Of Masks and Queues

Our governor here in Indiana has lifted the mask mandate. It is about time. We, Hoosiers, have been asked to wear a mask for about a year now and if there ever was any legitimate health reason to require citizens to wear masks in their daily lives, it has long since passed. The Chinese COVID-19 epidemic is receding. Vaccines are now available and probably the entire population has been exposed to the virus. There really is no reason to continue the mask mandates and lockdowns.

Yet, the order to lift the mandates has been surprisingly controversial. Those governors which have lifted their states’ mask mandates have been derided as science-denying Neanderthals even as COVID vaccines have become available and cases have been dropping. There is clearly no current justification for continued mask mandates and lockdowns if indeed there ever were. Why is there this insistence on compelling people to wear masks? I have a sort of a theory based on Chinese history. 

In 1644 the Manchus invaded and conquered China. Who are the Manchus, you might be asking? Well if you look at a map of China, the north-eastern part of China, north of Korea used to be called Manchuria.

These days it is called other names for various historical and political reasons, but never mind. The Manchus are the people who live in Manchuria.

The Manchus were a semi-nomadic steppe people much like the Mongolians. As is often the case when a less sophisticated people live alongside a more advanced nation, the Manchus came to admire the Chinese and began to adopt Chinese culture, settling down into cities and farms and importing Chinese artisans. Eventually the Manchu royal family, the Aisin-Gioro clan decided that they admired China so much that they should be the Emperors of China. They began to call themselves the Qing Dynasty and their king proclaimed himself Emperor

So, as I mentioned, in 1644, the Manchus invaded China. At the time China was beset with the usual political unrest, rebellions, and natural disasters which signified the transfer of the Mandate of Heaven from one dynasty, the Ming in this case, to the Qing so the Manchus were able to conquer China.

After they had consolidated their control, the Shunzhi Emperor decreed that every Chinese male must show his loyalty to the Manchus by wearing his hair in the Manchu fashion; his head shaved in the front and long in the back, gathered into a braid or queue. This decree was not popular, except among the toadies and collaborators among the Chinese. The Chinese viewed the Manchu as barbarians and had no desire to emulate them in any way. Moreover, Confucius had taught that as a person’s hair came from his parents, it was an act of disrespect to one’s ancestors to shave to cut one’s hair or beard.

After some initial resistance, the Chinese complied with this decree for the next two and a half centuries, as long as the Qing remained in power. For Westerners, the queue was the stereotypical Chinese hairstyle. Why was this? The Chinese outnumbered the Manchus by more than ten thousand to one. Why did Chinese men continue to wear their hair in a fashion they despised as a mark of their subjugation to a hated occupier? Well, for one thing, the Manchus were fierce steppe warriors, and the Chinese weren’t. Any man who refused to wear the queue was likely to be summarily beheaded as a traitor. A village where the men stopped complying could be destroyed.

Aside from that, China has never been a country that prizes individual liberty or great initiative from the masses. China has been a culture in which the common people were expected to obey their betters and let the Emperor and his Mandarin scholar-officials do the thinking for them. Obedience to their superiors had been pounded into the heads of the Chinese for two thousand years. And yet, the Chinese did resist. As the dynastic cycle progressed and the Qing began to decline, rebellions against the Manchus become increasingly common. The first thing the Chinese did when rebelling was to cut off their queues or let the hair in the front of their heads grow out. 

It seems to me that this insistence on continuing to mandate masks is less about controlling the COVID pandemic at this point and more about compelling a visible sign of submission to the regime, just like the Manchus required Chinese men to wear their hair in a queue. Why else should there be this insistence that everyone wear a mask, regardless of whether they have been infected? It seems to me that in a free country, the decision to wear a mask ought to be up to the individual. If you feel it is necessary to wear a mask to avoid contracting the coronavirus, by all means, wear one. If I believe that having had the coronavirus and been vaccinated believe that I am in no danger and therefore do not believe that wearing a mask is necessary, I shouldn’t be made to wear one. Why the name-calling and mask shaming? 

Maybe you think this is going a bit far. Well, consider this:

Wearing a mask is presented more as a gesture of loyalty to “President” Biden and his agenda than an actual health measure. 

The Chinese wore their hated queues under the threat of superior force and lived in a culture that emphasized conformity. We Americans allegedly have a culture that emphasizes freedom and individualism and no one is threatening to chop off our heads for not wearing a mask, at least not yet. So what is our excuse? Why are we being intimidated into continuing to wear masks even as the pandemic ebbs? Are we really that easily frightened? What happened to the people who wear willing to fight for their freedom?

If you want to wear a mask go ahead. If you don’t want to wear one, don’t. That is what people do in a free country. We don’t let our betters tell us whether to wear a mask. We decide for ourselves. Let’s take off the masks and be free. 

Unscientific American

Scientific American used to be a respectable magazine that reported on the latest scientific discoveries for a popular audience. Sadly, that no longer appears to be the case. Take, for example, this interview with “forensic psychologist” Bandy X Lee, in which she discusses the “shared psychosis”: of President Donald Trump and his followers and how best to wean his followers away from their shared delusions. It used to be regarded as highly unethical, in the psychiatric profession to offer a diagnosis of a person the professional has not interviewed and in fact, the American Psychiatric Association has the Goldwater Rule in its ethical guidelines. This rule states:

On occasion, psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement

Ms. Lee brushes this objection aside in the interview.

