Author Topic: The Way Forward for the American Creed  (Read 357724 times)

Crafty_Dog

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Russell Brand on FOX
« Reply #1050 on: March 18, 2023, 07:47:43 PM »

G M

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Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1052 on: March 20, 2023, 06:28:04 AM »
I would submit that the same applies to the currently greater threats coming from the executive branch.

ccp

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Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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Sign the Declaration of Independence!
« Reply #1056 on: April 18, 2023, 06:33:13 AM »


Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1058 on: April 22, 2023, 08:33:45 AM »
In response I would note the relevance of the part of Genesis wherein eating the apple of knowledge is what got us thrown out of the Garden.

G M

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1059 on: April 22, 2023, 09:17:42 AM »
In response I would note the relevance of the part of Genesis wherein eating the apple of knowledge is what got us thrown out of the Garden.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

I interpret that as the big bang and the formation of the universe.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

I see that as the stage where prehumans became sentient.
 

As far as the way forward, we must become "Neo-Amish", meaning we are selective in the technology we use. Insuring our own food supply outside the technocorruption is essential.




Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1063 on: April 25, 2023, 07:22:14 AM »
And no fatties!

ccp

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1064 on: April 26, 2023, 05:47:25 AM »
and no youngsters sitting next to each other but speaking to each other via smart devices


Crafty_Dog

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The Great American Opt Out
« Reply #1065 on: April 28, 2023, 08:12:53 PM »
Not without resonanc, but to go further it must address the fundamental challenges that arise from economic fragmentation-- witness Brexit, where the ties were much weaker.


https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/28/the-great-american-opt-out-a-matter-of-willingness-willfulness-and-will/

Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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Conservatives lost the culture war
« Reply #1067 on: April 28, 2023, 08:25:35 PM »


G M

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Re: Conservatives lost the culture war
« Reply #1069 on: April 28, 2023, 09:10:44 PM »
Third:

Some interesting points mixed in, and some go over the top.



https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/27/conservatives-lost-the-culture-war-and-the-trump-agenda-is-the-only-path-forward/

The American Republic is dead. The next one will be overtly Christian and Heritage American. Civic Nationalism brought us to the currently unfolding disaster. That is if the end times aren’t here, which may well be the case.





Crafty_Dog

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Arbalestquarrel: The Modern Amerian Civil War
« Reply #1071 on: May 03, 2023, 07:11:51 AM »
http://arbalestquarrel.com/the-modern-american-civil-war-collectivism-versus-individualism/


THE MODERN AMERICAN CIVIL WAR: A CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES
PART THREE*
“A closer look at the arguments on both sides often shows that they are reasoning from fundamentally different premises. These different premises—often implicit—are what provide the consistency behind the repeated opposition of individuals and groups on numerous, unrelated issues. They have different visions of how the world works.” ~ from A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, by Thomas Sowell, Economist and Social Theorist; Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

“You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve YOUR freedom. I hope you will make a good use of it.” ~John Adams

“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.” ~Benjamin Franklin

A CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES; A NATION AT A CROSSROADS**
No one can reasonably doubt that the United States is in the throes of a major cataclysmic event. Two factions face off against each other in mortal combat for the soul and psyche of this Country. We see, in the desperation of one faction, the lengths at which it will go in its bid to regain control of its agenda. That faction through its proxies in Washington, comprising Congressional Democrats and Centrist “Bush” and “McCain” Republicans, has maintained control for the last three decades. That faction has exerted a stranglehold on the Country, slowly squeezing the lifeblood out of the Nation and its citizenry through control, inter alia, of Congress; the Federal bureaucracy; the federal courts; the mass media; and, of course, through the Federal Reserve, part of the Central Banking system–the brainchild of Mayer Amschel Rothschild–that has extended its tentacles around the world, up to the present day.

The Leftist faction was well on its way toward completing the items on its agenda, as Barack Obama was ticking off the items during his two terms in Office. Hillary Clinton was poised to be elected U.S. President. Leftists of all stripes were smugly confident. After all, hadn’t virtually all the exit polls predict a win–a landslide. They were certain that Hillary Clinton would secure the U.S. Presidency.

Even if many on the Left would have preferred the Socialist, Bernie Sanders, as President, they knew, full well, that Hillary Clinton, would faithfully proceed, in the footsteps of her predecessor, Barack Obama, toward accomplishment of the Leftist agenda.

Had Clinton prevailed in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, she likely would have re-nominated Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, to the high Court; or, if not him, then she certainly would have nominated someone like him, someone who shares Judge Garland’s jurisprudential philosophy and jurisprudential approach to case analysis–a man who had no fear of legislating from the Bench; a man who would contort and distort the dictates of the U.S. Constitution beyond anything the framers of that historic and sacred Document had intended or would have wished for. And, with control of two critical Federal Branches, the Executive and Judiciary, along with control of the mass media apparatus and the massive federal bureaucracy, the actual composition of Congress would, likely, have been, at least, in the short term of less critical importance. But, Clinton did not make it into the White House. Leftists, in our Country, including the internationalist billionaire benefactors of Leftist groups and causes, were thunderstruck, and they were already plotting their revenge, even before Donald Trump took the Oath of Office, as set forth in Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

SEATING JURISTS ON THE SUPREME COURT WHOSE JURISPRUDENTIAL APPROACH TO CASE ANALYSIS COMMENCES WITH AN ABIDING LOVE FOR, DUE RESPECT FOR, AND DUE REGARD GIVEN FOR THE IMPORT OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AS WRITTEN, AND WHO INTERPRET FEDERAL STATUTE ACCORDING TO THE PLAIN MEANING OF THE TEXT, WAS CERTAINLY ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT GOALS IF NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT GOAL OF PRESIDENT TRUMP, AS IT MOST CERTAINLY WAS FOR THE MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WHO VOTED FOR HIM.
With the surprising election of Donald Trump as our Nation’s 45th President, and with Republican control of Congress—especially, the U.S. Senate—and too, with Trump’s nomination of one strict Constitutional constructionist and originalist, Neil Gorsuch, presently sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, and a second strict Constitutional constructionist and originalist, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, just confirmed as Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the U.S. Supreme Court now securely has a conservative-wing majority, albeit with one important caveat. Chief Justice Roberts is considered the new swing vote moderate. Chief Justice Roberts is, though, a more reliable conservative than retired Justice, Anthony Kennedy. So, where does this leave Leftists, and their agenda?

Leftists and Leftist mobs are left scurrying about hither and yon; ranting and raving. The Leftist agenda seems to be on the verge of collapse or, if not, then, for the moment at least, the work of effectuating the Leftist agenda has certainly appreciably slowed. And, with the Left’s failure to derail Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the high Court, that critical item of the Leftist agenda–preventing a conservative-wing majority, is a failed item. And the Leftist faction knows it. Leftists know that federal and State legislation that fails to cohere with the United States Constitution will not be allowed to go unchallenged. They know that, with Brett Kavanaugh on the high Court, those challenges will be taken up for high Court review. An “assault weapons” case, like the Kolbe and Friedman, would henceforth be heard. Leftists know that, if lower Courts continue to ignore the precedents of Heller and McDonald with impunity, there will now be a day of reckoning, and those lower Courts that so act with impunity will be called on the carpet for it.

Democratic Party control of the Judiciary, is, then, critical to completion of the Leftist agenda and that can only be accomplished through election of a Democrat as U.S. President, along with Democratic Party control of the Senate. Failure to win the White House in 2016, and failure to control the Senate explains why Democrats have, themselves, gone off the rails in their attempt to derail the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to the high Court.

And Americans have seen just how far Democrats are willing to go. After Judge Kavanaugh acquitted himself well in defending the vicious personal assault against him, they would not, could not admit even that much. Democrats speciously, even ridiculously, claimed that Judge Brett Kavanaugh has shown that he is unfit, temperamentally, to sit on the high Court, ostensibly because he happened to have the seeming audacity of displaying emotion and in having displayed righteous indignation in defending his character, his reputation, and his honor against a scurrilous, flimsy, rambling, barefaced, unsupported, uncorroborated public attack; an attack engineered by the Democratic Party leadership and by those Democrats sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee, as they desperately sought to prevent, by any means they could drum up, the Senate confirmation of a highly qualified Judge–however outrageous, patently unethical, and, perhaps, even illegal those means may be.

These “Leftists” cared not one whit that they would be damaging, possibly, irreparably, the character and reputation of an honorable man. And they cared not at all that doing so would also endanger the life, safety, and well-being of Judge Kavanaugh and that of his family. They operated callously, maliciously, and reprehensibly, completely beyond the bounds of reason, and ethics, and human decency. Democrats sitting on the Judiciary Committee are utterly shameless. Their machinations and subterfuge rest well beyond the pale of human decency, let alone beyond the pale of what would count as proper U.S. Senate etiquette, decorum, and propriety. Americans have not, for decades, seen anything like the public spectacle they bore witness to that took place over several days of Confirmation Hearing. Democrats appeared, by turns, as circus clowns, sanctimonious inquisitors, and, as members of a cabaret burlesque troupe–many things, indeed, but not solemn, dignified members of the United States Senate, that a few Americans might have mistaken them to be.

The disgusting displays of Democrats during the course of the Hearing, and the actions orchestrated by Democrats and by their allies behind the scenes is just a foretaste of what the American public may come to see, and would have every reason to expect if a liberal-wing Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, perhaps, or Stephen Breyer, retires or resigns from the high Court before President Trump’s first term in Office ends, and President Trump thereupon nominates a third Judge to sit on the high Court. Keep in mind that, according to USA Today, Justice Ginsburg is 85 years of age, and Justice Breyer is 79.

If one more conservative-wing Trump nominee can be confirmed–assuming one of the liberal-wing Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsberg or Stephen Breyer, retires–the conservative-wing majority, barring any unforeseen event, will be stronger yet, virtually impervious to Leftist attempts to complete the hijacking of the Nation and the Nation’s  Constitution.

 The Leftist faction knows that it has suffered a profound defeat having failed to derail the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh or at least to delay a vote on the confirmation until after the 2018 Midterm elections, when it hopes to gain Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

LEFTISTS KNOW WHAT IS AT STAKE IN THE COMING MIDTERM ELECTIONS. CONSERVATIVES SHOULD KNOW WHAT IS AT STAKE, TOO.
So, with the 2018 Midterm elections around the corner, Leftists are frantically, frenetically engaged in  sketching out new strategies in a bid to regain traction so that they can continue jumpstart the Leftist agenda. Republicans must not sit back and relax.

The Leftist leadership, Congressional Democrats, and their billionaire internationalist benefactors know this; they know that they have been hamstrung, and they are literally exploding with rage. They have no cogent argument to make in their defense. Mobs of activists are enlisted to shout down conservative voices and anyone else who disagrees with the Leftist agenda. Mass demonstrations, violent outbursts, visible threats to those they target all point to the singular desperation of this faction. They can do nothing now, but flail about. So, the first order of business for Leftists is for Democrats to regain control of the U.S. Senate. But, even with a substantial number of reliable Democrats in the Senate, along with several swing votes in the U.S. Senate, that would not mean that more Democratic nominees for Federal Court seats, at all levels, would be confirmed. For, only the President of the United States can nominate federal judges, although Democrats can and in fact have blocked confirmation of many of Trump’s nominees to sit on the lower federal Courts. So, then, the second order of business for Leftists is to make sure that Democrats can regain and hold control of the U.S. Senate through 2020 with the goal then of retaking the U.S. Presidency with a reliable Leftist. Once that step is accomplished, Democrats will be able once again to nominate reliably Leftist judges to sit on the federal Judiciary and will be able to confirm those Leftist Judges. Then Leftists will find themselves in a stronger position to reset the political and social direction of the Country, albeit with a little more difficulty now that the highest Court in the Land sits a reliable four Justice Conservative wing + one moderate/conservative Chief Justice majority.

CONTRARY TO WHAT SOME AMERICANS MAY THINK, THE PRESENT SITUATION IN THIS NATION IS DIRE. WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A CIVIL WAR.
We see two distinctive political/social factions fighting for control of the Country’s direction. Two visions for our Country are coming into sharp focus, into sharp relief. Whichever side ultimately prevails will see its world view realized. But, what are those two world views? How would each vision, if realized, affect this Country, and affect the lives of the Country’s citizenry and affect the Constitution upon which the foundation of our Nation rests? We begin with this assertion: the two visions–the two world views–for this Country and for its people, rest on two mutually exclusive frameworks. Only one of the two can be realized. Democrats are a proxy for one vision. Republicans are a proxy for the second. It is not, then, a simple matter of a Republicans versus Democrats conflict that we are seeing. That is too simplistic. To frame the issue in terms of Republicans versus Democrats trivializes the matter before us.

