America the vanishing

When will we declare independence of the madness now engulfing us?

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

American insurgency

“The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” – Mao Zedong

Under cover of protesters reacting understandably to what appears to be yet another instance of police brutality, the enemies of our nation have launched what amounts to a full-blown insurgency.  Pallets of bricks conveniently show up in time to be thrown through store windows.  Networks of celebrities are providing bail money for those who are arrested.  Politicians are pledging support to Antifa, even as the Federal government finally labels it a terrorist organization (spoiler: it always has been).  And the airwaves are thick with misinformation and misdirection, minimizing the extent to which actual violence and destruction have become daily routine over the past week.

And if that wasn’t enough, at least one potential agent provocateur has now been arrested while posing as a National Guardsman.  Keep that in mind the first time you hear of an incident between a Guardsman and a ‘protester.’  Things are not always as they seem, especially in press reports.

This is perhaps the most dangerous moment for the U.S. since 1861.  President Abraham Lincoln rightly pointed out:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow?  Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. (emphasis added)

And so it was our adversaries, beginning in the Cold War, began the “long march” through American institutions, seizing control of the means to shape the culture in such a way as to alienate a significant portion of the population from loyalty to the United States.  Their efforts were greatly aided by the deep scars of slavery and racism in our country.  One of the major reasons any sort of lasting racial reconciliation eludes us is that the issue is too useful a wedge for gaining influence — and yes, this is a trick used by partisans of many persuasions.  Remember the adage “divide and conquer.”

Now we’ve arrived at a point in our cultural programming where trying to rightly discern between protest and pillaging is dismissed as ‘racist.’  Now Mao’s ‘fish’ in the above quote can swim easily in the ‘sea.’  If only pillaging were the only goal, however.

Mao Zedong literally wrote the book on insurgency, after successfully fighting the Japanese in World War II and toppling the post-war Nationalist government of China.  He identified three phases to a revolutionary insurgency:

(1)  Organize: Build cells and support
(2)  Guerilla Warfare: Undermine the Government
(3)  Conventional (open) Warfare to topple the Government

Our internal enemies are well organized and enjoy considerable support from “the commanding heights” of society: educators, politicians, entertainers, wealthy ‘movers and shakers’ and so forth.  The violence we now witness is the movement into phase two.  Our Federal, State and local leaders are confronted with a choice: show restraint, in which case they look weak, or crack down, in which case the propaganda machine will work overtime to paint them in the worst possible light.  Either way, the insurgents seek to reduce support for our government.  President Trump has openly criticized State and local leaders for not doing more to control the violence.  Contrary to published reports, he is not calling for the arrest or abuse of peaceful protesters.  (Don’t rely on reports: listen to the man’s own words.  And notice ABC’s headline for the linked video.  Do they match?)  The corporate media blur the distinction between protester and criminal so that the president’s calls for law and order appear to be an effort to curb legitimate expressions of dissent.  Heads, they win.  Tails, he loses.

Do not lose sight of the fact that during all of this chaos, the public is not paying attention to the recent declassification and release of very damning documents that show how contrived and politically motivated the entire “Russia Russia Russia” hoax was, and how Michael Flynn was wrongly targeted as part of that process.  Powerful people have great reason to do anything to keep focus from turning to these developments.  Many have remarked about 2020’s penchant for disaster. Think of the main media themes in the U.S. this year: in January, it was impeachment.  Hardly had that fizzled than we were told COVID would kill us all, so better shut society down.  Once it was clear society was tired of being shut down and was de facto on the way to opening up, suddenly a case of police brutality sets the nation on fire.  (By the way, want to see ‘diversity?’  Look at the four officers involved and fired — it wasn’t a gang of white cops, but photos of officers Thao, Kueng and Lane don’t appear in the Minneapolis Star’s report on Monday. Why is that?.)

None of these events are occurring in isolation.  This is not a normal election year.

I believe the experience gained in our overseas fights must be put to use here at home, and quickly.  The networks of support for organizing violent, criminal activity, must be rolled up, and those involved forced to pay a high price for their incitements.  There are very good reasons not to like Donald Trump, who is a deeply flawed man.  But many of his opponents (on both sides of the aisle) are no longer the “loyal opposition” — they are literally fifth columnists who are a domestic threat to the Constitution of the United States, willing to overturn an election through rumor and innuendo from within the apparatus of shadowy government agencies.  Never forget that our leaders and our armed forces take an oath requiring them to defend that document against ALL enemies, foreign AND domestic.  At the very least, there are a large number of people guilty of sedition in this country.  And while treason is a word too lightly tossed around these days, an argument could be made it’s applicable in some cases as well.

