restaurants, were destroyed. That was all, of course, at the lower end of the employment scale, not to mention the lower end of the business scale. People who had invested everything in their restaurant were thrown to the wolves. One restaurant owner in Los Angeles even noticed that, adjacent to her closed business, a movie shoot was providing food, "craft services," for their actors and staff. Why were actors immune from Covid while restaurant patrons were not? Politicians were indifferent.
In New York, (well paid) City inspectors hunted down contractors who were still remodeling apartments, alone. They posed no health threat either to themselves or to others, but they still were to be fined and threatened. So the enemy was clearly not the disease, but business and labor themselves. But not Big Business. Target and Walmart remained open. These were "essential," like liquor stores. And Amazon.com cleaned up, helping to make Jeff Bezos one of the richest men in the world. Lose your waitering job? Get hired at Amazon.
Meanwhile, while European countries went along with this, and the Chinese walled people up in their apartment buildings (like in a horror movie), the Swedes didn't do any lockdowns. Disaster was predicted. All Swedes would die. But, in the end, not many more Swedes got sick or died as anywhere else. And they had not destroyed their economy or punished people for trying to make a living.
Then it turned out that epidemiologists had always known that lockdowns, and face masks, were mostly ineffective. But the "experts" kept saying that this all had to be done. A number of States, however, didn't go along. So a lot of people fled, to where they were often already fleeing, like to Florida, Texas, etc.
It wasn't just the epidemic. People were fleeing New York, California, New Jersey, Illinois, etc. because the governments in these places were already crushing business and releasing criminals on the public. The lockdowns and harassment just made things worse. But it was on a continuum already being actively pursued.
One begins to suspect that the epidemic was not a disaster for certain people, but an opportunity. This was openly stated by many, all the way to the James Bond villains of the "World Economic Forum" at Davos. They wanted a "Reset," which would revive something rather like communism, but now with them in charge. Marx had predicted that small business would be eaten up by monopolies. It wasn't; but now, curiously, Democrats and the Davos villains make that happen with the power of government, their government, each with their own monopolies. With a blizzard of lies, they might get away with it.
It doesn't affect as many people directly as energy, food, prices, and jobs, but a big part of the Democrat program concerns crime. Specifically, when it comes to crime, they don't care. When Lee Zeldin asked Kathy Hochul in their debate about jailing criminals, she replied, "I don’t know why that’s so important to you." Many thought this line alone would lose her the election; but obviously New York voters don't want criminals imprisoned.
Thus, Democrats seem to know what the people want. The fashionable policies now are to release criminals on the public, to the point of advocating the abolition of prisons. At the same time, the attendant policy calls for "defunding" or even abolishing the police. Crime, after all, is the fault of society; and so-called "criminals" are victims.
Indeed, the ideology of the Democrats is that guns cause crime, not criminals. Thus, citizens must be stripped of the means of self-defense, in order that they can be killed by criminals, or something, since, of course, criminals ignore gun laws in the absence of their enforcement (as in Democrat jurisdictions) -- and Open Borders allow for drug cartels to traffic in guns, drugs, women and children, or anything. This is the Utopia of Progressive politics.
One gets the sense that criminals are the militia of the Democrat Party. The vanguard of his militia are the more organized criminal rioters of organizations like "Antifa" and "Black Lives Matter" (BLM), who are free to burn down cities, attack police and court houses, and assault citizens, secure in the knowledge that local and federal prosecutors will drop the charges against them, should they happen to even get arrested. Not many have gotten arrested, since the police are usually instructed to back off the let the rioters riot.
The fiction that the "Anti-Fascist" organization "Antifa" consists of anarchists was exposed when they attacked as "Fascists" people demonstrating in Los Angeles against vaccine mandates. In other words, the "anarchists" supported the dictatorial policies of the government, requiring people to have experimental vaccines, whose side effects, including deaths, have been concealed from the public. Some anarchists. But it was already obvious that "Antifa" itself were the proper Fascists, in Fascisti black uniforms and masks. Similarly, "Black Lives Matter" could not care less about the black victims of crime, yet they protest even justified police shootings.
In default of abolishing prisons or the police, an easy first step is to have prosecutors who do not prosecute. New York State has abolished cash bail for most offenses, so petty criminals, and sometimes career criminals, can be arrested and then released before the police have even finished their paperwork. But the charges will be reduced or dropped anyway. Several big city District Attorneys have become poster children for "decarceration," i.e. failing to put criminals in jail. In New York and California especially, the official tolerance of shoplifting has resulted in many stores simply closing. The police may not even bother arresting shoplifters, who loot stores without any opposition, from police, security guards, or other customers. In San Francisco, breaking into cars is also routine.
With the help of money from the James Bond villain George Soros, faithless prosecutors have been elected across the country. Chesa Boudin, a son of terrorists, was in San Francisco, Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, George Gascón in Los Angeles, Kim Foxx in Chicago, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, John Chisolm in Milwaukee, Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, Mike Schmidt in Portland (Oregon), and Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore have been just the most high profile cases, but there are others.
Alvin Bragg was elected in New York's Borough of Manhattan, after he had promised to be soft on crime, even as Eric Adams was elected Mayor, with the promise of cracking down on crime. Manhattan, however, may qualify as the most foolishly Leftist of New York's Boroughs, i.e. with a concentration of Ruling Class white "liberals."
Perhaps Philadelphia voters were not paying attention to what Larry Krasner had been doing. California voters had no such excuse. They had the chance to recall the hypocritical, "white privilege" Governor Gavin Newsom, who had been busy destroying the State. At the conclusion of the election, on September 14, 2021, the Recall failed. So California will continue its death-spiral, although the Recall of Chesa Boudin on June 7, 2022 may indicate that many voters, even in San Francisco, are getting wised up.
There was already some evidence of that, when three San Francisco School Board members were Recalled on February 15, 2022, largely because of policies that were widely perceived as "Anti-Asian," i.e. disparaging and penalizing the achievement, as well as the character, of Asian students and their parents. One of the School Board Members had the nerve to keep making anti-Asian statements even after being recalled -- their obvious racism is never called that, of course, by the corrupt "mainsteam" press. But Californians are still stuck with Newsom, who now has delusions that he is a good candidate for President in 2024. Californians who had already fled the State for Arizona, Nevada, Texas, or Florida may have helped the remaining fools to retain Newsom as Governor, but they certainly would not be voting for him as President.
Meanwhile, Marilyn Mosby, under federal indictment herself, has lost her Democrat primary bid for reelection. And George Gascón will face a recall election this Fall. Even the Beverly Hills City Council has called for his ouster. But the Democrats are up to other tricks. James Craig of Detroit was the only police chief in the country who prevented riots in Detroit in 2020. He then ran for Governor of Michigan; but somehow too many of his petition signatures were ruled fraudulent or defective. How does that happen? He will thus not have an even chance against the despicable and evil Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.