In doing so, Lee and her colleagues strongly rejected the American Psychiatric Association’s modification of a 1970s-era guideline, known as the Goldwater Rule, that discouraged psychiatrists from giving a professional opinion about public figures who they have not examined in person. “Whenever the Goldwater rule is mentioned, we should refer back to the Declaration of Geneva, which mandates that physicians speak up against destructive governments,” Lee says. “This declaration was created in response to the experience of Nazism.”

How precisely Trump’s government could be considered “destructive” is not mentioned. The usual reason given by leftists is that Trump has been undermining our constitutional and democratic norms. In fact, it is the leftists who have been undermining the norms to get Trump. They have corrupted and politized our intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies to supple falsified information concerning Russian collusion. They have incited riots and unrest in our major cities. They have imposed censorship in social media to influence the election. They have rigged that election to ensure Trump’s defeat. Ms. Lee herself has abandoned longstanding ethical guidelines to engage in a political attack. I would say that the complaints about Trump undermining norms are prime examples of leftist projection. Ms. Lee’s comparison of Trump to Nazism says much about her own delusions. Ms. Lee might also want to consider the history of Soviet misuse of psychiatry to define dissidents as mentally ill. Her own suggested treatment of allegedly delusional Trump supporters comes dangerously close to Soviet standards. There is a reason why the Goldwater rule exists.

Consider what she has to say when asked what motivates Trump supporters.

The reasons are multiple and varied, but in my recent public-service book, Profile of a Nation, I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.

and

In Profile of a Nation, I outline the many causes that create his followership. But there is important psychological injury that arises from relative—not absolute—socioeconomic deprivation. Yes, there is great injury, anger and redirectable energy for hatred, which Trump harnessed and stoked for his manipulation and use. The emotional bonds he has created facilitate shared psychosis at a massive scale. It is a natural consequence of the conditions we have set up.

For healing, I usually recommend three steps: (1) Removal of the offending agent (the influential person with severe symptoms). (2) Dismantling systems of thought control—common in advertising but now also heavily adopted by politics. And (3) fixing the socioeconomic conditions that give rise to poor collective mental health in the first place.

I wonder if Ms. Lee has actually spoken to any Trump supporter. She might consider that many of them have real grievances that have been unaddressed by any national figure before Trump ran for president. She might also try to understand that many of Trump’s supporters have benefited from his policies. There is a reason why more people voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016 and why the Democrats had to hype up the COVID-19 threat and then resort to fraud to defeat Trump.

Scientific American had no business publishing this interview with Bandy X Lee. She has acted in violation of ethical guidelines. She has not met or interviewed Donald Trump and is therefore not qualified to submit any psychiatric diagnoses. She is entitled to her opinion about Trump, and other public figures, but such opinions belong in a political opinion journal, not in a publication devoted to scientific matters. The decision by the editors of Scientific American to publish this interview is an indication of the sad decline of any institution taken over by the left. Leftists infiltrate formerly respectable institutions, “wokeify” them, and leave a sort of husk divested of its former virtues. The left is like a sort of parasitical fungus I once read about that eats away at an insect from the inside out leaving only its carapace intact to lure more victims. Such is the fate of the formerly Scientific American.

Rhyming History

Mark Twain is supposed to have said that history does not repeat but it rhymes. Whether or not Twain actually said it, the meaning of this expression is that while historical events do not repeat themselves precisely, there are certain patterns to history. People are people, whatever the differences in geography or culture, and people tend to react to similar events in similar ways. With this in mind, I would like to consider certain historical events with which the current political situation is starting to rhyme in some ominous ways.

The first rhyme begins on January 30, 1933, when German President Paul von Hindenburg reluctantly appointed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. Hindenburg did not like Hitler very much. Hindenberg was an aristocratic Junker of the old Prussian mode and a monarchist and he despised Hitler as a demagogue and a plebian rabble-rouser. The Nazis, while short a majority, had become the largest party in the Reichstag and it was impossible to form a governing coalition without them. Hitler’s price for such a coalition was to be named Chancellor. Hindenberg had done a creditable job as a Field Marshall in charge of the German military in World War I, but by 1933 he was old, he was 85, tired, and perhaps a bit senile. He succumbed to the pressure to make Hitler Chancellor, against his better judgment.

Hitler was not yet a dictator, though. The Nazis held only three cabinet posts and there were new elections for the Reichstag coming up in March. Most observers felt that Hitler could be contained. Then, on  February 27, a fire broke out at the Reichstag building. A Dutch Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe was found on the scene and arrested. While many then and since have suspected the Nazis of starting the fire themselves, the historical consensus is that van der Lubbe was indeed the arsonist. Nevertheless, the Nazis were swift to take advantage of the incident, citing the fire as evidence of a widespread Communist conspiracy to overthrow the Weimar Republic and institute a Soviet regime.

Is history repeating itself, or rhyming?