Even if the government moves effectively to end the current crisis, it’s not finished.  The reason insurgency is so hard to defeat is that unless the ideas and motives behind it are completely discredited, even losing in stage three can leave a small cadre of the committed to begin all over again.  This is the type of war we have been fighting in Afghanistan and the Middle East since 9/11, and the reason Al Qaeda and Islamic State still persist, however diminished.  Killing combatants is easy.  Killing an idea is damned well impossible.  (I use “damned” deliberately, as the resiliency of Marxist and Jihadist aspirations, despite the long historical record of horrors in their names, shows the hellish perniciousness of their deceit.)

This is why the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.  We have been lulled into complacency, our attention directed anywhere other than where it needs to be.  Whether the insurgency grows to phase three or is knocked back to the starting line for another generation depends on Americans learning what’s really going on.  Lots of dots need to be connected to see the picture.  The question is whether we have the attention span and discernment to do so anymore.  Otto von Bismark, the statesman most responsible for the creation of a unified Germany in the 19th Century, is said to have remarked “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.”

I certainly hope that still holds true.

Marx and medicine don’t mix

As Americans turn their eyes to Uncle Sam for guidance about the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a certainty that Leftists will be mindful of Rahm Emanuel’s mantra “never let a crisis go to waste.”  Every misstep and deficiency will be touted as an example of why there should be a single, government-run healthcare system in our country.

Fortunately, we have a counterexample: China.

I was witnessing the kind of maximum, almost brutal efficiency a society must develop when the state is the master and the individual is merely a subject. Why would a Communist country not have an effective FDA? Because who are you going to complain to if you get tainted food? The government? They don’t answer to you. The press? They are owned by the government. And again, they don’t answer to you.

So what if you don’t like the conditions in the hospital? Where else are you going to go? This hospital is the last (and only) stop. You can’t opt for another place and then just pay out of your own pocket. The government has capped financial upward mobility. There is now “income equality.” And that means nobody has the means to buy their way into a different (or better) situation. And even if you could, one doesn’t exist. The state provides it all. You’re stuck.

Single payer also means single buyer. That means the dynamics of the market get eliminated. One of the natural checks-and-balances of finding a hot-shot surgeon willing to do the risky procedure or even just seek a second opinion, get chopped away little by little. Because now we’re answering to the government. It isn’t answering to us. After all, where are we gonna go? They’ve got us. And our cancer treatment or skin graft surgery or kidney stone blast is up to their red tape. Sure, we can get in the door for free. But we might die in there, waiting on someone with no incentive and who faces no recourse, to change our plasma bag.

That’s a good summary of two basic problems with government-run anything: a lack of competitive incentives to improve and reduce costs, and no recourse when the product/service isn’t what is needed.  Left unmentioned in the linked article is an additional problem: when government is a provider, it also decides who gets the provisions.  They can decide you don’t merit the product/service because you’re too old, or a troublesome dissident, or a newborn who would be ‘too expensive’ to save.

There are legitimate criticisms of how healthcare is provided today in the United States.  Costs consistently rise faster than general inflation, making much of it unaffordable for those without access to group insurance plans or government programs.  It can be argued, though, that this is the case precisely because the government is already heavily involved.  The idea of free markets is that the cost of goods and services will reach an equilibrium based on what the market (consumers) will bear.   But the presence of a purchaser/guarantor (Uncle Sam) who believes he can throw as much money as he wants at a problem, eliminates any market incentives to become more innovative and efficient.  In fact, Sam’s presence as a customer is usually accompanied by extra overhead and red tape that make the product/service less efficient.  This same dynamic is at work in higher education, where the rising costs of tuition parallel the rise of government aid and the availability of student loans.  If County General Hospital and the University of Hereville could only charge what the average American family could afford, their operations would, of necessity, become leaner and more efficient (sorry, diversity bureaucrats!).

This is not to say government doesn’t have a role.  But instead of being a consumer, it’s supposed to be a referee — the one to whom people have recourse when an industry is being abusive or careless.  The recent requirement for hospitals to post prices for most common procedures is a tiny step in the right direction.  The requirement needs to be clarified that hospitals provide the lay reader with context by linking associated costs and giving a reasonable range of the average total price for a given procedure.  Such information is necessary for customers to know their options and take advantage of competition (which currently is next to nonexistent).

