Next Summer’s Protest Recruitment Theater
Next summer’s protest recruitment theater [riots] to enlist more useful idiots willing to kill with conviction and moral superiority, is foreseeable. Democrat stronghold cities will bring in truckloads of OSB for patching things up after the Left finish the next round of recruiting, while law enforcement agencies collect data, and witness from the sidelines, the destructive [protected] speech of masked perps doing their worst.
The media will recruit for the revolution with free agitprop over the ostensible issues motivating the riots. But by the time the media realize that the issues are only bait to lure in the malleable young useful idiots, the revolution will have consumed them too and they’ll have lost the broadcast means to deliver any rebuttals to the new power.
When the revolution consolidates its power, the Bill of Rights won’t be worth the paper it‘s printed on. Utilizing the tools of persuasion and the artful linguistic constructs provided by the elastic English language – that can build a reason to support any proposition, however unrealistic – the BOR will melt away like a Spring snow, leaving only a shell, about which the state media will now fashion compliance directives.
But what if the people stood up and made law enforcement engage the law rather than the revolution?
What if the media was as focused on tyranny as it is on trannies?
What if parents took control of the curriculums their children were exposed to?
What if Americans stopped sniffing after every red herring dragged in front of them by the Left?
What if the failed communist dream was finally entombed in the last century where it belongs?
Yeah, next summer is foreseeable. But it doesn’t have to be.
Freedom. Use it or lose it.
Revolution
The nobility of the American Revolution is humbling – see the closing paragraph of the Declaration of Independence below:
“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Having “candidly” itemized the facts of the tyranny under which they lived, the Founders announced a new relationship with the sovereign, and how they would proceed to establish it.
In the next decade, the Founders would studiously consider and publicly debate all recorded historical relationships between citizens and their governors from ancient times through their present. They would construct a Constitution to codify their conclusions about the best governmental structures to preserve the enumerated fundamental rights in the Declaration of Independence.
The deteriorated relationship between man and state provided legitimate justification for their bloody revolution. The Founders constructed a process that led through revolution to a sustainable better form of government.
Today, we’re not faced with a challenge anywhere near that quality.
This summer, the degree that citizens respect or disrespect the self-identifications of other citizens led to mass tantrums in the streets, not to a government-changing revolution, despite the sociological claims of the activists.
The woke-hokum, Marxist-derivative, pseudo-scientific sociology that excused the destruction, rioting, looting, arson, and thuggery in American cities, has no noble foundation. Self-identification is the personal issue that turned into a public cause celebre after selected police events were misrepresented to instigate the mob.
City centers morphed into dangerous adult playgrounds filled with spoiled brats acting stupidly. How do you fix generations of mal-educated, probably stoned, acting-out man-children, coincidentally under the enabling leadership of Leftist mayors and governors?
We have an incredible history in America. The man-children shouting little bromides in the streets today, expressing rabid hormonal outrage, seem oblivious to their lowered standard of ideation. They’re missing out on the great American story, and they couldn’t care less.
They have no better ideas to offer America, and they’re hopelessly lost, bound up in a complex philosophical hell with no desire to escape. From killing babies to killing businesses and cities, all they have is a terrible consistency.
Wake up to the wokesters
The Constitution was written and ratified in the context of Christian state governance and culture. To this day, it provides successful mechanisms for the governance and growth of America.
Constitutional language succeeded in curing the country from the Civil War because both Northerners and Southerners shared Christian religious foundations and a common understanding of the origins of God-given liberties memorialized in the Declaration of Independence. Their fight over slavery was subordinate to a common Christian foundation.
Now come the Left who have rejected our Christian religious foundation, and consequentially, rejected the principle of God-given liberties. The Left think the state is the grantor of liberty.
A grantor of liberty and a guarantor of liberty have fundamentally different powers. A grantor can withdraw their grant and thereby eliminate liberty altogether, whereas a guarantor can merely fail to guarantee liberty, but the right continues to exist.
This fundamental division between the Left and Constitutional adherents cannot be compromised. There is no middle ground between the two positions.
A similar irreconcilable division exists between Islamic and Judeo-Christian fundamental beliefs. There is no middle ground for compromise between the Common Law and Sharia Law.
Now that American Democrats have turned hard Left, their fundamentally irreconcilable positions have ripened to a relevant concern.
Previously, the Christian approaches to constitutional confrontations with deviant political and religious beliefs have emphasized tolerance – based on a Christian value of forgiveness and a belief in the strength of our constitutional system to provide resolution mechanisms – just as it did during and after the Civil War. But a common foundation no longer exists with the hard Left.
It’s become clear that the Left give no credence to Christian sensibilities, and, moreover, actually intend to dismantle the Constitution and all of its related fundamental liberties in favor of omnipotent governance.
Do you remember the scene in the movie Independence Day where the President shares a telepathic connection with the Alien, and the Alien says, “No Peace.” The President asks what the Alien expects us to do, and the Alien says, “Die.”
That about sums up the Left’s intentions for constitutional conservatives. Today, tolerance is a fool’s errand.
One does not require metaphysical certainty about religion – Christianity in this case – to appreciate the fundamental principles that make America possible and successful. The Left have nothing to offer that remotely compares to our constitutional framework grounded in the DOI and the Common Law in their systemic capacity to provide an orderly framework for American success.
It’s time every American awoke to the wokesters and considered what should be tolerated, and what should be intolerable. Dismantling our successful constitutional system is intolerable.
Communism fails
From: W. Cleon Skousen, “The Naked Communist, Exposing Communism and Restoring Freedom”, pp. 386-8.