Characteristic of prosecutors unleashing criminals on the public is their serious prosecution of people who practice self-defense against criminals. This is revealing of a characteristic of Leftist ideology. "Progressives" want citizens to be helpless, in every way, from economic success to defense against crime. Hence the hostility to the success of people from India or East Asia. And it explains "gun control" laws, meaningless to criminals (especially with an open border controlled by Mexican drug cartels), which make it more difficult, or even impossible, for citizens to arm and defend themselves against criminals. But that is not enough. Self-defense, traditionally regarded as the most basic and important of all natural rights, must itself be criminalized. This may not always be obvious to the public, since it is not openly admitted by Leftist politicians (among so much else), but the behavior of corrupt prosecutors exposes the truth. Three high profile cases are noteworthy.
On August 25, 2020, after riots, looting, and arson by anarchists and "protesters" had afflicted Kenosha, Wisconsin -- the local police, of course, had been instructed to back off and let the rioters riot -- 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse volunteered to defend a car dealership that been vandalized the previous night. He was armed with a rifle, but he also was ready to offer first aid to anyone who had been injured (presumably by the rioters). Somehow he got separated from other volunteers and was threatened, attacked, and chased by rioters. At times he was knocked down and kicked in the head, as he tried to flee to distant police lines. But he defended himself and shot three attackers, killing two of them. One was himself armed, and all had assaulted Rittenhouse. For this he was charged with murder, and kept in a prison cell for a month, without running water.
Rittenhouse was on trial in Kenosha, November 1-November 19, 2021. The jury found him innocent on all charges. The prosecution made a couple of suprising arguments against Rittenhouse's defense of self-defense. One was that everyone should just be ready to take a beating from attackers. Perhaps the prosecutor could later have advised James Lambert of the same; and one might wonder if he would offer similar advice to victims of rape. Don't resist the rape. Actually, I've heard that advice.
Another prosecution argument was that, if you are armed with a gun, you have no right to use it against an attacker who does not have a gun. Again, we might like to hear that argument made against a rape victim. But this argument is based on a thin thread of legitimacy; for a general principle of self-defense is that you are only entitled to use a level of force that is sufficient to protect yourself.
However, this principle clearly depends on circumstances. A woman with a gun may have no physical chance to stop an attacker without shooting him. In Britain, an attack victim is required to run away if they are able to do so; but in a case of rape, a woman with a gun (impossible to get in Britain anyway) running away will put herself at a grave disadvantage. A rapist can overtake her and will then have an excellent chance of knocking her down and disarming her. Her best chance is always to shoot him in the first place.
Thus, many States have "stand your ground" laws, in which victims are not obliged to run away. Also, in a State like California, if you shoot an intruder in your home, it is prima facie self-defense. With Rittenhouse, it was obvious that he was running away, and he was still pursued and assaulted by his attackers. In the context, the arguments of the prosecutors were absurd, and the jury knew it. You are never morally or legally obliged to allow an attack, of any kind, against yourself; and the level of force you need to use to repel an attack will very specifically depend on the initial ratio of power between you and the attacker, and other circumstances.
Another feature of the Rittenhouse case were the lies told about it in the press. Thus, it was said that he was a "white supremacist" who brought a gun illegally to Kenosha specifically to kill black people, and did. It even went out over international media that he had killed black people, when actually they were all white, and one of them, who had been shouting the forbidden "N-word," was a convicted child molester. Thus, Rittenhouse has an excellent chance of winning defamation lawsuits against news organizations, as had previously occurred with the case of the Covington High School students who had been harrassed, and then defamed, in Washington on January 18, 2019. Attempts were also made to prevent funds being raised for Rittenhouse's defense (as at "GoFundMe"), when nothing of the sort was attempted about the defense of 2020 rioters.
As in Kenosha, there were "protests" and riots in St. Louis in 2020. Part of this was the murder on June 2 of retired (black) police Captain David Dorn, who was trying to protect a friend's pawn shop from looters. On June 28, marchers and activists broke down a gate and invaded the property of Patricia and Mark McCloskey. To warn off the invaders, the McCloskeys fetched guns and scared off the "protesters." No shots were fired.
For this, activist St. Louis prosecutor Kimberly Gardner charged the McCloskeys with felonies "for unlawful use of a weapon." Missouri actually has very strong self-defense laws, and the Governor immediately vowed that the McCloskeys would be pardoned if they were convicted of anything. The judge before whom the case was submitted, of course, should have dismissed it; but he at least ejected Gardner from the prosecution, for her obvious political bias. Unfortunately, on June 17, 2021, the McCloskeys accepted a plea bargain and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor offenses, of "assault" and "harrassment."
This was extremely foolish and ill advised. The Governor kept his word and pardoned the McCloskeys; but the vindictive Missouri Bar Association, certainly dominated by Democrats, moved to disbar the McCloskeys, who are both lawyers. The courts, even the Supreme Court, so far have let them get away with this. The McCloskeys should have known better not to plead guilty to anything. As with Rittenhouse, various lies were told, by the press and by Kim Gardner, about the case. The "peaceful protesters" seem to have been minding their own business when they broke down a gate and threatened the McCloskeys.
If we can see how Leftist prosecutors go after people exercising self-defense in the Rittenhouse and McCloskey cases, a new level of judicial misconduct was achieved on July 1, 2022. Jose Alba, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, was clerking late at night at a bodega in Harlem. A woman tried to buy a bag of potato chips, but her Food Stamp card was declined, so Alba refused the sale. Rather than come up with a little money, the woman went to fetch her ex-con, thug boyfriend, who returned to the bodega and assaulted Alba.
Alba had no chance to run away because he was knocked down in the confined space behind the bodega counter. As the assault continued, Alba grabbed a small knife off a shelf and defended himself. The original woman was also present, and she drew a knife and stabbed Alba. But Alba's knife did more damage to the attacker, who arrived DOA at a local hospital.
In a sane and just jurisdiction, the police would have taken down details of the event. They might even have arrested the woman who participated in the attack on Jose Alba. But New York City is no longer a sane and just jurisdiction. Alba himself was arrested, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged him with Second Degree Murder (which requies "malice"), demanding bail of $500,000 and sent him to the hell hole of the Rickers Island prison. When it came before a judge, the bail was reduced to the still ridiculous $250,000; and as in the Rittenhouse case, Leftist forces immediately shut down attempts to raise funds for Alba's defense (e.g. "GoFundMe" again). The woman was not charged, because, an Assistant District Attorney explained, she was "defending" her boyfriend.