We are engaged in a Civil War. The central question before the Nation, then, can be stated thusly:

Shall the Country continue to exist as an independent Sovereign Nation and free Republic as the founders conceived and intended, with the Nation’s Constitution, laws, and judiciary intact and supreme, subordinated to no external system of laws and external tribunals; or, will the Country, as an independent Sovereign Nation and Free Republic, see its status as a singular, unique, independent, sovereign Nation State, at once diminished, impaired, or severely truncated?

If the independence and sovereignty of the United States is impaired, we must consider a corollary question, namely, whether the supremacy of the Nation’s Constitution, its laws, and jurisprudence will similarly be impaired. And, if the United States finds its sovereignty and independence curtailed by pacts and treaties it happens to enter into with foreign entities through which such foreign elements insinuate their power and authority over this Country’s Government and institutions, will we then see the United States, as an independent sovereign political entity, subsumed into a new transnational political, economic, financial, and social framework, requiring that the Nation’s system of laws be subordinated to or otherwise replaced by foreign law and foreign jurisprudence? If such events were to occur, then this Nation and its Constitution will, de facto, cease to exist.

If such were to occur we would see the United States and the American people effectively subordinated to the governance and will of a new transnational political, economic, financial, and social system to which the Nation would henceforth belong. This is not conspiracy. This is not alternative history. This is fact. The events that have played out before us in recent months dispel perfunctory dismissal of the seriousness of the situation facing the Nation and its people. We have seen clear and categorical attacks on the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, and on the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We have seen lower U.S. District Courts and U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal flaunting the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and flaunting the President’s Article 2 powers. We have seen indisputable, irrefutable evidence of high level federal bureaucrats having conspired against and continuing to conspire against the United State President; and we have seen indisputable, irrefutable evidence of high level bureaucrats actively attempting to sabotage the Administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. We have seen indisputable, irrefutable evidence of  the leadership of a few States openly defying Federal law; and in open revolt against Federal Officers tasked with enforcing Federal law. We see a Press, misusing its sacred right under the First Amendment. It has undertaken a campaign of disinformation and misinformation. It routinely smears the President, in a reprehensible attempt to discredit him, to isolate him, to prevent him from doing his job on behalf of the American people; and, in that reprehensible attack on the President, the Press has also attacked the very institution of Office of the U.S. Presidency, and, in so doing, has attacked our institutions, our Nation, and our people. We have seen an insidious attempt to question the sanctity of the very notions of, ‘Nation State,’ and of  ‘Citizen of the United States.’ We see raging mobs in the Streets, on university campuses, and in the Halls of Congress. We have seen lunatics harassing both Government officials and members of Congress. We see sacred statues toppled; history rewritten; our Nation’s Flag disrespected; our system of laws defied. None of this is accident. It is all by design.

Ever since Donald Trump assumed the mantle of President of the United States, the ruthless, secretive, seditious, extraordinarily powerful, and inordinately wealthy forces that have worked to disassemble this Nation, have had to come out of the shadows, albeit reluctantly. What they could not accomplish quietly, within the interstices of the Nation’s laws and institutions, they have come to realize they must use brute force. These forces are fomenting violence, anarchy, in a crude but, as they see it, necessary attempt, to force the Country back on the path they had established for the Country, a path that the Clintons, and Bush, and Obama–the willing accomplices of the Leftist agenda–had quietly, inexorably directed this Nation and its people to.

As we continue to explore the two visions of the Country–one ascribed to the Leftist agenda, and the second ascribed to the Conservative cause–we need to take a closer look at the two factions–one of whom we have referred to here as “Leftist” and the other that we have alluded to as “Conservative.” We must take a closer look at these two factions, and we begin with a consideration of the labels heretofore used as descriptors for them, even as we find all those descriptors  to be inapt. We explain why. We then consider better descriptors that better encapsulate the beliefs, precepts, assumptions, aims, and ultimate goals of each faction, each side, in this conflict. We will then take a close look at several of those beliefs, precepts, assumptions, and aims, and show the logical end point realizations of each.

WHAT EXPRESSIONS BEST DESCRIBE THE TWO FACTIONS?
In describing the two factions, the two combatants, we have considered various terminology and rejected that terminology because we considered the verbiage are either vague and ambiguous, and therefore likely to create confusion, or too narrow in scope or range, and therefore deficient as descriptors. We have heretofore employed the expressions, ‘Democrat,’ ‘Leftist’, ‘Progressive,’ ‘Liberal,’ and ‘Radical’ loosely and often interchangeably to denote one faction. And, we have employed the expressions, ‘Republican,’ ‘Conservative,’ and ‘Populist’, loosely, often interchangeably to denote the other faction. But, these expressions, as well, are too vague or ambiguous and too limited in range to be effective for our purpose here. Furthermore, they have been so overused that they are tantamount to clichés. A couple of the expressions may be considered to be, simply, pejoratives. Lastly, a few of the expressions,  may readily, or, at least, arguably suggest ideas, beliefs, and precepts of  both factions, as there exists significant overlap. Or, the expressions are simply and essentially empty and vacuous vessels, and so serve no useful, functional purpose.

We have also considered using the expressions, ‘Globalist’ or ‘Internationalist’ or ‘Transnationalist’ to describe one faction and the expression, ‘Nationalist’ to describe the other faction. But these expressions as delineated come up short as apt descriptors, as they, too, have been overused; are, in fact, inaccurate descriptors; and, in reference to the term, ‘Nationalist,’ have been used as a term of  disparagement, as the mainstream media, when writing or talking about President Trump or anyone who supports him, equates the President’s nationalist fervor with fascism, even though President Trump is clearly not a fascist and the term ‘nationalism’ does not denote ‘fascism’ and should not be construed as synonymous with ‘fascism.’ But, the allusions are there, operating as a meme.

A well-learned attorney, and legal scholar with whom we have discussed the matter, suggested that the expressions, ‘Collectivist,’ and ‘Individualist’ are the best terminology to be used to describe the belief system of a member of one faction or the other.’ And we concur. These two expressions are precise, carry no connotation of disparagement, have not heretofore been used by anyone, to our knowledge, to describe the two factions; and broadly embrace all beliefs, precepts, presuppositions and aims of the two groups facing off in this modern civil war taking place in America, but without any overlap. Therefore, mutual exclusivity in both the connotation and denotation of the expressions, as applied to each of the respective groups, is faithfully maintained. The expressions, ‘Collectivist’ and ‘Individualist,’ then, are the two expressions we will use as referrers and descriptors for each of the two factions at war with each other.

Now, let us consider several of the basic belief systems, precepts, and ultimate goal and logical outcome of the Collectivist and Individualist philosophies. We will see in this delineated list two competing visions for our Country, one of which, taken to its logical conclusion, results in the ultimate dissolution of the Country as an independent, Sovereign Nation State, together with the dissolution of the Nation’s Constitution and system of laws, and the other which preserves the Country as an independent, Sovereign Nation State, with its Constitution and laws intact.

We thus have two distinct, mutually exclusive visions of the Country and of the world; two distinct notions of law and government, and of the relationship of man to government and to each other—two distinct visions, only one which can be realized; and two ever diverging paths, only one, of which, our Nation can take! Our Nation is at a crossroads.

COLLECTIVISTS VERSUS INDIVIDUALISTS
COLLECTIVISTS’ BELIEFS, PRECEPTS, PRESUPPOSITIONS AND AIMS APROPOS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY
1) The ‘nation state’ is an archaic concept. The United States must eventually be subsumed into a new transnational political, economic, cultural, and social framework. This new framework will consist of the relics of the old western nation states, to be overseen by a world financial and technocratic conglomerate that will prescribe uniform rules of operation, behavior, and conduct of the various units and populations within it.

2) Since the concept of ‘citizen’ is tied to rights and liberties, privileges and immunities of a select group of people within the nation state, called “The United States Of America,” and, as this nation state, as a political construct, is, eventually, to be dismantled, a concept of ‘citizen of The United States’ will no longer be meaningful. Individuals who were once perceived as citizens of The United States will henceforth be considered “subjects” within a greater, transnational political, economic, financial, cultural, system of governance, comprising people of diverse cultures.

3) Diverse populations of people who inhabit vast regions throughout the world are henceforth to be integrated into a new global political and social and economic and financial and cultural world community.

4) Since there nation states will no longer exist, there will no longer exist national borders to be protected. Hence, the subjects of this new transnational political, social, economic and cultural paradigm are free to travel to and reside in any geographical unit within the span or global reach of the new system of governance that the subject wishes to travel to and reside in. Such entry and exit points that had once demarcated geographical borders of nation states dismantled are henceforth erased.

5) The U.S. Constitution which includes the rights and liberties of the citizens, codified in the Bill Of Rights, is meaningful only within the context of The United States, as an independent sovereign nation state. Once the United States ceases to exist, it follows that the U.S. constitution will be rendered ineffective and obsolete. Hence the political entity that existed as “The United States” is dissolved, along with the various states within the Union. The Nation will be subsumed within the new broad transnational system of global governance.

6) The U.S. Constitution need not be formally repealed. It simply will, upon the formal dismantling of The United States, have no legal force or effect. the governing board—the rulers—of this new system of global governance will prepare and implement a new legal and administrative framework for the system’s governance. This new legal and administrative framework—consisting of a new system of laws, rules, regulations, along with a new jurisprudential philosophy and methodology for handling civil disputes that happen to arise and criminal conduct that must be adjudicated—will be established, handled through civil and criminal tribunals, dispersed throughout the global system of governance. A constitution for the vast populations residing in this new world order may or may not be drafted. It may be useful, but is not required. The global system of governance will control the populace with a vast network of intelligence and police apparatuses. a standing army, with barracks throughout the global system of governance will also be established and maintained.

7) All populations that reside in the new global political and social, and economic framework are subject to the jurisdiction of this new transnational system of governance. This transnational system of governance will be created and enforced by overseers, appointed by the new global governing board, to mete out justice and to set forth those privileges the subjects may have and enjoy. such privileges that the subjects of this global system of governance enjoy may be refined, modified, or eliminated, as the global governing board sees fit.

8) Substantive and procedural rights are perceived as all man-made constructs. since it is decreed that, for political purposes, no creator exists, it follows, there are no natural fundamental rights intrinsic to man, endowed by a creator upon man. such rights and liberties that subjects have are deemed mere platitudes as subjects have no inherent rights or liberties as such, but, rather, privileges bestowed upon them, denoted by licenses, that are presented to subjects by the overseers of the new transnational system of global governance. licenses shall be surrendered to the overseers on demand or as prescribed by such laws and regulations, seen as edicts, that the governing board happens to create. and, since rights and liberties are no more than or other than licenses bestowed on subjects, they can easily be ceded to the overseers upon demand. It shall be declared, then, that no subject within the new transnational system of governance can claim any right or liberty as a matter of personal right, as no such personal rights exist inherently in man.

9) Thus, all rights, privileges, and liberties are considered man-made constructs and artifices. The governing board may, at its pleasure, modify or eliminate outright such rights, liberties, and privileges as it deems necessary, as the members of the governing board hold exclusive power and authority throughout the reach of the global system of governance.

10) The ethical system utilized by the governing board of this transnational system of governance, as applied to the subjects therein, is based on the notion of utilitarian consequentialism. This is a system of ethics in which “the good” is defined in terms of ‘utility’ maximization. What constitutes ‘the good’ is anything the rulers of this transnational system of governance, through their overseers, define ‘the good’ as applied to and as maximized for the greatest number of people.

11) Morality: the concept of ‘moral good’ is determined by the consequences of one’s actions alone—not by one’s intention to do a good or evil act. What constitutes “moral goodness” in the broadest sense is, then, that which benefits the collective—the majority of people. What benefits the collective, does not necessarily also benefit the individual. In fact, what benefits the collective may be deleterious and detrimental to the individual. Thus, for example, if the ownership of firearms for self-defense is considered beneficial to the individual but detrimental to the masses, then firearms’ ownership must be curtailed. Similarly, if free speech, and free association among particular groups are deemed to harm collective cohesion, then freedom of speech and freedom of association are inferred to be contrary to maintenance of the ‘moral good,’ the moral fiber of the populations and must be constrained. Acts that neither benefit the collective nor are deemed harmful to the collective are considered to be morally neutral. Morally neutral acts are acts that can be tolerated.