[sic] “The four major Communist basic beliefs – the heart and soul of dialectical materialism that pretend to provide a complete explanation for the whole universe – the reasoning which gives an excuse to the Communist for her revolutionary violence and amoral conduct:
- Everything is a product of accumulated accident. There is no design. There is no law. There is no God. There is only the force of nature which is right, good and natural.
- Human beings are only graduated beasts and therefore human life is no more sacred than that of an insect or an animal.
- There is no such thing as innate right or wrong. The ends justify the means. Ethics and morals are superficial and fraudulent. Communist morality is whatever serves the struggle.
- All religious superstition must be overthrown so people become fully conscious of revolutionary spirit and able to steal or kill when leaders command.”
Obviously, Communist beliefs cannot coexist with the American Constitution, cannot coexist with the fundamental values written into the Declaration of Independence, deeply offend the religious beliefs of the great majority of Americans, and deeply offend the civil, criminal, and common law principles of justice in American law and Western Civilization. An American Communist Party is a contradiction in terms. There is no reconciliation possible between the two systems.
Our Government is instituted among Men who derive their just power from the consent of the governed, and who rely upon the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God that entitle us to the self-evident truths that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights – among them [not limited to] life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Communist disputes the metaphysical existence of God, and upon that belief – for all metaphysical statements are beliefs – constructs a justified amoral system of human domination.
We don’t need to rely on supernatural vision into the metaphysical realm to answer the question of the existence of God to assess the fundamental value of Western Civilization vs. Communism. We have centuries of recorded history under American law [Western Civilization] and Communist dictatorships to dispositively assess the two systems.
Each have produced drastically different outcomes in elevating human conditions out of poverty, out of slavery, out of disease, out of ignorance, and out of misery.
By any measure, Communism fails its people – and not because it’s not done right. It fails because it replaces the consent-based modality of human relations with a suppression-based law of the jungle.
People do more, create more, accomplish more, and are much happier, in the exercise of their free will, than when they take orders from the muzzle of a gun.
That generations of young Americans have been publicly educated to ignore these fundamental truths may be the greatest tragedy of our time.
Life without 1st Am. protection
Consider the consequences of internet censorship
Consider the similarities between police tactics in China and Leftist free-speech attacks in the U.S.
Feminist activist and freelance journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin – who was detained last month in southern China – has been put under residential surveillance, apparently for supporting anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.
The outspoken activist was first taken into police custody in mid-October but has since been moved to an unknown location and denied access to lawyers or visits by family members, according to sources in the activist community.
Huang, 32, a key figure in China’s #MeToo movement who has also written extensively about the Hong Kong protests after spending six months in the city earlier this year, was accused by police of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a vague charge that has been frequently used to detain activists and dissidents.
Chinese law generally restricts criminal detention to 30 days, so Huang’s transfer to residential surveillance appears to be a means of extending her detention.
Three fellow activists, two of them based in Beijing, confirmed that Huang had been transferred to residential surveillance in an unknown designated location. She was previously held at the Baiyun District Detention Centre in Guangzhou, where she was unable to receive visitors.
A source familiar with her situation, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, said Huang was detained because of essays she had written about the Hong Kong protests as well as some posts in support of the movement on social media platform Weibo.
Huang is one of a number of mainland activists who have got into trouble for sympathising with or supporting the Hong Kong protests which broke out six months ago, triggered by a now-withdrawn extradition bill to handle fugitive cases. Since then, mainland authorities have imposed strict controls on any discussion and reporting of the unrest in the city.
Police had been keeping a close watch on Huang since August, when her passport and Hong Kong travel permit were confiscated after she returned to mainland China from a six-month academic tour of the US, Taiwan and Hong Kong. As a result, she was unable to study law in Hong Kong as she had originally planned.
According to sources, she was arrested when she went to collect her travel documents – as instructed by the police – at the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau.
A source said the escalation in severity of Huang’s case may be due to a variety of factors, including sensitive information collected from her overseas visits as a freelance journalist which may have led to an accusation of collaborating with foreign forces.
Suspects held on such a charge can be detained for up to six months according to the law, but in practice this period can extend for much longer.
In addition to Huang, businessman Lai Rifu was detained for 31 days in Guangzhou from 15 September, two days after he posted videos from his ancestral village on his WeChat profile which expressed support for the Hong Kong protesters.
One video of firework celebrations was captioned with a message of support, while the other featured mountain scenery and the popular protest anthem Glory to Hong Kong.
Upon his return to Guangzhou, Lai said several police surrounded his vehicle and forced him to the ground in front of his child during his arrest.
“I was being classified as a supporter of Hong Kong independence when I was at the detention centre,” Lai said. “The centre was terrible. I only posted a video of fireworks and a song, how could this lead to so much trouble?”
Lai also claimed that police harassed his relatives and threatened his wife into agreeing that he was a Hong Kong independence supporter. He added that police also tried to hurt his business by harassing his clients.
“The night I was arrested, police found clients I had financial dealings with and harassed them. Since then, no clients want to do business with me,” he said.
“I asked the police at the detention centre why they had to go after my clients, who are just ordinary people. They said they would carry on finding them. I said they wanted to destroy my livelihood.”
Lai was charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – the same offence as Huang – and later released on bail.
Even those who have voiced support for mainland sympathisers of the Hong Kong protesters say they have been affected by a spreading climate of fear.
A middle-aged businessman from the southeastern province of Fujian – who preferred to use the pseudonym Yang Yong for safety reasons – said he experienced several days of constant phone harassment after publicly supporting Niu Jie, a law professor at Nanchang Hangkong University who was the target of a nationalist backlash when his group chat messages expressing sympathy for the young protesters were leaked online earlier this month.