The Nazi press spread stories of an imminent Communist takeover inciting panic among the German population and the following day  President von Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree, giving Hitler emergency powers, suspending the civil rights of the German People, including freedom of speech and the press and the right to peaceably assemble. The Communist Party was banned and those Communists not already in custody are rounded up and arrested. A month later, on March 24, the Enabling Act was passed, giving the Chancellor the power to rule by decree. Hitler was now a dictator and only President Hindenberg’s prestige and control of the German army stood in the way of absolute power for Hitler. This last barrier was removed when Hindenberg died on August 2, 1934. Hitler combined the offices of president and chancellor and assumed the title of Fuhrer and Reichskanzler.

Does all of this begin to sound familiar? Substitute Democrats for Nazi, Conservative for Communist, and Capitol riot for Reichstag fire and I could easily be talking about the current political situation. There is no Hitler to be found anywhere, thank God, and no one is actually talking about establishing a dictatorship, yet, but it is clear that the Democrats are using last week’s riot at the capitol to justifying attacking our most basic civil rights, with the aid of their Big Tech allies. Conservatives are already being purged from social media platforms, and who can tell what the coming Democratic Congress will enact. Prominent Progressives are openly talking about the need to “reprogram” Trump supporters, people are losing their jobs for backing the wrong side, and Democrats are talking about the need to rein in media “misinformation”.

I have long opposed comparing any politician or political party to Hitler or the Nazis. No one in mainstream American politics, I have said is anything at all like some of the worst people in human history. I might have to revise that position. If the Democrats are going to make use of the Nazi playbook, line by line, then I am going to start calling them what they have revealed themselves to be, Nazis or Fascists.

Meanwhile, if history continues to rhyme in this fashion, I am afraid we are in for some very dark times.

 

The Capitol Hill “Insurrection”

If you are expecting me to condemn the people who stormed Capitol Hill the other day, forget it. It’s not going to happen. The Democrats spent all last summer excusing and condoning the thugs who destroyed property and ruined lives. I am not going to condemn the of an unruly mob of people on my side while they continue to justify violence and repression by activists on their side. I am not going to demand my side play by Marquess of Queensbury rules while their side literally is getting away with murder.

For the last four years, well for many decades really, the leftists have been excusing and condoning violence. They have assaulted and harassed Trump supporters and conservatives with impunity. They have written articles extolling the virtues of punching Nazis, by which they mean anyone to be right of Stalin, and called for a violent insurrection against the Fascist Trump. Last summer, not only did these same Democrats who are busy condemning this “assault on democracy” not only stood by while Antifa and BLM thugs burned down our cities, they actively sided with the terrorists, with the disgraceful spectacle of prominent Democrats taking a knee while wearing kente cloth to show solidarity with actual insurrectionists.

Now, after spending years normalizing political violence, these people are shocked and saddened people on the other side seem to have adopted the new rules they themselves have established. I say seems to because there is reason to believe that the assault on the Capitol was incited by leftist activists posing as Trump supporters. Whatever the truth of the matter, the leftists are upset that both sides can play by the new rules. Some people on the left have made the argument that Antifa/BLM violence is justifiable because they have legitimate grievances about the conduct of police departments. This neatly ignores the fact that Republicans have legitimate concerns about the integrity of the last election. In any case, it simply does not work that way. If violence is an acceptable means to redress grievances by one faction, it is an acceptable means to redress grievances by all factions. You cannot say, “We are permitted to cause mayhem but you are not because we are on the right side of history and you are not.” Like it or not, and to tell the truth I do not like it, the new rules are going to apply to everyone. The Left has spent the recent past being the instigators of violence. They had better become used to being the recipients of violence. If you push people long enough, they will start to push back.

We tried to be nice with the Tea Party. We protested peacefully and worked within the system. We even picked up our garbage. They laughed at us and called us racists and political terrorists while the people we thought were on our side stabbed us in the back. So, we became a little less nice and elected Donald Trump. They called him Hitler and us Fascists, tried to block everything we wanted him to do for us, and even impeached him. They blocked out voices in social media claiming that we were haters.

Last year, they looked the other way as thugs burned down our cities. They made us prisoners in our homes and destroyed our businesses under the guise of fighting a pandemic. They deliberately crashed the economy to harm our President’s chance of reelection and when that wasn’t enough they stole the election before our eyes and told us we were crazy and dangerous to democracy for objecting. Now the same people who had no problem with actual terrorists murdering people want to hang us for treason because a few of us went a little unruly in the defense of our freedom.

We tried to use the ballot box but they stole the election right in front of us. We have used the soapbox, but the tech tyrants and the media are doing their best to silence and marginalize us. It is getting to be time to use the ammo box.

It’s time to stop being nice.

 

 

 

Vote Reparations

Vote reparations are the newest idea from the loony left that every conservative is talking about. What is vote reparations? We’ll let Brandon Hasbrouck explain in his article in the Nation.

Black votes in this country are worth less than white votes. Joe Biden won the Electoral College because Black voters in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia turned out in significant numbers. But even with overwhelming Black support—94 percent of Detroit voted for Biden!—the outcomes in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were worryingly close.

We’ll skip over the very real possibility that those close votes were the result of fraud for the sake of the argument. 

One core problem is the Electoral College. Wyoming, which has just 580,000 residents and is 93 percent white, gets three electors because of its two senators and one representative in the House. By comparison, Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District—which includes Atlanta, has 710,000 residents, and is 58 percent Black—has no dedicated electors or senators and can only occasionally overcome the mostly white and conservative votes from elsewhere in the state. This devaluation of Black votes allows our political system to ignore Black lives, and the consequences are devastating. Unequal representation has led to unequal health care outcomes, which the Covid-19 pandemic has only worsened. Without sufficient voting power, Black communities receive substandard education, and politicians are free to appoint judges who sanction mass incarceration, abusive policing, and electoral disenfranchisement.

