RIP the Peter of Peter, Paul, 'n' Mary

RIP Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary, whose hits included of Blowin' in the Wind. 

I still like groups like them and, say, the Weavers, even though I do remember an Ed Driscoll post from nine years ago which explained that the folk music movement was largely fake 'n' artificial 'n' manufactured (not to mention Stalinist)…

David P. Goldman on folk music: 

We Americans are not a “folk,” not in the sense that Johann Gottfried Herder used the term. We do not have the deep memory of autochthonous roots that characterizes European cultures, the hand-me-downs of long-lost pagan experience. We are a people self-created by religious and political impulse. We have a distinct culture, but it is a self-created culture, a riff on Pilgrim’s Progress …

 … We are not a folk but a church, and our native music is church music–the Battle Hymn with its quotation of Isaiah 63, for example, or “The Year of Jubilo,” whose hymnal roots I analyzed here. Our popular poetic language is that of our national epic, the King James Bible. We sang the go-to-meeting songs of the Methodists and other Protestant denominations. This informed the spirituals of black slaves who gave us our first original art form. American folk music? Gospel is as close as we get to such a concept.

 … What passed for “folk music” in the 1940s and 1950s, by contrast, was the remnant of English ballad preserved in isolated Appalachian communities, as rediscovered by musicologists. Joan Baez made a specialty of such things. John and Alan Lomax gathered Appalachian music, African-American music, and other scraps and shards distant from the American mainstream as an expression of authentic “folk” culture. The entire “folk” movement was Stalinist through and through (including Woody Guthrie, who was a Communist Party hanger-on and probably a member. … ).

Of course, it was all a put-on. Woody Guthrie was a middle-class lawyer’s son. Pete Seeger was the privileged child of classical musicians who decamped to Greenwich Village. The authenticity of the folk movement stank of greasepaint. But a generation of middle-class kids who, like Holden Caulfield, thought their parents “phony” gravitated to the folk movement. In 1957, Seeger was drunk and playing for pittances at Communist Party gatherings; that’s where I first met him, red nose and all. By the early 1960s he was a star again.

To [Bob] Dylan’s credit, he knew it was a scam, and spent the first part of his career playing with our heads.

"A network of small complicated rules": Alexis de Tocqueville Predicted the Kind of Tyranny Modern Democratic Nations Would Face

The type of tyranny that Alexis de Tocqueville warned about (video) two centuries ago is right on the spot, according to TheLibertyDaily (merci à Duncan Hill), which goes on to point out out that it describes today's "bureaucratic nightmares." The video quote from Democracy in America comes (in bold) in the third paragraph below:

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

In that perspective, here is another Tocqueville quote that I like:

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

And another:

“It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”  

Then there is this longish quote:

“What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?

There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.

When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.”

But my all-time favorite Tocqueville quote is the one I have used on several posts. It describes the Left's modus operandi and its fairy tales better than anything I have ever seen.

It is easier for the world to accept
a simple lie than a complex truth
— Alexis de Tocqueville

Let's Stop Using the Words "Trump Tried to Overturn the 2020 Election"; It's Unprofessional Journalism

A PROCLAMATION: Note to Karen-type readers and especially to Blogger/Blogspot "fact-checkers" and employees: Today, on the anniversary of January 6, I am republishing an updated version of the article below that first appeared on No Pasarán in the summer of 2023 — without any type of controversy whatsoever — and a previous newer version which was strangely flagged on November 5 and unceremoniously deleted for allegedly "violating [y]our guidelines".
As I wrote in my protest to Google along with my X-tweets to Sundar Pichai, No Pasarán is a serious blog that has published 13,860 posts over more than 20 years, taking pride in being or trying to be fair, neutral, and dispassionate in its coverage of subjects. No, there is nothing in this post — which appeared on American Thinker a year ago and which has since been translated to Danish, to French, and to Portuguese — which remotely violates any type of common-sense guidelines. Of the aforementioned 13,830 posts of the past 20 years, less than a dozen have been reverted to draft mode (after hysteria by drama queen Karens) and ***every single one of those rare few has been restored after review!***
The post compares the Democrats' version of the 2020 election with the GOP's (with Donald Trump's) version; if somebody doesn't like or agree with my conclusion, let them argue with different facts and arguments instead of using the tediousness of appealing to cancel culture. Indeed, let them write their replies in the comments section, or if they will contact me with a longer version, I will publish their response in full on the blog, cross-linking our two counterpoints. I have always been fair in the past (e.g., always taking care to post the "adversary's" hyperlinks), and have no intention of changing — now or ever.
Therefore, Blogspot employees, therefore, Sundar Pichai,
kindly restore the post of December 5
and refrain from removing the current one.
Thanks in advance.
Without further ado, here is the article:

