The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence

As the Biden-Harris administration's Department of Education goes ahead with plans for implementing critical race theory and the 1619 Project inside civics curriculums, it is time to summarize said 1619 Project in one single (albeit longish) sentence.

Here it is:

It is nothing short of preposterous to claim that an obscure (if admittedly heinous) and rather accidental commercial transaction in a tiny Virginia hamlet involving at most 25-30 people (including the 20some African slaves [who, legally speaking, were actually closer to indentured servants]) a century and a half before (!) the founding of a nation is more reflective of said nation in its entirety and of an entire people than a continent-wide war and its attendant historical documents 157 years (the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence) and 168 years (the Constitution) later which concerned every single one of its (then) two and a half million inhabitants, as well as the power structure of the entire Western world.  

Indeed, the ludicrousness of the 1619 Project is reflective of the cult-like status of the Left, leading Allen C Guelzo to state that The 1619 Project is not history; it is conspiracy theory.

Beyond that, what is galling is how all foreign nations, nationalities, and races are left out of the guilt trip and of the equation itself.

As it happens, it was by a fluke that this ship of slaves landed in the future United States in 1619. That single ship was one tiny part of a Portuguese fleet of 36+ (!) ships filled with thousands upon thousands of Ndongo slaves headed for Latin America which was lost or seized by pirates.

As the (left-leaning) National Geographic observes in a pro-1619 article,

In just two years, 1618 and 1619, the Portuguese-Imbangala alliance resulted in the capture and enslavement of thousands of Ndongo people, filling at least 36 ships with human cargo. These captives would be sent to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Central and South America to work as laborers. It was through this arrangement that slavery would spread to British North America in 1619, when chaos intervened and the destiny of those “20 and odd” Africans was redirected to a place called the Colony of Virginia on the Atlantic coast.

Again: The obvious question is, if the United States is to be castigated for these sins, why on Earth is it the only, or the main, nation to be so described (and demonized)?  How about the Spanish, Portuguese, and British kingdoms?  How about the Kongo, Dahomey, Yoruba, Benin, Imbangala, and Asante empires? How about the Arabs? And the Muslims? The Arabs and the Muslims? How do they fit in?

Ask George Avery, who goes even further outside the box:

Relatively speaking, the United States was a minor player in the African Slave Trade — only about 5% of the Africans imported to the New World came to the United States. Of the 10.7 million Africans who survived the ocean voyage, a mere 388,000 were shipped directly to North America. The largest recipients of imported African slaves were Brazil, Cuba. Jamaica, and the other Caribbean colonies. The lifespan of those brought into what is now the United States vastly exceeded those of the other 95%, and the United States was the only purchaser of African slaves where the population grew naturally in slavery – the death rate among the rest was higher than the birth rate. …

The World Slave Trade

The Trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean African slave trade, which began by Arabs as early as the 8th Century AD, dwarfed the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and continued up to the 20th Century. Between the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade and 1900, it is estimated that the eastern-bound Arab slave traders sold over 17 million Africans into slavery in the Middle East and India, compared to about 12 million to the new world – and the Eastern-bound slave trade had been ongoing for at least 600 years at the START of that period.

So, as it turns out, the only true descriptive of the situation is that The United States Was a Footnote in Slavery’s History.

A much longer and more detailed version of this post was published here:

• 1619, Mao, & 9-11: History According to the NYT — Plus, a Remarkable Issue of National Geographic Reveals the Leftists' "Blame America First" Approach to History

RELATED: 1619, Mao, & 9-11: History According to the NYT — Plus, a Remarkable Issue of National Geographic Reveals the Leftists' "Blame America First" Approach to History

• Wilfred Reilly on 1619: quite a few contemporary Black problems have very little to do with slavery

NO MAINSTREAM HISTORIAN CONTACTED FOR THE 1619 PROJECT

• "Out of the Revolution came an anti-slavery ethos, which never disappeared": Pulitzer Prize Winner James McPherson Confirms that No Mainstream Historian Was Contacted by the NYT for Its 1619 History Project

• Gordon Wood: "The Revolution unleashed antislavery sentiments that led to the first abolition movements in the history of the world" — another Pulitzer-Winning Historian Had No Warning about the NYT's 1619 Project

• A Black Political Scientist "didn’t know about the 1619 Project until it came out"; "These people are kind of just making it up as they go"

• Clayborne Carson: Another Black Historian Kept in the Dark About 1619

• If historians did not hear of the NYT's history (sic) plan, chances are great that the 1619 Project was being deliberately kept a tight secret

• Oxford Historian Richard Carwardine: 1619 is “a preposterous and one-dimensional reading of the American past”

• World Socialists: "the 1619 Project is a politically motivated falsification of history" by the New York Times, aka "the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party"

THE NEW YORK TIMES OR THE NEW "WOKE" TIMES?

• Dan Gainor on 1619 and rewriting history: "To the Left elite like the NY Times, there’s no narrative they want to destroy more than American exceptionalism"

• Utterly preposterous claims: The 1619 project is a cynical political ploy, aimed at piercing the heart of the American understanding of justice

• From Washington to Grant, not a single American deserves an iota of gratitude, or even understanding, from Nikole Hannah-Jones; however, modern autocrats, if leftist and foreign, aren't "all bad"

• One of the Main Sources for the NYT's 1619 Project Is a Career Communist Propagandist who Defends Stalinism

• A Pulitzer Prize?! Among the 1619 Defenders Is "a Fringe Academic" with "a Fetish for Authoritarian Terror" and "a Soft Spot" for Mugabe, Castro, and Even Stalin

• Influenced by Farrakhan's Nation of Islam?! 1619 Project's History "Expert" Believes the Aztecs' Pyramids Were Built with Help from Africans Who Crossed the Atlantic Prior to the "Barbaric Devils" of Columbus (Whom She Likens to Hitler)

• 1793, 1776, or 1619: Is the New York Times Distinguishable from Teen Vogue? Is It Living in a Parallel Universe? Or Is It Simply Losing Its Mind in an Industry-Wide Nervous Breakdown?

