Tag: authoritarianism

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Houck Off the Hook

police raid, church, faith

A jury has acquitted anti-​abortion activist Mark Houck of ridiculous federal charges. 

Houck had admitted to pushing a pro-​abortion activist (and volunteer abortion clinic security personnel) who, charges Houck, had been verbally harassing his 12-​year-​old son. The incident occurred outside of a Philadelphia abortion clinic in October 2021.

Local police looked into the scuffle and decided that there was nothing there.

But in September 2022 — almost a year later — the Biden-​Merrick Justice Department galumphingly arrested Mr. Houck for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act as if he’d been acting to stop someone from entering the clinic.

To arrest him, the agency sent a crew of J. Edgars to raid Houck’s home, gratuitously traumatizing his family, even though he had been ready to voluntarily surrender himself.

Peter Breen, head of litigation at the Catholic Thomas More Society, a public-​interest law firm that represents Houck, said that the charges “allege that Mark Houck interfered with a so-​called volunteer abortion patient escort when in reality, Houck had a one-​off altercation with a man who harassed Houck’s minor son, approximately 100 feet from the abortion business and across the street.”

Breen believes that the case was brought “solely to intimidate people of faith and pro-​life Americans. Why in the world would you send this phalanx of officers heavily armed to this family’s home, violate the sanctity of their home, frighten their children … other than just to send a message?”

Sadly, he’s exactly right.

At least it’s over. 

For now. 

At least for Mark Houck.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs

Brilliant Billionaire Buffoon

Bill Gates, China, authoritarianism, Covid, human rights

“[China’s] portion of the global economy and their portion of the global population match exactly,” Bill Gates informed his audience at Australia’s Lowy Institute. “Countries like Australia, U.S., we have per capita GDPs five times what the Chinese have, so we have a disproportionate share of the world’s economy.”

Funny that no one made a citizen’s arrest of the world’s fourth richest man, who, when it comes to personal wealth, is disproportionately disproportionate. But maybe the crowd has the respect for what people produce and earn that Mr. Gates appears to lack.

Gates main point was that China’s rise has been “great for the world.” 

While I’m not rooting for the Chinese people to be impoverished, I note that Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Taiwanese and dissident Chinese aren’t exactly singing the Chinazis’ praises.

… except when Uyghurs are forced to sing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda songs in those re-​education camps.

Australians are also well aware of China’s ugly behavior, having suffered under punishing economic sanctions ever since the Australian government suggested an international investigation into COVID’s origin and the CCP’s cover-up.

“Gates also leveled criticism at China,” explained Fortune: the billionaire “philanthropist” 

  • admitted that China is “not a democracy,” 
  • rebuked the country for not getting people vaccinated faster and 
  • referred to it as an “outlier today in terms of that level of wealth and still being as autocratic as they are.” 

Actually, “autocratic” is the nicest term available for such a regime. 

Bill Gates is a brilliant businessman, a billionaire many times over, but a complete buffoon (at best*) for failing to even mention the crimes against humanity being committed by the CCP government. 

When he thinks about world governance, now we know what he doesn’t think about.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “Evil” is another explanation I’ve heard, but I’m not making that case here.

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Accountability international affairs media and media people

Collapse of the Coronavirus Consensus

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand, authoritarian, Covid, zero tolerance

Jacinda Ardern is stepping down as New Zealand’s prime minister. In her teary farewell declaration, she glossed over her main contribution to world history: the policy of “Zero COVID.”

She even gave China a run in that race to medical totalitarianism.

Tellingly, the coverage in the Washington Post went through tens of paragraphs — much of it holding her up as some kind of hero for pushing lockdown and vax mandate policies as if they exemplified her fabled “personal style of consensus-​based governance” — before explaining the most likely reason for her resignation: “In recent months, Ardern’s broader popularity had begun to slip” and “her party is widely expected to lose this year’s election.”

My, “consensus” sure evaporated fast.

Top-​down commands are of course not consensus, which voters tend to figure out sooner or later. 

The once toothsome, now merely skeletally toothy, politician leaves in ignominy as “the consensus” about COVID shifts worldwide, as people realize they’ve been had: that the lockdowns didn’t save lives (excess deaths now being a big deal around the world) and the vaccines were problematic at best. From the start.

Ardern is not the only politician who rode the wave of the forced pseudo-​consensus on coronavirus only to collapse in defeat. New York Governor Cuomo was the first to suffer that disgrace.  There will be many others — not least, perhaps, contenders for the 2024 presidency, Trump and Biden. 

Perhaps more important than the fate of any single politician is what scientists and other “experts” are beginning to admit: that the figures of hospitalizations and deaths that spurred much of the panic constituted demonstrable misinformation. Bad data — which of course we realized here early on.

Unfortunately, the media’s “experts” — like CNN’s and WaPo’s go-​to gal Dr. Leana Wen — tend not to leave in infamy, despite their complicity in spreading falsities that allowed politicians to wreak so much damage.