It is easier for the world to accept
a simple lie than a complex truth
— Alexis de Tocqueville

After four years — and as Democrats in Colorado, Maine, and Illinois (vainly) attempted to ban Donald Trump from their states' ballot — it is beyond time for the media to stop "reporting" that "Trump tried to overturn a presidential election" and to quit referring matter-of-factly: to "the election that Trump lost"; to "Trump's defeat" and his "baseless" "false claims"; and to "Trump is challenging the results" of Joe "Biden's victory (in, say, Georgia)" and to "swing the election in his favor". 

It is equally time for news organizations to stop "reporting" that the four (who's counting?) indictments are nothing more than valid or understandable (if ill-timed) reactions to punish Trump for his ("criminal") attempts to "disenfranchise voters" and thus "subvert democracy."

This is not a neutral, objective, and non-partisan view of of the facts of the 2020 election. Far from it. No. It is the (self-serving) DNC version. It is akin to asking "When did you stop beating your wife?" 

Phrases like “no evidence”, “unproven claims”, “sham election investigations”, and “false claims of election fraud” come straight from the Democratic Party. At a minimum, readers and viewers are used to circumspect "allegedlys," to prudent "reportedlys," and to cautious "accused ofs". What happened to them?

At this point, a crucial question arises: What is Donald Trump's version of the 2020 election?

Remember that his whole message — as was that of the protestors on January 6, 2021 (not a single one of them, to my recollection, brandishing weapons other than cel phone cameras for selfies) — is exactly, or almost exactly, the same — i.e., that it was the Democrats who tried to overturn (and, indeed, who succeeded in overturning) the 2020 election and thus democracy (hence his, and the protesters', far from unreasonable anger).

We could even use similar wordings: "the election that Biden lost", "Joe's defeat" and "false claims", and "the Democrats tried to change/challenge (and succeeded in changing/challenging) the results". Indeed, the 45th President called it "stealing the election" and thus… if anyone disenfranchised voters and undermined democracy, it was the party of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.

Why — why on Earth — should leftists be shielded against "inflammatory rhetoric" and even against, yes, (the threat of) violence if and when they commit(ted) election fraud? The Left's mobs are constantly using inflammatory rhetoric ("racist" being their fallback slur and, indeed, the drama queens' main talking point) as well as violence, from 2020's George Floyd riots to the current pro-Gaza demonstrations — while avoiding jail or even trials and opprobrium itself.

Given that the charges are basically the same, shouldn't a media that was neutral, objective, and independent — instead of acting like the purveyors of (to use Trump's expression) fake news — give equal space to both charges?

The way that even conservative outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, not to mention RINOs like Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, buy into and repeat the Left's "talking points" and double standards is disconcerting. (A WSJ editorial defended Donald Trump against "lawfare" — to wield war on people through the legal system, by imprisoning them or "merely" ruining them, a tactic the Democrats have already used on such Trump allies as General Michael Flynn and Rudy Giuliani — while calling his "post-election behavior" in 2020 "deceitful and destructive" and referring to his "disgraceful" "malfeasance". While National Review also pushed back against the Trump indictments, all the while feeling the need to point out that it "condemned Trump’s appalling actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election" as well as "Trump’s deceptions": "Mendacious rhetoric in seeking to retain political office is damnable.") 

After proving, conclusively — quoting Justice Antonin Scalia, comparing Jan. 6 with the 1960s race riots, and using Webster's 1828 Dictionary — that January 6, 2021 Was Not an Insurrection, one of Reason's prominent constitutional law professors nevertheless feels it necessary to end with "Like Ilya [Somin], I am appalled by Trump's behavior on January 6, 2021, and I will not vote for him under any circumstances because of it." Why, Steven Calabresi?! You have just proven that 

Far from it being a rebellion, the January 6th riot was a two and one-half hour event in the Capitol City of the third most populous country in the world. No one came to the riot with guns even though guns are widely available in this country. When former President Trump asked them to leave, they left.

Why then, speak of the "wrong that Trump committed on January 6, 2021"?