• No longer America's "newspaper of record," the "New Woke Times" is now but a college campus paper, where kids like 1619 writer Nikole Hannah-Jones run the asylum and determine what news is fit to print

• Spoiled Brats? The NYT defends the 1619 project while (and by) trivializing or outright insulting its critics, with N-word (!) user Hannah-Jones going as far as doxxing one pundit

• The Departure of Bari Weiss: "Propagandists", Ethical Collapse, and the "New McCarthyism" — "The radical left are running" the New York Times, "and no dissent is tolerated"

• "Full of left-wing sophomoric drivel": The New York Times — already drowning in a fantasy-land of alternately running pro-Soviet Union apologia and their anti-American founding “1619 Project” series — promises to narrow what they view as acceptable opinion even more

• "Deeply Ashamed" of the… New York Times (!),  An Oblivious Founder of the Error-Ridden 1619 Project Uses Words that Have to Be Seen to Be Believed ("We as a News Organization Should Not Be Running Something That Is Offering Misinformation to the Public, Unchecked")

• Allen C Guelzo: The New York Times offers bitterness, fragility, and intellectual corruption—The 1619 Project is not history; it is conspiracy theory

• The 1619 Project is an exercise in religious indoctrination: Ignoring, downplaying, or rewriting the history of 1861 to 1865, the Left and the NYT must minimize, downplay, or ignore the deaths of 620,000 Americans

• 1619: It takes an absurdly blind fanaticism to insist that today’s free and prosperous America is rotten and institutionally oppressive

• The MSM newsrooms and their public shaming terror campaigns — the "bullying campus Marxism" is closer to cult religion than politics: Unceasingly searching out thoughtcrime, the American left has lost its mind

• Fake But Accurate: The People Behind the NYT's 1619 Project Make a "Small" Clarification, But Only Begrudgingly and Half-Heartedly, Because Said Mistake Actually Undermines The 1619 Project's Entire Premise

• The Truth Is Out: "The 1619 Project Is Not a History," Admits Hannah-Jones, and "Never Pretended to Be" 

THE REVOLUTION OF THE 1770s

• The Collapse of the Fourth Estate by Peter Wood: No one has been able to identify a single leader, soldier, or supporter of the Revolution who wanted to protect his right to hold slaves (A declaration that slavery is the founding institution of America and the center of everything important in our history is a ground-breaking claim, of the same type as claims that America condones rape culture, that 9/11 was an inside job, that vaccinations cause autism, that the Moon landing was a hoax, or that ancient astronauts built the pyramids)

• Mary Beth Norton:  In 1774, a year before Dunmore's proclamation, Americans had already in fact become independent

• Most of the founders, including Thomas Jefferson, opposed slavery’s continued existence, writes Rick Atkinson, despite the fact that many of them owned slaves

• Leslie Harris: Far from being fought to preserve slavery, the Revolutionary War became a primary disrupter of slavery in the North American Colonies (even the NYT's fact-checker on the 1619 Project disagrees with its "conclusions": "It took 60 more years for the British government to finally end slavery in its Caribbean colonies")

• Sean Wilentz on 1619: the movement in London to abolish the slave trade formed only in 1787, largely inspired by… American (!) antislavery opinion that had arisen in the 1760s and 1770s

• 1619 & Slavery's Fatal Lie: it is more accurate to say that what makes America unique isn't slavery but the effort to abolish it

• 1619 & 1772: Most of the founders, including Jefferson, opposed slavery’s continued existence, despite many of them owning slaves; And Britain would remain the world's foremost slave-trading nation into the nineteenth century

• Wilfred Reilly on 1619: Slavery was legal in Britain in 1776, and it remained so in all overseas British colonies until 1833

• Not 1619 but 1641: In Fact, the American Revolution of 1776 Sought to Avoid the Excesses of the English Revolution Over a Century Earlier

• James Oakes on 1619: "Slavery made the slaveholders rich; But it made the South poor; And it didn’t make the North rich — So the legacy of slavery is poverty, not wealth"

• One of the steps of defeating truth is to destroy evidence of the truth, says Bob Woodson; Because the North's Civil War statues — as well as American history itself — are evidence of America's redemption from slavery, it's important for the Left to remove evidence of the truth

TEACHING GENERATIONS OF KIDS FALSEHOODS ABOUT THE U.S.

• 1619: No wonder this place is crawling with young socialists and America-haters — the utter failure of the U.S. educational system to teach the history of America’s founding

• 1619: Invariably Taking the Progressive Side — The Ratio of Democratic to Republican Voter Registration in History Departments is More than 33 to 1

• Secular humanistic indoctrination dumbs down children, drives wedges between them and their parents, and has grown increasingly hostile to patriotism and parental authority

• Denying the grandeur of the nation’s founding—Wilfred McClay on 1619: "Most of my students are shocked to learn that that slavery is not uniquely American"

• Inciting Hate Already in Kindergarten: 1619 "Education" Is Part of Far-Left Indoctrination by People Who Hate America to Kids in College, in School, and Even in Elementary Classes

• "Distortions, half-truths, and outright falsehoods": Where does the 1619 project state that Africans themselves were central players in the slave trade? That's right: Nowhere

• John Podhoretz on 1619: the idea of reducing US history to the fact that some people owned slaves is a reductio ad absurdum and the definition of bad faith

• The 1619 Africans in Virginia were not ‘enslaved’, a black historian points out; they were indentured servants — just like the majority of European whites were

• "Two thirds of the people, white as well as black, who crossed the Atlantic in the first 200 years are indentured servants" notes Dolores Janiewski; "The poor people, black and white, share common interests"

LAST BUT NOT LEAST…

• Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech"

• Victoria Bynum on 1619 and a NYT writer's "ignorance of history": "As dehumanizing and brutal as slavery was, the institution was not a giant concentration camp"