12) Results desired outweigh adherence to any constitution created or to any laws established. If the results to be achieved conflicts with the law as applied, then, the law must give way to the result to be achieved. Thus, the political or social end to be achieved or desired shall always override the constitution, if there is one, or such laws, rules, and regulations that are made. If, then, a desired political or social end to be achieved or desired can be achieved in no way other than by ignoring, suspending, or abrogating such laws, rules, and regulations, then such laws, rules and laws shall be suspended, abrogated, or simply ignored. Thus, the means to be achieved always justifies the end sought. thus, all laws, rules, regulations, or codes of conduct are merely ad hoc and, therefore, ultimately illusory.

13) Thus, “law” is whatever the governing board essentially says law is. The governing board may create or suspend law by simple proclamation or government edict. Law is adjusted by demand or need to obtain a particular result. Order is maintained by force. the governing Board may, periodically, create disorder, too, as a political device to achieve their goals.

14) Individual ambition and motivation and desire is contained and constrained. It is collective will—the will of the masses—shaped, molded and periodically contorted, distorted, and then reshaped, remolded and reconfigured by the rulers as to garner, essentially a condition of neutral political stasis. It is this state of neutral stasis that is ultimately desired. So, it is that neutral stasis that is considered the “ultimate good” and it is thus that utility is maximized, and “the will” of the masses—“the will” of the collective is achieved.

15)The vast populations of the world that fall under the domain of this new transnational system of global governance will be reduced to penury and servitude.

16) “Popular opinion” overrides the effect and impact of the constitution, if there is one, and overrides such laws that are created. But, ‘popular opinion’ as understood by collectivists is less a spontaneous public response to perceived grievances, emanating from the public, and more a political and social device, used by those who wield power to create the illusion that the masses, the collective ‘will,” wields power to affect political and social change and that the desire to do so emanates from the masses. It does not.  Popular opinion is driven by the demand of those in power to achieve a desired end, as power—its creation and use—falls within the purview of government, not the people. This illustrates, once again, that all law is ad hoc for the collectivist. Law, as such, is an artifice, another tool of government to be used as a mechanism of control. The transnational system of governance is a system of governance ruled by men—the rulers of this transnational system of governance; it is not a system ruled by law.

17) Individuals, or groups of individuals, that, from time to time, happen to rise up against the global system of governance will be quashed by the police and army, if necessary. but, generally, the governing board will use the subjects, themselves, to constrain dissent. use of the populace itself, as a self-righteous horde, is preferred, to maintain order, as police and army standby at the ready. the illusion is maintained that the populace—the collective, the masses, themselves—are the rulers, as this fosters the false notion that it is the collective will that operates to create cohesion, order, and perpetual harmony in society. But that notion is the supreme, ultimate myth since governmental power and authority does not rest in the people, but in government itself and government is not answerable to the people, but only to itself, as it is the ruling “elite”—ever shadowy and secretive, who wield actual power and authority.

18) Eventually, the unique history, culture, traditions, and values that identify the peoples of the various independent nation states will be forgotten, dissolved in the mists of the past. A new history will be drafted; a new culture, set of traditions, and set of core values will be created for this new amorphous mass of people that inhabit the vast lands overseen by the rulers of this global system of governance. A single currency will be used throughout the system of governance, and a single language adopted throughout the realm. the ministers of propaganda will periodically monitor and revise language to maintain homogeneity in thought and action among the subjects of this vast global system of governance.

The vision of the proponents of Collectivism is inconsistent with the vision the founders of our Nation had for our Country. In fact, it is anathema to the vision of our founders.

In the next segment we look at the founder’s vision. It is the vision of Individualism, and, up to this point in time, it has prevailed, albeit Collectivists have been slowly, quietly replacing it with their own vision.

With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. Presidency, Collectivists have had to come out of the shadows. Their vision for the Country is on full display through the antics of Democrats and through raging mobs of agitators, and, through the creation of and utilization of “false flag” operations. Collectivists are testing the limits of the American public’s patience for and tolerance to the changes they seek to impose on the Nation. They are doing this to soften the resolve of the American people; to disassemble the legal, social, financial, economic, and political framework and fabric of this Nation in order to pave the way for the ultimate dismantling of the Country as an independent Sovereign Nation State, thereby paving the way for the Country’s inclusion into a new transnational, global system of governance.

If anyone should doubt what Collectivists are planning, keep in mind the steps they have taken to date that, even a few short years ago would have been so ludicrous as to be dismissed out-of-hand. Many of these Collectivists have, in fact, called for massive revision of the Constitution, and an end to the very concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘citizen’ as commonly understood and defined.

Collectivists have lost power to effectuate the changes they seek, the changes to society that had been quietly unfolding through the the administrations of two Bushes; Bill Clinton; and Barack Obama; and which would have continued through the administration of a second Clinton, Hillary, or that of a third Bush, Jeb.

INDIVIDUALISTS’ BELIEFS, PRECEPTS, PRESUPPOSITIONS AND AIMS

1) the concept of the ‘nation state’ is not archaic. it is not to be perceived as applicable only to past eras. it is as basic and fundamental, and pertinent, and useful a construct today as in any past century. And, The United States as a Nation State is to be understood as an independent sovereign entity, neither beholding to nor subordinated to any other nation, commonwealth of nations federation of nations, or governmental entity of any kind; nor beholding to or subordinated to any one individual or group of individuals or to any corporate or financial entity of any shape or kind.

2) The United States is a political construct, created by the people of The United States, through the nation’s Constitution. Since the Nation and its Government were created by the people, the Nation and its government can only be dismantled by the people of The United States, if they so wish, in accordance with the Constitution they conceived, ratified, and implemented, or where the existence of tyranny in, of, or by government so demands it.

3) The federal government created by the people of The United States has only such power and authority as codified in the Constitution of The United States. The powers and authority of the federal government are limited, created by the people, through the Constitution. Ultimate power and authority rests with and vests in the people themselves, not in government.

4) The concept of ‘citizen’ is tied inextricably to the concept of a ‘nation state.’ Certain rights and liberties, privileges and immunities exist for those people who are deemed citizens.

5) Rights and liberties, privileges and immunities cannot be and must not be summarily curtailed, contained, restrained, or erased, except as prescribed by and in full accord with and compliance with the Constitution and laws of the United States. And, those rights and liberties deemed fundamental, natural, unalienable, as set forth in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, can never be eliminated by law or even by the Constitution, as those rights exist independent of the Constitution—are simply codifications of rights existent in the American citizen, him or herself. As codifications of preexistent rights and liberties they serve merely as reminders to those servants of the people, in government, that such fundamental, natural rights are bequeathed to man by the Creator. They are not privileges bestowed to man by government. If the servants of the people forget that fact, there is one right in particular—the right of the people to keep and bear arms—shall forever remain as a potent reminder to those who serve the people that true power and authority rightfully exists, has always existed, and shall always exist in the people themselves, and not in their servants. Thus, among the unenumerated rights and liberties of the citizenry, such specific fundamental, unalienable, natural rights and liberties exist are so indelibly linked to the Nation as a free Republic, that the containment or abrogation of those rights and liberties is equivalent to the destruction of the Nation as a free Republic.

6) As the United States is an independent, sovereign nation, its Constitution and laws can never lawfully be abrogated or subordinated to the laws of any other nation or international or transnational body, federation, or commonwealth of nations. Thus, no person, group of people, nation, federation of nations, or entity of any kind outside the U.S. has authority over, nor shall such person or entity lawfully exert authority or power over the United States or its citizenry.

7) As no person, group of people, nation, federation of nations, or entity of any kind external to the U.S. has authority over, or can lawfully exert authority or power over the United States or over its citizenry, similarly, no person, group of people or influences internal to the U.S. shall operate to relinquish authority of the Nation to an external power or force of any kind; nor shall any person or group of people or influences within this Nation denigrate or subvert the ultimate and absolute authority of the citizenry of this Nation; nor shall any person, or group of people or influences within the Country restrain or subvert the sanctity of the autonomy of the individual citizen

8) As a legitimate, independent, sovereign ‘nation state,’ the geographical borders of The United States are physically demarcated. the government of the United States has the right and the duty to protect the integrity of its borders from any intrusion by aliens who dare to cross the nation’s borders illegally and who dare remain in this country illegally.

9) Thus, no one, not a citizen of the United States, can claim entry into this country as a matter of right, but may only enter and remain in the United States as the laws of this Nation and the Nation’s Constitution so prescribe.

10) Those individuals who presume to enter this country as a matter of right, and do so, in a manner inconsistent with the nation’s laws and Constitution, have illegally transgressed the nation’s laws and Constitution. Such individuals are deemed, ‘illegal aliens,’ not ‘undocumented aliens’ nor ‘undocumented immigrants,’ nor ‘nondocumented citizens.’ When individuals have transgressed our Nation’s laws, they are not privileged to remain within our nation’s boundaries; nor are they entitled to the full panoply of rights and liberties, privileges and immunities that exist for the American citizen. Thus, those individuals, who enter this country illegally, are subject to prosecution and either confinement or deportation, as dictated by law and by the U.S. Constitution, and, further, such individuals rightfully merit public condemnation, not public approbation.

11) The sanctity of the individual American citizen is not to be denied. Morality proceeds from the idea that whatever is in the best interests of the individual generally overrides the interests of the multitude, the Collective. the ‘morally good’ is defined in terms of those actions that serve the best interests of the individual American citizen, so long as the interest obtained does not negatively impact the life, liberty, and property, of another individual. A person’s intention to do good or evil, as well as all consequences stemming from that intention, determine that which is morally good as opposed to that which is deemed morally evil.

12) the dictates of the U.S. Constitution, and the strictures of law must always be adhered to if this Nation is to be deemed truthfully to be a Nation that is governed by laws and not by men.

13) No person, regardless of station in life, or personal monetary wealth, is considered to be above the law, on the basis of that station in life, or on the basis of ones’ personal financial means.

14) Our Nation’s Constitution and its laws—statutes and body of case law—dictate a person’s rights, duties, and responsibilities in our nation.

15) No person or political body shall contrive/conspire to ignore our nation’s Constitution or system of laws, or the rights and liberties existent therein; nor shall any person or political body establish its own set of ad hoc rules to be applied whenever that person or that political body so wishes in order to accomplish either a personal or political end; nor shall any person or political body contrive or conspire to apply laws unlawfully to denigrate, or disparage another person, or to deny to a person such rights, liberties, and procedural due process to which that person is entitled; nor shall any person or political body create ad hoc laws or rules to do same.

16) The Nation’s history, traditions, and core values are sacred and sacrosanct. The Nation’s history, traditions, and core values are not to be abrogated, as they define our Nation. The Nation’s history, traditions, and core values create, together, this Nation’s identity, and the identity of its people.

17) Popular opinion does not, never did, and never will control or supersede the Nation’s Constitution or laws or the supremacy of the fundamental rights and liberties codified in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

18) Results are never more important than adherence to the Constitution and laws of the Land. If the goal to be achieved conflicts with the law as applied, then law must never give way to the goal desired. No political or social end to be achieved shall ever dictate when or if, or how the Constitution or the laws of the Land ought to be or might be suspended, constrained, or abrogated.

19) If the desired political or social end to be achieved conflicts with the Constitution or the Nation’s laws, it is the political or social end that must be forsaken, never the Constitution nor the Nation’s laws.

20) Thus, suspension or repudiation of the Nation’s Constitutional precepts and laws must never be and can never be justifiably or rightfully suspended in favor of achieving the political or social end. For, it is understood that the danger of suspension, containment or abrogation of the Constitution or laws to achieve a political or social end is detrimental to the preservation of a free Republic and a free people.

21) Thus, preservation of the Constitution and of the laws of the Land and of the Nation’s system of jurisprudence always outweighs the achievement of a particular political or social goal or end. The attainment or realization of any political or social goal, however seemingly critical to the well-being of this Nation or its people at a particular moment in time or necessitated by seemingly perceived changed circumstances, can never and must never be deemed more critical than strict application of the Nation’s Constitution and laws, that attainment or realization of a particular goal shall suffer cause to ignore, contain, constrain, or abrogate, whether for the particular moment or henceforth, forever.

22) Thus, the desire to achieve any political or social end can never justify the suspension or abrogation of the sacred precepts of the constitution and laws of United States.

WHERE DO AMERICANS FIND THEMSELVES AT THIS JUNCTURE, NOW THAT JUDGE KAVANAUGH HAS BEEN CONFIRMED AS AN ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT?