An otherwise outstanding post at the Powerline Blog by the usually outstanding John Hinderaker, gives us, paragraph after paragraph, evidence of cheating and lying by Democrats. And still, that can't prevent Hinderaker himself from being polite and handing some rope to the opposition, ending said post with the words, Trump's "obviously indefensible claims", and with these immortal lines:

In sum, the indictment does not make out a case that Trump is a criminal who should go to prison. But it does make out a strong case that Trump is a dishonest egomaniac with terrible judgment who should never again be entrusted with a responsible government position.

You have just written 15 paragraphs detailing the Democrats' lying, cheating, and criminal interference in the 2020 election, John Hinderaker — not least in the very indictments that have been served up by Bolshevist prosecutors. Where do those two final sentences fit in except to prove that with enough pressure and broadsides, the Drama Queens' left-leaning propaganda will overwhelm even the most open-minded and the most honest brain?

Why is being a(n allegedly) "dishonest egomaniac with terrible judgment" worse than being a lying cheat with Bolshevist tendencies or than being a fellow Republican who cannot see that the other side are lying cheats with Bolshevist tendencies?

Even Communist Dissidents Fall for the Democrats' 

Soviet-Style Demonization of Their Opponents

Even refuges from (formerly or currently) communist countries — who are usually not shy about informing Western audiences just how totalitarian, say, the Woke movement or the statue takedown is —are not immune from what we the might call the DNC's propaganda. When everybody agrees on what an awful "narcissist" Trump allegedly is, don't they recognize that this is one of the ways that the Kremlin maligned (or that Beijing's CCP maligns) their fellow dissidents and going as far as sending them to insane asylums for the "benign" purpose of curing them?

Across the Atlantic, the usually outstanding Nicolas Lecaussin (an author born in communist Romania whose IREF — Institut de Recherches Economiques et Fiscales — and IFRAP — Institut Français de Recherche sur les Administrations Publiques — try to take on the Deep State in France the way FEE or the Mises Institute do in the US) pulls no punches with the Biden family but feels the necessity to come down on Donald Trump with une tonne de briques:

[l']ancien président, que ses frasques et son détestable caractère rendent aussi imprévisible qu’ infréquentable (the former president, whose escapades and loathsome character make him as unpredictable as unfit to be associated with).

Why can't a refuge from Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist nightmare (just as Ilya Somin is one from Brezhnev's nightmare) see that OrangeManBad's "loathsome" attitude is explainable by his disgust with America's left-leaning politicians, the corruption that they engender, and their desire to turn (or "fundamentally transform") America into a banana republic like Cuba or… Romania?

But the most astonishing Eastern European refuge is Steven Calabresi's "comrade" at Reason. I have followed and admired Ilya Somin — whose résumé takes a page or more to fill — ever since Glenn Reynolds started quoting him on Instapundit a dozen years ago. Just this February, Ilya Somin penned Remembering Lenin—the First Great Communist Mass Murderer. You would think that a refuge from a communist nightmare would, again, see through the dubious claims of government operatives.

But again and again, Ilya Somin ignores the numerous anomalies of the 2020 election (see below) while taking for granted the Democrat Party's claims of Trump's defeat (is it out of gratefulness to the West that otherwise rational Eastern European refuges set aside their brains and take Western governments, even when left-leaning — all or most of whom were supporters of the USSR's communists — at their word?), and claims that Donald Trump is guilty of treason and that the January 6 "insurrection" could have hurt or killed Capitol police officers.

As Ron Hart — no constitutional expert, he — points out, Democrats Got Their Political Playbook From Lenin:

When you have bad policies and cannot sustain your authority based on quantifiable results, you do what Democrats have done these last few years: you weaponize the government against your enemies.

It is not a novel construct. In 1918 the oppressive Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin (the 100th anniversary of whose death was on Jan. 21) laid out his plan to keep the communists in power with his infamous “Hanging Order.”

The comparison between Lenin's four or five “Hanging Order” points and the modus operandi of America's Democrat Party is a must-read. (If you click on no other links on this post, it must be Ron Hart's here and Matt Kane's below…)

Number 1. “Hang in full view of the people,” resembles the multiple, frivolous impeachment attempts against Trump by Democrats. You would have to surrender your reason to Woke-DNC dogma not to conclude that the Deep Blue “Deep Staters” are not targeting Trump. A 76-year-old man, never arrested, rings up 90 felonies these past 12 months as he runs against a sitting president. Really? Maybe he’s just a late bloomer?