Thus we see the full ideology. The criminal is the victim and the victim is the criminal; and an elderly (like James Lambert) immigrant worker (albeit legal), of color, had no right to defend himself against an attack by a person (black) with a long criminal record. And the accomplice in the assault, the woman, well, that's "self-defense."
The protest about this, of course, was widespread -- although it didn't include the corrupt Governor of New York or many other politicians. Fortunately, bail was soon reduced to more reasonable levels, and Alba was freed. But more than two weeks passed before Alvin Bragg realized that he better drop the charges against Alba. A jury was never going to convict Jose Alba of anything; and this whole business only exposed Bragg, and his allies, as the corrupt friends of criminals that they are.
But how did this Bizarro World happen? Who could decide to deliberately unleash criminals on the public? Nothing like that even happened in the 60's, with its own "soft on crime" policies. They weren't like this. No one suggested abolishing prisons or the police or simply unleashing criminals on the public. Today, a new level of insanity has been reached.
Indeed, all the current idiocy goes back to an anti-American ideology, formulated and promoted by Marxists, that is now at full boil, spilling over from academia into all levels of "education," sports, government, the press, corporations, and the kind of "liberal" religion that sees political activism rather than faith and morality as its proper focus.
Few Americans can have been unaware that rich football players, and then other athletes, were no longer standing for the National Anthem. The explanation offered for this, of which few also can have been unaware, is that America was intrinsically racist and oppressive, where police departments were systematically killing black men to an extent that could be called "genocide."
This was all lies, but lies that have been promoted by the "mainstream" media and other public voices. We might wonder how many Americans actually believed that -- and polls did show that many thought that the police kill hundreds of black men a year -- not the dozen or so actually killed, mostly with justification.
If enough have been dectived, perhaps this would explain the complaceny of voters about Democrat anti-Americanism. From the statement of radicals, which now includes the American ambassador to the United Nations, one might really think that the United States, with all its history, laws, and institutions, deserves to be destroyed. Not to worry, the job is in hand, to the extent that a senile President can pursue it.
Many Americans are now aware of the Marxism that is (deliberately) destroying America. It is an issue in public discourse, and in elections, as in a recent election that changed the State Government in Virginia. This variety of Marxism is called "Critical [!] Theory," and its specific application to race is called "Critical Race Theory," one of whose advocates I have featured here. As is typical, the first defense of the Left is that they are not teaching racism or Marxism, but only the honest history of slavery, racism, and Segregation, which racists don't want taught. This is all lies, since no one objects to the honest teaching of the history of slavery or racism. But any honest American objects to the teaching of lies, distortions, and Marxism.
When Gavin Newsom could have been removed as Governor of California, brilliant libertarian commentator Larry Elder could have been elected in his place. But the Los Angeles Times called Larry "the black face of white supremacy," a lie and smear so vicious that Larry should have sued the paper for defamation. But this is typical. Anything that isn't Marxism is "white supremacy," and that includes the economic success and virtues of immigrants from India, China, Korea, Vietnam, and many other places -- hence their disiullusionment with the Left in San Francisco. This is part of the program of the Left to make everyone into helpless victims -- victims, not just of racism and America, but, of course, of Capitalism.
All the talk about race, however, is really no more than a smokescreen. The Left doesn't really care about race, and, as with Larry, they are perfectly willing to smear any enemies with racial slurs. No, it is not about race. It is about restoring Communism. The totalitarianism of the Left is already on full display at American universities, including, most alarmingly, law schools. Activists do not believe in free speech, freedom of religion, or even in tolerating political oppposition. The FBI and the Justice Department, even under President Trump, were already politicized into goon squads of the Democrat Party. Lying to Congress, citations of contempt of Congress, Democrats get waved through without penalty for any of these things. But Republicans get arrested with early morning raids or humiliating public confrontations. In the District of Columbia, they can then be convicted before biased judges and biased juries, or intimidated into plea deals, after prosecutors have deliberately tried to bankrupt them with legal expenses. As has been said, "The process is the punishment," so that people can be ruined even without a conviction or a guilty plea. If there is a just God, a lot of people are going to be going to Hell over all this.
Meanwhile, "Big Tech" and most social media act as agents of the Democrat Party and Democrat office holders, censoring news stories and suppressing opposition voices. This is illegal, since the government cannot use private business to violate rights that the government cannot, and actions to help the Demcorat Party are "in kind" campaign contributions, which must be reported. But, again, the courts have mostly protected the censors and the Democrats. This helped get Joe Biden elected, when his son's abandoned laptop computer exposed all the corruption of Biden family business dealings; but Big Tech, etc., largely was able to suppress and/or discredit the story. Even now, when the truth is admitted by all, there has been no accountability for the bad actors, not the least being Joe Biden himself.
Besides energy, inflation, and crime, the Democrats have other destructive policies. Thus, not only have they unleashed criminals on the public, they have thrown open the border and allowed millions (literally) of illegal aliens into the country. Since it looks bad on TV with such numbers of people camping at the border, and the border States are livid, the federal government has been secretly moving them all over the country, often with flights late at night into closed local airports.
None of this has been openly admitted to the public. Biden Administration officials make absurd statements that the "border is closed" or the "border is under control." All lies. "Gaslighting" again. Even when the secret flights into Upstate New York were exposed by the press, their existence or purpose has never been acknowledged.
Why this is being allowed is a good question. It is a fundamental betrayal of the responsibility of government, which is to American citizens, not to aliens entering the country illegally. Since the purpose of it all is not explained, or even discussed, by officials or politicians (except privately), we are left to guess. What it looks like, of course, is that the Democrats hope to make all the aliens citizens through a general amnesty, in which case they will vote for Democrats, who let them into the country and give them free stuff.
The purpose of it all, consequently, is simply a play for power, regardless of the interests of the American people, and even regardless of the interests of the aliens. Local Democrats, as in New York, are now discovering that their "homeless" services are being swamped by the illegals. The "homeless" problem, with drug addicts, crazy people, and criminals, was bad enough already.
Since the influx of aliens amounts to an invasion, aided and abetted by the Biden Administration, border States are now considering the practice a matter of treason against the United States. This may not go anywhere, but we do see the faithlessness of Biden and the Democrats. Again, Americans who voted for this simply voted for the destruction of their own lives and of the country.
Since the border is open and the Border Patrol is swamped with "processing" aliens (the ones who haven't already gotten away), the Mexican drug cartels have taken control of the actual border. As they release groups of aliens to distract the Border Patrol, the drug lords smuggle in, well, whatever they want, including exploited children or the highly toxic drug fentanyl, a very small dose of which will kill, and does. This is manufactured and shipped, by the way, by our Chinese Communist friends, who have bought off much of American business, sports (especially the NBA), and other influential sell-outs.