With Brett Kavanaugh now on the high Court, the Individualists’ vision for this Country now has a better chance to prevail in the decades ahead than the vision of the Collectivists. Had Hillary Clinton prevailed in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and thereupon nominated individuals to the high Court who view the Constitution of the United States as a “Living Document,” susceptible to massive judicial and legislative revision, the direction of this Country would have continued along the path created for it by the Bush and Clinton clans, and by Barack Obama. Americans would have seen the eventual loss of this Country’s independence and sovereignty, and, concomitantly, Americans would have seen the loss of the fundamental, unalienable rights guaranteed to them, as codified in the Nation’s Bill of Rights. The losses would have been drastic, and those losses would have been assured. Thankfully, a dire future for this Nation and its people is less likely to happen now, as the election of Trump has enabled the Nation to pivot back to the path laid out for us by the founders of the Nation. But, there is still much work ahead for the American people. We must remain ever vigilant. Be mindful of this fact: if, after the 2016 Midterm Elections, the Democrats—as a vehicle of the forces of Collectivism—gain majority control of the House, they can create serious obstacles to President Trump’s goals to bring this Nation back on track toward preserving the vision of this Nation as understood by this Nation’s founders.

Collectivists want their power back; they want to place their agenda back on track. After the 2016 midterm elections we will see whether Collectivists regain some of their lost power by retaking the House of Representatives. Those who espouse Individualism can prevent that. Americans will have to choose the kind of Country they want or whether they still want a Country at all.

The forces of Collectivism, as we have seen, are capable of planning and implementing the most obscene, insidious stratagems to frustrate the efforts of the Trump Administration and thereby frustrate the will of the American people. These Collectivists are ruthless, relentless, and seemingly impervious to defeat. They have unlimited stores of cash, along with extremely effective organizational skills. They are masters of propaganda. They control legions of agitators. They know how to whip the ill-informed among us into a frenetic, raging mob, urging them to coerce and intimidate law-abiding citizens, including Government officials and members of Congress. They are absolutely bent on getting their way. We must see to it that they don’t.

____________________________________________________________

*Note: to readers: This is a substantial revision of Part Three.

**After the fact, the Arbalest Quarrel came across a website, “Freedom Keys,” that does a good job in setting forth critical differences between the two mutually distinct and incompatible groups: Collectivists and Individualists. What the Arbalest Quarrel does, distinct from the creators of that website, is to take the key predicates of each group and draw the necessary inferences as to what the precepts and beliefs of each group mean and the end toward which the particular belief systems and basic axioms of these two distinct, divergent groups, point.

WHERE DO AMERICANS FIND THEMSELVES AT THIS JUNCTURE, NOW THAT JUDGE KAVANAUGH HAS BEEN CONFIRMED AS AN ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT?
With Brett Kavanaugh now on the high Court, the Individualists’ vision for this Country is now more likely to prevail in the decades ahead than is the vision of the Collectivists. Had Hillary Clinton prevailed in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and thereupon nominated individuals to the high Court who view the Constitution of the United States as a “Living Document,” susceptible to massive judicial and legislative revision, the direction of this Country would have continued along the path created for it by the Bush and Clinton clans, and by Barack Obama. Americans would have seen the eventual loss of this Country’s independence and sovereignty, and, concomitantly, Americans would have seen the loss of the fundamental, unalienable rights guaranteed to them, as codified in the Nation’s Bill of Rights. The losses would have been drastic, and those losses would have been assured. Thankfully, a dire future for this Nation and its people is less likely to happen now, as the election of Trump has enabled the Nation to pivot back to the path laid out for us by the founders of the Nation. But, there is still much work ahead for the American people. We must remain ever vigilant.

The forces of Collectivism, as we have seen, are capable of planning and implementing most obscene, insidious stratagems to frustrate the efforts of the Trump Administration and thereby frustrate the will of the American people. These Collectivists are ruthless, relentless, and seemingly impervious to defeat. They have unlimited stores of cash, along with extremely effective organizational skills. They are masters of propaganda. They control legions of agitators. They know how to whip the ill-informed among us into a frenetic, raging mob, urging them to coerce and intimidate law-abiding citizens, including Government officials and members of Congress. They are absolutely bent on getting their way. We must see to it that they don’t.


Crafty_Dog

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Pandemic officially over, how it changed America
« Reply #1073 on: May 05, 2023, 07:34:25 AM »
Not sure where to put this--  lots of graphs, so I post only the link.  Is this something you guys can see.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covid19-crisis-is-officially-over-everything-changed-605b31ae?mod=hp_lead_pos5

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Re: Pandemic officially over, how it changed America
« Reply #1074 on: May 05, 2023, 07:38:44 AM »
Not sure where to put this--  lots of graphs, so I post only the link.  Is this something you guys can see.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covid19-crisis-is-officially-over-everything-changed-605b31ae?mod=hp_lead_pos5

I can see I am required to subscribe.

Paywalled.

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1075 on: May 05, 2023, 09:12:40 AM »
Not sure how the formatting will work out here:
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END OF AN ERA
The Covid–19 Crisis is Officially Over.
Everything
changed.
The World Health Organization declared an end to the pandemic emergency. The reshaping of American life is among the lingering side effects.
By Stephanie StammFollow
 and Danny DoughertyFollow
Updated May 5, 2023 9:44 am ET

SHARE

TEXT
The alarms sounded in March 2020, and Americans cloistered at home, sheltering from a pandemic killing at times thousands a day. Many people free to work remotely left their big-city lives for suburbs and rural communities. Americans everywhere have settled into more homebound routines for meals and entertainment. Yet even with the deadly crisis fading, the U.S. has yet to recapture the level of happiness enjoyed before the virus SARS-CoV-2 transformed our world.

...where we live changed.
The flexibility of remote work allowed many people to flee coastal urban areas and settle in more-affordable rural and central parts of the U.S. Suburbs and smaller cities claim most of the growth.


Divisions of the U.S.

West North Central

East North Central

New

England

Mountain

Largest gain

Middle Atlantic

Largest loss

Pacific

South

Atlantic

West South

Central

East South

Central

Change in county populations from 2020 to 2022, by census division

City core of large metros

 

 

 

 

 

Suburban and outlying areas of large metros

Medium and small metros with populations < 1 million

 

 

 

 

 

Rural counties

6

%

5

The New York City metro area lost over 400,000 people

4

Overall

change

in region

3

2

1

0

Mountain

West

South

Central

South

Atlantic

–1

–2

East

South

Central

West

North

Central

New

England

East

North

Central

Pacific

–3

Middle

Atlantic

Note: Data for Connecticut not included due to recent boundary changes.

Source: WSJ analysis of Census Bureau data
...work changed.
The job market has shifted. Some industries, such as leisure, hospitality and healthcare, are pulling ahead. Retail and manufacturing are cooling.


Job openings by industry in February 2020 and March 2023

OPENINGS PER 100 JOBS

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Total nonfarm

2020

2023

Manufacturing

Retail

Transportation, warehousing and utilities

Professional and business services

Health care and social assistance

Leisure and hospitality

Government

Leisure and hospitality jobs have climbed to more than eight openings per 100 jobs

Note: Data are seasonally adjusted. The openings rate is total job openings as a percentage of employment plus openings at the end of the month.

Source: Labor Department
Americans are still working at home a lot. Offices are only about half as full as before the pandemic.


Office occupancy, 5-day rolling average

100%

90

Prepandemic rate

Week ending March 6

98%

80

70

Week ending

March 29

49%

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

March 2020

'21

'22

'23

Source: Kastle
...spending/finances changed.
Some pandemic habits are sticking. People continue to spend more on home, personal and recreational goods, such as sporting equipment, audio-visual gear and musical instruments.


Change in consumer spending from 4Q 2019

60

%

Recreational goods

40

Home furnishings

20

Clothing and footwear

Motor vehicles

0

Recreation services

–20

–40

2020

'21

'22

'23

Note: Seasonally adjusted

Source: Commerce Department
...eating changed.
Americans are grabbing more meals at fast-food restaurants and other quick-service spots. Fewer people are having restaurant meals.


Restaurant and food service industry food and beverage sales, 2019–’23

Total

Bars

and taverns

–10.6%

Full service

–9.2

Quick service*

1.9

*Includes fast-casual restaurants, cafeterias, buffets, snack bars and social caterers
Note: Adjusted for inflation
Source: National Restaurant Association
While nearly 90% of Americans shop for some groceries in stores, the dollar amount of online grocery shopping has quadrupled during the pandemic.


Monthly online sales for groceries by receiving method

$8.0

billion

Pickup

$3.5 billion

$1.9

billion

Delivery

3.2

Ship-to-home

1.3

2019*

’20

’21

’22

’23

*Figures from August of that year, used as a proxy for 2019
Note: Except for 2019, all figures from March of each year.

Source: Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey, 2019–’23.
...how we entertain ourselves changed.
People entertain themselves at home, too. The popularity of streaming services is finding a new level based on huge surges during the pandemic.


Net paid subscribers change*

0.6 million

2019

2.0

2020

2.5

2021

4.0

2022

-0.2

2023

*February of each year. Includes both new and converted (from trial) subscribers. Adds are when number of new subscribers is higher than cancels. Net losses are when cancels are higher than adds.
Note: Includes Apple TV+, Discovery+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, Showtime, Starz.

Source: Antenna
...school changed.
Test scores declined after children struggled with remote schooling.


Average reading scores and achievement levels

2022’s average score dropped five points since 2017

2022’s average score dropped seven points since 2017

BASIC

PROFICIENT

4th grade

’19

’17

BASIC

PROFICIENT

8th grade

200

210

220

230

240

250

260

270

280

’19

’17

Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress
...health changed.
Americans aren’t visiting the doctor quite as frequently as they did before the pandemic.


Adults with a visit to a doctor in the last 12 months



86

%

85

84

83

82

81

80

79

78

Q1 2019

'20

'21

'22

Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
But people make more remote telehealth appointments, the majority for behavioral health.


National telehealth visits

80 million

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Q1 2019

'20

'21

'22

Source: Trilliant Health
...our happiness changed.
Overall, Americans say they are less happy—some much less so.


Level of happiness of polled

CHANGE

FROM 2018–23

60%

Pretty happy

+0.2 pct. pts.

50

40

30

Not too happy

+17.5

20

10

Very happy

-19.6

2010

'12

'14

'16

'18

'21

'23

Source: WSJ/NORC poll of 1,019 adults, conducted on March 1-13, 2023; margin of error +/-4.1 pct. pts. Data prior to 2023 from the General Social Survey annual surveys of 2,000-2,500 adults; margins of error range from +/-2.2  pct. pts. to  +/- 3.1 pct. pts.
Brianna Abbott, Ben Chapman, Peter Grant, Heather Haddon, Jaewon Kang, Sarah Krouse, Chastity Pratt and Max Rust contributed to this article

Crafty_Dog

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Walter Russell Mead: Not Destined to Live in Quiet Times
« Reply #1076 on: May 16, 2023, 11:00:30 AM »

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/destined-live-quiet-times-progress-walter-russell-mead-via-meadia

You Are Not Destined to Live in Quiet Times
Humanity’s third major technological revolution is leading us into a future more promising and also more dangerous than any since the dawn of history. It’s coming faster than you think.
BY
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
MAY 07, 2023
Via Meadia
Walter Russell Mead analyzes the revolutionary changes upending American life in the hope of rekindling the American dream for Gen Z and beyond

The COVID pandemic and the rise of AI have something in common. Between them, they have upended one of the most consequential debates among American tech analysts, and largely refuted the claim that progress in America was coming to an end—that the Adams curve was flattening out as a Great Stagnation cooled the dynamism of American life.

The case for stagnation was a strong one. Current technologies, advocates warned, were providing diminishing returns, and productivity growth in American life was slowing. The regulatory burden on innovation in the United States inexorably grew. Compared with the optimism that accompanied earlier innovations like electricity, indoor plumbing, the internal combustion engine, antibiotics, refrigeration, and mass communications, Americans in the internet age seemed noticeably more risk averse and pessimistic about the future.

The stagnationists make some important points. But as my friend Tyler Cowen noted in his seminal 2011 book The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, stagnation was never likely to be more than a pause. By 2020, Tyler saw the pause coming to an end as advances in medicine, battery technology, computing, and distance-working made themselves felt.

The alternation between a sense of stagnation and one of dizzyingly rapid change reflects, I think, the complexity of human society’s progression up the Adams curve. As a hiker begins to climb a mountain, it becomes harder to see the summit, and harder still to see—as the trail winds through forests and takes you up onto ridges and down into valleys—whether you are in fact making any progress. But along the way, there will be moments when you get a clear view of the summit looming above you and the immense distances you have already climbed, and those doubts will be stilled.