The same is true for pharmaceuticals.  Patients in the U.S. can pay anywhere from two to six times more than in other countries for the same brand-name prescription drugs.  In this paragraph’s linked article, the argument is made that’s because buying is more fragmented than in a country like the United Kingdom, whose National Health Service is a large, single buyer with associated market clout.  CNN is, of course, in favor of nationalizing U.S. health care, so it makes sense that would be their take on it.  But as they admit in their own article, Medicare is legally forbidden from negotiating drug prices (wonder who lobbied for that rule).  It isn’t that the market is ‘fragmented,’ it’s that there are only a few big players, including Uncle Sam.  When a prescription drug becomes available in an over-the-counter strength, pricing shifts to a broader market: the individual consumer, who will compare prices and look to save money.  There’s no reason this wouldn’t work in the prescription category:

[Dr. Peter] Bach, of Memorial Sloan Kettering, said that when buyers can say no, for whatever reason, they can control prices better. In fact, Bach’s hospital refused the colon cancer drug Zaltrap in 2012 because it cost double that of a reasonably good alternative, Avastin. The company that manufactures Zaltrap, Sanofi, worried that other cancer hospitals and doctors would follow suit, so it halved the price of the drug.

And they would do the same if it was millions of Americans individually making the same cost comparisons in their purchase decisions.  Granted, for some medications there are no approved substitutes, so such competition wouldn’t apply.   But those situations occur in part because drug manufacturers can patent their new products for as much as 20 years.   I sympathize with the argument that development can be expensive and it’s right to expect a return on investment.  But given how many drug-related trinkets I see in doctor’s offices and patient discharge bags, I’m not sure it takes two decades to recoup costs on an effective new medication.  I’m wary of any scheme wherein government determines prices, so the preferred solution would be to reexamine what a reasonable patent period should be before generic equivalents are allowed on the market.  After that point, let market forces work.

As repeated examples have shown in history, the equality Marxism achieves is an equality of misery for the masses, with exceptions and privileges for those running the Leviathan of government.  That’s not the right prescription for whatever ails us.

Setting an example

Many of us of a certain age are increasingly concerned about the growing popularity of socialism among the younger generations.  We rightfully point out that the horrors of communist life in the 20th Century have been minimized in our history classes, so that the siren sound of “equality” has regained some of the appeal it lost amid prior carnage.

The truth, though, is that America has been flirting with socialism for about a century ourselves — we just haven’t called it that.  And while the young may not be as wise as we might hope, they’re not completely blind to the hypocrisy:

…the irony is that these old anti-socialists already live in a wonderland of government generosity that bears a passing resemblance to the socialism they so dread.

The federal government already guarantees single-payer health care to Americans over 65 through Medicare. Senior citizens already receive a certain kind of universal basic income; it’s called Social Security. While elderly Americans might balk at the idea of the government paying back hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt, they are already the grand beneficiaries of a government debt subsidy: The mortgage-interest deduction, a longtime staple of the federal tax code, effectively compensates the American homeowner (whose average age is 54) for their mortgage debt, thus saving this disproportionately old group approximately $800 billion in taxes owed to the federal government each decade. The economist Ed Glaeser has likened these policies to “Boomer socialism.”

In this framing, Sanders is not offering his more youthful constituency a radically new contract. Instead, he is extending the terms of an existing social contract to cover more—and, necessarily, younger—Americans.

Now, while I’m inclined to agree with this diagnosis, I don’t agree with the proposed treatment: “Some, but not all, of the problems facing young adults would be well addressed with an expansion of government.”  The socialism we’ve tacitly accepted since the days of the Progressive Era and FDR has already warped our society and economy in harmful ways.  Government spending in the areas of healthcare and education (much of it debt subsidy in the latter) has allowed prices in those arenas to skyrocket far beyond the rate of inflation (itself a result of government meddling with the currency).  Want to reign in health costs?  Put the consumer back in control by forcing providers to post price lists and compete for business that’s paid for at the point of sale.  When someone else is paying the bill, there’s no incentive to reduce costs, and those who don’t have that “someone else” are left priced out of the market altogether.  Same with education – get the government treasury out of it, and institutions will suddenly no longer have funding for “diversity coordinators” that add little value to the transmission of useful knowledge that leads to gainful employment.