This is all by design. The Constitution’s framers set up the Electoral College to protect the interests of slave states. Along with the Senate, the Electoral College was critical in the endurance of slavery and its continuation by other means. Abolishing this system would mean that ballots cast by Black voters—or any voters, for that matter—would count the same.

But there’s another way to undo the damage of the Electoral College and other structurally racist political institutions: We can implement vote reparations by double-counting ballots cast by all Black residents. The poisonous legacy of slavery applies to Black people regardless of when we or our ancestors arrived in this country. Vote reparations should also extend to Native Americans. Slavery is rightly called America’s original sin, but so too was the United States’ genocidal seizure of land from its original inhabitants. Various legal forms of disenfranchisement have applied to them. It wasn’t until 1962 that all Native Americans were allowed to vote, and even then they faced—and still face—electoral obstacles. These are not the only examples of American oppression; we should include in vote reparations others who have suffered similar disenfranchisement.

Basically, the idea that Blacks, and perhaps other people who have suffered from past and present discrimination should get two votes to make up for past wrongs. 

There is a lot to object to in this idea, not least of which is the old maxim that two wrongs do not make a right. You cannot remedy injustice against one group by practicing injustice against the other. I will have more to say about that in a moment, but first, I think it is worth observing that the whole idea of vote reparations is based on a false premise, the idea that the constitution and particularly the electoral college were designed to perpetuate slavery. Logically, if the premise is false, the conclusion must also be false.

Contrary to what the architects of the 1619 Project contend, the constitution was not designed to perpetuate slavery. The framers of the constitution wanted to create a republican government that would preserve liberty for themselves and their descendants. The founding fathers drew from many sources, both ancient and modern for inspiration, including the greatest political philosophers throughout history, particularly Aristotle, Polybius, John Locke, Edmund Burke, and Montesquieu. These thinkers generally believed that the best way to preserve liberty was to create a mixed government, that is, a government that included elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, all in balance with a separation of powers. The framers of the constitution wanted a system that was somewhat democratic, but not too democratic, so they included undemocratic features, like the Electoral College into the constitution. The founding fathers did not want the president to be elected by the people, the people might not know the candidates very well. They wanted the president to be elected by representatives of the people, selected by the state legislatures. None of this had anything to do with slavery. In fact, the Constitution, and especially the Declaration of Independence, with its declaration that all men are created equal had rather a corrosive effect on the institution of slavery. 

Getting back to the subject of vote reparations, then. Aside from the obvious injustice of awarding differing numbers of votes based on race and color, the problem I have with this sort of restorative justice is that I wonder when does it all end. At what point are the previously oppressed and the previous oppressors even? If we embark on a policy of privileging the descendants of the oppressed at the expense of the descendants of the oppressors? If Blacks get reparations paid by Whites today, do Whites have a claim on reparations a hundred years from now based on the oppression their ancestors endured at the hands of privileged Blacks? 

It may seem ludicrous to consider Whites being oppressed by Blacks today, but how do people like Mr. Hasbrouck think Whites are going to react when they see their Black neighbors getting two votes? Probably the same way they think about any government policy that shows preference to Blacks at the expense of Whites. Few Whites are going to simply shrug their shoulders and say, well they deserve the extra votes because our grandfathers oppressed their grandfathers. The Whites are inevitably going to feel discriminated against, with some justification. Dismissing their just grievances as simply as more racism will only make them angrier. 

So, where does it end? Do we simply continue on an endless cycle of discrimination, flipping back and forth between the races, or do we put an end to discrimination and treat everyone as equal? Do we continually revisit the injustices of the past to foster an endless sense of grievance or do we move forward into a brighter future? Vote Reparations would only take us back to an endless pattern of racism today, racism tomorrow, and racism forever. I think it is better to aim for a future of liberty and equality. 

 

Statistical Anomalies

Suppose there was an election, it doesn’t matter what the election is for; president, senator, mayor, city dogcatcher, whatever, and suppose that on the night of the election one candidate, let’s call him Bob, was a thousand votes ahead of the other candidate, Jim. Now suppose there is a pause in the vote-counting and then when the counting resumes it turns out that during the pause there was an influx of 1500 votes, which when counted turn out to be 1400 for Jim and only 100 for Bob, enough for Jim to win the election. Wouldn’t you think there was something strange going on?

What if Bob were comfortably ahead in every precinct in the city except one, but that one precinct was so overwhelmingly for Jim (99%) that it was enough to win the election for Jim. Wouldn’t you suspect that there was something a little suspicious going on in that one precinct?

What if the local newspaper, which had only run positive stories about Jim, portraying him as a saint who spends his spare time feeding the homeless while writing news stories reporting that “unnamed sources state” that Bob regularly beat his wife and children, foreclosed on widows and orphans, and had a serious problem with body odor, announced Jim’s victory in the election before the counting was even completed. and treated Bob’s demands for an audit and a recount with contempt, labeling him a sore loser and advising his supporters to accept the fact that they lost and to move on? Wouldn’t you think that that newspaper was not really a very reliable source of news about the elections and probably shouldn’t be trusted to be objective or honest?