The advent of AI and the COVID pandemic provided two such moments of clarity. The swift appearance and rapid development of practical AI applications on a mass scale has surprised and alarmed many people close to the industry. Geoffrey Hinton, widely credited with developing the intellectual foundation for modern AI, resigned from Google last week to warn about the dangers of an invention so disruptive that he regrets helping to develop it. Hinton’s warning follows a letter signed by some well-regarded tech analysts and industry leaders ranging from Steve Wozniak to Elon Musk cautioning that the unchecked development of AI could pose a threat to the stability or even the survival of civilization as we know it.


The pandemic also showed us how far we have come. When COVID hit, and a panicked population looked for ways to stay safe, Americans discovered something that made this pandemic different from all others: The development of both the hardware and software in the enormous invisible realm we vaguely refer to as “the internet” had reached the point where the majority of the productive activities of American society could be conducted by tens of millions of people without leaving their homes.

But the impact of internet-empowered work from home (WFH) went far beyond helping us get past COVID. Without anybody really noticing, and with some of the world’s most acute observers lamenting the end of progress, the technological basis for a total transformation of the American workplace, urban landscape, and even family had quietly taken shape offstage. The characteristic workplace of the Industrial Revolution, the large, centralized workspace to which white-collar workers commute like clockwork five days a week, is no longer an economic necessity. The megacity of the Industrial Revolution, with an economically dominant central business district surrounded by rings of suburbs, is no longer a natural and inevitable form dictated by the nature of work. The potential for mass WFH also points toward a profound change in the nature of the family of the industrial era—when, uniquely in human history, most children and most parents in nonelite families spent most of their waking hours living separately from each other.

Productivity statistics, which essentially divide the value of a worker’s output by the amount of time spent on the job, do not capture these realities. Time spent at a desk is one thing, but the time spent commuting matters if we want to think more holistically. According to Census Bureau figures, the average commuter in the New York metro area spent roughly 75 minutes per day or 375 minutes per week commuting in 2019, the last year before the pandemic. During the pandemic, those workers produced essentially the same work without the commute, an efficiency gain of 15.6%. Factor in the reduced costs (gas, tolls, depreciation on cars, and bus and train fares), and it’s clear that the WFH model offers significant increases in the efficiency of work.

The ultimate impact on social productivity is likely to be higher still. The vast and cumbersome transit systems that the pre-internet economies required are costly to build and maintain. They contribute significantly to both public and private costs. If future economic growth can be unshackled from the need to endlessly expand these systems, so that cities and states do not have to invest such eyewatering sums in adding new lanes to existing freeways or building and operating new transit systems, a lot of money will be freed up. Similarly, workers will have fewer costs even as they enjoy more free time.

The big waves of change we call economic revolutions don’t just increase the amount of economic activity in a particular society. They change the nature of economic activity in ways that can be difficult to capture or understand. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, many economists shared the view of the physiocrats that agricultural production was the true basis of society and that all others were parasites. For them, agricultural productivity was the only kind that mattered. Industry, finance, and the service sector were irrelevant and unproductive. For these economists, developments like the early steam engines and spinning jennies were meaningless epiphenomena.

That would change. The Industrial Revolution would force shifts in economic theory and promote massive changes in the way economists measured and valued economic activity. Similarly, today as the economy develops and both the means of production and the objects of production mutate into radically new forms, we will have to develop new ideas about how the economy works and new measurements to tell us how well we are doing. Progress in the industrial era involved, among other things, developing new and faster ways to move commuters to and from the workplace. Progress in the information age may mean finding ways to help them achieve greater productivity without leaving their homes.

For all the talk of stagnation, the Adams curve remains a basic fact of contemporary life, and our society can expect new waves of both social and economic change as the 21st century proceeds. The best way to understand how that reality shapes our political and cultural environment is to step back from the present and look at the long view—at the role that technological and social development has played in the story of our kind. The picture that emerges is both promising and troubling.

The story of our species is full of surprises and plot twists, but just about as far back as we can explore the fossil record, the human family seems to be preoccupied with two principal fields of activity.

First, from the time of our remote ancestors to the present day, human beings have never stopped developing new tools and thinking up new ways to harness natural objects and forces to achieve human ends. Second, we’ve never ceased weaving thicker and more intricate webs of society, language, and culture. (The third thing we keep doing, having fights with other groups of humans, is, I think, best seen as a byproduct of our web-weaving activity.)

Whether measured by social or technical development, we’ve come a long way. Our culture and our technology are both unrecognizably complex compared to the achievements of our forebears. Our ancestors chipped flints on the savannah; today our telescopes scour remote galaxies for signs of the origins of the universe. We once lived in small family units and survived on what we hunted and gathered. Today we build vast cities and feast on exotic foods imported from all over the world.

Materialists like Karl Marx would say that technological progress drives cultural development. Idealists will tell you that it’s the culture and above all the ideas that drive events. To understand the arguments, think of the piano. Materialistically inclined musicologists argue that progress in the construction of new and more sonorous pianos allowed Ludwig van Beethoven to develop increasingly complex music. Their colleagues of a more idealistic or romantic bent would maintain that the unceasing demands by Beethoven and his contemporaries for better pianos to play the music they heard in their heads drove piano manufacturers to build instruments that kept the customers happy.

These chicken and egg controversies are hard to settle, but for my part, I’ve always thought Aristotle had the right approach. His definition of human beings as political animals points us to an understanding of human nature that integrates the “spiritual” and “material” elements of our lives into a seamless whole. As animals, we are grounded in the material world, but it is also part of our nature to engage with the world of abstractions and cultural meaning that go into our common existence. We are amphibians, intellectual and spiritual beings who spontaneously and naturally engage in logical reasoning, aesthetic creation, and moral discernment; and we are physical beings who live and act in the material world from which we draw our sustenance.

Whether you go with the materialists, the idealists, or us incarnationists, the outlines of the story are the same. As far back into the distant past as we can peer, human beings have been developing tools and techniques to impress their will on the natural environment, and they’ve been interacting with each other to create an ever-thicker web of social interaction and cultural meaning.

This may seem tediously obvious, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the decades, it’s the importance of interrogating the obvious. What could be more obvious and even humdrum than an apple falling from a tree? Many of the great discoveries and achievements come about because a determined person grabs hold of some apparently obvious phenomenon, demands to understand it and, like Jacob wrestling with the angel, says “I will not let you go until you bless me.”

There are three admittedly obvious things about the long story of human progress that I find indispensable when it comes to making sense of our times. The first is that while technological change and social and cultural change go hand in hand, they do not always move in the same direction or at the same pace—a fact that is particularly important when the pace of change is extremely rapid.

Living as we do in a time of rapid technological and social change, the gap between the world our institutions and cultural values took shape in and the conditions we live in today means that many of our most important institutions do not work very well. It is as if we were trying to run the software of the 2020s on computer hardware and operating systems from the 1990s.

Our political parties and institutions took shape long before the internet and social media existed. Our government bureaucracies, our schools, and our legal system were all built for conditions that no longer exist. Many of our labor market policies assume that people will work for one employer for most of their working lives.

Unfortunately, this is not just a matter of institutional hardware. Many of our political ideas and ideological assumptions also reflect the conditions of an earlier era. If society’s operating system is running on the equivalent of a long-outdated version of Windows, that makes real reform difficult to imagine, and harder still to carry out.

The bad news is that this creates a pervasive and self-reinforcing sense of alienation and frustration as people interact with many different institutions that are not fit for the purpose. The good news is that thinking clearly about these gaps and their causes can help us develop a reform agenda that can substantially improve the way America works—and those changes, because they make our institutions more efficient as well as more effective, will often save money rather than require greater spending.

It looks as if we are entering an age of permanent revolution, in which radical technological and social changes cascade across the world largely nonstop.



https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/destined-live-quiet-times-progress-walter-russell-mead-via-meadia
The second feature of the story of human progress that matters today is that we happen to be caught up in one of the three great waves of change that most historians dignify with capital letters and associate with revolutions. The Neolithic, Industrial, and Information Revolutions all mark major milestones in the human story. The reality that we are now living through one of them is a fundamental feature of our time and one of the chief causes behind many of the problems and controversies we face.

Revolution is one of the most overused words in the political lexicon, but no lesser word adequately describes the scale, disruptiveness, and consequences of these three explosive events in the human story. The Neolithic Revolution, as the wave of changes connected to the development of settled agriculture is often called, was much more than a revolution in the ways people fed themselves. It was, literally, the dawn of history, as the first writing systems developed to handle the greater needs for permanent recordkeeping and commercial transaction under the new conditions. Those systems did not just enable the rise of bureaucracies and mercantile trade. Oral traditions were written down, forming the basis of organized religion. Scientific enquiries and philosophical debates could transcend the limits of space and time, as scholars could read the words of their predecessors.

The Neolithic Revolution was a time of explosive social change. The rise of cities and the elaborate political structures needed to govern them are just some of the consequences of the shift. Class systems developed along with increased specialization of labor as the relatively homogenous communities of previous eras gave way to a world of kings, nobles, priests, merchants, artisans, peasants, and slaves. Armies with professional soldiers appeared for the first time, along with wars of conquest.

The consequences of the Industrial Revolution were similarly far-reaching. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, cavalry officers still charged across battlefields sword in hand. The last great war of the industrial era concluded with the detonation of nuclear bombs. From the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to the rise of Marxism and the Russian and Chinese revolutions, the intellectual and political movements of the last 250 years have transformed the face of the world and led humanity on a series of adventures both magnificent and tragic.

The development of railroads, automobiles, and airplanes introduced changes in human culture and civilization that we still struggle to process. Unprecedented developments in mining, industry, and methods of energy generation and transmission have covered the Earth with the works of mankind. Urbanization, the rise of the industrial working class, the growth of nationalism, the development of mass public education, the cultural impact of mass entertainments like Hollywood movies: Each of these changes emerged from the all-conquering impact of the Industrial Revolution.

These are still early days, but the Information Revolution seems fated to be more dramatic still. A cascade of interlocking, interrelated social and technological change is driving global upheaval at an unprecedented speed. Before its work is done, the Information Revolution is likely to drive social, political, cultural, economic, and geopolitical transformations more sweeping and profound than anything the Industrial Revolution produced.

This is both a wonderful and a terrifying thing. On the one hand, humanity is becoming more productive and affluent than ever before. Already the average person with a cellphone has faster access to more information than anybody in the history of the world. New methods of research incorporating artificial intelligence have already accelerated the development of new treatments for disease, and the promise of these and similar technologies is only beginning to be fulfilled.

But that is not the whole story. New technologies enable government and corporate snooping on a scale that would have astounded (and delighted) Josef Stalin. Manufacturing and clerical jobs have been automated out of existence or outsourced to poor countries at rates that match the collapse of family farming in the 19th and 20th centuries. IT-enabled weapons and cyberattacks could make wars even deadlier and harder to avoid. Global and national financial systems, experiencing unprecedented rates of change and development as AI and other new technologies enable financial markets to achieve levels of complexity and velocity that the unaided human mind cannot comprehend, could experience devastating crises costing trillions of dollars and upending millions of lives.

Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution continues across much of the world. Factories are still springing up in rice paddies across Asia; the first textile mills are popping up in some African countries. The massive migration to the cities across much of Africa and Asia continues even as the disruptions of the Information Revolution reverberate around the globe. The children of illiterate herdsmen scan social media on their cellphones. The world has never seen anything like this concatenation of explosive transformations, and the world that emerges from this era will be like nothing humanity has ever seen or dreamed.

This brings us to another feature of the ancient story of human progress that matters especially in our era: the tendency of human development to accelerate and intensify over time.

For thousands of years, the pace of humanity’s growing technological prowess and social complexity was almost unnoticeable over an individual lifespan. Archeologists can trace the spread of new techniques for chipping flints and making tools through prehistoric human society; historians and archeologists can work together to understand the spread of new metalworking techniques in the Bronze and Iron ages. But change was slow, and many people around the world never saw a tool or had an idea that would not have been familiar to their grandparents. And even when change happened, it was usually seen as an exceptional development, a stone falling into a pool that would, after the ripples died down, resume its previous and natural calm.

But over the last 700 years, the rate of human progress began perceptibly to pick up steam. Starting in Western Europe, the rate of technological and social change accelerated as a new kind of dynamism made itself felt. Windmills, double-entry bookkeeping, cannons, printing presses: World-changing inventions poured forth at an unprecedented rate.

This acceleration changed the way that history works. The Neolithic Revolution, associated with settled agriculture and the invention of writing, came thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was only about two centuries old when the Information Revolution started to hit late in the 20th century. Increasingly, especially with advances in genetics and the science of the brain coming so quickly, it looks as if we are entering an age of permanent revolution in which radical technological and social changes cascade across the world largely nonstop. For people in our time, rapid and accelerating change is the norm; we hardly know anymore what stability feels like.