For many years I’ve said I’d love to have the option to sign away my claim to any Social Security benefits in exchange for never paying the tax again.  As I get closer to retirement, that’s obviously less of a good deal for me.  But while I’d love to have the taxes I’ve paid in my private accounts rather than in Uncle Sam’s, the fact is that *if* I draw what Social Security currently projects for me (something I certainly don’t count on), I’ll recoup my contributions in less than 6 years.  So if I live another decade or more after that, where’s the money coming from?

The paychecks of younger workers, that’s where — the very generation that realizes the system will not work for them as it has their elders.  Where their contributions don’t cover it all, Uncle Sam’s uses his credit card, the balance of which is a drag on everyone’s fortunes whether they realize it or not.  For example, Sam is desperate to keep interest rates low, so he can continue to carry that balance (and add to it!).  But in doing so, he robs those who dutifully save of the interest they would normally make as a result of their frugality.  Since the elderly on a fixed income can no longer live on interest earnings, Social Security becomes an essential part of most people’s retirement plans… and the cycle begins anew.

That which can’t go on forever, doesn’t.  Our current structures are unsustainable.  We are at a crossroads: either we double down on what is known to be a failed economic model (planned economies), or we get the government out of the driver’s seat.  We need to find a way to set the sun on Social Security and Medicare (just for starters), while putting consumer protections in place like truthful labeling of medical costs and investment risks.  Government is supposed to police abuses of the market, not become the major provider of a good or service.  I’ve said it before: the worst result of our current hybrid system is that it isn’t true market capitalism in many respects, but is believed to be.  As a result, truly free market economics gets a bum rap.

So it’s worth keeping in mind the difficulty of convincing Bernie Bros not to point our nation toward full-blown Marxism when we’re already relying on programs of which Karl would have heartily approved.

Life and death in America

The battle lines are being drawn ever more starkly in this country, between those who believe in the sanctity of life, and those who believe it to be just another disposable commodity.

Pro-abortion activists believe Ruth Bader Ginsburg is their last hope of protecting the travesty known as Roe v. Wade.  And perhaps they’re right.  Interestingly, the “Notorious RBG” hasn’t been seen in public in over a month, having missed several oral arguments at the Supreme Court due to health issues (out of character for her).  Has anyone done a wellness check on her lately?  Some thought Tuesday’s State of the Union address might confirm whether she’s still an active Supreme Court Justice or we’re seeing a Democrat reenactment of the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s.”  But now we’re told she’ll be skipping it due to a schedule conflict.  How… convenient.

Sensing their time is short, abortionists are moving quickly to emplace laws at the State level that would allow the slaughter of the unborn to continue regardless the fate of the Roe precedent.  In their haste, they are dropping any pretense this is somehow about making abortion “safe, legal and rare,” as the tagline used to go.  No, this flurry of activity is about making abortion available on demand at any time, for any reason…

…including just after birth:

Virginia’s governor has drawn backlash after suggesting that a pregnancy could be terminated after the baby’s birth, as the state debates a bill relaxing restrictions on third trimester abortions.  Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, made the shocking remarks in an interview with WTOP-FM on Wednesday, as he attempted to explain a Democrat delegate’s earlier remarks.

Northam, a pediatric neurologist(!), described a hypothetical situation where a severely deformed newborn infant could be left to die.  He said that if a woman were to desire an abortion as she’s going into labor, the baby would be delivered and then ‘resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue’ between doctors and the mother.

So does this mean that for a period of time after a clump of cells fetus baby leaves the womb and draws breath it is still fair game for abandonment and death?  How long is that period?  Hours?  Days?  Weeks?  What if an impaired child affects a mother’s “mental health” when it reaches two years old?  The current crush of new laws go to great lengths to remove criminal penalties for killing an unborn child while assaulting the mother.  Activists correctly realized the contradiction in charging “fetal homicide” while still permitting abortion.  Their solution is to completely dehumanize the unborn in the eyes of the law, so they only become a “person” when born to a woman who wants them.  “Women’s rights” do not include being allowed to play God.

We’re constantly berated that nobody has the right to tell a woman what to do with her body. But an unborn child is not the woman’s body. It is a distinct individual, with its own DNA, fingerprints, and future.  Any person’s choices are limited by society to the extent they impact others, and this, above all, should be no exception.  Aside from rape, every woman exercises her ‘choice’ in this matter by choosing to abstain from, or engage in, sexual activity.  Abortionists like to “what if” all manner of horrific but statistically insignificant scenarios, but the conclusion is inescapable the overwhelming majority of abortions are simply birth control after the fact, at the cost of a human life.