All of this is precisely what we are being asked to believe about the election of 2020. In this election, we saw Donald Trump begin with a lead in several swing states the evening of the election, only for his rival, Joe Biden to receive mysterious influxes of votes, enough to put him over the top to victory. In an honest count, you would expect the ratio of votes for the candidates to be approximately the same from the beginning of the count to the conclusion. This is in fact, what allows for winners of elections to be projected even before the counting is finished. There would be variations, of course. One candidate might have more support in a certain precinct, while the other might have more support elsewhere. Sometimes you might encounter strings of votes for one candidate, however, the voting might fall out. What you would not expect would be to see a series of hundreds or even thousands of votes for Biden with no votes for Trump, no votes for third party candidates, not even some joker writing in Micky Mouse. This is simply not a probable outcome in an honest election. It is like flipping a coin fifty times and coming up heads forty-eight times.

Now, improbable does not mean impossible and improbable outcomes do not necessarily indicate that there was anything amiss in the election. Yet if I flip a coin and it comes up heads forty-eight times out of fifty you would have just cause to suspect that I might be using some sort of trick coin, weighted to come up heads. If we were playing poker and a player got an improbable hand, such as a royal flush, three times in a row, that would not necessarily mean the player was cheating, yet we might be advised to check if he has any cards up his sleeves.

The suspicion that something is wrong is only increased when no examination is permitted. If I refused to allow you to examine my coin; if the player refused to consent to have his sleeves searched, we would be all the more justified in assuming that some sort of trickery is going on. Yet, again, this is precisely what is happening with the election. First, Biden was proclaimed the winner, even when the outcome was uncertain. Ever since we have been told, over and over that Biden is the President-elect before anything was certified. Any questions about the statistical irregularities or accounts of illicit behavior on the part of poll workers have been dismissed as baseless claims on the part of a sore loser. Investigations into irregularities are denounced as assaults against democracy. Social media has been busily censoring any accusations of fraud or really any attempt to question whether Joe Biden really won the election.

The attempt, coming from many directions, to present the alleged results of the election of 2020 as beyond any serious question only serves to make the whole business even more suspicious. If this were an honest election, what harm would it do to investigate even seemingly baseless claims of fraud. Why are so many people so nervous about people expressing the opinion that is was not honest. When someone assures us that he is an honest man, that is a good sign that he is not, in fact, honest. When Facebook, Twitter, Google, and the entire mainstream media are taking such pains to assure us that there was no fraud in the election while censoring anyone who dares to assert there was, should we not conclude that the election was indeed fraudulent.

I am not a person given to conspiracy theories. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F Kennedy without any help from the government. I believe that we really did go to the Moon and that 9/11 was not an inside job. I am not a person who would ordinarily subscribe to the idea that there has been a conspiracy to rig the election unless there was good reason to believe so. I believe that the preponderance of evidence indicates that there was a conspiracy to use fraud to ensure that Donald Trump was defeated in his bid for reelection. I believe, without any doubt, that the results of the election that have been released are fraudulent and that Joe Biden is neither the legitimate winner of the election or the legitimate President of the United States.

The Decline and Fall of the Empire of Lies

In 1979, it looked as if the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War. Communism seemed to be on the march everywhere. The Soviets held Eastern Europe in an iron grip and had client states on almost every continent. The Soviet nuclear arsenal was numerically superior to America’s and the Soviet military seemed invincible. By contrast, America and the West were clearly in decline. The United States was still shell-shocked by its loss in Vietnam, its military was in disarray, its economy seemingly locked in a permanent recession coupled with high inflation, its population demoralized. It seemed only a matter of time before the Soviet Union became the dominant power in the world. If someone had predicted that in only a decade the Soviets would withdraw from Eastern Europe and that two years later the Soviet Union would collapse, leaving a resurgent America as the world’s sole superpower, he would not have been taken seriously. Anyone could see that the Soviet Union was here to stay. 

In hindsight, the weaknesses of the Soviet Union were obvious. Its economy was stagnant and inefficient, Its vaunted military might was a shambles with outdated equipment and filled with reluctant conscripts. Its citizens were demoralized and cynical. For most Marxism-Leninism was simply a set of empty platitudes one parroted to get ahead, No one believed in the official ideology. No one believed anything the government had to say. The whole system just needed a push to come tumbling down. Ronald Reagan provided that push.

 Often, longlasting states and institutions appear to be at their strongest right before their collapse, They seem to be a permanent part of the scene until they aren’t. Their weaknesses become obvious only in hindsight. The Roman Empire seemed to be as strong as ever as late as AD 400. No one could have predicted that in only five years its borders would be irreparably breached by the barbarians, in ten years Rome itself would be sacked and by AD 476 the last Western Emperor, a child, and a puppet would be unceremoniously deposed by a German warlord. The Empire was there, then it wasn’t. It is only in hindsight we see how weak the Roman Empire was. The barbarians provided the push that caused the whole structure of the empire to fall down. 