Much of the intellectual history of the last two centuries revolves around the efforts of great thinkers to wrap their heads around the Great Acceleration. The family of intellectual and political movements generally known as the Enlightenment grew out of the recognition of thinkers ranging from Voltaire to Goethe that something fundamental in the human condition had changed. Philosophers like Kant and Hegel were not just, like many of their predecessors, interested in unraveling the nature of existence. They found themselves drawn to the study of change. They were aware that the social and technological basis of European society was changing from decade to decade and even year to year. They wanted to understand what this meant, why it was happening, and what it portended for the future.

A heightened awareness of human progress and its impact on events led to the integration of philosophy and politics. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it.” Those words inscribed on Karl Marx’s tomb highlight the new sense of mission that impelled generations of thinkers to turn their understanding of the historical process into a concrete political program. Liberals and socialists developed competing programs to accelerate the process of progress and share its benefits more widely based on their understanding of the technological and sociological forces at work.

These debates still echo in politics today, but many 21st-century thinkers and activists have increasingly moved from a fascination with the fact of change to an alarmed analysis of the effects of its relentlessly accelerating rate. Change itself is old hat for us today. In 18th-century Europe, reflective people understood that the rate of historical change was significantly greater than in past times, and they were conscious of ongoing progress in technology and society as the unavoidable background of their own lives. In the 21st century, we don’t just feel the presence of progress. We feel the acceleration of progress as the Information Revolution unfolds. It is the consequences of that acceleration—both as we experience it today and as we extrapolate it into the future—that engage our attention and, increasingly, our concern.

Apocalypse used to be a religious, even a mythological concept. But in our time, it is becoming a political possibility.



https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/destined-live-quiet-times-progress-walter-russell-mead-via-meadia
Progress in small, measured doses is an exhilarating and energizing thing. But can there be too much of it? Can an individual or a society overdose on progress? Can the rate of social, economic, cultural, and technological change drive a particular society into a political, psychological, and moral spiral of crisis and dysfunction?

Judging from the history of the Industrial Revolution, the answer is yes. The Russian Revolution and the Nazi rise to power are only two examples of societies overwhelmed by the social and political stresses that rapid modernization brought. The Industrial Revolution and the international conflicts that accompanied it shook the foundations of social order around the world and produced a uniquely stressful international situation. Tested to the breaking point by the combination of the domestic and international consequences of the Industrial Revolution, Germany fell into one kind of abyss, Russia into another.

They were not alone. The multiethnic, multicultural states that characterized much of 18th- and 19th-century Europe disappeared in orgies of bloodletting as the Hapsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires dissolved. The collapse of Iran into the dismal fanaticism of the Islamic Republic, the serial disasters of Maoist China, genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and beyond: Each of these tragedies has its own distinct set of causes and consequences, but without the domestic and global upheavals associated with the Industrial Revolution and its numerous transformations of the human arena, it’s unlikely that any of these tragedies would have occurred.

The Anglo-American world was spared the worst of these upheavals, and after the horrors of World War II much of Western Europe and Japan seemed to have made their peace with the Industrial Revolution. During the long Cold War era, and with even more confidence after the fall of the Soviet Union, most people in these societies assumed that the political stability and social peace they had finally managed to build was a lasting and permanent achievement.

But is it? What if the Information Revolution, as seems likely, arrives faster, propagates more widely, hits harder, and digs deeper than the Industrial Revolution ever did?

As the rate of change increases globally, even the nimblest and most adaptable societies must struggle to adjust. The social and political unrest and dissatisfaction in the United States, leading some to fear an irretrievable breakdown in our political system, reflects America’s difficulties in coming to terms with the latest wave of tech-driven social and economic change.

America’s difficulties are not unique. Both democratic and authoritarian political systems around the world are facing new strains under the pressure of economic disruption, cultural conflict, and the corrosive impacts of social media.

The sense is widespread today, among elites as well as among the public at large, that the dogs of technological and economic change have slipped the leash: that things are happening to us faster than we can understand, much less control. “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind,” as Emerson wrote in the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution. Today, as I’ve written before, many feel that we don’t surf the web as much as the web surfs us.

Faced with the evident consequences of an accelerating rate of progress on an already-frayed social fabric, both intellectuals and activists have, since the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, looked for ways to slow, stop, or reverse the incoming tide. It didn’t work for King Canute, and it didn’t work for the 19th-century Luddites or the 20th-century Agrarians. Genies are not easily persuaded to return to their bottles. Progress is not going away, and change is not going to slow because humanity would like a mental health break.

The answer to the perils of progress cannot be less progress. As we’ve seen, the processes of technological and social development that we call progress are grounded in human nature itself. William Blake might have moaned about the “dark Satanic mills” overspreading the beautiful English countryside as the Industrial Revolution lurched into existence, but those mills could no more be stopped from proliferating than the sun can be stopped from rising.

Nor should those mills have been stopped. For all the evils of the Industrial Revolution, and for all the toxic social and environmental consequences we have inherited from it, both the material and social conditions of human life substantially improved because of it. Billions of people moved from illiteracy to fuller participation in the riches of human knowledge, from subordination to fuller participation in political and cultural life, from subsistence to affluence and from bondage to freedom. To cite a much higher authority, the blind saw, the deaf heard, the lame walked, and the poor had good news shared with them.

The Industrial Revolution was both soaring triumph and searing tragedy, glorious cultural and scientific achievement and unspeakable cruelty and crime. Far from being unique to that epoch, the mix of great good and great evil is what we see wherever we look in the long annals of our kind. The rise of the Roman Empire, the allied victory in World War II, the decolonization of Africa, and the history of the United States of America all combine these features of extraordinary accomplishment and shocking horror.

That is how we human beings roll. Our story of progress is not a made-for-children television special. History is rated X, not G, crammed to the bursting point with violence, injustice, foul language, nudity, and smoking. We’ve sailed on bloody seas to get to where we are, and the outlook is for more of the same. Trigger warnings should be posted in every delivery room. The world is not a safe space, and the arc of history is nobody’s poodle.

The way to cope with the onrushing waves of change and upheaval at home and abroad is to use the unprecedented financial, technological, cultural, and intellectual resources that progress creates to address the wrenchingly urgent and stupefyingly complex problems it inevitably brings. As a political movement the Luddites made nothing better for anyone. It was the wealth that the Industrial Revolution created, and the new forms of social and political organization that accompanied it, that allowed reformers to make the mills less dark and satanic over time.

If we are to surf the waves of change now rolling toward us instead of being overwhelmed by them, it will be because we have the wit, the wisdom, and the maturity to keep our psychological balance as we learn to bring the unprecedented resources of the Information Revolution effectively to bear on the unique demands of our time.

That would be a difficult task if the only challenge we faced came from the accelerating pace of change that defines our era. But there is one other complexity to consider. As the pace of change surges at an ever-increasing rate, the prospect of a fundamental change in the conditions of human existence looms larger from year to year. Will AI supersede humanity, leaving us inferior to the machines we have made? Will we upload our consciousness into cyberspace, perhaps downloading again into cloned designer bodies? Will we blow ourselves up in a nuclear holocaust or destroy ourselves in a series of climate catastrophes?

Apocalypse used to be a religious, even a mythological concept. But in our time, it is becoming a political possibility. The Silicon Valley tech lords speak of the Singularity even as some of them invest billions in longevity and consciousness research they hope will make them immortal. Climate activists warn of an imminent catastrophe even as the great powers rearm.

Progress has done many things for us, and few of us would exchange the dentistry, for example, of our time with that of even the recent past. But progress turns out to be paradoxical. Human ingenuity has made us much safer from natural calamities. We can treat many diseases, predict storms, build dams both to prevent floods and to save water against drought, and many other fine things. Many fewer of us starve than in former times, and billions of us today enjoy better living conditions than our forebears dreamed possible.

Yet if we are safer from most natural catastrophes, we are more vulnerable than ever to human-caused ones. Not only do we all live under the shadow of nuclear weapons and artificial general intelligence. We also live under the threat of financial catastrophe from the unanticipated convulsions of a banking system that few of us, and perhaps none of us, really understand. The impact of human industrial and agricultural activity on the natural environment threatens our future whether from climate change globally or the effects of air pollution in our hometowns. The social anomie characteristic of a decadent Blue Model society combined with the availability of cheap drugs contributes to more than 100,000 premature deaths in the United States each year. The 20th century saw stunning advances in medicine that saved millions of lives; millions more were lost in the fierce and unrelenting wars and repressions of that terrible time.

While the ever-accelerating and ascending wave of human progress has brought us to peaks of achievement and affluence that our ancestors could scarcely imagine, it has both failed to keep us safe from the most dangerous predators of all and—to the degree that the rate of progress has become a major force of destabilization—progress itself may now be the greatest source of danger humans face.

As I wrote in my last essay, we live in a singular century, and it is impossible to grasp either the psychology or the politics of our time without considering how this new reality affects a world that is already laboring under unprecedented stress.

Walter Russell Mead is the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College, and the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal.

« Last Edit: May 21, 2023, 01:32:24 PM by Crafty_Dog »

ccp

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Ronald Reagan : campaign speech for Barry Goldwater
« Reply #1077 on: May 21, 2023, 12:10:00 PM »
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_for_Choosing

when one looks at the state of affairs today
this quote has never been more apropo:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

indeed the threats he spoke of in '64 are alive well and many more times today than then .

G M

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Re: Ronald Reagan : campaign speech for Barry Goldwater
« Reply #1078 on: May 21, 2023, 12:51:31 PM »
I will not have any sunset years in a totalitarian society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_for_Choosing

when one looks at the state of affairs today
this quote has never been more apropo:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

indeed the threats he spoke of in '64 are alive well and many more times today than then .

G M

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G M

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Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1081 on: May 22, 2023, 06:51:50 AM »
I would submit that the American Revolution succeeded in great part because there was a coherent articulation by our Founding Fathers of what we now call the American Creed around which the American people could rally.

I would submit that plenty of Americans are already awake to the dangers around us, but a coherent vision as to what to offer in response is  , , , seriously underdeveloped.   This forum seeks develop and articulate such a vision.

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1083 on: June 17, 2023, 07:27:35 PM »
I would submit that the American Revolution succeeded in great part because there was a coherent articulation by our Founding Fathers of what we now call the American Creed around which the American people could rally.

I would submit that plenty of Americans are already awake to the dangers around us, but a coherent vision as to what to offer in response is  , , , seriously underdeveloped.   This forum seeks develop and articulate such a vision.

Along those lines, the task at hand, I believe, is to identify all the issues on our side that are or could be 60-40, 70-30 and 80-20 issues, not focus the fight on 50-50 issues or worse. 

Newt did that. Reagan did that.

We are not winning the 50-50 elections right now with all the funny business going on - so stop trying to fight on a 50-50 playing field.

Along those lines, stop letting them frame the issues. It's time to go on offense

Someone tell me an issue we can win 60-40 that involves attacking or demotivating our own side.  These supermajority issues are designed to unify, not divide.

You have to win elections to make any difference.

Top ten examples of 60-40 or better issues: enforce the border, end inflation, general prosperity, fight crime, get fentanyl off the street, call boys boys, end human trafficking, election integrity, power the grid, legalize cars and gas stations, makes food affordable, and so on.

Coincidentally, didn't DeSanrtis just win a swing state 60-40?

G M

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1084 on: June 17, 2023, 07:45:01 PM »
I would submit that the American Revolution succeeded in great part because there was a coherent articulation by our Founding Fathers of what we now call the American Creed around which the American people could rally.

I would submit that plenty of Americans are already awake to the dangers around us, but a coherent vision as to what to offer in response is  , , , seriously underdeveloped.   This forum seeks develop and articulate such a vision.

Along those lines, the task at hand, I believe, is to identify all the issues on our side that are or could be 60-40, 70-30 and 80-20 issues, not focus the fight on 50-50 issues or worse. 

Newt did that. Reagan did that.

We are not winning the 50-50 elections right now with all the funny business going on - so stop trying to fight on a 50-50 playing field.

Along those lines, stop letting them frame the issues. It's time to go on offense

Someone tell me an issue we can win 60-40 that involves attacking or demotivating our own side.  These supermajority issues are designed to unify, not divide.

You have to win elections to make any difference.

Top ten examples of 60-40 or better issues: enforce the border, end inflation, general prosperity, fight crime, get fentanyl off the street, call boys boys, end human trafficking, election integrity, power the grid, legalize cars and gas stations, makes food affordable, and so on.