“It’s so ridiculous. I couldn’t bear [seeing them doxx Niu Jie] any more, so I decided to do something to support him,” said Yang, adding that he had previously not dared to make online comments about Hong Kong since he knew the risks.
By speaking out in Niu’s defence, Yang got caught up in the online storm and had his personal information leaked too. Like Niu, he also became the victim of vicious trolling and harassment, receiving hundreds of spam messages and calls to his mobile phone.
Nanchang Hangkong University has given no updates on Niu’s employment situation since announcing that he would receive “severe punishment”. Niu could not be reached for comment.
Not everyone is brave enough to speak out and risk the potentially harsh consequences. There are believed to be many more sympathisers on the mainland who dare not voice their opinions in the face of a hostile national climate.
A middle schoolteacher in Henan, who also preferred to remain anonymous, said she was too scared to express her sympathies in case she lost her job. For the same reason, she said she no longer taught her students facts about China’s turbulent history that could not be found in the heavily-vetted official textbooks.
“I have been feeling increasingly suffocated. You can’t say anything. And you can’t even trust the people around you,” she said.
President Trump 9/24/2019 Address to UN General Assembly Transcript
Thank you very much.
Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, distinguished delegates, ambassadors and world leaders, seven decades of history have passed through this hall in all of their richness and drama.
Where I stand, the world has heard from presidents and premiers. At the height of the cold war we have seen the foundation of nations, we have seen the ringleaders of revolution, we have beheld saints who inspired us with hope, rebels who stirred us with passion, and heroes who emboldened us with courage, all here to share plans, proposals, visions and ideas on the worlds biggest stage.
Like those who met us before, our time is one of great contests, high stakes, and clear choices.
The essential divide that runs all around the world and throughout history is once again thrown into stark relief. It is the divide between those who’s thirst for control deludes them into thinking they are destined to rule over others, and those people and nations who want only to rule themselves.
I have the immense privilege of addressing you today as the elected leader of a nation that prizes liberty, independence, and self government above all. The United States, after having spent over 2.5 trillion dollars since my election to completely rebuild our great military, is also the world’s most powerful nation.
Hopefully it will never have to use this power. Americans know that in a world where others seek conquest and domination, our nation must be strong in wealth, in might, and in spirit. That is why the United States vigorously defends the traditions and customs that have made us who we are.
Like my beloved country, each nation represented in this hall has a cherished history, culture and heritage that is worth defending and celebrating and which gives us our singular potential and strength. The free world must embrace its national foundations. It must not attempt to erase them or replace them.
Looking around and all over this large magnificent planet, the truth is plain to see. If you want freedom, take pride in your country. If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty. And if you want peace, love your nation.
Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their country first. The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbors and honor the differences that make each country special and unique.
It is why we in the Unites States have embarked on an exciting program of national renewal. In everything we do, we are focussed on empowering the dreams and aspirations of our citizens.
Thanks to our pro-growth economic policies, our domestic unemployment rate reached its lowest level in over half a century. Fueled by massive tax cuts and regulations cuts, jobs are being produced at a historic rate. Six million Americans have been added to the employment roles in under 3 years.
Last month, African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American unemployment reached their lowest rates ever recorded. We are marshalling our nations vast energy abundance and the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. Wages are rising, incomes are soaring, and 2.5 millions Americans have been lifted out of poverty in less than 3 years.
As we rebuild the unrivaled might of the American military, we are also revitalizing our alliances by making it very clear that all of our partners are expected to pay their fair share of the tremendous defense burden which the United States has borne in the past.
At the center of our vision for national renewal is an ambitious campaign to reform international trade. For decades the international trading system has been easily exploited by nations acting in very bad faith. As jobs were outsourced, a small handful grew wealthy at the expense of the middle class. In America, the result was 4.2 million lost manufacturing jobs and 15 trillion dollars in trade deficits over the last quarter century.
The United States is now taking that decisive action to end this grave economic injustice. Our goal is simple. We want balanced trade that is both fair and reciprocal. We have worked closely with our partners in Mexica and Canada to replace NAFTA with a brand new and hopefully bipartisan U.S., Mexico, Canada agreement.
Tomorrow I will join Prime Minister Abe of Japan to continue our progress in finalizing a terrific new trade deal.
As the United Kingdom makes preparations to exit the European Union, I have made clear that we stand ready to complete an exceptional new trade agreement with the UK that will bring tremendous benefits to both of our countries. We are working closely with Prime Minister Boris Johnson on a magnificent new trade deal.
The most important difference in America’s new approach on trade concerns our relationship with China. In 2001, China was admitted to the World Trade Organization. Our leaders then argued that this decision would compel China to liberalize its economy and strengthen protections to prevent things that were unacceptable to us, and for private property and for the rule of law. Two decades later this theory has been tested and proven completely wrong.
Not only has China declined to adopt promised reforms, it has embraced an economic model dependent on massive market barriers, heavy state subsidies, currency manipulations, product dumping, forced technology transfers, and the theft of intellectual property and also trade secrets on a grand scale.
As just one example, I recently met the CEO of a terrific American company – Micron Technologies – at the Whitehouse. Micron produces memory chips used in countless electronics. To advance the Chinese governments 5 year economic plan, a company owned by the Chinese state allegedly stole Micron’s designs valued at up to 8.7 billion dollars. Soon the Chinese company obtains patents for a nearly identical product, and Micron was banned from selling its own goods in China.