These institutions are rather like a majestic oak tree that has stood for a century and looks to be able to stand for a century more, but in fact, is rotten and ready to fall in the next storm. The oak needs just a push to come falling down. I believe that the left, what Andrew Klavan calls the Empire of Lies, is in the same position as the Soviet Union or the Roman Empire before they collapsed. They seem all-powerful, controlling our culture and every important institution, academia, primary and secondary education, our news and entertainment media, the federal bureaucracy, most of our large corporations, yet I believe they are primed for a collapse. All the Empire of Lies needs is a push to come tumbling down. 

Donald Trump provided that push. In just four years Trump managed to discredit all of the institutions held by the left. To be more precise, he has allowed them to discredit themselves. One after another, these institutions have been revealed to be corrupt, crassly partisan, and altogether ineffective at fulfilling what is expected of them. Higher education has become an expensive joke. No one can believe a word the mainstream news media says. Hollywood churns out crap. Woke businesses go broke. Federal law enforcement is more concerned with investigating imaginary hate crimes than corruption and real crimes. Worst of all, Donald Trump’s policy successes, both foreign and domestic, have revealed just how inept and out of touch our alleged political elite actually is. No wonder they hate him so much, 

Think of it this way. For four years the left has thrown everything they have had at Donald Trump. They have called him a racist, a fascist, a White Supremacist who is the worst person in the world. They have spread false stories of Russian collusion and have impeached him. Their cronies in the government have blocked him at every turn. Yet, despite their every effort to discredit Trump and make him odious in the eyes of the people, they still had to cheat, using unprecedented levels of outright fraud to “win” the election. Does that sound like a movement that is confident of victory? Consider the increasingly desperate attempts by the mainstream media to convince us that all is well, the desperate attempt of the social media oligarchs to silence us, the hatred and fear that so many on the left exhibit in all their actions. They are beginning to lose their grip and they know it. 

They look all-powerful now. So did Germany right before it lost both world wars. In 1918 the Germans knew that they were losing the war so they mounted the Spring Offensive. Likewise, during the winter of 1944-1945, the Germans launched the Battle of the Bulge. In both battles, the Germans used their last available reserves to make the allies believe they were still capable of putting up a fight. That is just what the left is doing with the stolen election of 2020. They want us to believe we are beaten and can only make the best of a bad situation. We have to prove them wrong. 

This is not to say we don’t have a hard fight ahead of us. As Winston Churchill put it, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”. Trump has given the left a hard push, but we need to keep on pushing. There is no time to despair. The enemy looks strong but inside they are rotten to the core. We represent the cause of freedom and the future belongs to freedom. They can only offer the failed solutions of the past. Their economics are from the nineteenth century. In race relations, they still think its the 1950s. We base our ideas on eternal truths. They based their policies on the whims of the moment. We offer freedom. They offer tribalism to divide us and serfdom as our lot. So, let’s get out there and fight for freedom. 

Why I Don’t Vote for the Libertarian Party

Some time ago, perhaps twenty-five years ago, I happened to be listening to some late-night radio talk show. The host was sort of a conservative Rush Limbaugh clone, so popular on talk radio at the time and he was interviewing a Libertarian candidate for some position. At one point during the interview, the host pointed out that while Libertarian ideas about small, limited government were popular with many Americans their position on legalizing drugs was not. The Libertarians might, he said, get more votes and actually win elections. The Libertarian explained in detail how legalizing drugs was consistent with the general Liberation philosophy on minimalist government and dropping the drug legalization plank from their platform would be inconsistent with that minimalist philosophy. The host replied that he understood their reasoning and even agreed with it, but that many Americans did not, therefore as long as the Libertarians insisted on advocating drug legalization, the appeal of the Libertarian Partry would be somewhat limited. That might be, the Libertarian said, but they weren’t going to compromise their principles.

That is one of the reasons I don’t vote for the Libertarian Party enough though I agree with most of what they have to say. To put it simply, what good is all their fine principles if they cannot get elected to enact them? If The Libertarians will not adapt their message to win over a majority of the voters, they cannot be elected into a position to make any of their ideas into reality. Even if a Libertarian does manage to be elected into some position such as a legislator, he will be ineffective at getting anything done if he will not compromise and form some sort of coalition with non-Libertarians.  So, what good is the Libertarian Party?

The problem with the Libertarians is that they know perfectly well that they have no chance of actually winning any elections and therefore have no reason to make the sort of compromises and concessions that the major parties have to make to win elections. The Libertarians are free to prize ideological purity over electability. They can propose policy ideas that are completely logical and consistent with their philosophy but that are not necessarily related to actual experience. They can imagine life in a small government utopia without worrying too much about how to bring it about, how it might actually work, or whether that is what people actually want. Because the Libertarians, and really any minor party in our political system, don’t have any reason to adapt their message to make themselves more electable, they don’t bother and end up making themselves even less electable over time.

This leads to the other reason I don’t vote for the Libertarian Party. They cannot win. No third party has any chance in our first past the post, winner takes all elections. Proportional voting and runoffs are uncommon in the United States and usually the candidate with the most votes, even if he does not get a majority. This makes any vote for a third-party candidate a wasted vote, and often effectively a vote for the candidate the voter is ideologically opposed to. Consider this example. Suppose there are three candidates running for Congress, a Democrat, a Republican, and a Libertarian. Now suppose around 3% of the more conservative voters decide that the Republican is just not conservative enough for them. She supports various big government programs that small-government conservatives oppose. On election night the results are 49% for the Democrat, 48% for the Republican, and 3% for the Libertarian. The Democrat wins the election and goes on to Congress where he supports even bigger government than the Republican candidate would have. Those voters who stuck to their principles and voted for the Libertarian ended up, in effect, voting for the big-government candidate. A similar scenario might have progressives deciding that the Democratic Party is too capitalist and voting for the Green Party, only to see the even more capitalist Republican winning.