What the Democrats don't mind talking about are quibbles over language. Illegal aliens are "undocumented immigrants," with the implication that they are simply "immigrants" like anyone who comes to the country legally; and we get silly slogans like "no person is illegal." This is all, of course, to avoid honestly addressing the real issues. There is also a racial aspect to it. Many activists think that Latin Americans have a right to be in the United States, while those of European ancestry do not. Chances are, they have not asked the Navajo, and others, what they think about that. "Latinx" demonstrations usally feature dancers in Aztec costume, as though the Aztecs had lived in Arizona, or Compton.
Besides all the other evils they are practicing and promoting, the Democrats are also on board with one of the most evil movements in American history. It is a program to mutilate American children. This is part of the "gender equity" movement. Feminists had never believed that "gender" was rooted in genuine sexual differences, but this has now progressed to a new level of insanity. Today, anyone can be any "gender" just by deciding that is what they are, regardless of their natural sex at birth.
Children who express any uncertainty about their bodies, often under peer influence or educrat propaganda, may be directed to cooperative doctors who can prescribe drugs and even surgery. Children may be given, unknown to their parents, new names and new clothing, appropriate to their "gender identity." Puperty may be "blocked" with experimental drugs; and teens may undergo surgery, castration for boys and mastectomies and hysterectomies for girls. At that point, parents will be involved, but often they have come on board with "experts" telling them that their children may commit suicide unless their bodies are mutilated.
Girls with only mastectomies and male hormones may nevertheless still be able to conceive children. This leads to the trope of "men can get pregnant," which seems to send the activists and the press into ecstacies. How common it is is a good question. Of course, girls who have been encouraged or pressured into a sex change, and then realize the horror of what has been done to them, may "detransition"; but, even if they are still able to conceive, they no longer have their breasts to feed their own children.
An activist Berkeley law professor clashed with a U.S. Senator, accusing her of encouraging violence against "trans" people by asking her "What is a woman?" -- a question that a new Surpreme Court Justice said she could not answer. The Senator, on the other hand, did not retort that the law professor was herself promoting violence against women by endorsing the transfer of biological males to women's prisons -- where they rape and impregnate female prisoners. This has happened in Britain, California, and New Jersey, if not elsewhere. Establishment Feminists are silent about the problem, but we learned long ago that such "Feminists" will sell out women in an instant for the sake of political considerations. As Mark Steyn has noted, women come last in the hierarchy of political priorities.
It is widely noted that such "Feminists" are now tolerant of words like "woman" and "mother" being erased from politically correct vocabulary. Women are now just some among the "vaginated" or "menstruating persons"; and mothers are "birthing persons" or, most grotesquely, "chest feeders." These changes are to accommodate the existence of "men" who menstruate or become pregnant. But some honest Feminists are not putting up with it, perhaps most conspicuously J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books. Despite fierce vilification, Rowling, unlike some others who have spoken up, has not backed down. Rowling continues to point out the insanity of saying that a rapist, with a penis, is a "woman."
Just as evil are the "trans-women" who end up competing in women's sports. Men who have gone through puberty and then "transition" to being "women" will be, of course, larger and stronger than biological women. Thus two "women" running track in Connecticut have been beating all the women, and a "woman" swimmer in Pennsylvania has set women's swimming records and has even been nominated by the University of Pennsylvania was the "woman athlete" of the year. Few actual women athletes have been willing to speak up against these injustices, even as the Biden Administration has tried dictating rules to give the "trans-women" the same rights as biological women. Real women may as well give up on women's sports. They are going to keep getting beaten by actual men.
The dishonesty and viciousness of this all is shocking. The courts need to stop "trans-women" from taking over women's athletics. At the same time, the mutilation of children may only be stopped by a blizzard of lawsuits, when young adults realize what has been done to them by "expert" adults. Not only can no sex change be anything other than cosmetic, but serious surgeries, especially on women's genitals, can result in medical problems for the rest of their lives, not to mention the damage that can be done when hormones must continually be taken -- artificial doses of both male and female hormones can lead to heart disease, cancer, and other problems. At the very least, of course, a natural sex life is impossible. It is a high price to pay for fashionable ideology.
And when it all happens because of political propaganda, someone should be prosecuted -- something that will not be done by crime-friendly prosecutors -- but then civil suits can take up the slack. This is already happening, but not with the impact and the public profile it deserves -- indeed, the corrupt "mainstream" press has no reason to provide honest publicity. It is a willing part of the program to mutilate children.
Since the Orwellian urge of the Left is not exhausted with the erasure of "woman" and "mother," a big part of their campaign is about pronouns. Since everyone gets to choose their gender, they also choose their pronouns. And since the simple alternatives of masculine, feminine, and neuter are too restrictive, there will be an infinite number of whimsical pronouns to fit an infinite number of potential genders. Politically correct persons, therefore, absurdly introduce themselves with their preferred pronouns, just as American schools now introduce themselves and their functions with declarations acknowledging the "Native Americans" upon whose "unceded lands" the school sits. However, the schools never seem to actually return these "unceded" lands. To the Left, using someone's preferred pronouns is now morally and legally obligatory. Refusing to do so is the political crime of "misgendering," which means that referring to a biological male who rapes women in a women's prison as "he" is a crime probably greater than the rapes themselves (which are simply Lesbian acts, and not evil male rapes). Thus, an elementary school district initiated federal Civil Rights actions against some children who had used the wrong pronouns -- as in Norway, a woman is being prosecuted for denying that men can get be "lesbians."
Thus we know what they are: Tyrants. They cannot tolerate disagreement or opposition. They cannot even tolerate silent acquiescence. "Silence is violence" is their motto, which seems to mean that you will go to prison (after they've been emptied or ordinary criminals) should you refuse to repeat some Stalinist catechism. Heaven help you if you openly dissent. Staffers of Bernie Sanders have been caught discussing concentration camps for "reeducation." In Finland, of all places, a woman was prosecuted for repeating Biblical teachings on homosexuality. But they never pull this, so far, with ʾIslâm, even though there are no "gay rights," "gay marriage," or even toleration of homosexuality in Islamic Law. Homosexuals are hanged in Irân, or given the option now, ironically, of a sex change operation. And, as I have noted, the "gendered" language of the Qurʾân is never accused of being "sexist." That would be "Islamophobic" and probably racist. So it is mainly Christians (and Zionists) who bear the full blast of hatred from the Left.