It’s only a small step, not a slope, from this point to arguing that any inconvenient life can be terminated.  The concept of “assisted suicide” already allows people to end their own life if they find it “too painful.”  But last year the Netherlands began an investigation into a doctor who allegedly had family hold a patient down while he inserted a fatal IV drip against her will.

I commented recently on the willingness of political opponents now to say things that would have been considered beyond the pale just a generation ago: “Put the MAGA hat kids in the woodchipper,” “Burn their school down,” and of course an alleged comedian holding a simulated severed head of the president.  Add this to the general devaluation of life that abortion and euthanasia represent, and we have an explosive cocktail indeed.  Earlier generations of Marxists had no qualms about “breaking a few eggs” in the quest for their socialist paradise.  Given the opportunity, I suspect their ideological descendants today would feel the same way.

Still wonder why many of us are determined to protect the right to bear arms?  In a culture of death, the means of self-defense are essential.

Do you know what direction your State is headed on this issue?  Will it protect the first heartbeat, or enable the murder of a person on the verge of birth?  How will you help ensure your State chooses life?

How we became unthinking mobs

The recent rush to judgment over the Covington Catholic High School group’s actions after the March for Life in D.C. is merely the latest in a string of events, including the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, that demonstrate far too many of our citizens react to events via emotion and bias rather than reason.  One only needs to spend a brief time on Twitter to realize our national discourse has largely descended to the level of junior high school taunting back and forth.  Insults, rather than insight, is the currency there.

The danger is that these “two minutes’ hate” events have become so regular, that people who should certainly know better–like Disney producers–begin tweeting things like this:

Sure, he “apologized” as the original narrative about what happened utterly collapsed.   That’s irrelevant — the fact many adults thought it appropriate to say such vile things shows how close we are to actual violence breaking out in our country.  These public utterances simply show what is in the heart of far too many people.

I’ve often noted how close we are to violence now, or the need to defend our freedoms by force.  And while I’ll admit to occasionally thinking like Han Solo, the truth is I’m well aware of what such circumstances would mean.  As a military veteran of multiple deployments, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when the last veneer of civility is ripped away.  And it’s the last thing I want for the country I love and pledged my life to defend.

How did we get here?  Not by accident, that’s for certain:

In terms of communication, people will say what they think. The problem with the sad state of civil discourse today occurs because people are mostly really bad at thinking. The dismal failure of the education system is what created our poisonous public discourse.

This degeneration of the public’s ability to think did not occur instantaneously. The destruction of reason and logic was a gradual process, spearheaded by the adoption of postmodernist subjectivity in the late 1960s and pushed into the American schools since then.

Those of us who are partial to objectivity are instinctively aware that classroom methods of encouraging feelings and emotion are fundamentally problematic. Children are encouraged to express what they feel when it comes to understand the world around them. For example; climate change feels bad because humans are destroying the planet. Capitalism feels bad because we are exploiting the poor. Masculinity feels bad because males oppress women. Environmentalism feels good because we are saving the planet. Socialism feels great because we take care of the poor in society. Feminism feels wonderful because girls are empowered against male oppression.

The method of teaching students to “feel” (i.e. perception from senses) instead of to “think” (i.e. conception from judgement) is the problem with education. It is the reason why Johnny can’t think. Johnny’s mind hasn’t been trained to think in integrated concepts because he has always been taught to rely on his feelings. Johnny’s world is presented to him in a fragmented chaos of sensory perceptions.

It is quite an interesting exercise to note how most people are unable to think in concepts. Take for example, when a criminal kills with a gun, someone who is incapable of thinking in concepts can only see the instrument of murder and thus mobilize against banning guns because they think that it is the gun itself that is responsible of the crime.  The same lack of conceptual thinking applies to those who are incapable of seeing a successful white male for his character, skills and habit as the factors shaping his success because their thinking capacity only allows them to see his gender and race as the factor which determines his success.

The American schools has succeeded in reducing the public’s intellect to the level of the perceptual beast. …they do not know how to put together the data they observed into structured logical thoughts. And like a lost animal incapable of making sense of the world around it, that person lashes out like a beast because the world is unintelligible around them.