That would require, you see, CNN and WaPo to admit they had spread the dreaded “misinformation and disinformation” which they proclaim only others do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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What Is and Is Not Sinister

China, authoritarianism

“Is this just human stupidity?”

I asked that, last week, regarding the flourishing of the Omicron variants of SARS-​CoV‑2 in China. The Communist-​run country is undergoing a huge spike in infections, millions of infections, after years now of totalitarian tracking and quarantine protocols.

I had mentioned the regime’s lack of interest in encouraging the growth of natural immunity, in its various forms. Instead of helping people cope with the new disease, the Chinazis thought they could corral their society to prevent the spread.

That broke down completely, this winter.

But was the quarantine policy and its breakdown just plain old stupidity? Folly in familiar forms?  “Or is it something more sinister?”

Well, yesterday Dr. John Campbell focused his regular online talk on how the totalitarian quarantines fell apart.

The Chinese infection rate had been relatively low — to the extent that we can trust statistics from a lying regime — because of the thoroughgoing nature of the quarantine policies, which immiserated millions, and caused numerous deaths, just as lockdowns would do in almost any society.

While acknowledging the protests that swept China, Campbell argues that a bigger factor in ending the policy was the fact that many Chinese were bribing officials to obtain negative results on the mandatory tests, thereby gaining license to go about as normal. And spread the disease — quite rapidly — in a low-​immunity society, low in part because the CCP chose the Zero COVID policy … rather than a strategy of a freer society.

Still, in China and America, the totalitarian itch remains. The dream of zero transmission seems “rational” to many people, especially those who demand that The State solve every problem. It hasn’t worked anywhere, though. 

And not just due to the chronic bribery and corruption fostered by authoritarian societies, but because isn’t good medical or political science.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture international affairs Regulating Protest

Making Symbolism Count

China, protest, riots, authoritarianism

“Governments do unconscionable things every day; it is in their nature,” writes Katherine Mangu-​Ward in the February Reason. “But not all transgressions are equal.”

Ms. Mangu-Ward’s piece is entitled “Bodies Against the State,” and though she doesn’t quite come out and say it, not all protests are equal, either, with some deserving more respect than others.

“In China, crowds of people line the streets,” Mangu-​Ward writes. “They are holding blank sheets of paper.” This is something I’ve written about, too, in “Point Blank Protest” back in November. “The police nonetheless know what they mean. The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party know what they mean. The world knows what they mean.”

Helpfully, she explains: “the protesters’ goal is to make manifest the implied violence that authoritarian states use to keep order.”

Of course, in China, even more than here (not all transgressions being equal), the state’s violence is too often more than merely implied. 

And in America, the symbolism of protests has been marred by too much violence — something Mangu-​Ward mangles in her piece. But the point of pitting oneself symbolically against state crimes remains important, as she explains: “The most perfect and enduring image of a person weaponizing his body against the state was taken after the brutal suppression of protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The unknown Chinese man standing in front of a tank didn’t have to hold a sign for the entire world to know exactly what the problem was.”

The art of protest needs some perfecting in the west. When our protests run to riot, their symbolic impact becomes confused, and adds to our ideological strife, clarifying nothing — quite unlike Tank Man, and the blank paper protests.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Zero Tolerance Policy That Failed

China, covid, authoritarianism, zero tolerance

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, China’s behavior has been … opaque. Unhelpful. Suspicious. The Chinese Communist Government may have been involved in the creation of the virus, but, if so, 

  1. it was likely created with the help of Fauci and U.S. taxpayers, and
  2. could have been deliberately or accidentally leaked to the Wuhan population. In any case,
  3. the lack of transparency early on meant a worldwide spread of the contagion. 

That latter neglect may be especially galling to all of us outside of China, but it was no comfort inside China either, since as the disease hit the Chinese their leaders quickly resorted to nazi-​like tactics. Most specifically, the government stuck to a Zero-​COVID policy, which was astoundingly cruel and totalitarian.

That policy has been shown to have zero efficacy. “As many as 37 million people are contracting COVID-​19 in a single day in China,” The Epoch Times informs us, “according to leaked minutes from a meeting of the country’s top health body confirmed by multiple news outlets.”

What’s gone wrong? Well, “the regime’s stringent zero-​COVID policy has left the Chinese public with little natural immunity against COVID-19’s highly contagious Omicron variant, which appears to be spinning out of control in the country.”

Alas, both in China and in the West, the notion of natural immunity was evaded. America’s government-​funded experts have discouraged discussion of it, and the Chinese rulers thought it more important to prevent any form of spread. Hence totalitarian lockdowns.

All pointless, now, as hospitals and morgues are flooded with COVID patients from a weakened populace.

Is this just human stupidity? Or is it something more sinister?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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