But we’re seeking justice. The Unites States lost 60 thousand factories after China entered the WTO. This is happening to other countries all over the globe. The World Trade Organization needs drastic change. The second largest economy of the world should not be permitted to declare itself a developing country in order to game the system at others expense.
For years these abuses were tolerated, ignored, or even encouraged. Globalism exerted a religious pull over past leaders, causing them to ignore their own national interests. But as far as America’s concerned those days are over. To confront these unfair practices I’ve placed massive tariffs on more than 500 billion dollars worth of Chinese made goods. Already, as a result of these tariffs, supply chains are relocating back to America and to other nations, and billions of dollars are being paid to our treasury.
The American people are absolutely committed to restoring balance to our relationship with China. Hopefully we can reach an agreement that would be beneficial to both countries. But as I have made very clear, I will not accept a bad deal for the American people.
As we endeavor to stabilize our relationship, we’re also carefully monitoring the situation in Hong Kong. The world fully expects that the Chinese government will honor its binding treaty made with the British and registered with the United Nations in which China commits to protect
Hong Kong’s freedom, legal system, and democratic ways of life. How China chooses to handle the situation will say a great deal about its role in the world in the future. We are all counting on President Xi as a great leader.
The United States does not seek conflict with any other nation. We desire peace, cooperation and mutual gain with all. But I will never fail to defend America’s interests.
One of the greatest security threats facing peace loving nations today is the repressive regime in Iran. The regime’s record of death and destruction is well known to us all. Not only is Iran the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism, but Iran’s leaders are fueling the tragic wars in both Syria and Yemen. At the same time the regime is squandering the nations wealth and future in a fanatical quest for nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. We must never allow this to happen.
To stop Iran’s path to nuclear weapons and missiles, I withdrew the United States from the terrible Iran nuclear deal which has very little time remaining. It did not allow inspection of the important sites and did not cover ballistic missiles.
Following our withdrawal we have implemented severe economic sanctions on the country. Hoping to free itself from sanctions the regime has escalated its violent and unprovoked aggression. In response to Iran’s recent attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, we just imposed the highest level of sanctions on Iran’s central bank and sovereign wealth fund.
All nations have a duty to act. No responsible government should subsidize Iran’s blood lust. As long as Iran’s menacing behavior continues, sanctions will not be lifted. They will be tightened. Iran’s leaders will have turned a proud nation into just another cautionary tale of what happens when a ruling class abandons its people and embarks on a crusade for personal power and riches.
For 40 years the world has listened to Iran’s rulers as they lash out at everyone else for the problems they alone have created. They conduct ritual chants of death to America and traffic in monstrous anti-semitism. Last year the country’s supreme leader stated Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor that has to be removed and eradicated. It is possible, and it will happen. America will never tolerate such anti-semitic hate. Fanatics have long used hatred of Israel to distract from their own failures.
Thankfully, there is a growing recognition in the wider MiddleEast that the countries of the region share common interests in battling extremism and unleashing economic opportunity. That is why it is so important to have full normalized relations between Israel and its neighbors. Only a relationship built on common interests, mutual respect and religious tolerance can forge a better future. Iran’s citizens deserve a government that cares about reducing poverty, ending corruption, and increasing jobs, not stealing their money to fund and massacre abroad and at home.
After 4 decades of failure, it is time for Iran’s leaders to step forward and to stop threatening other countries, and focus on building up their own country. It is time for Iran’s leaders to finally put the Iranian people first.
America is ready to embrace friendship with all who genuinely seek peace and respect. Many of America’s closest friends today were once our greatest foes. The United States has never believed in permanent enemies. We want partners, not adversaries. America knows that while anyone can make war, only the most courageous can choose peace.
For this same reason we have pursued bold diplomacy on the Korean peninsula. I have told Kim Jung Un what I truly believe – that, like Iran, his country is full of tremendous untapped potential. But that to realize that promise, North Korea must denuclearize.
Around the world our message is clear. America’s goal is lasting, America’s goal is harmony, and America’s goal is not to go with these endless wars – wars that never end.
With that goal in mind, my administration is also pursuing the hope of a brighter future in Afghanistan. Unfortunately the Taliban has chosen to continue their savage attacks. We will continue to work with our coalition of Afghan partners to stamp out terrorism. And we will never stop working to make peace a reality.
Here in the western hemisphere we are joining with our partners to ensure stability and opportunity all across the region. In that mission, one of our most critical challenges is illegal immigration which undermines prosperity, rips apart societies and empowers ruthless criminal cartels. Mass illegal migration is unfair, unsafe and unsustainable for everyone involved. The sending countries and the depleted countries become depleted very fast, but their youth is not taken care of, and human capital goes to waste. The receiving countries are overburdened with more migrants than they can responsibly accept. And the migrants themselves are exploited, assaulted and abused by vicious coyotes. Nearly 1/3 of women who make the journey north to our border are sexually assaulted along the way.
Yet here in the United States and around the world there is a growing cottage industry of radical activists and non governmental organizations that promote human smuggling. These groups encourage illegal migration and demand the erasure of national borders.
Today I have a message for those open border activists who cloak themselves in the rhetoric of social justice. Your policies are not just. Your policies are cruel and evil. You are empowering criminal organizations that prey on innocent men, women and children. You put your own false sense of virtue before the lives and well being of countless innocent people. When you undermine border security you are undermining human rights and human dignity.
Many of the countries here today are coping with the challenges of uncontrolled migration. Each of you have the absolute right to protect your borders. And so of course does our country. Today we must resolve to work together to end human smuggling and human trafficking, and put these criminal networks out of business for good.
