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Saturday, August 28, 2021

Reminder: Things Could Always Be Worse

Everyone complains about the GOP, but here are three articles--all related in a general way--that remind us that things could be worse and that our votes and choices really do matter:

Paul Gottfried sees the threat clearly enough. Voters need to somehow get through to their representatives


The Emerging One-Party State

Republicans would do well to abstain from misleading talk about “bipartisanship” and refer to the Democrats as what they really are: a totalitarian threat to our constitutional system.


Amid Gottfried's warnings of the dangers we face and of the frustratingly myopic GOPe, there is this:


Despite all these obstacles, Republican victories in 2022 and beyond are still possible, providing the party pays attention to the guile and determination of its well-organized adversary. Republicans should not approach elections as ritualized contests in which sportsmanship is de rigueur. At stake will be the very possibility of meaningful opposition to the Left. Republicans would do well to abstain from misleading talk about “bipartisanship” and refer to the Democrats as what they really are: a totalitarian threat to our constitutional system.


Can this make a difference? In fact, yes.

I make fun of the fecklessness of Justices Amy and Brett, but Christopher Bedford's article illustrates how much better off we are--for now. The point is that a GOP Senate is essential to defend against much worse than fecklessness:


Unlimited Power: The Latest Supreme Court Dissent Is A Window Into The Mind Of The COVID Bureaucracy

The left thinks its power is so broad as to be essentially limitless, and so singularly vested as to be checked virtually solely at its own discretion.


Interested to know what the top liberal legal minds of the United States Supreme Court think about government power and your private property? First, take 10 minutes to read Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion, written for the majority, in the court’s Thursday night decision to stop the ban on rental income; then spend another 10 minutes on Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent.

Here’s a hint: The left thinks its power is so overarching as to impact nearly every citizen, so broadly interpreted as to be essentially limitless, and so singularly vested as to be checked virtually solely at the discretion of the bureaucracy itself.

...

And that’s where the split is: Breyer and his political allies on the left and throughout the Democrat Party have unfailing faith in the technocracy; it’s near-religious, and we’re all living in it.

For the past 18 months, we’ve suffered under the thumb of this sort of unchecked bureaucracy: Closed schools, masked children, shuttered businesses, canceled weddings, restricted hospitals, forbidden funerals — even the public drug dens and homeless camps now filling major cities are products of CDC “guidance.” For “public health and safety,” we’re told.

But while it’s been in full public view these past 18 months, the reality is we have increasingly suffered under the thumb of unchecked bureaucracy since President Woodrow Wilson; its power and influence growing stronger each year, while the executive and congressional power and will to curb it have lessened.

Some of that growth is natural: influence craves influence, power craves power. But much of it is the result either of active policies in favor of it (or a failure to enact policies restricting it), driven by men like Wilson and men like Breyer — highly educated and seriously intelligent men who think that we, the people, ought not rule ourselves; the experts will take care of that.


Between those two excerpts is a detailed analysis. When Bedford refers to the "COVID Bureaucracy," what he's largely referring to--as his references to Wilson, experts, and the technocracy make clear--is the entire progressive project that, beginning in the 19th century under the influence of Hegel, has morphed into the globalist project for a Great Reset.

Lastly, a relatively brief article on a topic I've referred to numerous times: The continued performance of private schools--often Catholic but far from exclusively so--as compared to the government schools. These schools deserve our support, and our children and grandchildren deserve these schools. The future of America may depend on them. The good news is that these schools, as well as the home schooling movement, are providing an essential service in these dark days of the Covid Regime. The author, inexplicably, fails to provide an obvious link to the full study at the Herzog foundation, although a simple search should turn it up:


Christian Schools Vastly Outperforming Public Schools During COVID-19, According to New Survey of Parents

Among last year’s other lessons, none may be more important than this: Our taxpayer-funded education establishment cares more about adults than children.


Consider the evidence: public school union bosses pressured officials to close schools and keep them shuttered beyond what medical authorities recommended. In spite of the obvious harm to children of school closures, unions throughout the country lobbed threats and issued demands. In Chicago, the union went so far as to sue the Mayor to keep schools closed; in San Francisco, the city had to sue its school board.

A public education system that failed to do right by our children has kept union bosses empowered and politicians cowed. ...

Christian parents reported their schools were open even as nearby public options closed. While only 8 percent of public school parents could report that their schools never closed, a quarter of Christian school parents did. 

...

... The data is unmistakable: In a panicked, trying year, Christian school parents and their children fared far better than their public school counterparts.

The data offers us hope on several fronts. Parents across the country are expressing growing anxiety about the teaching of “critical race theory” in classrooms. In this survey, 70 percent of all parents do not believe their school should teach that “white people are inherently privileged and Black people and others are oppressed.” 