• Dennis Prager: The Left Couldn't Care Less About Blacks

• A Prager U Video and a Book, "1620," Take on the 1619 Project

• When was the last time protests in America were marred by police violence? 1970, according to Ann Coulter, who asks "Can we restrict wild generalizations about the police to things that have happened in our lifetimes?" (Compare with, say, China…)

• The Secret About Black Lives Matter; In Fact, the Outfit's Name Ought to Be BSD or BAD

• The Real Reason Why Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and the Land O'Lakes Maid Must Vanish

• The Confederate Flag: Another Brick in the Leftwing Activists' (Self-Serving) Demonization of America and Rewriting of History

• Who, Exactly, Is It Who Should Apologize for Slavery and Make Reparations? America? The South? The Descendants of the Planters? …

• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619

Sunday Special: GoFundMe Page for Hilary in Far-Away Port Huron

The sister of an NP reader (and friend) was in a car accident "in faraway Port Huron" a month or two ago which totaled the van she uses for her charity work. (I have been trying to contribute $100 bucks for the past thirty minutes, but it's my very first GFM attempt, and no matter how many times I click on the green Donate Now button, it does not seem to be going through.) The GoFundMe page set up by her friends has more details:

miss hilary was t-bone[d] by a car [in late February], as [the other driver] ran a red light and smashed right into her sending her to the hospital. thankfully the lord was watching over her and allowed her another day with us. She's going to be unable to work during this time and is going to need help not only with medical and bills but also with buying a new van for herself. 

She needs a new van to be able to continue her journey with helping the other families she helps on a daily basis. Hilary runs a good pantry for her church and spends most of her own money to supply the food and material that's donated to many families in need, just last Monday she supplied 17 families with the help they needed to feed their family during this hard time as we know many are not working and every penny counts for those bills. 

She is always and I mean Always putting the needs of others above her own and now it's our turn to show her the live and support she deserves, whether it's donating, sharing or praying it all adds up in our eyes, so please join us and help us get her back on her feet when she's able to do so and help her replace her van as its done for and she needs it in order to shop, provide for families and Continuing to do what she lives the most in life!! thank you everyone for standing behind her and showing your love and support while she heals, i know she appreciates each and every one of you.

The Two Rules of Modern Journalism

Regularly, Instapundit — rightly — reminds its readers of the definition of modern journalism according to Jim Treacher and to Iowahawk. Both definitions are outstanding, but I think there is room for an additional one.

Here, then, are:

The Two Rules of Modern Journalism

RULE # 1: Because journalists are required to be open-minded, exercise independence of spirit, and display a healthy amount of skepticism, the words and deeds of politicians, leaders, and the powerful — as well as those of regular citizens being interviewed — must constantly be questioned, second-guessed, doubted, fact-checked, challenged, and, more often than not, interrupted (more or less politely). 

RULE # 2: Rule # 1 only applies to Republicans.

(And to anybody leaning conservative.)

For Democrats and leftists, the typical query is more along the lines of "pray enlighten us to your glorious plans for fundamentally transforming the United States of America (we will be quiet now)." (Close second: "kindly tell us how much people have suffered, and are still suffering, in this dreadful country of ours.")

An obsessive totalitarianism: The political cult of Wokism combines the worst aspects of every political cult in history

The strange figures known as Wokists currently destroying America aren't just reprises of earlier enemies

notes Tal Bachman (thanks to Glenn Reynolds).

They represent something rather new. The political cult of Wokism combines the worst aspects of every political cult in history.

Whether they realize it or not, Wokists themselves combine the lunatic loyalty of the Manson family with the hollow pseudo-joy of Jonestown residents, the racism of National Socialists, the inhumanity of Mao Tse-Tung, the bratty tantrums of Veruca Salt, the nihilism of Bakunin-style anarchists, the totalitarianism of Stalin's Soviet Union, the child torture and sacrifice of the Mayans, the derangement of Heaven's Gate followers, the sadistic violence of the Jacobins, and the ruthless control-freakism of the current Chinese Communist Party.

Now add to that noxious syncretic blend the Wokist use of powerful communication technologies to shape narratives and meta-narratives, destroy opponents, and recruit new converts, and you've got yourself a thing.

Through it all, a counterfeit moral imperative with a deceptively appealing name ("social justice") drives the cult. That counterfeit imperative casts all existence as one great battle between Good (Wokism) and Evil (everything that is not Woke). It denies any constraints on efforts to win that battle. It entails an obsessive totalitarianism. It forbids critical self-examination of itself. Adherents of the cult are Knowers of the One True Truth. They are crusaders in righteous battle. Only victory matters. Anyone so much as questioning the One True Truth, inside or out, must be destroyed.

Although this is often denied to outsiders, Wokist theology requires hatred of America. It teaches that America was conceived in sin and remains insufferably sinful. It therefore decrees that America deserves execution and cremation into nothingness. Into that newly-created void, Wokism itself must move. Only then will righteousness prevail. Making this happen is a sacred obligation for all cult members. Their great success shows their sincerity.

 … And what they're actually doing is something like an Invasive Parasite Play: While keeping the outer forms (like the country's name, like "elections", etc.) intact, they move in to co-opt and control the structures and institutions which really run the country (which is to say, the structures and institutions which control us). As a result, millions remain oblivious that Wokists are destroying and replacing everything that ever constituted the country—that is, that they are changing what 'The United States of America' actually is.

Among many other things, that means first targeting public order, buildings, cities, fair trials, public trust, careers, police forces, education, laws, educations, freedom of speech and religion and assembly and press, codes of ethics, corporate practices, borders, political boundaries, the military, the economy, demography, religious beliefs, customs, music, books, myths, movies, family dynamics, sexuality, heroes, villains, history, aspirations, everything, and then, wherever possible, either destroying them or replacing them with Wokist substitutes.

