Tag: fear

Categories
ballot access partisanship

Fear & Its Peddlers

fear, panic, democracy, Joe Biden

“We’re facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War,” President Joe Biden hyperbolically orated on Tuesday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

“That’s not hyperbole,” he insisted, repeating, for emphasis, “Since the Civil War.”

Referring to state legislation passed or proposed by Republicans regarding various election procedures, Mr. Biden must remember the Jim Crow Era with its “literacy tests, poll taxes, elaborate registration systems, and eventually whites-​only Democratic Party primaries to exclude black voters,” since he also smeared these current Republican polices as a “21st-​century Jim Crow assault.”* 

President Joe painted a picture of “unprecedented voter suppression” and “raw and sustained election subversion” and more.

Somehow, the media chorus line just repeats this nonsense.

Ignore the years of prominent Democrats’ straight-​faced berating of Republican support for voter ID laws as nothing more than a purposely racist suppression tactic … immediately followed the Democrats’ recent about-​face claim that they had always supported voter ID.

Even as they continue to push federal legislation that would effectively obliterate such ID laws in 35 states.**

Then contrast the bill passed in Georgia or being considered in Texas with the process in Biden’s home state of Delaware, which “doesn’t allow 24-​hour or no-​excuse drive-​through voting,” as Karl Rove explains in The Wall Street Journal. 

“It won’t begin early voting until 2022 and then for … fewer days than Texas,” which has had early voting for more than three decades.

Somehow, Mr. Biden has never denigrated Delaware for Jim Crow-ism. 

Yet he may be right that “bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.”

Peddler of lies, know thyself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Not to mention that a certain “Biden crime bill” passed decades ago may have led to more disenfranchisement of voters — especially voters of color — than any single piece of legislation since … the Civil War.

** This HR1 would also allow partisan control of the Federal Election Commission, for the first time ever — the most potentially speech-​suppressing provision of any state or federal legislation.

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general freedom media and media people U.S. Constitution

The Rates that Matter

fear, Covid, Coronavirus, epidemic, pandemic, propaganda,

Millions more Americans have been infected with SARS-​CoV‑2 than are considered “confirmed cases,”* at rates ranging from 6/​1 (Connecticut, early May) to 24/​1 (Missouri, late April), making the fatality rate of COVID-​19 much lower than feared.

Unfortunately, we cannot trust our news sources to be forthright about this.

The “death count” had been the pandemic’s repeated headline for months, Dr. Ron Paul noted yesterday, “all of a sudden early in June the mainstream media did a George Orwell and lectured us that it is all about ‘cases’ and has always been all about ‘cases.’ Death, and especially infection fatality rate, were irrelevant.”

There’s a reason for this re-​focus. Since peaking in April, deaths, you see, “had decreased by 90 percent and were continuing to crash. That was not terrifying enough so the media pretended this good news did not exist.”

And the case number increases do look ominous, despite being almost innocuous: “This is not rocket science: the more people you test the more ‘cases’ you discover.”

And that is not the only change of spin regarding the pandemic, as Jeffrey Tucker dramatized on Twitter:

“Flatten the curve!”
“What does that do?”
“Pushes infections to the future”
3 months later
“There are new infections!”
“What should we do?”
“Flatten the curve!”

At Mr. Tucker’s stomping grounds, the American Institute for Economic Research, Gregory van Kipnis wrote last month that the “most frightening aspect of the coronavirus-​19 (COVID-​19) epidemic in the US is that it brought about exaggeratedly heightened fear of death.”

We have something to fear from the virus and its attack upon the respiratory system, but we have more to fear from fear itself.

That staple of propagandistic media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*  A confirmed case is of a patient who has seen a doctor for symptoms of the disease and has tested positive with the diagnosis seconded and logged by scientists associated with a national health agency.

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Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture Popular

Propaganda Bombs

panic, explosion, fear, hysteria, terrorism

“In these times, we have to unify,” President Donald Trump said in response to reports of bombs sent to high-​level Democratic public officials, “we have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America.”

He also assured that “a major federal investigation is now underway.”