Moreover, 80 percent of all parents do not think that their school should teach that achieving racial justice requires discriminating against white people. In other words, while America’s parents may disagree on a great deal, they are united in the belief that many of the central tenets of critical race theory should not be in the classroom—whether that classroom is funded privately or publicly.

... In the face of that, parents ought to consider a broader set of options—including Christian schools whose parents report more satisfaction and more attention to students than their public counterparts. 


16 comments:

  1. In the AG comment section after Gottfried's post, reader Maximus-Cassius notes that
    "In 2008, Ron Paul and his Libertarian troopers attempted a take-over of (going off memory here) about a dozen Republican Party state chapters, and very nearly succeeded in about five or six.
    In 2012, the Tea Party attempted similar takeovers, with only marginal success.
    In the aftermath of these rear guard efforts to take over state Republican Chapters, the RNC (and this is second-hand info, from a source who is supposedly in the know) developed fail-safe language, that allows the national chapter to invoke rules or other measures, to keep the state chapters in line, and loyal to the RNC.
    For instance, why hasn't the Utah Republican Party kicked Romney out of the party, and denied him the ability to run as a Republican again?
    Or how about Kentucky? Their state chapter should all but crucify Mitch McConnell.
    And of all the states you'd think was MAGA, down to the last committeeman, the Alabama state chapter is up to its neck in RINO loyalists. Same with Florida...."

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  2. I am sorry to say, but I believe Paul Gottfried is living on another planet. "providing the party pays attention"??? They are paying attention. To the sewer dwellers, not the people they supposedly serve. Those that have seized power will not give it up willingly. Trite but true "there is no voting our way out of this".

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  3. Replies
    1. I can't take issue with a single thing she says. In fact, I enthusiastically endorse it all.

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    2. I will add, however, that especially in the House, there seem to be a fair number of members who kinda get it. With the prospect for more.

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    3. You Know Who has a major post today ("Review to Answering the Big Question, how do we fix this mess", arguing that it's the SSCI that holds the aces, and that suppressing Assange was a key achievement of the DS, partly to protect that committee's relationship with the DS.
      This post looks like enough of a major effort, to be worth consideration.

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    4. I saw the title but skipped over it because I didn't understand what it was about. I certainly agree re Assange. I'll have to give it a thorough read.

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  4. I think this is why more concerned citizens are becoming precinct committeemen in their districts. To have a say in choosing candidates.

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  5. From the Emerald R piece:

    "You would think that shame or self-preservation would put a stop to the self-humiliation that these people indulge in almost daily. But you would be wrong. Since that second impeachment farce, the situation has actually gotten much worse. It's now clear that the GOP is unable to function even as an opposition party in the minority. This became abundantly clear during the rushed Senate confirmations of Biden’s cabinet nominees."

    Is this the fundamental flaw in our idea of representative democracy? Doesn't the entire edifice rest upon the assumption that politicians will be constrained by (if not patriotic duty) self interest and the fear of being turned out of office? Yet Robinson argues that we have essentially an entire party that is almost wholly unresponsive to its base voters-- in fact seems to *despise* them.

    I submit that the present system is beyond fixing in any, current available, Constitutional manner. The Constitution is no longer operative. It has been circumvented and rendered powerless by a seeming coup or socialist revolution. The only solution I can see is to tear down the federal government and vest all powers in local and county governments. Even the genius of the Constitution could not resist and thwart the corrosive power of the Federal Lucifer squatting on the Potomac. Lyf

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  6. Wow on Citibank canceling Gen. Flynn’s credit card.

    Too bad the Gop will ignore.

    Be curious if Trump does anything.

    There is a lot of anger that could be used for a targeted boycott among maga voters. To make an example of one company by singling them out.

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    Replies
    1. That amazed me. I think you're right about the anger.

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    2. I'm trying to determine if thats True.
      From what I found on the Internet, its Chase, not Citi (unless they're the same and I don't know.)
      But I do use a Chase credit card as my primary card and I will cancel it -- if this pans out.

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    3. Chase:

      http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/aTx1Cf0dbE8/chase-bank-cancels-general-mike-flynns-credit-cards

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    4. Mea culpa - chase
      https://mobile.twitter.com/reginahicksreal/status/1431993932527947776

      Delete
  7. Is this real... I can't tell.

    10 sec video:

    Biden: "I'm happy to take questions now, if that's what you want me to do Nance.. I'm happy to do whatever you want me to do...?"

    Nance: "Are we on? No, I don't want him to talk"

    https://twitter.com/walterkirn/status/1432122122374205440

    Old Frank

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