I mentioned above the analogy of an invasive parasite, but this play is really something even more ambitious. It's a metamorphosis play, where infiltration, destruction, and replacement is followed by transforming the United States into some completely different entity altogether. That different entity is on track to resemble the former East Germany—a totalitarian puppet-state run by a lawless secret police, subservient to a greater foreign power—far more than any iteration of America throughout its history.

Victor Davis Hanson has more to say (obrigado per Sarah Hoyt) on the subject: 

Ed Bastian [… who] makes $17 million a year as chief executive officer of Delta Airlines … thinks it is racist to require the same sort of ID to vote that Delta requires for its passengers to check-in

Yet most Americans believe voting is a more sacred act than flying Delta and, moreover, may have noticed that Delta has all sorts of partnerships with a systemically racist China. So polls show Americans approve of voter IDs. 

 … The woke revolution is not a grassroots movement. It is powered by a well-connected and guilt-ridden elite. Yet the religion of Wokeness assumes these high priests deserve exemptions. Their wealth, credentials, contacts, and power ensure none are ever subject to the consequences of their own sermons. 

Multimillion-dollar NBA stars blast America’s “systemic racism.” They utter not a word about Chinese communist reeducation camps, the destruction of Tibetan culture, or the strangulation of Hong Kong’s democracy.

Such stars’ salaries are geared to coaxing a huge Chinese market. Their domestic endorsements hinge on a younger, woke American clientele. Defending the professional sports lifestyles of rich and famous stars apparently requires loud penance by blasting an unfair America.

Take almost any woke hotspot and a growing class divide is clear.

 … The richest celebrity billionaires such as Jay-Z, George Lucas, Paul McCartney, or Oprah Winfrey weigh in a lot about the oppression of a supposedly rigged system they mastered, rarely about the plight of the less-well paid in their own professions.

So wokeness is medieval. Sin is not given up as much as atoned for—and excused—through loud confessionals.

Self-righteous elites rant about carbon footprints, needless border security, defunding the police, gun control, and charter schools. But they rarely forgo their own private jets, third and fourth homes, estate walls, armed security guards, and prep schools. Apparently to rant about “privilege” means the less you need to worry about your own. 

Wokeness is an insurance policy. The louder the damnation of American culture, the more likely a career will be saved or enhanced. 

Wokeness is classist and elitist. Those who made or inherited a fortune, got the right degree at the right place, made CEO or four-star rank, live in the right ZIP code, or know the good people, believe they have earned the right to decide what is moral for their inferiors. 

So some of them have created an entire vocabulary of deplorables, irredeemables, clingers, dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals—for the peasants and “losers” who must do what they are told. 

Wokeness is not really about fairness for minorities, the oppressed, and the poor, past or present. It is mostly a self-confessional cult of anointed bullies, and hypocrites of all races and genders, who seek to flex, and increase, their own privilege and power. Period.

The Rational Bible Series (Highly Recommended): Dennis Prager Examines Each Moral and Every Story in the Bible with an Open Mind

The third book in Dennis Prager's Rational Bible series won't be due until September. The subtitle of Prager's Deuteronomy is either God, War, and Peace or God, Blessings, and Curses.

Is the Bible, the most influential book in world history, still relevant?

Why do people dismiss it as being irrelevant, irrational, immoral, or all of these things?

This explanation of the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible, will demonstrate how it remains profoundly relevant—both to the great issues of our day and to each individual life.

Do you doubt the existence of God because you think believing in God is irrational? This book will cause you to reexamine your doubts.

The title of this commentary is The Rational Bible because its approach is entirely reason-based. The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone. In Dennis Prager’s words, “If something I write is not rational, I have not done my job.”

The Rational Bible is the fruit of Prager’s forty years of teaching to people of every faith and no faith at all. On virtually every page, you will discover how the text relates to the contemporary world in general and to you on a personal level.

His goal: to change your mind—and, as a result, to change your life.

Deuteronomy will be the third book in the Rational Bible series by the founder of Prager University, in the wake of Genesis and Exodus. In the meantime (i.e., while waiting for September), you can purchase a copy of Dennis's The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code. Alternatively, or in addition, you can head over to Prager University's free video commentaries on each of the Ten Commandments — 1 to 5 and 6 to 10 — with six minutes or less per Commandment.

God, Slavery, and Freedom: Is the Bible—powerfully—relevant to today’s issues? (Highly Recommended)

As someone who was never particularly religious, I have been amazed to discover the first books in Dennis Prager's Rational Bible series. The subtitle of Prager's Exodus is God, Slavery, and Freedom.

Why do so many people think the Bible, the most influential book in world history, is outdated? Why do our friends and neighbors – and sometimes we ourselves – dismiss the Bible as irrelevant, irrational, immoral, or all of these things? This explanation of the Book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, will demonstrate that the Bible is not only powerfully relevant to today’s issues, but completely consistent with rational thought.

Do you think the Bible permitted the trans-Atlantic slave trade? You won’t after reading this book.

Do you struggle to love your parents? If you do, you need this book.

Do you doubt the existence of God because belief in God is “irrational?” This book will give you reason after reason to rethink your doubts.

The title of this commentary is, “The Rational Bible” because its approach is entirely reason-based. The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone. As Prager says, “If something I write does not make rational sense, I have not done my job.”

The Rational Bible is the fruit of Dennis Prager’s forty years of teaching the Bible to people of every faith, and no faith. On virtually every page, you will discover how the text relates to the contemporary world and to your life.

His goal: to change your mind – and then change your life.

Besides a free sample from Amazon, you can purchase a copy of Dennis's The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code. Alternatively, or in addition, you can head over to Prager University's free video commentaries on each of the Ten Commandments — 1 to 5 and 6 to 10 — with six minutes or less per Commandment.

