Tag: authoritarianism

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First Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights

The Bidening

Joe Biden

It does seem — because of the raids and surveillance and things targeting critics of the regime — that the Biden administration (“the Biden”) is out to get its political opponents.

John Hinderaker of Powerline notes a few recent tip-​of-​the-​iceberg actions by the Biden or its political allies.

The Dilbert comic strip by Scott Adams was suddenly dropped from 80 newspapers after the strip began mocking certain modish pieties about diversity. We’ve learned that ostensibly private censorship is often done at the behest of government or politicians eager to muzzle somebody.

The Biden issued a slew of subpoenas to persons associated with the Trump administration for documents about efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. Nearly all these pertain “to activities that are plainly lawful,” observes Hinderaker.

The Biden seized the cell phone of Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow and infamous skeptic of the 2020 election results. He’s accused of identity theft and damaging a computer related to an alleged breach of Colorado voting machines, accusations that Hinderaker regards as implausible on their face. “This all has to do with his opposition to the regime.”

Although the Biden may provide rationales for the targeting, these tend to be paper-​thin. Why? Probably because the Biden wants you to know exactly why all this banana-​republic stuff is happening. You are expected to take the micro-​thin excuses as a hint — so that you will adopt a paranoid stance.

And to avoid saying or doing anything that may get you, too, targeted by the Biden.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with DALL‑E

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general freedom too much government

Worse Than Shanghaied

Shanghai, China, covid, masks, oppression

Two years into the pandemic, we in America are now mostly arguing about masks.

We’ve suffered pretty repressive measures, here. But we haven’t had to cope with:

● Being literally imprisoned in your home. Stopped from going out even to get food.

● Having fences erected around your home. “What if a fire breaks out?” one Shanghai resident asked a reporter. “I don’t think anyone in their right mind can seal person’s homes.” (Well, fire is not a virus.)

● Being ejected from your home and forced into public barracks for people infected with COVID-19.

● Being ejected from your home so that it can be disinfected.

● Being subjected to a “zero COVID-​19” policy, zero common sense.

This is the fate of millions in Shanghai and elsewhere in China.

In the U.S., maybe you were harassed for conducting unmasked church services or keeping your shop open. Maybe you got arrested for paddle boarding, alone, in the Pacific Ocean.

It got pretty bad. But what we are seeing in Shanghai is the reality of a totalitarian regime when it chooses to fully exercise its power to repress. At any moment, the Chinazi state may make it impossible for millions to take the simplest steps to survive.

Shanghai residents may not even complain about their fate. To the extent they have voiced any complaints publicly, the Chinese government has struggled to eliminate all traces of the complaints.

Here, at least, we can gripe. 

But what does a people do when not allowed to protest or argue against their oppressors?

They scream. At night, the people of Shanghai yell out their windows.

Think of it as the soundtrack of mass misery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights too much government

Four of Five Doctors Disagree

Salem Witch Trial

“Thank goodness I don’t live in X,” we may say as we follow the news.

Billions live in Russia, Ukraine, China, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Cuba, New York, Chicago, Seattle, California, Canada, and other statist hellholes. The rest of us live elsewhere. Perhaps we congratulate ourselves on our wise choices of birth location and/​or subsequent residencies.

But people are copycats.

As producers, we are often inspired by great achievements and seek to emulate them. The destroyers among us, somewhat similarly, are eager to adopt the latest in fashionable assault on what the producers are doing.

So we don’t necessarily escape if, say, California prohibits physicians from discussing things medical whenever their judgment conflicts with state-​approved doctrine. Because next thing you know, lawmakers in Tennessee or Virginia will be saying, “Gee, that’s right, gag the doctors. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Legislative masterminds in California now want to harass doctors who recommend a non-​government-​approved treatment for COVID-​19. If AB 2098 is passed, it would authorize California medical boards to discipline doctors for “dissemination of misinformation” related to COVID-19.

The bill implies that no doctor can legitimately disagree with another about a particular case. (Yeah? See the history of medicine.)

When I say that this legislation assaults truth and truth-​seeking — which requires freedom of speech as a necessary corollary of freedom of thought in medicine or in any field — I speak for Californian doctors and California patients.

I speak also for us all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Witch Trial of George Jacobs by Thompkins. H. Matteson

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general freedom ideological culture Regulating Protest

Sources of Trudeau 2022

Justin Trudeau, authoritarian

The willingness of Canada’s thug-​in-​chief to so obnoxiously penalize protest — for one, “de-​banking” trucker-​protesters and supporters alike without even fake court orders — has shocked many of civilized sensibility.