Apart from the blizzard of lies poured out by the Press and the Democrats, life under Donald Trump was pretty good. Unemployment was low, often historically low, growth was good, inflation was vanishing, and, apart from eliminating ISIS and chasing the Taliban, warfare was minimal. The Wuhan virus pandemic started to change that, and the Press and the Democrats wanted to blame it on Trump. That the virus probably originated in a Chinese lab, and was largely paid for with American tax dollars, was suspected from the first -- evoking fierce accusations of "racism" -- and later proved probably true -- certainly true about the tax dollars, and the support of American scientists, who used the Chinese lab to avoid American prohibitions of "gain of function" experiments on viruses.
Then there were race riots, which were not only tolerated and even promoted by Democrats, but a whole anti-American ideology was ready to roll out, "Critical Race Theory" and its like, and for some reason a wide spectrum of elite forces instantly bought into it. It looked like matters were already primed to go before the riots.
Be that as it may, many Americans seemed to blame Trump for something, and Joe Biden apparently promised moderation and calm. That was all lies also, and Biden himself was obviously senile; but a lot of Americans fell for it. But there seemed to be something else. A lot of people were unhappy with low unemployment and peace. This was paradoxical. Some people in New York and elsewhere were already attacking the police, long before any questionable deaths in Mineapolis. Young hooligans were throwing water and more obnoxious things at police in New York City, and nothing was done about it. The cops were instructed to just walk away. Hostility to police was already promoted by the Mayor of New York, Bill DeBlasio, while he happily smoked dope and went to his gym (instead of to work). Some kind of major folly was already in the air.
That preparation, of course, went back to the shooting of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. Riots ensued after rumors circulated that Brown was shot in the back or shot while trying to surrender, with his hands up. These all turned out to be lies, but it didn't stop demonstrations and riots from taking place across the country. In fact, Brown had assaulted Officer Darren Wilson, breaking his eye socket and trying to seize his weapon. Wilson was shooting in self-defense. And Brown had just robbed a store.
Using the Ferguson shooting as a pretext for ideology was something I saw close up at a demonstration in New York City. The marchers were carrying signs for the Revolutionary Communist Party, an organization I had heard about while living in Austin, Texas, back in the 70's. They wanted violence. Identifying such a group, or clearly showing their signs, is something that doesn't happen on the news. "Black Lives Matter," however, did get identified in 2014; and anyone foolish enough to add "All lives matter," was, of course, visited with the full rigors of denunciation and sometimes firings and ostracism -- what would soon be called getting "cancelled." Yet black lives are not, indeed, going to matter unless all lives matter. And, as I have noted, "BLM" does not actually believe that black lives matter, only those lives that can be used to denounce the police or the justice system and to celebrate criminals.
So what happened in 2020 was well prepared and a long time coming.
In the June 20, 2020 New York Post, I found a column by Michael Barone entitled "What Success Brings." This otherwise was posted elsewhere, on June 19, as "Success breeds failure." This is a profound insight, far beyond the examples, political and economic, examined by Barone. The best reason for this may be close to what is asserted in the quote from The Matrix above.
It may not be that we define our reality "through suffering and misery." But there are two sides to that close to the truth. One is that life as a challenge is itself a kind of suffering and misery. The creative person is driven, which may not make them happy or comfortable. Even the challenge of getting up in the morning to make an ordinary living, which may feel burdensome and onerous, nevertheless can leave a void when it is absent. Many men die soon after retirement, if they find nothing to do with themselves.
On the other hand, those who don't need to work for a living, like the Kennedies, or other beneficiaries of trust funds, may expend their lives in partying, drugs, and other destructive behavior. The leisured become bored. There is even a word for it: Ennui. This also happens with those who have worked hard for their success but then didn't know how to handle it. Why did Freddie Prinze (1954-1977) commit suicide? Depression and divorce may have been involved, but otherwise he was someone with, apparently, everything to live for. Success seemed like failure. This has happened to others.
The question here is, does it happen on a large scale? politically? economically? socially? Nietzsche, at least, did not believe that happiness was the purpose of life. So where would that leave us if we believed that the "pursuit of happiness" is part of the meaning of life?
The issue also looms large if we think seriously about Marxism. Marx distinguished between a life of "necessity," where we labor just to survive, and a life of "freedom," where no thought need to be given to necessities, and we are free to creatively flourish. The Revolution is not enough for this, something Marxists sometimes seem to forget. Marx's idea was that through all of human history, there could not be production without exploitation. Maybe the slaves could have revolted in Ancient Egypt, but the "means of producton" would not have changed and so the form of society could not have changed. Only the industrial revolution made real liberation possible, with machines replacing human exploitation.
The element of truth in that is that industrial society means that labor intensive production is replaced by capital intensive production, resulting in a greater quantity and variety of goods. But the problem for Marxism is its fundamental thesis that capital is a fiction. So the proper Marxist cannot distinguish between "labor intensive" and "capital intensive." The Hegelian disguise, of course, is to use the Dialectic in place of capital. This is an evasion, substituting the gibberish of Hegelian "reasoning" for the simple truths that you need to know how to build a machine and how to get the resources that are necessary for that construction. That is not "Dialectic." It is imagination, research, and invention. Something that some inventor needs to think up, which excludes people like Georg Hegel or Karl Marx, who never invented anything. Ever since, it is common for people to believe that everything has already been invented, and nothing is left. But instead, nothing has ever been so consistently falsified.
Under Marxism, indeed, almost nothing new has ever been invented, except, of course, new forms of tyranny. For no Marxist program has ever freed anyone from necessity, except maybe a small political elite. Most citizens of Marxist regimes have been doomed to live in miserable poverty, no less so than the slaves, peons, and proletariat identified by Marxism in different social systems throughout human history. As Agent Smith says in The Matrix, this is certainly a reality defined "through suffering and misery."
Meanwhile, capitalism produced abundance. Facing this fact, Marxists came to believe that abundance, promised by Marx for communism, was in fact bad. It harms the environment. So we see a retreat into the moralism of Plato, that people are seduced, mainly through advertising and "consumerism," into what Plato called "unnecessary desires." What is preferable is, perhaps, a pre-industrial society, maybe even a pre-agricultural society, where "primitive communism" provides enough that is needed, in conditions of social equality. Marx is vulernable to this move because he ended up accepting the existence of "primitive communism" himself, along with myths of the "noble savage." This goes back to Jean Jacques Rousseau. And now it is the aim of the Environmental movement, which, if stated honestly, wants most of us to die, and the human population reduced to what it was before the Neolithic revolution.