To our country, I can tell you sincerely, we are working closely with our friends in the region, including Mexico, Canada, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Panama, to uphold the integrity of borders and ensure safety and prosperity for our people.
I would like to thank President Lopez Obrador of Mexico for the great cooperation we are receiving, and for right now putting 27,000 troupes on our southern border. Mexico is showing us great respect and I respect them in return.
In the U.S., we have taken very unprecedented action to stop the flow of illegal immigration. To anyone conducting crossings of our border illegally, please hear these words. Do not pay the smugglers. Do not pay the coyotes. Do not put yourself in danger. Do not put your children in danger, cause if you make it here you will not be allowed in. You will be promptly returned home. You will not be released into our country. As long as I’m president of the United States, we will enforce our laws and protect our borders.
For all of the countries of the western hemisphere, our goal is to help people invest in the bright futures of their own nation. Our region is full of such incredible promise, dreams waiting to be built, and national destinies for all, and they are waiting also to be pursued. Throughout the hemisphere there are millions of hard working patriotic young people, eager to build, innovate, and achieve.
But these nations cannot reach their potential if a generation of youth abandon their homes in search of a life elsewhere. We want every nation in our region to flourish and its people to thrive in freedom and peace.
In that vision, we are also committed to supporting those people in the western hemisphere who live under brutal oppression, such as those in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. According to a recent report from the UN Human Rights Council, women in Venezuela stand in line for 10 hours a day waiting for food. Over 15,000 people have been detained as political prisoners.
Modern day death squads are carrying out thousands of extra judicial killings. The dictator Maduro is a Cuban puppet, protected by Cuban body guards, hiding from his own people while Cuba plunders Venezuela’s oil wealth to sustain its own corrupt communist rule.
Since I last spoke in this hall the United States and our partners have built a historic coalition of 55 countries that recognize the legitimate government of Venezuela. To the Venezuelans trapped in this nightmare, please know that all of America is united behind you. The United States has vast quantities of humanitarian aid ready and waiting to be delivered. We’re watching the Venezuelan situation very closely. We await the day when democracy will be restored, when Venezuela will be free, and when liberty will prevail throughout this hemisphere.
One of the most serious challenges our countries face is the specter of socialism. It’s the wrecker of nations and destroyer of societies. Events in Venezuela remind us all that socialism and communism are not about justice. They’re not about equality, they’re not about lifting up the poor, and they are certainly not about the good of the nation.
Socialism and communism are about one thing only – power for the ruling class. Today I repeat a message for the world that I have delivered at home. America will never be a socialist country. In the last century, socialism and communism killed 100 million people. Sadly as we see in Venezuela, the death toll continues in this country.
These totalitarian ideologies combined with modern technology have the power to exercise new and disturbing forms of suppression and domination. For this reason the United States has taken steps to better screen foreign technology and investments and to protect our data and our security. We urge every nation present to do the same.
Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected both abroad and from within. We must always be skeptical of those who want conformity and control. Even in free nations we see alarming signs and new challenges to liberty. A small number of social media platforms are acquiring immense power over what we can see and over what we are allowed to say.
A permanent political class is openly disdainful, dismissive and defiant of the will of the people. A faceless bureaucracy operates in secret and weakens democratic rule. Media and academic institutions push flat out assaults on our histories, traditions and values. In the United States, my administration has made clear to social media companies that we will uphold the right of free speech. A free society cannot allow social media giants to silence the voices of the people. And a free people must never ever be enlisted in the cause of silencing, coercing, cancelling, or blacklisting their own neighbors.
As we defend American values we affirm the right of all people to live in dignity. For this reason my administration is working with other nations to stop criminalizing of homosexuality, and we stand in solidarity with LGBTQ people who live in countries that punish, jail or execute individuals based upon sexual orientation.
We are also championing the role of women in our societies. Nations that empower women are much wealthier, safer, and much more politically stable. It’s therefore vital, not only to a nations prosperity, but also is vital to its national security to pursue women’s economic development.
Guided by these principles, my administration launched the women’s global development and prosperity initiatives. The WGDP is the first ever government wide approach to women’s economic empowerment, working to ensure that women all over the planet have the legal right to own and inherit property, work in the same industries as men, travel freely and access credit, and institutions.
Yesterday I was also pleased to host leaders for a discussion about an ironclad American commitment protecting religious leaders and also protecting religious freedom. This fundamental right is under growing threat around the world. Hard to believe but 80% of the world’s population lives in countries where religious liberty is in significant danger or even completely outlawed.
American will never tire in our effort to defend and promote freedom of worship and religion. We want and support religious liberty for all.
Americans will also never tire of defending innocent life. We are aware that many United Nations projects have attempted to assert a global right to taxpayer funded abortion on demand right up until the moment of delivery. Global bureaucrats have absolutely no business attacking the sovereignty of nations that wish to protect innocent life.
Like many nations here today we in America believe that every child, born and unborn, is a sacred gift from God.
There is no circumstance under which the United States will allow international interests to trample on the rights of our citizens, including the right to self defense. That is why this year I announced that we will never ratify the UN Arms Trade Treaty which would threaten the liberties of law abiding American citizens. The United States will always uphold our constitutional right to keep and bear arms. We will always uphold our 2nd Amendment.
The core rights and values America defends today were inscribed in America’s founding documents. Our nation’s Founders understood that there will always be those who believe they’re entitled to real power and control over others. Tyranny advances under many names and many theories but it always comes down to the desire for domination. It protects not the interest of many, but the privilege of few.