It sure looks like a concerted operation, considering the number of targets: political funder George Soros, former CIA director John Brennan, former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Maxine Waters, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, et al.

Given the political affiliations of the recipients, many people assume it was a partisan terrorist from the Republican side of the proverbial “aisle.”

But note the obvious: not one putative bomb went off. Or even got close to the ostensible targets.

Massive incompetence?

One device seems to have “ISIS” scrawled on it, but experts tell us that device is well below ISIS standards. It turns out that the marking is an ISIS parody symbol. The perp is not likely a jihadist “lone wolf” wannabe.

Bombs going off is serious terrorism, deadly evil. But bombs not going off is serious … propaganda by the dud.

What if the point is not to explode and hurt people, but to “explode” in human minds?

Could this be an “October surprise,” the false flag of some demented person or “cell” on “the left” to impugn “the right”?

As Matt Walsh hazarded at The Daily Wire, “It does not take a conspiracy theorist to wonder about the timing and methods in this case.”

We do not know much yet. Questions will hopefully soon be answered.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Illustration: pixabay

 

Categories
general freedom ideological culture Popular too much government

Who Benefits From Our Fears?

fear, children, dog walking, freedom, security, control

“Think of the children!”

I have daughters. And neighbors, nephews, nieces, cousins, friends with children. And friends who used to be children. But when the command to “think of the children” is screamed out by freaked-​out paranoiacs demanding more laws, more punishments, more prison time, more surveillance — and consequently less freedom — I try to think responsibly.

As did one Corey Widen, when she “let her 8‑year-​old do the most normal, cheerful thing in the world — walk the dog around the block.” Lenore Skenazy tells the tale in Reason. “After the girl returned home, the doorbell rang. It was the police.”

Someone in Widen’s Wilmette, Illinois, community had seen the child and dog walking around “unsupervised” and called 911.

The thing, there was no lack of supervision, here. The child was supervising the dog.

What could be more natural?

The neighbor could have walked outside and smiled at the kid and talked about the dog and, in general, been a good neighbor.

Think of it as a peaceful order of supervision.

Instead: in came the police.

Then, after the police let it go, the Department of Children and Family Services stepped in to “investigate.”

Because nothing says DANGER more than a kid walking a dog.

Skenazy notes that this attitude is commonly justified by crimes against kids. And yet, Ms. Skenazy notes, crime in Wilmette has gone down dramatically over the years. As it has most elsewhere.

The culture has become more paranoid.

Who is served by this?

Authoritarians. Haters of freedom. Demagogues.

Certainly not kids, for kids cloistered from simple responsibilities cannot grow up to take on real responsibilities.

Think of the …  future adults.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
Accountability general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Wisdom of the Founders

Constitution, voting, democracy, Ed Crane, fear

“At a certain point, you have to let go for the democracy to work,” President Barack Obama told HBO’s Bill Maher last week, praising “the wisdom of the founders.”

“There has to be fresh legs,” he continued. “There have to be new people. And you have to have the humility to recognize that you’re a citizen and you go back to being a citizen after this office is over.”

Maher failed to ask Mr. Obama how this “fresh” viewpoint squared with his support for Mrs. Clinton. Nevertheless, let’s applaud the president’s endorsement of term limits.

Speaking of the founders, and limits on power, and this being Election Day, I’m reminded of a commentary in Forbes, back on Election Day four years ago, written by Ed Crane, the man who built the Cato Institute into one of the nation’s preeminent think tanks. Bemoaning the “interminable presidential race,” Crane wished for “a nation in which it really didn’t matter who was elected President, senator or congressman.”

“Don’t get me wrong, because I’m not saying it doesn’t,” explained Crane, “only that it shouldn’t.” He added, “I believe the Founders had a similar view.”

His point is simple: Getting to vote for your next president and senator and congressman is swell, but it’s important to have a Constitution that restrains those elected, so they “don’t have a heck of a lot of power over you or your neighbors.”

“We are a republic of limited governmental ­powers,” or should be, argued Crane. “Such a nation allows for sleep on election night.”

Instead of gnashing of teeth.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Constitution, voting, democracy, Ed Crane, fear