Coincidentally, didn't DeSanrtis just win a swing state 60-40?

Yes, strangely enough, right after aggressive investigation and prosecution of vote fraud.

Obviously just a coincidence!

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/26/desantis-voter-fraud-defendants-florida-00053788

DougMacG

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1085 on: June 18, 2023, 08:10:11 AM »
The chicken or the egg?  The ability to conduct "aggressive investigation and prosecution of vote fraud" came out of (drum roll) winning an election.  By a hair the first time, only with Trump's support, he said, (unified party), not with the back biting he's doing now.

But winning a 60-40 election (in a recently 50-50 environment) comes from governing well, hiring well, leading a team and getting popular things done for the people.

Prosecuting 20 people sends a message to thousands who might otherwise think about doing that next time.  Same thing could happen with rank and file FBI agents. Fake a FISA warrant for your boss, and do hard time.  Think about that. Being a whistleblower might pay better.

"Deep state" has not shown they can win an otherwise landslide election against them. Maybe in Venezuela, 2004. Not here, yet.

'Right or wrong direction' polling is now 3-1 against, with Democrats clearly in charge.  Hand in hand with that is inflation and the managing of the economy, HUGE margin against the Dems. On the other side of that coin is this, when has the table ever been set better for our side - to advance the American Creed? 

The hyped promises of socialism, modern monetary theory, critical race theory, gender 'affirmation', etc. are all hogwash, for anyone to see, no matter your race, religion, orientation or income level..

Inflation in particular offers three directional choices. 1. Ignore it and hope it will go away (while you keep doing the things that are causing it).  2. Root canal budget constraints (that alone are never enough).  3. Growth economics (cf Reagan 1983, Clinton-Gingrich 1997).  What a HUGE opportunity for a leader to step forward and win with OPTIMISM!  Right while young voters are wondering what course forward is the alternative to Bidenomics, someone with the national podium could step up and tell them - what they learned in school is wrong. We can't have an economy of all lawyers, bureaucrats and distributionists. Someone has to produce something, and from a public policy point of view, that comes from easing the roadblocks to doing that.
 
Even the fighting of climate change requires prosperity to move forward, and even the leftists will admit that when pressed on the costs of their ideas.

What a truly insane time to give up (IMHO).
« Last Edit: June 18, 2023, 08:30:33 AM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1086 on: June 18, 2023, 08:28:57 AM »
Well said.

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1087 on: June 18, 2023, 09:03:41 AM »
The chicken or the egg?  The ability to conduct "aggressive investigation and prosecution of vote fraud" came out of (drum roll) winning an election.  By a hair the first time, only with Trump's support, he said, (unified party), not with the back biting he's doing now.

But winning a 60-40 election (in a recently 50-50 environment) comes from governing well, hiring well, leading a team and getting popular things done for the people.

**How many republicans do this?**


Prosecuting 20 people sends a message to thousands who might otherwise think about doing that next time.  Same thing could happen with rank and file FBI agents. Fake a FISA warrant for your boss, and do hard time.  Think about that. Being a whistleblower might pay better.

**Yes. Let's see a list of all the deep state members currently being prosecuted. Is Lois Lerner doing time? Eric Holder? Let me know when Ilhan Omar get her fraudulent citizenship stripped and she is deported. Those raids on Epstein's client should start any day now...**


"Deep state" has not shown they can win an otherwise landslide election against them. Maybe in Venezuela, 2004. Not here, yet.

**2020 was a landslide election, unless you think Biden actually got 81 million votes. The most popular president in American history!**

'Right or wrong direction' polling is now 3-1 against, with Democrats clearly in charge.  Hand in hand with that is inflation and the managing of the economy, HUGE margin against the Dems. On the other side of that coin is this, when has the table ever been set better for our side - to advance the American Creed? 

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3609791-record-percentage-says-us-headed-in-wrong-direction-nbc-poll/

Red wave!!!

The hyped promises of socialism, modern monetary theory, critical race theory, gender 'affirmation', etc. are all hogwash, for anyone to see, no matter your race, religion, orientation or income level..

Inflation in particular offers three directional choices. 1. Ignore it and hope it will go away (while you keep doing the things that are causing it).  2. Root canal budget constraints (that alone are never enough).  3. Growth economics (cf Reagan 1983, Clinton-Gingrich 1997).  What a HUGE opportunity for a leader to step forward and win with OPTIMISM!  Right while young voters are wondering what course forward is the alternative to Bidenomics, someone with the national podium could step up and tell them - what they learned in school is wrong. We can't have an economy of all lawyers, bureaucrats and distributionists. Someone has to produce something, and from a public policy point of view, that comes from easing the roadblocks to doing that.
 
Even the fighting of climate change requires prosperity to move forward, and even the leftists will admit that when pressed on the costs of their ideas.

What a truly insane time to give up (IMHO).

How many of your lefty friends are ready to vote R?

Crafty_Dog

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1088 on: June 18, 2023, 09:36:50 AM »
It is the independents that we need to get.

I would add that IMHO that six week cut-offs for abortion loses us a lot of votes.  I fear this will hurt DeSantis a lot.

G M

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Re: The Way Forward for the American Creed
« Reply #1089 on: June 18, 2023, 09:57:02 AM »
It is the independents that we need to get.

I would add that IMHO that six week cut-offs for abortion loses us a lot of votes.  I fear this will hurt DeSantis a lot.

 :roll: OY f'ing Vey!

You are NOT voting your way out of this anymore than the Lakota were going to Ghost Dance the massive herds of Bison back into existence.

At some point, this will sink in.

The one true branch of government IS NOT GOING TO VOLUNTARILY GIVE UP POWER EVER!

Remember when the American people voted for white genocide, just like they did in europe?

NO?

Because NO ONE did.

Yet it is happening.

What's the current polling supporting letting Multidrug Resistant TB infected illegal aliens into public schools with independent voters?

How much support among registered dems for allowing PLA Spec Ops troops to be imported into the US?

This is the Fire Hydrant of Normalcy Bias.

 :roll:



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marist poll FWIW
« Reply #1090 on: June 18, 2023, 10:29:58 AM »
"I would add that IMHO that six week cut-offs for abortion loses us a lot of votes.  I fear this will hurt DeSantis a lot."

Agreed!

of course this is LEFT wing poll but
I can believe the numbers .   Look the independents -

https://maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/the-trump-indictment/

real clear politics

this is bad

trump > biden by 7 points
Desantis > biden by 1

Magas will run with this.
DeSants needs to start appealing to independents in my view

not just appeal to Conservatives - he needs to prove he has best chance of winning in general .

I still don't believe the Dem candidate will be biden - no way

it could be clodoucher whitmire or newsless
harris butti rfkj

it will not be biden
ESPECIALLY WITH NUMBERS LIKE THESE




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What now for Americans without a country?
« Reply #1091 on: June 20, 2023, 05:46:54 AM »
What Now for the Men and Women Without a Country?
Roger L. Simon
June 14, 2023Updated: June 19, 2023

Commentary

I woke up this morning feeling as if I were a man without a country.

The place where I was born no longer existed.

It’s been that way for some time but now is approaching the point of no return.

I imagine that many others, millions, are feeling that way now that Donald Trump has been indicted for a second time, with a third very much in the wings.

It’s not that I love Trump so much. I respect what he has done but on occasion have cringed. He’s human, like the rest of us.

It’s just that the actions against him are so beyond rationality, so built on rage, conscious and unconscious, that they have obliterated the most noble governmental experiment in human history—the United States of America.

My friend Tucker Carlson puts the blame on Trump’s comments about the Iraq War. The 45th president had the temerity to say it was a mistake, that it “destabilized” the Middle East and created more problems (deaths) than it solved.

Those remarks threatened the establishment, dependent on what we used to call the military–industrial complex, to a degree they could no longer countenance him.

Partly.

But I don’t think that was enough to engender a reaction to Trump that’s so excessive that even the late, lamented Fox News is running a chyron as direct as “Wannabe Dictator Speaks at the White House After Having His Political Rival Arrested.”

And in any case, Trump was always somewhat inconsistent in his reactions to the Iraq conflagration.

I think the problem runs deeper than merely a misbegotten war. The potential for reelection of the 45th president threatens everything about the “progressivism” that has dominated our politics since Woodrow Wilson was in office, with only the relatively short interregnum of Ronald Reagan’s terms.

The unelected deep state has become increasingly entrenched to the extent that it controls virtually every aspect of our lives and employs who knows how many people not only inside the Beltway but also in all 50 states.

We now live in a society that’s more socialistic, astonishingly, than Western Europe, where the metastasizing transgender epidemic, at least, is looked upon askance. They think we’ve gone crazy on gender dysphoria—and we have. For them, this iteration of Marxism is finally too much.

As recently as a few years ago, all this was unimaginable.

COVID-19 cemented the situation.

So it’s more than just the Iraq War. It’s, in a word, everything.

What then do we men and women without a country do?

In a June 13 op-ed, the New York Post’s estimable Michael Goodwin wrote:

“Watching the Tuesday circus in Miami and listening to media poohbah pronouncements about the gravity of the moment, I recalled a conversation with a friend about the indictment of Donald Trump.

“He repeated a phrase he had heard recently: ‘We’re not voting our way out of this.’

“‘This,’ of course, is a reference to the great divide tearing America apart, and Exhibit A is a Democratic president’s willingness to use the Department of Justice as a weapon against his leading Republican rival.”

Of course, we should try to “vote our way out of this,” but what if that friend of Goodwin’s is correct? What if things are too far gone, the system too corrupt, for that to work?

The choices are grim.

In the old days—during the Vietnam War—we knew many who fled to Canada. Nothing could seem more ridiculous now.

If I were looking for a safe haven these days, I would choose Eastern Europe, where the agony of life under communism is well known to the populace and their governments act accordingly. Few of us, however, speak Estonian, and many of us are too old to learn.

Moreover, everyone, Eastern Europe included, is dependent on us. As we go, so goes the planet. A future somewhere between communist China and the World Economic Forum (WEF) will be the fate of all humans.

Personal agency will have been the lifestyle of some ancient civilization.

In my interviews with Vivek Ramaswamy, the presidential candidate has spoken of the sacrifices we will have to make to decouple from communist China.

Difficult as that is, we will have to decouple from more than that. The sacrifices will be even greater.

Every patriotic citizen must put his or her personal ambitions aside now—or at the very least push them far to the rear—and focus their efforts on bringing back our constitutional republic.

The good news—in fact, the great news—is that in doing this, you will become happier perhaps than you have ever been.

You will be living an authentic life.

We can rewrite WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab’s “You will have nothing, and you will be happy” as “You will have yourself, and you will be happy.”

Go for it.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Jordan Peterson
« Reply #1092 on: June 28, 2023, 03:35:33 PM »

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George Friedman on Labor Day
« Reply #1094 on: September 04, 2023, 10:36:38 AM »
September 4, 2023
View On Website
Open as PDF

    
The Genius of Labor Day
By: George Friedman
Editor's note: To mark the Labor Day holiday, we are republishing this article, originally released in 2020.

Labor Day became an American Federal Holiday in 1894. Most other countries celebrate Labor on May 1. That date had been a pagan celebration, but in the late 19th century, European socialists adopted it as the annual holiday devoted to labor with marches and riots.

Industrialization brought labor problems to the United States with some nasty consequences. American workers wanted more money, better working conditions and recognition. Money and better conditions were hard to give. So labor suggested a holiday, and management and Congress was enthused. A holiday not built around an armed uprising was just the thing. But May 1st was a reminder of everything they wanted the workers not to think about.

So, the first Monday in September was chosen. Being the last weekend before children returned to school, it created a three-day, family oriented holiday. Rather than marching under the red flag, families headed to the beach or lake or wherever for a final summer outing. The vendors at these places thought it was a delightful idea. And so, Labor Day became not a day to plan revolutions but a time to kick back and have a beer, and for the vacation industry to have one last summer blow-off.

Think about it. The threat was a European style revolution. The solution was a holiday, one the kids wouldn't let the workers ignore. Those making money out of summer got a three-day weekend to peddle their wares. The workers were recognized for being workers, and at least that beef was taken care of. And some of the Christian churches who were not happy with a pagan holiday being Labor Day were also appeased.

To get a sense of the difference between the U.S. and Europe when facing political and economic chaos, the American solution was to turn a revolution into a marketable event, keep the churches quiet, and let the kids call off the union meeting.

Happy Labor Day, and think about its pure genius.