By September, the first three books of Dennis Prager's Rational Bible series will have been published: Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy… 

With regards to the significance of the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt, Bookworm treats us to his or her annual Passover post:

For roughly 3,500 years, Jews have been telling and retelling the story of Passover — which is also the story of the world’s first revolt against a totalitarian dictatorship … 

 … the thing to remember is that those atop the tyranny pyramid care about only one thing, which is that their tyranny remains stable and protected

 … I was re-reading Dennis Prager’s superb The Rational Bible: Exodus and was reminded that each one of the plagues essentially attacked one of the Egyptian’s many gods. Only in this way could God demonstrate that they were false idols and that he had the power to control the symbols with which they were associated. 

 … There is … a much more profound purpose behind the ten plagues, and that is to remind us of the tyrant’s capacity for tolerating others’ suffering, as long as his power remains in place.

What Pharaoh discovered with the first nine plagues is that life can go on, at least for the ruler, no matter the burdens he places upon his people. A blood-filled Nile River may, at first, seem appalling, but the red recedes and life goes on. Pharaoh still holds power. The same is true for each subsequent plague, whether lice, boils, frogs, darkness, or anything else. As long as Pharaoh realizes, after the first panic, that he is still powerful, he will always reconcile himself to his people’s incremental destruction.

Sheltered in his lavish palace, Pharaoh might have a theoretical concern that a starving and frightened populace could turn on him. However, provided that he is assured that his people will continue to fear and worship him, their suffering is irrelevant. It is only when the price becomes too high — when the plague struck Pharaoh in his own palace, killing his firstborn — that Pharaoh is convinced, even temporarily, to alter his evil ways.

Human nature hasn’t changed in 3,500 years. Think, for example, of both the Nazis and the Japanese at the end of WWII. … Hitler and his commanders were Pharaoh. Only when they, personally, faced a humiliating death would they stop fighting.

The same held true for the Japanese. … The Japanese high command was Pharaoh. No amount of smaller plagues could stop the command from its chosen path. Only a large plague would swiftly lead to the inevitable conclusion.

The only way to destroy an evil institution is to decapitate it. That’s what God did with the 10th plague. That’s what Truman did when he dropped atom bombs on Japan. That’s what the Allies did when they engaged in total war against the Nazis. In each case, the only way to end a tyrant’s rampage of murder, torture, and enslavement was directly hurting the tyrant’s person.

Those who prefer the stability of tyranny to the risks of freedom are the same people who refuse to accept that, under tyranny, the innocents are always going to die, with the only question being whether they will die quickly or slowly. That’s the problem with an evil regime. If you’re unlucky enough to live under that regime, you’re going to end as cannon fodder. 

Pharaoh will let you die of plagues, and the Nazi and Japanese leadership will let you be bombed and burned, and Biden will open America’s southern border while ramping up the welfare system and pushing Critical Race Theory, a pernicious racial theory every bit as bad as the Nazi’s racial theories. Ensconced in the White House, and surrounded by unelected fanatics, nothing will stop them. The American economy can collapse and whites can become the subjects of actual purges and the Biden administration will continue on its path — as long as the tyrants in charge can retain their power.

People of goodwill must sometimes recognize that the generation raised under tyranny is a lost generation that cannot be saved, whether because it will die under the tyrant’s lash, in the tyrant’s war, or in a war against the tyrant. Sometimes, when slaves finally taste freedom, they fear it. The Bible recognizes this problem, banning the Promised Land to those who were slaves in Egypt. They were a lost generation.

For this reason, when one sees a people groaning under tyranny the most humane thing to do is to destroy the tyranny quickly and decisively even if that process causes people to suffer. Most of them were always going to be lost. Our actions are for the benefit of subsequent generations and, if we are lucky, for those who survived both the tyranny and the liberation.

Protecting freedom for the greatest number of people sometimes demands proactive behavior. And there is nothing more proactive than an overwhelming response when a tyrant starts putting out feelers to see how far he can go. …

 … The only way to stop tyranny is to fight tyranny. For liberty-loving people in America, that’s a challenge, because, for the first time in my lifetime, the tyrant is their unfettered government. Still, we have weapons. For one thing, every last one of us needs to stop bowing down before cancel culture. Even non-conservatives need to realize that there is no end to cancel culture. Its practitioners must constantly strive to prove their purity and they can do this only by attacking others.

 … We have to stop playing this fear game. When they call us racists, when they subject us to the appalling racist Critical Race Theory, when they use race to justify overthrowing our southern border, we need to speak out even more loudly. We need to fight their ideology at every turn. We need to boycott the woke companies. We need to fund organizations that will handle lawfare for people fired because they exercised their constitutional rights.

Do anything and everything you can think of to push back against this administration. That does not mean violating the laws; it does not mean impoverishing yourself; it does not mean violence. However, it does mean speaking up constantly, withholding what money you can from complicit organizations, and backing down only when your safety is at risk …

Entirely Reason-Based: The reader of Dennis Prager's Rational Bible Series is never asked to accept anything on faith alone (Highly Recommended)

As someone who was never particularly religious — although I was a big New Age fan in my teens and twenties (so much that I eventually minored in Religious Studies of comparative religions) — I have started reading the first book in Dennis Prager's Rational Bible series. To say the very least, Dennis Prager's Genesis — subtitled God, Creation, and Destruction — is eye-opening.

Why do so many people think the Bible, the most influential book in world history, is outdated? Why do our friends and neighbors – and sometimes we ourselves – dismiss the Bible as irrelevant, irrational, immoral, or all of these things? This explanation of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, will demonstrate that the Bible is not only powerfully relevant to today’s issues, but completely consistent with rational thought.

 … The title of this commentary is “The Rational Bible” because its approach is entirely reason-based. The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone. In Dennis Prager’s words, “If something I write is not rational, I have not done my job.”

I am awestruck especially by the explanations of the founder of Prager University on the subject of ingratitude — the most overrated trend in modern thought. To the detriment of Wisdom — perhaps the Bible's central tenet. You can download a free sample from Amazon.

Many people today think the Bible, the most influential book in world history, is not only outdated but irrelevant, irrational, and even immoral.