The point of this discussion is that what is very likely the most important election of our lifetimes is rapidly approaching. I know they say that about every election, but it is really true this time. Donald Trump, for all of his faults, has been a monumental, history-changing president. His wrecking ball approach to governance has helped to demolish stale orthodoxies and shaken the grip of a stagnant elite.  Trump has taken US policy in a new direction and has helped to resolve issues that have been stalemated for decades. He needs to have another term to complete his work. Meanwhile, the Democrats have moved so far to the left that they are openly embracing socialism. This new Democratic party is not the party of FDR or JFK anymore. The contemporary Democratic Party derives its ideology more from Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin than from Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, the founders of the Democratic Party they now despise as racists and slave owners. It is increasingly evident that the Democrats despise America and all the institutions that make America great and free. They cannot be allowed to wield power until the moderates are back in control of their party.

This means that those of us who still love our country and wish to be free do not have the luxury of standing on ideological purity. Casting a protest vote for a third party or abstaining from voting altogether is the same as voting for the Democrat’s extreme socialist agenda. It is better to vote for an imperfect Republican like Donald Trump than waste your vote on a Libertarian and see Joe Biden and his puppetmasters in office.

I am the Emperor and I Want Dumplings.

That title is a famous quote from Ferdinand I Emperor of Austria from 1835 to 1848. Ferdinand, I was not a particularly good emperor. This wasn’t his fault. Thanks to his Hapsburg ancestors’ predilection for inbreeding (his own parents were double first cousins sharing all four grandparents.) Ferdinand had inherited a number of physical and neurological issues. He was not as afflicted as the unfortunate Charles II of Spain, but Ferdinand did suffer from hydrocephalus, severe epilepsy, and a speech impediment. Ferdinand was not mentally retarded, as many in his court assumed, but his almost continuous seizures (as many as twenty pet day) made it impossible for him to attend to affairs of state or even to sire an heir.

One day, Ferdinand asked his cook to make him apricot dumplings. The cook replied that because apricots were not in season he could not possibly fulfill the Emperor’s wish. The Emperor, who was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, who was used to having every wish immediately gratified could not have a favorite dish because the ingredient was not available. The mighty emperor could only shout in frustration, ‘I am the Emperor and I want dumpings’.

He didn’t get his dumplings.

If you happen to be a resident in the United States of America or any other reasonably developed country and you desired apricot dumplings at any time of the year, all you need to do is go to the nearest grocery store and but apricots and the other ingredients. The store is sure to have apricots even if they are out of season at your location. Just think about that for a minute. You, an ordinary person has access to whatever treats you might want at any time of the year, regardless of what might be in or out of season. You have a better chance of having whatever cravings you might have than the most powerful people in the world only two centuries ago. You also have far better access to medical care than Emperor Ferdinand had. Any ordinary person with the sort of physical problems that afflicted Ferinand would have a fair chance of having his condition alleviated and of living a more normal life than poor Ferdinand ever could have, for all his power and wealth.

You would think that in a free country in which everyone had access to apple dumplings whenever they wanted, people would be happy, or at least content, but that is not the case. Instead, we see people protesting against the poverty and injustice they are living under. Yet, if we were to bring an ordinary worker or peasant from Ferdinand’s time to our own, he would believe that he had entered a utopia of plenty. He would be astonished that everyone had enough to eat, even too much. He certainly wouldn’t be used to seeing so many obese people. He would be mystified as Antifa protesters complained to him of the poverty and injustice they are suffering under.

America is by no means a perfect country. Our treatment of our Black citizens is surely the most egregious example of how we have failed to live up to our ideals. Is the left then correct in portraying America as a country beset with systemic, structural racism in need of a fundamental transformation, even a revolution? Well, despite every effort, Blacks are still not entirely equal to Whites, and yet, discrimination based on race has been illegal since 1964 and it has been the official policy of every level of government, along with academia and most corporations to do everything possible to uplift the African-American community. One might have doubts about the efficacy of many of the policies adopted, but there is little question that the intent is to help, not to oppress. Moreover, public opinion has swung decisively against any public expression of racism. Even a mildly racist remark is sufficient to destroy a career. Despite the Democrats’ characterization of President Trump as a racist and an open White Supremacist, the fact is that If Trump were the slightest bit racist, he wouldn’t have gotten two percent of the vote.

Our friends from nineteenth-century Austria, Emperor Ferdinand, and his humble subject would be used to life in a truly racist country. In the Austrian Empire, your ethnicity determined your entire life. German Austrians were at the top, Hungarians and some favored Slavs in the middle, most Slavs at the bottom, and the Jews even below the Slavs. Even people of the same race were not equals. The nobility expected and got deference from their inferiors. The idea that all men should be treated as equals, imperfectly realized as it is in our time, would seem unimaginable both to the Emperor and the worker.