Crafty_Dog

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The Founding Fathers and Red Caesar
« Reply #1095 on: October 27, 2023, 04:53:08 PM »
https://americanmind.org/salvo/founding-fathers-and-red-caesar/?utm_campaign=American%20Mind%20Email%20Warm%20Up&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=280081211&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--Yg2mkXnw0x9y_3NYqPEt7_y_Gf_L7Rb0F-i7QAqijDq2IOVQand34oz2A6uoonUxFNin6D0_GF0DxLhaqDuFFfIJH3Q&utm_content=280081211&utm_source=hs_email&fbclid=IwAR0QEvdKXMwSsg3oUWwJUa22Dh5phT8vZ5cYSjFX3dIO06OSUiUpR36qsl8

Those who speak plainly about our regime’s decay are not the ones responsible for it.
If three things in life are inevitable, they are death, taxes, and bad-faith hit pieces against the Claremont Institute. The last of those things (well, maybe the others, too) seems to be occurring much more frequently nowadays.

The most recent screed from The Guardian’s Jason Wilson is a panicked warning about growing discussion on the Right of a “Red Caesar”—an extralegal ruler who, judging that the oligarchic ruling class has forfeited its legitimacy as a representative government, will take advantage of the chaos to impose order from the Right through autocratic means. It opens by quoting Hillsdale College professor Kevin Slack, who reports in his latest book that the “New Right now often discusses a Red Caesar, by which it means a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people.” (In the interest of full disclosure, I am an alumnus of the Claremont Institute’s Publius fellowship program and took several of Dr. Slack’s classes as a graduate student at Hillsdale College.)

But Slack did not invent the term “Red Caesar”—that was essayist and former Trump Administration official Michael Anton, who weighed the possibility that civic decay might bring us to the point in the cycle of regimes at which either a Red or a Blue Caesar, on the model of Augustus, could seize the reins of power. Wilson does not treat this argument in full—he presumably has no problem with a potential Blue Caesar. It’s the Red variety he fears, and so he condemns Slack for even accepting Anton’s premise: that a cronyist government has supplanted republican government by way of the administrative state and media apparatus. This assessment strikes Wilson as “conspiratorial and extreme”; to me it seems like a plain assessment of the facts.

Certainly, to observe that such conditions could facilitate the rise of a Red Caesar is not to welcome or invite that outcome. To the contrary, Anton and others are dismayed that the republic should have even arrived at the point at which the possibility can even be countenanced. But even to discuss the possibility of regime change (except regime change in a leftward direction) is enough to raise accusations of anti-Americanism.

In his typical hysterical fashion, Damon Linker warns that a Trump victory in 2024 will lead to martial law and soldiers in the streets. Such concerns ring hollow from those who supported the curtailment of civil liberties with Covid lockdowns and unconstitutional vaccine mandates and made excuses for or even cheered on rioters and looters in the summer and fall of 2020. But that aside, any serious political inquiry into our own times will necessarily raise questions over the stability of the current regime and what will succeed it.

Linker, who fancies himself as a student of Leo Strauss, should know that Strauss himself pointed to Caesarism as the likely alternative to a failed republic in his “Restatement on Xenophon’s Hiero.” The histrionics over theoretical discussions of Caesarism reveal a deeper epistemic fear that an objective approach to political science could lead one to doubt the viability or legitimacy of the status quo.

Red Caesar is not, à la Martin Heidegger, a plea for a god to save us. It is an acknowledgment that the independent, liberty-loving people who once constituted the ruling majority in America are dead and gone. Distressing as that is, it is a fact. Any sober observer who has not decided against the possibility in advance will acknowledge that rule by strongman is one eminently possible outcome of our current downward trajectory. But to say so is not to wish it so. As Slack pointed out in his response, all this talk about Red Caesar has been spurred by the fact that republican, constitutional government has already been eroded, if not entirely discarded.

The Most Miserable Habitation

Far from being anti-American autocrats, then, those on the Right who raise the possibility of a Red Caesar are working in the same intellectual tradition as our founding fathers, who recognized that a republic lacking virtue and the rule of law will not long endure. It will degenerate into some kind of despotism or debauched oligarchy. John Adams, perhaps the most astute student of political philosophy and history in his generation, recognized the possibility that a Caesar (Red, Blue, or otherwise) would arise from the ashes of a ruined republic.

Adams, the first vice president and second president of the United States, played an underappreciated role in the formulation of American constitutionalism. In addition to drafting the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, the oldest operating constitution in the world, his 1776 pamphlet “Thoughts on Government” influenced multiple state constitutions and, by extension, the future Constitution of the United States.

Following Montesquieu, Adams argued that all governments are founded upon a dominant principle or passion in its people—fear, honor, or virtue. Most governments are founded upon fear and produce misery for mankind. It was the last of these, virtue, which made a republic the best form of government. A republic, said Adams, depends upon the virtue of the people and best preserves their safety and happiness.

He defines this mode of government as “an Empire of Laws, and not of men.” Only a moderate, courageous, just, and wise people will preserve their liberty and the rule of law against the temptation of vice and slavish devotion to an elite class. It was for this reason that Adams served as legal representative for the redcoats who fired on the mob in the 1770 Boston Massacre, even though he publicly opposed Parliament’s assaults on the rights of the colonists. A nation that descends into mob rule will never preserve a free government and may even willingly surrender its rights in exchange for momentary pleasures.

President Adams famously wrote in a letter to the Massachusetts state militia that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” No other statement from a founding father is quoted so frequently in defense of traditional Christian morality. But it raises an obvious and alarming question: What happens if that morality is not restored? Adams’ letter to the militia was no mere pep talk, but a prophecy about the likely future of an America without virtue.

Just before his famous line on the need for a moral people, Adams wrote: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.” If Americans do not voluntarily restrain themselves through religion and morality, they will lose the protections of their Constitution. They will no doubt be restrained—but by a government whose animating passion has changed from virtue to fear. They will suffer a despotism of their own design.

Adams warns that a wayward, hypocritical foreign policy will be the canary in the coal mine. “But should the People of America,” he writes, “once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance; and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour frankness & sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and insolence: this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world.” What could better describe a government that claims to uphold the rules-based international order while it spies on its own citizens, elected officials, and allies, extrajudicially murders citizens and children abroad, sacrifices its own soldiers to maximize the intake of refugees (read: reliable future voters for the Democratic Party), and risks nuclear war to prop up foreign money launderers? Adams’ son may be heralded as a prophet for warning that America will lose her liberty if she goes abroad in search of monsters to destroy. But his father deserves some credit for the insight, too.

Adams’ forecasts grew even darker over time. He foresaw that decline might be inevitable. “Commerce, luxury, and avarice” he wrote to Benjamin Rush, “have destroyed every Republican Government.” Eventually the virtue of the people would give way to decadence. The nation would be a victim of its own success. Such a government might maintain the trappings of a republic: “it may still exist in form” but it “is lost in essence.” Once it succumbs to corruption and greed, it will never return to its free, republican way of life. As Adams later asked Thomas Jefferson, “Have you ever found in history one single example of a Nation thoroughly Corrupted—that was afterwards restored to Virtue—and without Virtue, there can be no political Liberty.”

From this degenerated republic, as Adams wrote in an earlier letter to Jefferson, an “artificial aristocracy” would form, built upon wealth, power, and “corruption in elections.” This artificial aristocracy (in reality, an oligarchy) will bilk the people for its own advantage. But it will not last forever. “The everlasting envies, jealousies, rivalries and quarrels among them, their cruel rapacities upon the poor ignorant people, their followers, compel these to set up Caesar, a demagogue to be a monarch and master, pour mettre chacun a Sa place [to put them in their place].” There you have it in black and white: a founding father ruminating on a future Caesar rising up to crush a sclerotic oligarchy. Who knew that the founders were MAGA extremists?

Observation Is Not Invocation

Propagandists for the ruling class will balk at claims that America is an oligarchy. After all, we still have elections. But what good are elections that are bought and paid for by billionaires and rigged by intelligence officials? And even when the disfavored candidate wins, the national security state assumes veto power over foreign policy, plots treason with our rivals, and labels his supporters as domestic terrorists. The all-too-candid Chuck Schumer gloated that the intelligence agencies have “six ways from Sunday” to strike at duly elected officials. Phony dossiers and military-led impeachment attempts are just two of them. Adams had their mark two centuries ago. An oligarchy that hides behind the corpse of democratic institutions is still an oligarchy.

Adams warned that a future Caesar will be cut from the same cloth as the oligarchs that he replaced. Yet this is precisely why oligarchic capture is such a grievous crisis: there may be no way back from it, and no way forward except Caesarism. Among exclusively bad options, the people may be left with no alternative except to mitigate the decay by hoping for an autocrat who at least militates for order rather than further chaos and recrimination—a Caesar rather than a Sulla.

Conservatives who speculate about the possibility of a Red Caesar are responding to a legitimacy crisis caused by our ruling class. They recognize that there is a cycle of regimes, that corrupted governments do not last forever, and that, unfortunately, virtuous republics do not magically reappear once lost. They are not anti-American. That title should be reserved for those who sell out to foreign rivals, prosecute citizens for self-defense, stock porn in libraries, retaliate against parents for speaking out at school board meetings, disbar lawyers for challenging election illegalities, and condemn the Betsy Ross flag as a terrorist symbol—those, in other words, who have created the conditions under which it even becomes plausible to worry about a Caesar in the first place. Those who speak plainly about those conditions are not wishing them upon us. They are already here.

America today is increasingly an empire not of laws but of corrupt men. Those who point this out are not conspiracy theorists or dangerous militants, as far-left outlets like The Guardian claim, but simply men with functioning eyes and ears. They have seen that impartial due process and morality, the twin pillars of the rule of law, have long been eroded. They are right to ask, as the most pessimistic of our founders once did, whether this nation can long maintain its liberty.


Casey Wheatland is a senior lecturer in political science at Texas State University. He holds a Ph.D. from Hillsdale College and is a 2021 Publius Fellow.

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What now? Use your rage.
« Reply #1096 on: November 08, 2023, 07:10:48 AM »


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« Last Edit: November 13, 2023, 06:51:33 AM by Crafty_Dog »

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God help us!
« Reply #1099 on: November 20, 2023, 03:34:30 AM »



A Facebook saga about Christian nationalism and the ‘appeal to authority’
America was founded on biblical principles
By Everett Piper

Last week, in response to the evergrowing accusation that anyone who believes the fact that America was founded on biblical principles is a deranged Christian nationalist, I posted these three quotes on Facebook: “The general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.” — John Adams

“The birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.” — John Quincy Adams

“The only true basis of all government [are] the laws of God and nature. For government is an ordinance of Heaven, designed by the allbenevolent Creator” — Samuel Adams

Well, as predictable as the sunrise, one of my Facebook trolls (I’ll call him “Skip”) shouted with hyperventilating opprobrium: ”You’re cherry-picking! This nation was founded on the separation of Church and State. Thomas Jefferson was an atheist!”

Not wanting to get into a social media titfor- tat, I decided that rather than use my own words, I’d let Thomas Jefferson (whom my friend brought up) and several other of our nation’s subsequent leaders speak for themselves. Here’s a smattering by way of example:

“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God, [and] that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. … Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice.” — George Washington

“In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it, we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Now, the best religion the world has ever had is the religion of Christ. A man or a community adopting it is virtuous, prosperous, and happy. … What a great mistake is made by him who does not support the religion of the Bible!” — Rutherford B. Hayes

“I assume the arduous and responsible duties of president of the United States, relying upon the support of my countrymen and invoking the guidance of Almighty God. Our faith teaches that there is no safer reliance than upon the God of our fathers, who has so singularly favored the American people in every national trial and who will not forsake us so long as we obey his commandments and walk humbly in his footsteps.” — William McKinley

“The teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally — I do not mean figuratively, I mean literally — impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards toward which we, with more or less of resolution, strive to raise ourselves.” — Theodore Roosevelt “The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” — John F. Kennedy

My friend Skip responded: “This is an argument from authority. This is an example of your problem! You must have something to be subservient to.”

I ignored the obvious — that Skip doesn’t understand Socratic fallacies — and simply asked, “And by what authority do you claim to discount all authority?”

“My own,” he shouted. “Ah - there we have it,” I said. “You have declared yourself to be the only measure of right and wrong, good and evil. All authority rests in you and only you. You have achieved Nietzsche’s ‘will to power.’ You, my lost friend, have just decided that you are God. Welcome to the ranks of Robespierre, Diocletian, Nero, and Hitler. Your appeal to authority is yourself.”

God help us, for God is the only one who can.