The absurdity, let alone the viciousness, of this is not often openly voiced. But the ideology sneaks out. We would be happier, and probably even healthier, as hunters and gatherers, like the Bushmen. Nevertheless, we can see it as another indication of how "success breeds failure." If capitalism has in fact put a great many people into the condition of freedom, where their creativity can flourish, this turns out to be, not just frightening, but, to them, shameful. The enlightened bien pensant is guilty, and can only assuage such guilt by political activism, an activism aimed, not at the Marxist utopia of abundance, but at destroying modern society as such.
Thus, the goal of the stepchildren of Marxism has become not utopia and abundance, but a continuous revolution of political activity. That is the meaning of life; and since it doesn't produce either primitive communism or any other identifiable goal, it becomes a substitute, even as Rousseau imagined a substitute, which turned out to be the Terror of the French Revolution, duplicated, not just in the Terror of every Marxist regime, but in the nascent totalitarianism at American universities.
In all this, the realities of the condition of "freedom" can be avoided, especially in facing the stark reality of mortality and the final meaning of life. Marx could dismiss religion as a misdirection away from the Revolution, the "opiate of the masses," but that ignores most of the history of religion, when revolution needed to wait for the evolution of the means of production, and meanwhile everyone had to face the human condition they had, thousands of years of it, and the mortality that overtakes all.
Were a Marxist communist utopia possible, the particular cirumstances of that human condition would return, and everyone would need to wonder, as we often do, "What is this all for?" The revolutionary Marxist can dedicate himself to the meaning of "history"; but the actual prophecy of Marxism, as of Hegelianism, is that history will end. Then what? At least Hegel had an answer to that: The radiant End of history was Hegel himself -- a reductio ad absurdum if there ever was one -- but in fact a deification, such as we see reproduced in all Marxist regimes, where the meaning of life becomes Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho, Castro, Chavez, the Kims, etc. -- i.e. living Orwellian Big Brothers. They are then worshiped like gods.
It is a kind of postulate of modern politics and economics that good policies make things better. The idea that reform and innovation will result in general improvement of the human condition, i.e. "progress," is generally expected. This has been called the "Whig interpretation of history." That is now often disparaged, but pretty much all politics to the left of center, and most to the right, depends on it. "Liberal" policies, whether the pseudo-liberalism of the Left, or the Classical Liberalism of the free market Right, no less than for William Gladstone (1809-1898), are expected to make life better. Karl Marx would not have disagreed, although he looked for revolution rather than liberal reform, abruptly rather than gradually making things better.
But there has been an opposite view of human life and the world, in which there is no end to evils, οὐκ ἔστι κακῶν παῦλα (as Plato says), and life cannot ultimately be reformed or made better in any fundamental or durable way. The classic affirmation of this is in Buddhism, where the First Noble Truth of the Gautama Buddha is that life is suffering, specifically in the forms of birth, disease, old age, and death. The life of all Mediaeval civilizations was lived pretty much on the same terms. The eternal round of birth and death, sowing and harvesting, war and peace, went on much the same from year to year. In India, there is no classical traditional of historiography because everything that could ever happen had already been displayed in the great epic, the Mahâbhârata. It is a reality of eternal cycles, with no real novelty, let alone "progress."
As it happens, it looks like modern life has been able to ameliorate many evils. People live longer, are healthier, and populations have grown. Famine and starvation are the results of political acts, not natural evils that political acts might correct -- although the Chinese, trying to remedy famines for centuries, finally decided that government often made things worse. But the evils associated with birth, disease, old age, and death have not as such been eradicated. They catch up with us in the end, and the way they do so can be pretty ugly. To the extent that modern medicine, for instance, has helped, Barone's principle that "success breeds failure," may well be operative. Is living the life of a vegetable on a ventilator a "success" of medicine? No; and instead it is something of which all of us now live in dread, even as longer life too often seems to mean stupifying boredom, sentility, and infantilizaton for years in nursing homes. In Japan, there are temples where people pray to be spared the humiliation and dehumanization of an old age afflicted with such evils.
This issue manifests itself in three important areas that I will consider. One is political, that justice and wisdom be effected through government. Another is economic, that wealth and well-being broadly increase for all of us. And finally it is religious, or existential, that life as such is worth it and holds enough meaning to warrant the love of it, or at least respect for it. Each of these results in its own difficulties.
In politics, one expects the improvement of life through the reform of political institutions. Unfortunately, the most radical and dramatic forms of this have resulted in mass murder, tyranny, and the imprisonment, starvation, and enslavement of large parts of populations. Paradigmatic in that respect was the French Revolution, which began with reform, inspired by the American Reovlution, but then progressed to mass murder, tyranny, and wars that ravaged Europe for years. Perhaps 30,000 people were executed in the Terror, not even counting those killed in rebellions against the regime, such as that in the Vendée in 1793, with estimates of 170,000 to 200,000 dead. The execution total alone compares to similar numbers killed, over its entire history, by the Spanish Inquisition, or, again, those killed in the witch hunts, mainly of the 17th century. Since the Revoltuion was supposed to substitute reason and humanity for the evils of religion, the comparison is not flattering. Atheists still congratulate themselves about the rationality and humanity of their doctrine, but the record of atheist government often demonstrates the opposite. Even now, the harrassment of Christians (they wouldn't dare do the same to Muslims) bespeaks very little of humanity or toleration.
Even worse, indeed, were the Revolutions of the 20th century, which sometimes were deliberately intended by their perpetrators to reproduce the worse features of the French Revolution. Thus, calling the events of the French Revolution the "Terror" was not something done by the enemies of the Revolution but by its adherents. Similarly, Lenin deliberately planned a "Red Terror" and then carried it out. As then continued by Stalin, this produced by many multiples of the executions of the French Terror, i.e. millions of victims, although many of these were effected by mass starvation and by working people to death in labor camps. R.J. Rummel attributes 42,672,000 deaths to Stalin. Indeed, the prison camp system of the Soviet Union was an original creation, and followed logically from the justification of slavery by Leon Trotsky, who then (ironcially) was murdered on the orders of Stalin. Russia has still not managed to fight its way out of dictatorship, which has returned in some force after the dashed hopes of the 1990's.
All of the evils, dictatorship, and slaughter of the Soviet system were produced many times in the 20th century, in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and elsewhere. More than 100 million people were murdered, starved, or worked to death by Communist governments. None of those countries has been any more successful in shaking off their character, although China and Vietnam have been economically more successful than the others, while retaining dictatorship, and are now learning new forms of genocide. But the ideology of tyranny and poverty, durable in Korea and Cuba, has now been spreading to Venezuela and Chile, if not to the United States itself. We know from secret recordings of Bernie Sanders staffers that they would like to put many Americans in GULAG-like concentration and labor camps.