Actually, this sort of ethnic hierarchy has been the rule in every multi-national state or empire, even our own republic until very recently. What some seem to regard as an evil unique to the United State is the norm in human history. What is not the norm is for the group on top to extend the promise of equality and aid to the formerly oppressed without the threat of a violent revolution. The United States is far from perfect on racial matters, but the progress we have made in recent decades is almost unique in human history and there is no reason to suppose that progress will continue to be made, without any need for riots or the threat of violence.

I do not want to come across as some sort of Pangloss, blithely assuming that everything is wonderful here in the United States. I know that we many problems here in the United States, yet life in twenty-first-century America is better than at any other time and place in history. We live in a remarkably successful country with a long history of dealing with its problems peacefully and without revolution. It seems to be madness for anyone to throw it all away to implement the ideology of a nineteenth-century crackpot. Maybe they don’t teach history anymore.

Chief

Catherine Roome President and Chief/Lead Executive Officer of Technical Safety BC explains why she felt it was necessary to change her title.

A few weeks ago, in my role as the president and chief executive officer of Technical Safety BC, I sent an e-mail to our 450 employees about racism and, in particular, systemic racism against people of colour.

I wrote about my hope that the Black Lives Matter movement would present Canada with an opportunity to define what a better world looks like. I also wrote that deeply seated racism in our society includes racism toward Indigenous peoples – the original inhabitants of these lands.

In response, many Technical Safety BC employees from across British Columbia took the opportunity to share their experiences and expressed calls for action and reflection. In particular, I was urged to consider the importance of language and the titles that many of us adopt and use without thinking.

As folks who know me well will tell you, I am a stickler for inclusive language. I often interrupt people – board directors, heads of organizations, politicians and others – if I feel they are using titles for our employees that are outdated.

She sounds like a real joy to work for. I imagine the working environment at Technical Safety BC must resemble something out of Orwell. Her subordinates must live in constant fear of accidentally using the wrong word or committing thoughtcrime.

So to receive constructive feedback on my own use of language made me sit up and take notice.

One particularly courageous colleague pointed out that I was using a word in my title, president and chief executive officer, that represents something deeply meaningful to many Indigenous peoples. It is a word that is honoured and respected in First Nations culture and conveys a meaning very different to organizational leadership.

If I were the President and CEO of a company and one of my employees said something like that, I would respond by pointing out that if he has so much free time on his hands that he can obsess over politically correct terminology then his position is obviously superfluous. Of course, if I were the CEO of a corporation I wouldn’t be hectoring my employees about using outdated titles. I wouldn’t even be wasting my and the company’s time on the latest woke causes. I would be doing my job and trying to make the company as profitable as possible for the shareholders.

I wonder if the particularly courageous colleague was himself a Native American or whether any Native Americans have ever actually objected to the use of the word chief in the title Chief Executive Officer. For matter, I wonder if the word chief actually has any deep meaning to any Indigenous peoples. It is not a Native American word.

The origin of my original title is European. That doesn’t give me a pass. Asking about how racism affects a person and being given an answer means I can choose to listen and do something, or I can stay silent.

To be precise Chief derives from Old French chef or chief which comes from Vulgar Latin capum which in turn is derived from the Latin caput meaning head. When English speaking Europeans encountered the Indians they simply applied this generic word to the leaders of the various tribes or nations they dealt with. It is not a word invested with deep meaning and I wonder whether the use of the word chief to designate the leader of a sovereign polity might not have been somewhat derogatory. If the English settlers and explorers had believed the people they were dealing with to be equals they might have referred to their leaders as kings or princes. But this is a digression.

I have long been a champion for Indigenous rights and reconciliation. Yet I am ashamed to say, the thought had never even occurred to me that the title I proudly held could evoke such a response, or even be viewed as disrespectful to the very reconciliation process that I support.

That might be because the title she proudly held is not, in fact, disrespectful nor would it evoke any response at all from sane people.

So upon reflection, I have changed my title within the organization to president and lead executive officer.

Is anyone’s life going to be improved by Ms. Roome’s decision? Is the life of a single Native American Indian going to be made better, even if every Chief Executive Officer in Canada changed their title? Is Ms. Roome really doing anything to help anyone? No, of course not. All Ms. Roome is doing is making herself feel better about herself and looking virtuous in front of her peers. Going out and providing concrete help to the First Nation communities would require hard work and sacrifice on her part. She would have to give up her high salary and cushy lifestyle. Changing her title costs Ms. Roome absolutely nothing.

It seems to me that all this political correctness, wokeness, or being a social justice warrior, or whatever you want to call it is not really about helping the oppressed or marginalized at all, despite the pretensions. None of these people seem to be at all interested in actually going out and helping anybody. They are not even all that interested in finding out what the supposed oppressed really want or think. Are Native Americans really offended by the use of the word chief? Do they really care if sports teams use American Indian themed names? Who cares? There is virtue signaling to be done?

It seems to me that the woke are more like some middle school clique than fearless crusaders for the oppressed. Like the members of a clique, they have their own jargon and manners to distinguish the cool kids, the in-group from the nerds. That is all this professed concern for the marginalized really amounts to, separating the cool kids from the nerds, the virtuous from the bigots. It is a way for them to feel good about themselves and an excuse to bully the uncool.

Is Ms. Roome and others like her were really going out and helping the oppressed, they would deserve our respect and admiration. Since all they are really interested in doing is showing off what wonderful people they are, they deserve nothing but ridicule.