Our Founders gave us a system designed to restrain this dangerous impulse. They chose to entrust American power to those most invested in the fate of our nation – a proud and fiercely independent people. The true good of the nation can only be pursued by those who love it, by citizens who are rooted in its history, who are nourished by its culture, committed to its values, attached to its people, and who know that its future is theirs to build or theirs to lose.
Patriots see a nation and its destiny in ways no one else can. Liberty is only preserved, sovereignty is only secured, democracy is only sustained, greatness is only realized by the will and devotion of patriots.
In their spirit is found the strength to resist oppression, the inspiration to forge legacy, the goodwill to seek friendship, and the bravery to reach for peace. Love of our nations makes the world better for all nations.
So to all the leaders here today, join us in the most fulfilling mission a person could have, the most profound contribution anyone can make.
Lift up your nations, cherish your culture, honor your histories, treasure your citizens, make your countries strong and prosperous and righteous, honor the dignity of your people, and nothing will be outside of your reach.
When our nations are greater, the future will be brighter, our people will be happier, and our partnerships will be stronger. With God’s help together we will caste off the enemies of liberty and overcome the oppressors of dignity. We will set new standards of living and reach new heights of human achievement. We will rediscover old truths, unravel old mysteries, and make thrilling new breakthroughs. And we will find more beautiful friendship and more harmony among nations than ever before.
My fellow leaders, the path to peace and progress and freedom and justice and a better world for all humanity begins at home. Thank you, God bless you, God bless the nations of the world, and God bless America.
Thank you very much.
Rights vs. socialism
The American Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to access healthcare, education, jobs, homes, transportation, travel, public speech, their government, and many other rights.
No other country guarantees to its citizens all of the rights that Americans have.
American government is limited, but its citizens’ rights are not. For Americans, rights are unalienable, and within the bounds of law, practicable.
In other countries where rights are limited, government power is correspondingly greater. There’s an inverse relationship between government power and individual rights. They don’t coexist.
Socialists would have us trade away our unlimited rights for a smaller set of rights limited by government regulation, and a much larger basket of government powers. They would have us exchange freedom for government overseers.
Socialists use all sorts of emotional arguments to justify these trades, but in the end, they all lead to degrees of slavery.
Socialists who give up on the market, who give up the right to practice their rights as they personally see fit, make a very poor bargain for themselves, and for all who come after them.
Do you want the option to buy the healthcare you actually need? Or do you want a government bureaucrat to tell you what healthcare you are allowed?
Do you want the option to educate your kids in a curriculum you choose? Or do you want a government bureaucrat to determine what your child may learn at school?
Do you want to practice your own choices about what is best? Or do you want the government making those choices for you based on unproven dubious theories?
Do you want an economy run by consenting makers, sellers and buyers? Or do you want closed markets resistant to invention and creativity regulated by bureaucrats who have no personal skin in the game?
For reasonable people, these types of questions have obvious answers. Why do Leftists appear to lack the common sense necessary to see them?
Today’s national socialists and their Untermensch
Today’s young [and old] national socialist Democrat resisting indivisibles are quick to call people who disagree with them Nazis. Meanwhile, they’ve cut off reasonable feedback from family and friends through ridicule and scorn, and one doubts they’ll ever escape or grow out of the Leftist cult. The worldview inside their self-imposed cult blinders, riven by identity and class divisions, misery, envy, hate, and retribution, is immune from critical analysis. They don’t want to improve conditions for all mankind. They want to take what they think is coming to them.
The lynchpin for the whole syndrome seems to be killing babies – believing that it makes women’s lives better to exercise that sordid tenant of social justice. But abortion sets the bar high for abominations against fellow mankind. All manner of imposition, force, militancy, redistribution, regulation, and yes, retribution, fall well within that standard. On that scale, any force less than termination becomes a reasonable method for the achievement of utopian social justice.
And if human nature weren’t at the bottom of it all, motivating us to do what we do, to create what wealth we can create, to protect the fruits of our labors from theft by others as we must, the Left’s utopia could actually work.
But human nature is our nature, and no amount of Leftist redefinition of that nature can change it. The Left’s struggle to change human nature will always fail. Calling a baby a fetus won’t somehow undo the baby.
Anyone who doubts this can try the following: Rename your hand “anvilus.” Believe it! Now, smash your anvilus with a hammer.
Changing the label for something, or some beings, does not change their nature. It’s been tried before: See Untermensch
Vibrant young people, so intent on changing human nature to serve an unworkable utopian vision, spend gobs of good energy chasing after bad ideas. They deal out insults and rage like Halloween candy when challenged. They cut themselves off from reality feedback by friends and family outside of the cult from whom they might learn and recover sanity.
On the eve of this election, Trump and the Senate did what they could to set conditions to reasonably consider the mess of adjudicated social policies tearing the country apart.
Meanwhile, Obama and the Left aim to take back control to continue their wave of destruction because it makes them feel good about their good intentions. Haven’t we had enough of the Left’s good intentions?
From the perspective of today’s unborn untermensch, those intentions became genocide. Thankfully, the remainder of the Left’s policies, while disastrous, expensive and unworkable, are at least not so deadly.
Matheson, more windmills than people.
Pity the Left
Anyone familiar with history knows the hard Left have terrorist hearts. Before his death in 2014, R.J. Rummel calculated the Democide – Deaths caused by Leftist governments – at over 174 million in the 20th century. Conservatives who know history know the truth of Rummel’s analysis. Despite their seeming pathological inability to admit it, the Left own this history.
Force, muscle, intimidation, propaganda, suppression, branding, torture, and death, the Left employed these tools vigorously in service of their politics all over the world. More subtle were the degraded human health and welfare conditions, and lost economic opportunities, caused by socialist policies throughout the West in the same time frame.