These are excerpts from a much lengthier piece I encourage you to read in its entirety.  It goes far to explain how a sitting member of Congress can wonder aloud why people might be more concerned about “being precisely, factually and semantically correct than about being morally right.”  This is not a new development.  Back in 2004 the New York Times actually ran a story about alleged records (proven to be forgeries) of then-President Bush’s service in the Guard that had the headline “Memos on Bush are Fake but Accurate, Typist Says.”  (But whatever you do, don’t call the New York Times “failing” or “fake news!”)

Emotions have their place.  But they must be kept in their place.  That place is not the drivers seat of law and policy.  Our compromised public schools, though, have taught multiple generations to “follow your heart” regardless of any inconvenient facts (example: the 100 million body count Marxist ideology racked up in the 20th century).  So now we have a body politic where one side thinks the other is stupid for ignoring reality, and the other responds by thinking the rationalists are uncaring and evil.

That kind of divide is not likely to end well.

The morning after

In an unsurprising (but disappointing all the same) development, Americans have handed control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats for the next two years.  Republicans, however, have tightened their grip on the Senate, picking up seats there.  My initial thoughts:

• Pelosi, Waters and their crew will use their restored subpoena power to make the administration as miserable as possible until 2021.  Buckle up for the ugliness.  That said, Democrats are probably regretting the precedents Obama’s administration set of ignoring such requests from Congress.  Trump won’t have forgotten that.  What goes around…
• Retaining control of the Senate means the administration can continue building what may be Trump’s most enduring legacy: resetting the Judiciary by appointing judges who view the Constitution through an ‘originalist’ lens and are less likely to engage in policy direction by judicial fiat.  The impact of these appointments will be felt for decades.
• There will be no funding for a border wall any time soon, unless Trump tries to coopt Defense Department money through Executive direction.  At the same time, the Senate will be able to prevent Democrats from undoing very much of the last two years (tax cuts, deregulation, etc).
• There are still strong rumors (especially from the “Q” quarter) that ongoing investigations into prominent Democrats may soon yield indictments and the full declassification of the FISA court shenanigans.  One theory is that Trump held off pulling the trigger on these so as to avoid accusations of politicizing the investigations during an election cycle.  If true, that’s likely a wise move.  It also means the Democrats may soon be more on the defensive than their win of the House would normally indicate.
• It will be instructive to see what independent counsel Robert Mueller’s next move is.  He, too, is said to have held back during the election season.  With that over, I suspect he’ll be under increasing pressure from both sides to show his hand and “put up or shut up.”

In short, while disappointing, I don’t yet see last night’s results as a full-blown disaster.  As many pundits noted, the President’s party usually loses seats in Congress during his first midterm election.  There is one ominous thing to point out, however.  Overall the Democrats ran a much more openly leftist/globalist agenda this cycle… and they still picked up considerable support.  That a candidate like Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke could challenge Ted Cruz so strongly in Texas is not a good long-term signal.  Nor is having Florida’s gubernatorial and Senate races within a percent of each other.  (Related note: the vast majority of Beto’s funding came from outside Texas, something that in my mind should be prohibited.  Residents of one State have no business trying to buy elections in another one.)  We are a deeply divided nation with two incompatible worldviews vying for dominance through government force.

Demography and the long-term effects of leftist indoctrination in our education system are having the intended effects.  That’s why this Trump period is so important.  So far it has been the only successful push back against the Left’s “long march” of the past three decades.  But unless traditional Americans break the lock the globalists have on the education of the next generation, it’s only a matter of time before an ignorant population rejects the birthright their ancestors worked so hard to achieve.

“When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”  Adolph Hitler, May 1937

“No borders, no wall, no USA at all!”

That’s what Antifa hoodlums chanted in Washington D.C. last weekend while trying to pick fights with anyone who looked remotely to the political right of them. While they were mostly mindlessly chanting as directed, one could give them credit for succinctly expressing the formula they and their fellow travelers are using to kill the United States. Because without any borders, without any walls, there won’t be a U.S.A. at all. Or any other nation, for that matter.