This explanation of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, demonstrates clearly and powerfully that the opposite is true. The Bible remains profoundly relevant—both to the great issues of our day and to each individual life. It is the greatest moral guide and source of wisdom ever written.

Do you doubt the existence of God because you think believing in God is irrational? This book will give you many reasons to rethink your doubts. Do you think faith and science are in conflict? You won’t after reading this commentary on Genesis. Do you come from a dysfunctional family? It may comfort you to know that every family discussed in Genesis was highly dysfunctional!

The title of this commentary is “The Rational Bible” because its approach is entirely reason-based. The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone. In Dennis Prager’s words, “If something I write is not rational, I have not done my job.”

The Rational Bible is the fruit of Dennis Prager’s forty years of teaching the Bible—whose Hebrew grammar and vocabulary he has mastered—to people of every faith and no faith at all. On virtually every page, you will discover how the text relates to the contemporary world in general and to you personally. His goal: to change your mind—and, as a result, to change your life.

By September, the first three books of Dennis Prager's Rational Bible series will have been published: Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy…

If Grandma or Grandpa is sick and dying from COVID, how does it help them if their kids and grandkids lose their businesses, jobs, or homes?

With lockdowns, people still get sick; you can't stop a germ. But they do succeed at three things: destroying the economy, destroying quality of life and, ironically, making more people sick and die due to the stress, loneliness, depression and poverty the lockdowns produced. 

The author of Trump Rules, Wayne Allyn Root hates to say "I told you so." But he did tell us so. (Dank U Wel to KC.)

I'm one of the few brave souls in the American media who warned and advised from day one (back in early March 2020) not to lock down the American people or the economy. 

If we may be allowed to ring our own bell, No Pasarán's blogmaster is another of the few brave souls (with the post Is There 100% Irrefutable Proof that the Covid19 Pandemic Is Overstated?, written in the final weeks of March 2020). Already at the time, Wayne Allyn Root says, he had started arguing the following:

— That lockdowns wouldn't stop COVID-19, because you can't stop a virus.

— That there was never a reason to lock down everyone. Anyone relatively young or healthy never had a reason to fear death from COVID. The survival rate has been reported at 99%, especially for anyone relatively healthy under the age of 65.

— That over time, lockdowns would cause more deaths from suicide, depression, loneliness, drug and alcohol addiction, joblessness, poverty and stress (from people being unsure how to feed their families) than from COVID.

— And, worst of all, that lockdowns would destroy the economy. If Grandma or Grandpa is sick and dying from COVID, how does it help them if their kids and grandkids lose their businesses, jobs or homes? It only makes things much worse. Grandma and Grandpa would not want their kids and grandkids to be jobless, hopeless or homeless. They want them to live life and prosper. That's how you honor Grandpa and Grandma.

I warned that the only way to fight COVID and pay for COVID was to keep the economy open and healthy. And to keep Americans employed.

Don't look now, but I was 100% right.

Florida is exhibit A. 

 … Even though Florida has been wide open (without masks) for almost a year now, even though the state has millions of retired senior citizens, it still has less deaths and hospitalizations right now than most of the know-it-all liberal states that are locked down and run by authoritarian Democratic governors. [The numbers of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who should be America's Hero Governor,] are better than those of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois.

All this and the people of Florida kept their businesses open, kept their jobs, kept their kids in school and kept living normal lives.

My friends own restaurants in Florida. Restaurants and bars are jammed. No one is wearing masks. They tell me that not only are the customers healthy; all their employees are healthy.

How is this possible? How can Florida be thriving and prospering and healthier while California and New York have been shut down the entire time, with businesses dead, jobs gone, schools closed and kids not leaning a thing?

The answer is simple. Democratic governors blew it. They made all the wrong decisions. No lockdowns were ever needed. Nor were they ever constitutional. No jobs should have been lost.

This was all a travesty, a tragedy, a [farce]. With lockdowns, people still get sick; you can't stop a germ. But they do succeed at three things: destroying the economy, destroying quality of life and, ironically, making more people sick and die due to the stress, loneliness, depression and poverty the lockdowns produced.

Lockdowns prove the solution is often worse than the virus.

The only answer is freedom and individual choice. Let Americans choose whether to keep their businesses open, go to work or wear masks.

As usual, government was wrong. Government made things much worse. As usual, liberal Democratic ideas failed miserably. Lockdowns are perhaps the worst mistake in America's history. Case closed. 

Related: Here Are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know
• COVID-19: Here Is the Key Question Regarding the Coronavirus
• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619

Joe Biden, Why Are You Calling Denmark a White Supremacist Country? And You, Barack Obama: Why Are You Calling Africa a Racist Continent?

Voting in a Danish school's baseball court: the white paper in the voters' hands is their IDs,
and thus the proof of their identity (those dirty scoundrels must all of 'em be racists!)

What to you mean, No Pasarán, with those provocative questions, "Why are you calling Denmark a white supremacist country, Joe Biden? Why are you calling Africa a racist continent, Barack Obama?"?!

When have Joe Biden or Barack Obama ever said that?! Are you bonkers?!

That's just the problem, dear reader: they have not said that.

But they should. According to the Democrats' own logic.

Actually…

Actually, scratch that: it turns out that, according to the Democrats' own logic, they have in fact said that, or, if you prefer, they have implied it…

After all, if demanding voter IDs is symptomatic of racism and indicative of a Jim Crow culture, then Denmark is one hell of a racist (and rotten) kingdom, because it is a nation in which — horror of horrors! — you cannot go into the booth on voting day and vote unless… (wait for it) you produce… a special voting ID.

For each election (national, regional, and/or local) in the land of Hamlet, the voter gets a card in the mail, valid for that election day alone, and it must be presented when you go to the polls — in person, of course — and after being handed over, the voter's name is ticked off on the voting rolls before he enters the booth.

Further South, in France, the nation's electoral card lasts for 12 elections (national, regional, and/or local), duly stamped, after which it must be renewed. In addition, in any town or city with more than 3,500 citizens, the voter must also present a regular ID.