Today, the hard Left still employ these tactics, but at their own peril since it’s only a handful of zealots who didn’t learn their history who remain engaged in the revolution. Their number seems large due to the amplifier the opposition media gives them – 24/7 coverage with loops of tight camera shots that make 5 people look like 500, repeated sound bites, hosted by doe-eyed panting journalists – to create the impression of a mass movement.
This is manipulation on a grand scale by a tiny minority. Unfortunately, anyone who turns on a television cannot avoid Leftist propaganda.
But that’s really no excuse for an otherwise sane majority of Americans to give in to Leftist provocations. Pity the Left, but don’t enable them by responding to the ghastly images and fears they propagate.
That’s just swinging at ghosts.
Delaware 4th of July Parade, 2017 (55th I think)
Victor Davis Hanson: The State of the Nation
Trump’s Way Out of the Progressive Labyrinth
amgreatness.com/2017/06/19/trumps-way-progressive-labyrinth/
6/18/2017
In every single week of the Trump presidency, the investigators and attorneys of FBI Director James Comey or, subsequently, of special counsel Robert Mueller, have leaked information that President Donald Trump was under investigation for either colluding with the Russians or obstructing justice—allegations so far without any substantiating evidence.
In the case of Comey, we now know that his office or sympathetic third-parties leaked to the press false stories that Trump was under FBI investigation at precisely the time that the careerist Comey was privately reassuring the president himself that he was in fact not being investigated.
The appointment of Mueller was a concession to opposition demands that Trump appoint a Lawrence Walsh-type Special Prosecutor. The Comey-Mueller investigations and leaks occur simultaneously with House Intelligence member Adam Schiff’s passive-aggressive and often pompous announcements of evidence of Russian collusion—including raising the specter of a Grand Jury investigation—that are never followed by any evidence.
Since January 2017, the Congress ceased being a legislative body. It is now a Star-chamber court determined to decapitate the presidency.
Never in the history of the republic have there been so many legislative and political simultaneous efforts to 1) sabotage the Electoral College, 2) sue to overturn the presidential vote in key swing states, 3) boycott the Inauguration, 4) systematically block presidential appointments, 5) surveille, unmask, and leak classified or privileged information about the elected president, 6) nullify federal law at the state and local level, 7) sue to remove the president by invoking the Emoluments Clause, 8) declare Trump unfit under the 25th Amendments, 9) demand recusals from his top aides, 10) cherry-pick sympathetic judges to block presidential executive orders, 11) have a prior administration’s residual appointees subvert their successor, and 12) promise impending impeachment.
And that is only the political effort to remove the president. [Read more…]
how the door swings
On our recent trip we transited numerous border crossings, each with their own armed border patrol officers, customs inspectors, baggage x-ray machines, fingerprint readers, electronic passport scanners, video and still cameras for recording face images, and rope lines for sorting and queuing people. Cameras are never allowed in border crossing areas. We processed through immigration authorities in China, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, China again, Hong Kong again, and finally the U.S.
The U.S. is the only country in the above list that does not register your leaving the country. There is no exit immigration process from the U.S. You are free to leave any time, provided you can find another country who will let you in. The rest of the countries we visited all had both exit and entrance immigration processes. Their governments have the capacity to prevent you from leaving.
Our government controls the export of products from the U.S., but people are free to go. Let that sink in.
The exportation of people, as in the U.S. population, is not a problem for the U.S. Again, let that sink in.
We transited Taipei outbound and inbound, but since we remained in the international terminal and did not legally enter Taiwan, there was no need to go through their immigration process.
The immigration drill is fairly standard with arrival cards, departure cards and customs declaration cards for those immigrants carrying dutiable goods.
Near the end of our trip, we transited both ways through the Hong Kong and China Lo Wu border crossing one day. This crossing has foot bridges going over a moat with steep 30’ concrete walls on both sides of the water, no shallow parts, and the final wall on the Hong Kong side topped with large dense coils of concertina wire facing the Chinese side. It is a formidable boundary.
There are two immigration authorities, face to face, with an international zone between the two. Everyone goes through both an exit and an entry process in Lo Wu, whether you’re coming or going. The foreign queues had much less volume than the Chinese national queues.
As visitors to China we had to previously obtain a visa, a process through the Chinese embassy in the U.S. that involved paying a fee and obtaining a letter of intent from a Chinese entity that was planning to see us. They don’t let people into their country without a reason.
Similarly, the Chinese don’t let their own citizens out without a reason. Chinese citizens must obtain an exit visa to visit Hong Kong. This is a Chinese requirement, not a Hong Kong requirement, that probably has something to do with the fact that 90% of the population of Hong Kong is made up of Chinese people who decided to not return to China. Exit visas for Chinese wanting to visit Hong Kong may be refused by the government, and it was because this happened to our friend that we met in Lo Wu that day.
Well, I guess the main point of this little writing has come and gone, but it bears reinforcing. The next time you hear an ungrateful person talking trash about some aspect of America, please remind them that the door is wide open for them to leave.
people and capital move constantly
This strangely titled article purports to speak to a familiar universal experience—what remains after a migration. As one who migrated, I recognize the territory.
My journey began in a thriving medium-sized city of wealth and opportunity. Everyone worked, banks lent money, men built businesses that provided employment, children played in the summer without much supervision, homes rarely stood empty during the day, the fine arts were produced in all sorts of forms and venues throughout the year and people went out to enjoy them, and families came together at punctual meal times.
The order and freedom allowed young people to dream about their future lives. My dream was pretty general. I thought it would be cool to live in different regions of America—to spend a couple decades in each of them and enjoy the full American experience over the course of my life. In large part this dream came true.