And that’s the real goal of the globalists. Too many people think “globalists” is just a quasi-conspiratorial term, but it’s a very real phenomenon. A significant number of Western leaders act as if they owe more loyalty to their transnational peer group than they do to the people they supposedly serve at home. The same holds true of most transnational corporations, whose leaders are more concerned with international access and profits–even if it means bowing to autocrats–than they are with domestic considerations or notions of representative government. This has created a political and technocratic worldwide “ruling class” and, as writer Sarah Hoyt points out, a developing version of the same sort of neo-feudalism that existed under communism:

…communism was not discredited where it counted. There were no long-running exposes of exactly how bad it was in the Soviet Union, or the other communist countries, nor of the massive number of people – at least a hundred million, but quite likely more – that these regimes sent to their graves. There was no explanation about how imposing this kind of regime from above always leads to a quasi-feudal existence, in which the functionaries at the top are kings and everyone else serfs because it has to. Because the people at the top are still human, which means they not only have no idea what is “each’s need” or “each’s ability” but they have their very own greed and desire and other issues the same as any robber Baron. Only at least the robber Barons had to establish some industry, create some empire, finagle some monopoly. Those at the top of the planned economy have full power and cart blanch to JUST rob.

The development of this international club goes a long way explaining the horrified reaction to the election of Trump. The constant harping on his personal moral failings conceals the real anger: he doesn’t play “One World” with the other would-be aristocrats. From all appearances Trump is implementing the promised “America First” policies he campaigned on. Such nationalism—particularly from a key center of power like the U.S.—is intolerable to the globalists.

So they have unleashed their modern brownshirts – the Antifa (another Orwellian misnomer, since they are quite fascist in their attitudes and activities). These street brawlers, like their Nazi forebears, are an army of “useful idiots” to break down the fabric of representative governance so it can be replaced with something more to the totalitarian’s liking. Most of these black-hoodie footsoldiers have no idea they are helping destroy the very system that makes their self-absorbed grievance-mongering possible:

…Antifa, an assemblage of the psychotic and the helpless and mostly both, people who couldn’t catch a clue if the clue was on crutches, people who – from the exemplars caught and exposed – either exist in the sheltered bubble of Academia or in the equally sheltered bubble of their parents’ basements, people who, if they have any job it’s the equivalent of barista.  These people, who would have trouble existing in the relatively harsher environment of Europe… only survive because the US is so prosperous and so secure that – outside of a few Democrat fiefdoms like Chicago or East St. Louis — it’s almost impossible to get yourself killed for gross and offensive stupidity…

Perhaps Antifa activists should reflect on the fate of D.C. denizens Lauren Geoghegan and Jay Austin, whose belief that people everywhere enjoy the same basic goodness and resulting security led to their deaths on a bicycling trip through Tajikistan:

…Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own [wrote Austin] By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind.”

This same misguided idea that “people are basically good” – which runs completely counter to the Christian worldview – is the foundation upon which the idea of communism (and globalism, its current incarnation) is built. It fails to take into account, as Hoyt pointed out, the inherent fallibility of our decisions, as well as the self-interested motives that often color them. This is one of many reasons globalists are opposed to authentic, evangelical Christianity. The Bible makes clear “there is none righteous; no, not one,” and the litany of accounts in its pages go on to prove even the most well-intentioned people will always be flawed.  As a result, the Founders understood that nobody should wield unchecked power over others.  Barack Obama’s famous “I have a pen and phone” statement of intent to use executive power to achieve what he could not through legislation ran completely contrary to American tradition.  And yet he had his supporters, his own cult of (manufactured) personality.

Perhaps, then, from a Christian perspective Antifa is best understood as a cult. They have a worldview, require professions of “faith” from their fellow travelers, and viciously ostracize any who challenge their viewpoints. Unlike other cults, however, this one is not just a danger to its own members. Left to themselves, they will bring our nation crashing down.  They seek to erode patriotism, faith in our Constitutional institutions, and any sense the U.S. is special.  Nations cannot survive without these.

The United States has never been perfect. But it has resulted in more opportunity, peace and prosperity for more people than any other nation in history. It has yielded to the temptations and sins of great-power politics, but nevertheless on balance has been a positive influence in the world. The system of human organization from which it springs is an infinitesimal rarity in all of history. As such, it is worth defending, lest this part of the world cease being the “last, best hope for mankind,” and revert back to what history shows is the default result of unfettered power over the masses.

Check YOUR ‘privileges’

The prevalence of this sort of arrogant nonsense is enough to make me question whether ANYONE should send their offspring away to college these days.  “Higher education” in many instances seems to have become little more than a way to get parents to pay for the ideological harassment and indoctrination of their own children:

A bulletin board hung by a resident assistant in a primarily freshmen and sophomore dorm shames those who are have white, male, Christian, able-bodied, heterosexual, or cisgendered “privilege.”