 … Number 2. “Publish their names.” Clearly the “doxing and swatting” of GOP leaders, from Lois Lerner to the IRS agent who turned over the tax returns of Donald Trump and Elon Musk to The New York Times, fit this category. 

Number 3. “Seize their grain.” It is what NY Attorney General Letitia James is doing to Trump by using some novel legal theory which has neither victim nor crime to take Trump’s properties away from him. 

Number 4. “Designate Hostages — in a fashion people see and tremble.” If this is not the essence of the vast prosecutorial overreaction to Jan. 6, then just arrest me. A few hundred men who looked like the cast of Duck Dynasty on a confusing day walked through our Capitol (“The People’s House”) and monkeyed with Nancy Pelosi’s podium. Now many of them sit in solitary confinement, perhaps for up to 20 years. For trespassing.

Republicans Play the Rules of Golf 

While the Democrats are Playing Ice Hockey 

I don't like the idea of being protected by these shepherds
who are no better animals than us, and who very often are worse.
— Alexis de Tocqueville

Speaking of which: Meanwhile, Joe Biden's — far worse — instances of corruption, both as senator and as occupant of the White House (over $20 million in bribes from China's communists?!), are duly opposed but never with such vitriolic wording. The opposition is quite restrained and, even if principled, almost of the "Ho-hum" variety (rarely, if ever, loaded words like "disgrace(ful)", "appalling",  or "malfeasance"). I don't remember Chris Christie, Mitt Romney, or Liz Cheney — not to mention the Department of Justice — getting worked up about any of the Biden family's shenanigans.

You might as well say, Well, of course, the Soviet tribunals went too far. That goes without saying. But still, with regards to individual cases such as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov (or, say, a Romanian opponent to Ceaușescu or the Hong Kong dissidents), surely those losers in some way did deserve their fate.

When will Republicans and conservatives (as well as the general American population, for that matter) finally get familiar with The Two Rules of Modern Journalism? Why do conservatives so often suffer from Stockholm Syndrome and feel the need to be "fair" and to give in to the self-serving views of Democrats, who have never harbored an iota of goodwill for them and who are in no way willing to reciprocate?  

(See the GOP video of 24 minutes of one Democrat after another, from Al Gore to Stacy Abrams, contesting one election result after another since 2000; just as important, notice that while a troubling number of naive conservatives have expressed a degree of sympathy towards the Democrats' contention that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election — even in spite of the fraud — not a single member of the donkey party ever does so with regards to their own party; in addition, none of the mainstream media outlets can point to many an MSM report telling Jimmy Carter or Karine Jean-Pierre that it is time to "move on", much less informing them that they might simply be wrong.)

As Bernie Marcus, Home Depot co-founder, mentioned 11-12 years ago, explaining "the rules of the game":

… the Republicans play the rules of … golf. In golf, if you miss a putt or you touch the ball, you call a shot on yourself. We're playing the game of golf. The Democrats are playing ice hockey. It's a killer game. And that's the difference in politics.

The genius of Donald Trump was, and is, to have the GOP play the game of ice hockey as well. (This — in turn — is the precise explanation why Trump is hated to such an extent.)

"Unproven Claims"?  The Principle of Fairness: 

Dispassionate Examinations of the Rival Contentions

There is nothing more prone to error than common opinion.
A good isolated observer actually has more weight on my mind
than a thousand superficial or self-interested accounts which repeat one another.
— Alexis de Tocqueville

But let us take a moment to examine the principle of fairness: as far as fairness is concerned, if a reporter, or a common citizen, were to examine the rival charges dispassionately, wouldn't an intellectually honest person (journalist or other) feel the need to conclude that there is more evidence in Trump's favor?

Isn't it "evidence" of a stolen election that election offices in a handful of states in which Trump was leading after voting ended closed at or after midnight — a move that is absolutely unprecedented — and when they re-opened the next morning, several hours later, Joe Biden was suddenly ahead?

I could go on about the efforts to change state election laws, the House retaining all GOP seats while adding another dozen, and mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, the mules controversy, as well as the Twitter Files, with institutions (Death of the American Voter), social media, and the MSM all ganging up to malign stories such as the New York Post's report on Hunter Biden's laptop, etc… 

DINESH AND Mollie Hemingway OTHER MOVIE SUGGESTED Rigged (Death of the American Voter)

As Del May writes on American Thinker,

For me, the biggest give-away that the election was rigged is how the Dems stopped every attempt at an audit. If they had nothing to hide, then let the Repubs audit. If there was no rigging, then the audits would make the Repubs look like fools. So, why didn't they let the Repubs audit??