In the expanded time perception of youth when the clock moves way too slowly, one gets the impression that things are more permanent than they are. But the city of my halcyon youth could not stop time, and would not preserve that ideal combination of people and elements that surrounded my place in it.
People and capital always move. External forces create new opportunities, and diminish the potential of old exploits. Things change.
Regionally, my home area is more wealthy than ever, but the distribution of wealth, property, valuable real estate, and jobs throughout the region is all new. Except for service jobs—of which many more exist than before—the nature of capitalized skilled jobs in the region bears little resemblance to the factories that formerly dominated the region’s employment.
I have no reason to doubt that material shifts of this fundamental nature happen throughout America and the world. What happened to my home town region happens everywhere in the world, constantly.
I am lucky to have the option for nostalgia over the simpler time I grew up in. Someone who had a misfortunate childhood probably does not look back so fondly. It fascinates me that children today may in the future consider this time as the simpler more nostalgic period, and may even want to preserve it from whatever chaotic future they find themselves in.
It also fascinates me when people migrate to an area and adopt a nostalgic view of that area with an objective to return that area to the stasis of the nostalgic view they found there. It happens a lot in Elbert County.
People take a drive through here, see the trophy ranches owned by worldly billionaires, and develop a false foundation for nostalgia that does not reflect the hard scrapple circumstances of existence those who tamed this place endured. No one in their right mind would choose to return to such difficulties.
The romantic trophy ranches built with today’s money earned from other places are not relics. They are new, just as the current business climate in my original home region is new and bears little resemblance to what happened there in the past.
We cannot freeze time in a place, though many devote themselves to the pursuit. For young people looking to experience all the world has to offer, there is probably no more effective way to get them to leave home than to try to prevent change and growth.
Returning to the Rothman article that spurred these thoughts, the author seems more interested in connecting the alliterative labels: “dying,” “defunct,” “despair,” and “dystopic” to “Trump voter” than he is in adding any insight about the ebbs and flows of people, capital and economic activity in America.
Jefferson – no fan of direct democracy
America has been had
President Trump, whatever else you do, you must get the Muslim Brotherhood OUT of our government, military and federal agencies.
http://unconstrainedanalytics.org/resources/
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263921/our-catastrophic-failure-jihad-denial-daniel-greenfield
unacknowledged wars
“The context and subtext contain the real message. This is true on both sides of today’s political battles. On the one side, we have the remnants–scratched and bleeding, but still partially cohesive–of the old American Christian cultures, largely Protestant but with a strong admixture of Catholics; on the other is the far less numerous but culturally potent Unholy Left, adhering to its own secular religion, although it professes atheism. As with the battle between radical Islam and the West, one side has explicitly avowed war on the other, while the other, more powerful, refuses to acknowledge it or even conceive of it. Which side, under these circumstances, is more likely to be successful?”
Michael Walsh, “The Devil’s Pleasure Palace,” 2015, p. 115.
Reason, not force. Consent, not submission. Citizen, not subject.
Justice Scalia’s death is a litmus test for the nation. Everyone who justifies their position on the proper course of action for the President and the Senate to fill Scalia’s seat on the Court with an appeal to the will of the people is wrong. America was never intended to be governed by a political expression of the will of the people.
Justice Scalia fought an uphill battle to preserve the rule of law, not the rule of men. He agreed with the Framers that Constitutional law should only be changed with the safeguards of the amendment process in order to avoid judicial tyranny. But this process is far too slow for the Left who see the Court as the architect of social engineering in America.
That concept – social engineering – is the very antithesis of freedom. It makes lab rats out of free men. It just amazes me to see the Left, who are all so libertarian about their behavioral choices, chuck their free will aside and line up to conform with the latest politically correct gestalt.
And if it were only that, I could grudgingly accept it. But no. They’re driven to make law to govern and force me to accept their experiments too. And that’s where I draw the line – because I don’t sell my freedom cheaply. I expect to be persuaded and convinced, and the Left, generally, don’t make compelling arguments.
A week in the San Francisco Bay Area
the Christmas spirit
My Uncle Robert Garrett USN received military honors this past Monday at Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery. The schedule is tight at the cemetery. Time is meted out with military precision in small increments for final farewells and ceremonies. Those not engulfed in grief – the honor guard and officers – are eminently serious.
With the ceremony concluded, I retrieved my video gear, and walked out. I met the officer in charge of the honor guard and said, “Thank you sir.” He nodded a serious acknowledgment, and then he paused to say something. I turned to look at him, and his face broke into a massive smile as he said, “Merry Christmas!” It was unexpected and beautiful.
And I realized the ceremony he had just performed was his Christmas gift to our family, and his wish brought me right back into a warm and peaceful space from the most solemn one we had just witnessed. I wished him Merry Christmas too, and that was all for our exchange.
But there was a lesson in that moment. That’s why they do what they do – why the military go downrange to risk their lives to put down evils all over the world. Our culture is exceptional for its simple good things, Christmas among them. This officer knew what to protect. He wanted to come home and practice his exceptional Americanism – maybe wish a total stranger Merry Christmas and really mean it. He knew the cost in American lives it took to provide that safe protected space from the persistent forces around us trying to destroy, occupy, and diminish everything American.
The snowflake students talk about their spaces safe from microaggression, completely oblivious to what it costs men like this officer to create the environments where someone like them can waste oxygen on toy battles over petty insults.
Well, he wasn’t wasting his oxygen. He gave out honors, and then Christmas presents. It’s what real Americans do.