The durability of communist ideology, which means a combination of socialist economics and totalitarian politics, can be blamed on academics and intellectuals. No greater fools have ever lived, which is profoundly discouraging in its own right. It is possible that Heraclitus, who said, "Learning of many things does not teach intelligence," already understood this. However, this may have been just been Heraclitus denying that others understood the truth of his own ideas. But a general principle of the same sort seems to be true. "Education" as such does not necessarily produce anything like wisdom, understanding, enlightenment, or even the possession of good information. This is why George Orwell, much more recently than Heraclitus, could say, "There are some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them." Mere factual history is dismissed by the purveyors of ideology. Thus Theodore Dalrymple, a psychiatrist who interviewed patients in emergency rooms and in prisons, found that British youth often had no idea when World War II was fought or who Britain was fighting. He did not know which was more disturbing, that young toughs got swastika tattoos, or that they really didn't know what they were. From this we see that it is not just the collapse of American education but of British education also. Reporter Jesse Watters is well known for interviewing people on the street and asking simple questions about history or government that they cannot answer -- including, like Dalrymple, who the United States fought in World War II, or when that was.
However, it is not as though there is a clear alternative to the vicious ideology of Leftist intellectuals. We expect genuinely progressive modern governments to be, in general terms, "democracies." But exactly what a democracy is supposed to be now is a dangerously and terrifyingly open question. I have considered this in some detail elsewhere; but I can summarize the basic alternatives as between a government that is supposed to effect the "Will of the People," and a government that is supposed to protect the natural rights of individuals.
As we have seen, the "Will of the People" can often mean the "Tyranny of the Majority," as the Segregation regimes were created and enforced in the American South, where a minority can lose an election and then even lose the right to vote and other civil rights. There is no "Will of the People," since any population or electorate involves divisions and disagreements. Elections empower a voting majority, or sometimes even only a plurality, and disempower the losing minorities. This can quickly lead to serious injustices and crimes. It has been said that "democracy" means two wolves and a sheep voting what to have for dinner. We know how that will turn out. Therefore, democracy as such does not mean a system of government any more wise or just than any other.
Perhaps even worse, political "machines" can rig and steal elections, creating what is effectively a dictatorship. As with some overt dictatorships, the citizens sometimes seem to endure such regimes with some complacency. Bernie Sanders, with his "democratic socialism," certainly means "democratic" as this was used in East Germany -- the "German Democratic Republc" -- for the Communist dictatorship.
Thus, one party rule in Chicago and many other American cities, and some States, whether created by fraud or not, generates little opposition from the citizens, even when economic life and opportunity in the cities is steadily destroyed. Thus, much of the city of Detroit has actually been abandoned over the years, its population has fallen by half, one out of four residential lots are empty, and the city now has crippling levels of unemployment, illiteracy, and crime. Yet local voters keep the same clique of incompetent, crooked socialists in power, and I don't think the elections even need to be stolen. We see Chicago going down much the same road; and the weekly total of murders by gangsters on the South Side passes without much concern, let alone action, from Chicago politicians or activists against "racism." In the 2020 riots, where many of the remaining South Side businesses were burned and/or looted, and some Aldermen actually expressed alarm about the lack of police protection, they were dismissed by the ideologue Mayor as simply promoting themselves, despite everyone involved being the same Democrats. This is the sort of Mayor, of course, who sees gangs, riots, looting, and arson as "democracy."
Some understanding of the corruption and tyranny involved with this is evident in the provisions introduced by the authors of the United States Constitution. No one wanted a pure and actual "democracy." As Jefferson had said in the Declaration, "governments are instituted among men to secure these rights," i.e. the natural rights with which citizens are "endowed by their Creator." While the elements of monarchy and democracy are apparent in American govenment, how it would be an "aristocracy," without Roman Patricians, is less obvious; and the whole conception is superceding by a modern reworking of an balance between "executive," "legislative," and "judicial" functions. A further refinement was that the legislative function was divided between Representatives, directly elected by the People, and Senators elected and representing State legislatures. This is what remained of the provision for "aristocracy," but what it meant was a direct check by State governments on the Federal government. This wise provision was then destroyed by the 17th Amendment, which mandated the direction election of Senators, who now are free to ignore the interests or wishes of their State governments.
As Jefferson soon realized, a grave oversight in the Constitution was its failure to provide for a mechanism of its own enforcement. Hamilton and Madison argued in The Federalist Papers that action of the States and citizens would enforce the Constitution. An attempt to actually do this was when the Federalist Administration of John Adams passed the "Alien and Sedition Acts" (1789), which gravely violated the First Amendment. This was ineffective, and the issue became a dead letter when Jefferson was elected President. However, Adams had appointed John Marshall as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He claimed a role for the Supreme Court as the sole ultimate judge of Constitutionality. Jefferson realized that the Court would promote and protect the power of the Federal government and ignore the Constitutional limitations on Federal power. This has made American government an ultimate judicial dictatorship, where, as has been said, the Constitution is whatever the Surpreme Court says it is. Thus, if the Constitution was intended to limit government and protect citizens from government abuses, the fox was placed in charge of the hen house.
Thus, no greater damage has ever been done to American government than Helvering v. Davis (1937), where the New Deal Court decided that the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution meant that the Federal government would spend money on anything. As it happens, this had been proposed to President Washington by Alexander Hamilton, so we know what Jefferson, Madison, and others thought of it. Jefferson's comment is the simplest, that the adoption of such a principle would render the Constitution "nugatory." This is what has happened. Politicians now can simply buy votes with Federal "benefits," so that, as Jefferson also said, "They will purchase the voices of the people and make them pay the price." Indeed. This may have been a slow cancer, but its effects are durable and cumulative. The main complaint of people about government now is that it doesn't give them enough money and other "benefits."
Jefferson thought there was a final firewall against unlimited government. Thus, he said that trial by jury was "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." However, judges now routinely tell juries that the Constitutionality, or even the simple justice, of a law is none of their business. Juries are made to swear that they will follow the law, even if unjust, and the instructions of the judge, even if unjust, unfair, or an outrage to the conscience. Because people are busy demanding their "benefits," and they are barely aware of the injustices prepared for them, with all protections stripped away, we are fucked. Proper fucked.
