Tag: obedience

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ideological culture public opinion too much government

Socialism vs. Socialism vs. Socialism

State Socialism, collectivism, obedience

“Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America,” said President Trump in a mid-term election spot. “America will never be a communist country.”

But what does he mean by those words? 

Vice President J. D. Vance was asked to define socialism at a press conference soon after the ad ran. 

The word, he said, is “a very hard term to define these days because . . . you know, classically, you would think, socialism is about prioritizing workers. And yet, in reality, I bet most of the self-described socialists running across America are going to howl about this announcement, today, which is prioritizing American workers over foreign workers, so, I don’t know what the term means any more. 

“I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context, is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls’ sports. That’s what I see that unites the socialists that I see running across the United States of America today.”

Vance focused on the woke nonsense (the boys in girls’ sports reference) because that is what he sees. By pointing to socialists’ opposition to administration policy against Microsoft replacing American workers with foreign ones, Vance was aiming to note an irony. 

Most folks, however — including from National Review and the Orange County Register — see a bigger irony in his defense of Trumpian policy by recourse to workers’ socialism.

It’s just protectionism, of course, but instead of frankly favoring home-grown businesses, it’s framed to favor American over foreign workers.

Yet, many economists insist that protectionism is just socialism in short pants.

“You can’t defeat socialism with an alternative form of collectivism,” explains Agustina Vergara Cid of the Register, “only with its opposite: the principle that the individual is not a means to any group’s end.” 

That’s unfortunately not how Trump or Vance approach the issue . . . but that may be of limited relevance, considering that their failures led to a backlash sending actual communists into Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

The Long, Long Two Weeks

covid, hysteria, protest, obedience, disgrace, freedom

Nothing is so permanent, wrote Milton Friedman, as a temporary government program.

Six years ago, Americans learned that not only vaguely temporary measures go on and on, even precisely marked-out periods with clear starts and stops stated at the outset can be dragged on well past their expiration date.

Last week, Robby Soave “celebrated” the most astounding example of this in an article for Reason titled “This Was the Moment the COVID-19 Experts Betrayed Us,” about how the “two weeks to slow the spread” rationale for the lockdowns was shown to be a lie.

I wonder how many people were like me, at the time, noticing that the lengthening of the lockdown period was almost never justified by hospital numbers — a key point in the initial rationale, since we feared overwhelming the hospital system. The opposite happened almost everywhere, with hospitals becoming ghost towns in most locations, stressing the system in the opposite manner. By extending the duration of the near-universal quarantine, government officials and employees and their hangers-on showed how little interest they had in taking our health seriously.

What Soave focuses on is one tweet by National Public Radio, about how all crowds were bad for public health except those marching in protest of the death of George Floyd, a criminal with a long, violent rap sheet. NPR’s post began “by condemning the protests against lockdowns” and then drew “an explicit contrast with the racial justice protests, which are explicitly condoned.”

Soave calls this “junk science.” 

But it wasn’t any kind of science at all. It was pure ideological perversity.

Knowledge of that moment must be kept alive. Our expert class betrayed us by prioritizing their riot apologetics over our health.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTES:

See Milton Friedman, Tyranny of the Status Quo (1980) p. 115.
For a “Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (2020)” see Grokipedia.
The encouragement of the riots was, many hazard, an opportunistic psy-op to unseat President Trump in the 2020 election. It seems to have succeeded.

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First Amendment rights international affairs

The Skeleton Haunting Europe

skeleton, Europe, EU, control, authoritarianism, censorship, obey

Give Emanuel Brünishol credit for pluck.

The man uttered opinions on social media with which some people disagreed. A Swiss court fined him 500 Swiss francs. He refused to pay — believing that one should not be fined or condescend to pay fines for merely uttering opinions, no matter how annoying they may be.

So the Swiss government sent Brünishol to prison for ten days.

His terrible views?

That skeletons can be only male or female. He also seemed to suggest that trans people are mentally ill.

The post: “If you excavate LGBTQI [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex] people after 200 years, you will only find men and women among the skeletons; everything else is a mental illness that was fostered by the curriculum!”

Agree, disagree, in whole or in part — not the issue. The issue is why Brünisholz’s wading into issues of sex and gender caused the Swiss police to haul him in for questioning “on suspicion of incitement to hatred.”

If somebody’s gonna hate you because you disagree with them on a question, the only alternative to “inciting hatred” is staying mute or uttering opinions so empty that not even the most eager censor would think to call the cops about it. And then how can we ever discuss anything that is both controversial and important?

Of course, none of the sensitive Europeans forwarding Facebook posts to the police are being fined for their own hatred — of freedom of speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

skeleton, Europe, EU, control, authoritarianism, censorship, obey

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First Amendment rights insider corruption

The Biden’s Four Ways

Joe Biden, censorship, mind control, obey, obedience, free speech

In response to controversies about pandemics, elections, and whatnot, Congress did not quite pass — nor President Biden quite sign — a new law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. (As far as I know.)

Biden’s government did act, regardless, with the force of law to shut people up. According to the Media Research Center’s new report on Biden censorship — ready to be shared with all who contend that his administration perfectly respected our freedom of speech — the cabal I call The Biden censored Americans using four approaches:

Direct action. For example, ordering a big tech firm or a judge to censor somebody. White house advisors, agency bureaucrats, and others exerted this kind of pressure.

Policy or rulemaking. Examples include the State Department’s agreement with foreign nations “to pressure Tech platforms to censor more” and Homeland Security’s attempt to create a Disinformation Governance Board to police speech.

Partnerships with state and private actors to censor speech. Biden’s National Security Council collaborated with the UK’s Counter Disinformation Unit to impose UK censorship on Americans.

Grants to organizations to attack and flag utterance of incorrect speech, which the government could then censor.

These were effectuated, by MRC’s count, with 57 initiatives.

As soon as he began his second term, President Trump issued executive orders to combat such muzzling of debate. Congress must do its part too.

No matter what defenses are put in place, though, we will see further attempts by government goons to gag us. We must be vigilant.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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