Shouldn’t be surprising, though. It’s nothing new either in Justin Trudeau’s conduct or in that of Western governments. (The Canadian parliament has now endorsed the crackdown.)

David Solway reports that Trudeau’s reign has long been blighted by tyrannical policies as well as by overt sympathy for terrorists, dictators, and dictatorship.

And Glenn Greenwald observes that it has become standard in the West for many “who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists [to] wield the defining weapons of despotism” — weapons like squelching dissent (directly or indirectly by enlisting private firms to function as agents of repression) and punishing dissenters without trial.

Greenwald relates the example of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. When the U.S. government found no way to criminally charge him, it pressured firms to terminate his financial accounts and kick WikiLeaks off private servers.

Such tactics as pressuring, or ordering, companies to censor and financially ostracize political opponents “without a whiff of due process” are now part of the standard governmental toolkit.

The scale on which Trudeau has been doing this, and the flagrancy of it, may seem new in North America. But he is relying on well-​established precedent. Pre-​pandemic precedent.

But the framework for opposing this new authoritarianism has more precedent. Alberta’s premier, Jason Kenney, has rightly sued Trudeau and the Canadian government for abuse of authority in resorting to emergency powers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs media and media people

Exclusion-​Enforced Inclusion

covid, Canada, Justin Trudeau, authoritarianism, freedom

When the prime minister of Canada told the world that “Building Back Better means” not only helping the “most vulnerable” but also “maintaining our momentum on reaching the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” it might behoove us to look it up.

It’s not a secret.

It’s part of what Davos globalist Klaus Schwab calls “The Great Reset.” And the links between Schwab and Justin Trudeau are not tenuous: “what we’re really proud of now is the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau,” gushed Schwab weeks ago.

Well, Trudeau really had a chance to prove his Klausian globalist mettle last week.

Trudeau had indeed leveraged the coronavirus pandemic to institute tight statist controls on the Canadian population, right out of Schwab’s playbook.* But his vax mandate for truckers led not merely to supply-​chain problems in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the massive convoy protests in Ottawa.

So how did Schwab’s proud privileged prodigy perform?

First, he went into hiding. And then, while the protesters were explicitly directed against the vaccine mandates — notwithstanding the fact that 90 percent “of Canada’s cross-​border truckers … has had two shots” — Justin Trudeau couldn’t help himself, condemning “the antisemitism, Islamophobia,** anti-​Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia that we’ve seen on display in Ottawa over the past number of days,” he proclaimed in a tweet. “Together, let’s keep working to make Canada more inclusive.”

Well, mandating vaccines is forced inclusion, the ominous part of the Schwab/​Trudeau agenda, enforced by exclusion. 

No wonder the growing opposition, sporting anti-​Klausian signs such as “Mandate Freedom.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The ’book in question being Schwab’s explicit program in Covid-​19: The Great Reset.

** Some participants are undoubtedly many of those phobic things, but evidence at the rally? Scant. As Tucker Carlson pointed out in his coverage, the protesters even shoveled snow and picked up trash after themselves.

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Specifically Alarming

Heartland Institute/Rasmussen Reports, covid, Democrat

To see Washington politicians and political hacks behaving badly, demanding the power to roll over the rights of those with whom they disagree, is not nearly as frightening — because it’s now so mundane — as to witness that insiders’ itch also infecting the grassroots of the body politic like a viral contagion.

Specifically alarming? A new Heartland Institute/​Rasmussen Reports survey of voters finds a plurality of self-​identified Democrats (48 percent) support slapping fines and imposing prison sentences on Americans “who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-​19 vaccines.”

No joke, as President Biden would say … but I’m telling the truth. 

Here’s the precise question asked: “Would you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose a proposal for federal or state governments to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-​19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications?”

Thankfully, the overall numbers less portend a totalitarian future, where speech would be thoroughly policed and suppressed (like China today). Pro-​censorship Americans total only 27 percent of the population, with fully two-​thirds of us opposed to shredding the First Amendment.

Still, per this poll, it isn’t free speech alone that Blue Team members are increasingly willing to jettison in fear of COVID:

  • “Forty-​five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-​19 vaccine,” explained Rasmussen Reports. 
  • And 47 percent of Democrats support “governments using digital devices to track unvaccinated people.”
  • Nearly a third of “Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-​19 vaccine.”

Constitutional rights belong to everyone … “in sickness and in health.” 

Right? Democrats?  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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