The details, and the specifics, may change, but in all cases, there is some sort of an ID to be presented in order to vote.

Aren't you outraged, drama queens?! 

Aren't you outraged by the hatred?! — by the bigotry?! — by the racism?!

Indeed, there is scarcely a country in Europe, as well as in Africa (including the Obama family's ancestral Kenya), Asia, Oceania, and South America — nor, for that matter, is there one among either of the USA's immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico — where you do not have to present some sort of ID when you go to the polls. (And here I include even the autocracies and the pretend democracies…) 

And therefore it stands to reason that every single country in Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas is forever embroiled in the era of Jim Crow relics.

Because there does not seem to be a single place on this planet — those rotten spitbowls, all of 'em! — where ideas akin to those found in HR1 are even entertained.

Lack of voter ID: No thanks.

Mail-in ballots: Non merci.

Acceptance of ballots up to eight days after the polls have closed: Nein danke.

Etc: Nej. Nei. Nyet. Non.…

The only place where there are attempts to make those thing happen turns out to be… the United States of America.

It is the dreamers' attempt to "fundamentally transform the United States." (See The Leftist Worldview in a Nutshell: A World of Deserving Dreamers Vs. Despicable Deplorables.)

There is a caveat — one humongous whale-size piece of a caveat — to all this, a caveat which the reader (whatever his or her nationality) must absolutely become aware of:

Offhand, it might sound like the USA alone is in the process of turning into a banana republic (if it hasn't done so already), while every other country has more or less common sense voting laws (whether they reflect the reality of the situation in the particular country or not).

In a sense, yes, that is true. 

But a deeper truth is that there is one thing we must not forget: most other countries have no such things as the electoral college. And other countries have no such thing as the filibuster. (Or equivalents thereof.)

What this means is that is that the (more populated) city vote always prevails over the countryside vote. And what does "the city" mean? What does it entail? It means dependent (helpless?) citizens, it means a greater need for assistance, it means a vaster bureaucracy, it means anonymity, it means corruption, it means inside deals, and it means lots and lots of bureaucrats who "are here to help" (aka compassion (sic)).

In other words, these countries, whatever their names (la République française, the German Democratic Republic, etc…) are functions of (at best) democracies rather than republics.

This is why the vast majority of other nations have no organization with the strength of the Republican Party (or of the Libertarians), certainly not at the level inside the U.S.A. (even when naïve RINOS dilute the strength of their own side).

This, in turn, explains why foreigners always oppose the USA's GOP (see November 2020 election) — often religiously — why foreigners always join Democrats in criticizing, ridiculing, and demonizing the flyover Americans, and why foreigners always support Democrats in their dreams to "fundamentally transform the United States." 

Foreigners support making the USA not into a one-party nation per se, but into a nation like their own, a democracy where the drama queens of basically some kind of (more or less rigid) pro-government party are always at the helm and where élites rule over the respective nations' unruly deplorables — whose youngsters are invariably being indoctrinated by the respective school systems.

I will end this post by saying that, needless to say, there is nothing new about this and by quoting a nine-year-old post where I said much the same as above, but while using slightly different language and arguments. If you have the time…

In July 2012, the Economist ended an article on voter fraud with the sentence:

it would be awkward, to say the least, if Mr Romney won because new laws kept some of Mr Obama’s supporters from voting.

And I had the following reaction: 

Would it not be far worse if Barack Obama — or if either candidate, really — won because the absence of a voting law allowed fraudulent voters from his party (with or without the candidate's consent) to steal the election?

In the latter case, a candidate might win as a result of a crime — a crime which election and law officers were deliberately prevented from detecting. In the (hypothetical) case you mention, his adversary might win because of the unintended consequences in the fight against crime, which is surely a distinction worth making.

To take another (far worse) crime, how prevalent is murder? Not very, if you take the statistics in percentage (something like 0.0048 %). Well, no matter how rare murder is, you still need to criminalize it as much for justice — to bring perpetrators (however rare they may be) to justice — as for prevention — to prevent people from being tempted to use it.

The last I heard, one needs some sort of poll card to cast a ballot in Britain, as indeed one does in every other democracy on this planet. Due to the Democrats' hysterical race-baiting, we have been subjected to the (absurd) spectacle of being the only country where having this (common-sense) requirement can only be viewed as vile, outrageous prejudice. Well, if it is racist to require voter ID in America, then Britain and every other democracy on the planet (including, of course, in Africa) can only qualify as racist as well.

The height of ridicule occurred when Democrats organized hearings in Washington to hear the sob stories of these oppressed masses. Except that in order to get out-of-state to DC, the wretched martyrs who find it such a hardship getting around their home towns managed to board an… airplane by showing an… ID.

Related: • Unmentioned About the Voter Fraud Scandal of 2020:
Not Only the Presidency Is Affected — Other Races Will Need Revision as Well
• Voter ID: Apparently not allowing minorities to cheat is a form of racial oppression
• In America, we learn from the French newspaper Le Monde (in July 2013),
Most of the 39 Million African-Americans Do Not Have an ID to Vote 
• If the Democrats learned anything from their 2016 debacle,
it’s that they didn’t cheat nearly enough (May 2017)
• Let’s dispense with the myth that liberals are really against voter fraud;
Voter fraud is actually an essential part of their election strategy (from April 2014) 
• Democrats don't support voter fraud;
they just worry about disenfranchising the deceased

One Week Before the Election, the New Yorker Mentioned the 25th Amendment — But Only for Donald Trump; With Joe Biden, There Is Nothing to Fear

We May Need the 25th Amendment, wrote the New Yorker one week before the election, but only for Donald Trump; with Joe Biden, there is nothing to worry about. (Welcome, Instapundit  readers.)