“Why can’t I hold all this male privilege,” reads one meme on the bulletin board hanging at Appalachian State University.

“‘I don’t see color’ which also means I deny having white privilege,” reads another flier on the red board adorned with colorful puzzle pieces.

The fliers are products of the “Check Your Privilege” campaign started by three University of San Francisco professors, as previously reported by Campus Reform.

In other words, a Gramscian propaganda campaign of creating class, racial and gender envy as a precursor to revolution, started by some tenured (i.e. “employment privileged”) ivory-tower Marxists has spread from the Left Coast all the way to Appalachia.  Just great.  How, exactly, is this different from living in a totalitarian reeducation camp, also designed to tear down and rebuild your sense of self-identity?

I’ve had more than enough of this incitement to jealousy crap.  So as a Christian white heterosexual able-bodied male (who also happens to be only the first in my family’s history to have gone to college, and not because my parents paid for it out of pocket), let me be blunt: everyone in America is living in the civilization my ancestors and their culture built.  That you are doing so is a PRIVILEGE — one you were born to, the same as me.  By virtue of being born in the USA, regardless the circumstances and challenges that accompanied it (and we each have our own), you are ALREADY better off than two-thirds of the people living on this planet!  Try focusing on what you have instead of what you don’t, for a change.

This nation is not perfect (I defy you to find one that is), but tearing down a successful society because you want to obsess over past–or perceived–sins isn’t “enlightened.”  It’s STUPID.  It’s also stupid to reject–and actively fight against–the premises that made this nation what it is (i.e. self-reliance, self-restraint, family commitment, and that oft-derided “protestant work ethic”), and then claim those who held to them are somehow ‘privileged’ because their life choices produced better results.  Try some applied science: if you don’t like your personal results, change your personal formulas!  Don’t go trying to turn this land into the same sort of factionalized war-torn hellhole that predominates too much of our world already.

If these radical egalitarians put half the effort they do into this well poisoning into something useful to society, they might find their paycheck getting larger, among other social benefits.  I realize being a normal working stiff isn’t as exciting as, say, role-playing Che Guevara, but you really ought to compare the likely outcomes of those two approaches to living (and dying) before making that choice.

If you REALLY believe you have no opportunity to succeed here — that society won’t let you have anything (I’m looking at YOU, Mr. College Student Resident Hall Advisor who draws a stipend), then GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!  That’s another ‘privilege’ you have here that doesn’t exist in many of your favored national models — the ability to emigrate anytime you like.  I’m sure your talents for cut-and-paste propaganda and antisocial energy would be eagerly welcomed in places like Cuba, Venezuela or, if you’re really ambitious, China.

They are NOT welcomed here!

Now that I’ve addressed this particular residence hall advisor, it’s time to ask Appalachian State: what the hell are you paying this kid for?  To create a hostile living climate?  How about focusing on something more practical, such as figuring out why nine of your students have died just in this school year alone — at least three ruled by suicide?   There’s such a thing as challenging one to see things from a different perspective, and then there’s gross harassment and reverse bigotry, which, for all you know, may be part of your problem.  If you consider this RA’s actions appropriate, then you should just come right out and say that Christians and Caucasians are not welcome on your campus.  And families should plan accordingly — i.e. refuse to send their kids there.  There are far too many educational choices available today to be willing to put up with such hostility, and parents need to be closely scrutinizing exactly what environment they are sending their kids into.

Sadly, as the spread of this ridiculous campaign shows, the problem isn’t just one university.  Which is part of why the Oldest Musketeer is attending a community college, where students aren’t considered full-time suckers to pay for classes that focus on this sort of indoctrination.  His mother and I are only too glad to have him continue living at home, so that if he does encounter such nonsense, there’s an antidote available that same day.  And after working a year before starting classes, he’s paying as he goes, without taking out student loans to subsidize status symbols like the latest iGadget.  When he finishes his degree, he’ll be debt free and have options.  He’s going to school to learn a useful skill and become gainfully employed, not to become part of a revolutionary vanguard.

Though more and more, I worry he and his brothers may one day have to help put down the inevitable full fruits of this insanity that has infested our social institutions.  Freedom, in the end, isn’t a privilege.  You have to be willing to fight to have it — and to keep it.