But the Jeffersonian conception of government, even if the obvious flaws were corrected, has its own intrinsic problems. A government whose charge is to protect natural rights must determine what those rights are. That is what the Supreme Court thinks it is doing, when it is not just ignoring the issue and applying the popular judicial positivism. But there is no agreement across the political spectrum on just what human rights are, and one benefit of judicial positivism for the courts was that it could allow them to avoid wading into all the uncertainties of the matter. Thus, the Soviet Union was full of rights, including rights to housing, employment, income, medical care, vacation, and all sorts of things. This still appeals to the foolish, who don't know, haven't been taught, or who don't care how any of that actually worked out. Since it didn't work out, the ignorance of its promoters is moral and intellectual negligence. However, Russians who complained about the failures of the system could face prison or labor camps; and we now have the suspicious circumstances that "progessives" already have the mentality and are already prepared to prohibit and imprison political opposition. We might begin to suspect that "progressives" already know that their promises are empty, their true goals are something else, and that they know what it will take to take and hold absolute power.
Ronald Reagan said, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." Indeed, a entire generation has now passed since Reagan left office, and America now displays the evidence of its failures in the education of its on own children in their own heritage. There is something like an actual stampede for them to sell their birthright of freedom for a "mess of pottage" [Genesis 25:29–34]. Yet, as I said, there is confusion about just what that birthright is. Why isn't there a right to medical care, or housing, or a job? There are men who think that they have a right to sex, which is not being provided for them. They are "involuntarily celibate." Why can't the federal government just hire some prostitutes?
There is a tradition of how to deal with that, but its terms are not at all obvious. First is a distinction between "positive" and "negative" rights. This began with a distinction by Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (1767-1830) between the "liberty of the ancients" and the "liberty of the moderns" and was unpacked further by Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997). Thus, the "liberty of the moderns," consisting of "negative" rights, were immunities from government action and imposed on others only duties of omission, i.e. the obligation to leave others alone, or to respect their rights of person and property, prohibiting violence or trespass against them. By contrast, the "liberty of the ancients" was simply the right and power to participate in political action. If someone has a right to medical care, this obviously imposes a positive duty on some others, to administer that care. To make a living, and not be slaves, these others are entitled to compensation. Yet the "right to medical care" is always proposed as though medical practitioners have no right to compensation, or, if they do, it falls to someone else to provide it. Like, "society." So practitioners have a duty to act, and someone else has a duty to pay. Slaves, of course, could expect "compensation" of a sort, i.e. the (minimal) means of life. How much more are medical personnel entitled to? If they are provided a hut and bread, are they still obligated to treat the non-paying?
A "right to medical care" thus seems to boil down to Who pays? and What kind of life is owed to those compelled to serve? The Left likes to say "the money is out there," and all we need to do is take it, from the rich, and use it for purposes like these. The Left, however, doesn't belive in capital and doesn't understand that arbitrarily removing capital from the economy curtails the growth of wealth and well-being. Thus, "free medical care" in the Soviet Union or Cuba was and is a miserable business; and Cuba now farms out doctors to other countries and takes most of the compensation paid for them, while holding the families of the doctors hostage. And, of course, when the Cuban elite, or their friends, like Hugo Chavez, get sick, they bring in doctors from Spain. This is vicious and, by implication, at least, unedifying for all proposals for a "right" to medical care.
The issues here can be clarified with a thought experiment favored in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the "state of nature," where government does not exist, "positive" rights are all but unenforceabile. A "right to medical care," which compels others to serve, means that they must be sought out and, if unwilling, seized by force for this service. Historically, there have been may circumstances where this sort of thing actually has happened, and it is called "slaving." Similarly, if one has a right to shelter and food, this would involve seizing it from others, which is called "robbery."
Thus, the original idea of "state of nature" theories, in the liberal tradition (not Hobbes), was that "rights" secured by the institution of government are to protect those that could be reasonably secured in the state of nature, i.e. the negative rights to be left alone, to be secure in one's own person and property. Those could always be enforced by self-defense, and the combination of a community to enforce the rights of all its members would transition, when large and durable enough, into a state with a government. The government, then, will have certain claims. The common defense and the enforcement of rights involves obligations. The King will tax you, presumably for the benefit of protection, the administration of justice, and perhaps public works, like the irrigation systems in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The King will also expect to be supported in the style of life to which he has become accustomed. That can get out of hand, especially if the King regards himself as a god, as in Egypt, or as at least the "Son of Heaven," as in China. Insufficient deferense to this could get you killed.
Hence Greek democracy. Determining taxation and policy is no longer the job of a monarch but of the citizens voting together. This solves some problems in order to produce others. Politicians discover that they can buy votes. As Jefferson said, "The public money and public liberty... will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and dominion to those who hold them; distinguished, too, by this tempting circumstance, that they are the instrument, as well as the object of acquisition." If a permanent political class develops, such as we have now, it begins to the display the characterists, especially the self-importance and arrogance, the "insolence of office," of monarchs. This was also anticipated by Locke:
Yet Americans have been sold on the idea that legislatures in permanent, rather than occasional, session are better, that politicians should be supported by the state, and that it should be possible to reelect them in perpetuity. This is logically bound to produces all the evils anticipated by Locke and Jefferson, as it has. Actually, Americans have little respect for Congress and for most politicians, but this has turned out to make little difference in practice; and a substantial portion of the electorate, and an actual majority for Hillary Clinton, votes for people whose whole program is the increase of government and their own power and irresponsible prerogatives. The only explanation for this is as a response to the promise of "entitlements," which the goverment must then strip from the productive economy.
Was ist gut? -- Alles, was das Gefühl der Macht, den Willen zur Macht, die Macht selbst im Menschen erhöht.
but then the modern academic doesn't believe in facts or truth, only in power. It doesn't matter how many black children are killed by stray bullets in Chicago. If they weren't killed by the police, then it is of no concern to the Enlightened.
And voters often should have known better. Larry Krasner was reelected in Philadelphia, after it was already obvious that he was driving up crime. At right we have the funeral card for James Lambert, an elderly Philadelphia black man who was beaten to death, with a traffic cone, by laughing and dancing (black) teenagers -- behaving just like the sociopaths in Robocop [1987]. But there is no Robocop to the rescue in today's Philadelphia, or at the original scene of the movie, in Detroit, where large parts of the city have been abandoned.
Thus, the idea was that there would be what Aristotle called a "mixed" form of government, with elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, that would serve, as described by Polybius in the Roman Republic, as a system of "checks and balances" to define and limit the power of government.
This imposed on others the duty to recognize this right; and "positive" rights in general are those that impose duties of commission on others, obliging them to do something in recognition of the right. Negative rights generally require inaction in others, positive rights, action. The implications of this are displayed in the legal terminology of the diagram. If someone has a claim on you, you suffer from a liability to their power. If they have no claim on you, you have an immunity to their disability.
But in Governments, where the Legislative is in one lasting Assembly always in being... there is danger still, that they will think themselves to have a distinct interest, from the rest of the Community; and so will be apt to increase their own Riches and Power, by taking, what they think fit, from the People. [The Second Treatise of Civil Government, §138]
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