Before getting to Sleepy Joe, needless to say, Jeannie Suk Gerson spends eight long paragraphs discussing why 25 applies primarily to Trump, who is a psychopath comparable, she suggests at one point, to… Hitler and Stalin. Furthermore, her history of the 25th "in temporary and limited ways" invokes Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and George W Bush, but not a single Democrat. 

As it turns out, Joe Biden's health, mental or otherwise, is nothing to worry about. All the fears you may have about him are due to nothing more serious than a "lifelong stutter."

The only reason to fear for a candidate's mental health is if — as expected (sic) — Trump loses, Jeannie Suk Gersen says, because then

the period between November 3rd and Inauguration Day, on January 20th, is likely to be “the most dangerous moment” in his Presidency. “What does a malignant narcissistic person do when they’re enraged?” [John Gartner, a Duty to Warn psychologist] said. “They want to act out in an aggressive and sadistic way, to regain their sense of power.”

If you can stomach reading them, here are some excerpts from the New Yorker article:

Throughout the past four years, there has been chatter about Donald Trump’s mental health and stability, but little political will to make use of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which allows Congress to deem a President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and remove him from power. … The news that he was medicated with the steroid dexamethasone, used for seriously ill covid-19 patients, also alarmed many because its known side effects include aggression, agitation, and “grandiose delusions”—behaviors that, judging from the President’s Twitter account, at least, he already seemed to exhibit.

 … Section four of the Twenty-fifth Amendment provides two distinct avenues for removing a President against his will. In one, the Vice-President joins with a majority of the Cabinet to send Congress a written declaration that the President is unable to serve. In the other, the Vice-President does so along with a majority of “such other body as Congress may by law provide.”

 … The questioning of Trump’s fitness has persisted throughout his Presidency, as members of his party and his close associates fed the narrative of a deteriorating mind. In 2017, then Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee who was then the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, called the White House an “adult day care center”; he went on to say, “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.” In “A Warning,” published in 2019, an anonymous senior Trump official reported: “He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity.” Similarly to Corker, the Administration official added that working with Trump was “like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak.” Other senior officials have said that Trump, who is seventy-four, appeared to be suffering from some form of dementia. Trump’s former White House adviser Omarosa Newman stated in her book “Unhinged,” in 2018, that Trump’s “mental decline could not be denied.” Trump’s former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said, in 2019, that Trump “has declining mental faculties.”

Others, including Trump’s niece Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist, have said that Trump’s behavior shows the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. A number of mental-health experts have also suggested that he may suffer from malignant narcissism, a term that was coined by the psychologist Erich Fromm, in 1964, in order to describe Hitler and Stalin. John Gartner, the psychologist who spearheaded the Duty to Warn movement in 2017 and has advocated removing Trump through the Twenty-fifth Amendment, told me that malignant narcissism is a “psychiatric condition that makes you evil,” combining narcissism (which features the extremes of poor self-esteem and distorted self-enlargement), paranoia (which Gartner sees in “the crazy conspiracy theories, sense of victimization, and demonization of minorities”), psychopathy (“lying and exploiting people”), and sadism. The condition is considered dangerous because the combination of aggression, suspiciousness, lack of empathy, and a fragile ego might result in vindictive and destructive acts when the sufferer is wounded. Shortly before Trump’s impeachment trial, in February, more than eight hundred mental-health professionals signed a letter to Congress, warning that “failing to monitor or to understand the psychological aspects” of humiliating Trump “could lead to catastrophic outcomes.”

Trump has repeatedly flipped the conversation about mental deterioration onto his opponent, who many have claimed also shows signs of senility. At a March rally, Trump said, of Biden, “They’re going to put him in a home, and other people are going to be running the country.” Talk of Biden’s mental decline began during the Democratic primary campaign last year, as other candidates observed that Biden garbled sentences, misspoke, and failed to finish trains of thought in some debates. (Biden has spoken about having a lifelong stutter.)

Last spring, Bernie Sanders’s surrogates and supporters promoted the hashtag #WhereIsJoe, implying that Biden’s campaign was keeping him out of sight to hide mental infirmity. Glenn Greenwald, founder of the Intercept and an outspoken Sanders supporter, tweeted that “the steadfast, wilful refusal of Dem political & media elites to address what is increasingly visible to the naked eye — Biden’s serious cognitive decline — is frightening.” Biden, who has said he would not seek a second term as President, released his physician’s report that he is healthy and “fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency” but offered nothing specific about his cognitive health.

 … As Frank Bruni put it, in the Times, “Please tell me why I should care whether Joe Biden is declining mentally when Donald Trump bottomed out morally long ago.”

Trailing Biden in polls, Trump has continually triggered shock waves around election integrity, claiming election fraud, attacking confidence in the process’s legitimacy, urging his supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully,” and, most alarmingly, at times refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. (When pressed by NBC News’s Savannah Guthrie in mid-October, he did commit to a peaceful transfer of power.) If, as seems likely, voters deliver a loss for Trump, the Twenty-fifth Amendment comes into different focus, as an essential support to the democratic electoral process rather than an end run around it. In the event that the President’s mental state leads him to try to circumvent the election result in order to stay in power, having Congress remove him via the Twenty-fifth Amendment as “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” would be as legitimate a function of constitutional democracy as can be imagined.

John Gartner, the Duty to Warn psychologist, told me that, if Trump loses the election, the period between November 3rd and Inauguration Day, on January 20th, is likely to be “the most dangerous moment” in his Presidency. “What does a malignant narcissistic person do when they’re enraged?” Gartner said. “They want to act out in an aggressive and sadistic way, to regain their sense of power.” He compared the voting public to “the abused spouse” who finally says to the abuser, “We’re going to leave you. We’re kicking you out of the house. Come January, we’re packing your bags. Well, what does he do then?” During that transition, it might be most important to have the Twenty-fifth Amendment at the ready. As for Biden’s mental health, Gartner declined to say that there were no signs of cognitive decline. But, referring to Donald Winnicott’s notion of the “good enough mother,” he deemed Biden “the good enough President.”