But I would refer you to Matt Kane's outstanding must-read article at American Thinker, where he discusses "unconstitutional changes to state election laws, unsupervised ballot drop boxes, voting machine errors, mathematically improbable voter turnout, and other examples of outright voter fraud" as well as the fact that "Establishment politicians and mainstream media have fought harder than on any other issue to convince the public that voter fraud is a conspiracy theory."

I would also refer to the Time Magazine article of February 4, 2021 — less than a month after the so-called January 6 "riots" by "thugs" that represented "threats to democracy" — in which Molly Ball approvingly reports on a “cabal” (Time’s own choice of words) of “left-wing activists and business titans” working to "save" the election from Trump. In the New York Post, Glenn Reynolds — who points out that although "Jan. 6, 2021 … has been called an “insurrection,” it was closer to a campus mob occupying the dean’s office than a coup d’etat" — reports that the "'cabal' that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us" and on the world

pushed mail-in voting. It moved to block election fraud suits brought by Trump and supporters. It employed social media censorship to mute pro-Trump arguments and amplify anti-Trump arguments. It sponsored protests.

Isn't it evidence that recently, in one of the (Soviet-style?) court cases against Donald Trump, the Special Counsel, Jack Smith, has asked the judge (Tanya Chutkan) to block the former president from presenting January 6 evidence, 1) effectively not allowing an American citizen his First Amendment rights, 2) effectively not allowing the former president to defend himself, and 3) effectively not assuming that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty?

To quote Severn on a post on the 14th Amendment:

Pause for a moment to savor the sheer Kafkaesque insanity of all this ... language in the Constitution which was written to apply to those who engaged in insurrection against the United States is being used by those who engaged in insurrection against the United States (the anti-Trump "resistance") to prevent the actual lawfully elected government (Trump) from taking power on grounds that he is resisting them.

Apart from those — numerous — pieces of evidence, for myself, there is one simple instance that stands out above the rest.

How conceivable is it that a doddering professional politician with nary a history of a gift for gab or one of national popularity (unlike, say, deservedly or not, Ted Kennedy) would not only beat the Republican Party's rock star (Donald Trump) in votes, but also the Democrat Party's rock star (Barack Obama) — especially since Joe Biden's (rare) campaign speeches and (rare) campaign appearances hardly attracted any significant number of individuals, let alone crowds, and since, indeed (upon the strange advice of VIPs like Nancy Pelosi), Sleepy Joe hardly left his basement to campaign?

By contrast, let us be fair and examine the left's talking points: one of the main reasons many of us are skeptical pertains to the very fact that the mainstream media has been trying to stifle all debate on the subject, and that from the earliest hours of November 4, 2020. Trump "continues to argue, falsely, that the 2020 election was stolen from him" (New York Times, Aug. 8, 2023).

All the left does is repeat incessantly — they don't even bother using their usual weasel tactic of referring to (unnamed) experts, although that is implicit — that Trump's claim are "baseless" or "unfounded", if not an outright lie (or "the big lie"), all the while calling us skeptics "conspiracy theorists", without ever giving, at least once in a while, some evidence thereof.

Just presenting one in-depth single article or news story in which every one of Trump's claims is meticulously picked apart and debunked might be enough, and the New York Times and the Washington Post could refer to it by linking the word "baseless" or "lie" in every every other subsequent news story to it.  But that "ur-article" does not seem to exist in any editorial office.

As Dennis Prager puts it, in today's America (and world),

all you have to say to people who went to college is "Experts say" … As I've said for years, for the secular college graduate, "Experts say" is what "Thus sayeth the Lord" has been to religious people for thousands of years.  They have just exchanged authority from the Lord to "the experts"…

In this case, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN don't even use "experts say", knowing that that would sound ridiculous (who on Earth — what individual — can be called an unassailable expert on the matter of election results if there have been shenanigans which by definition are stealthy and which the so-called expert cannot possibly know anything about) while betting — incredibly, with no lack of success — on nobody challenging their basic gaslighting about Trump's "baseless" claims and his desire to "overturn" an election and, indeed, democracy itself.

More data backing this up: most Americans are *not* leftwing, and yet leftwing ideology dominates all our big institutions. There needs to be a thorough effort to depoliticize these institutions. https://t.co/bqZidYFmbn pic.twitter.com/tUkLkG6mJ9

— Jacob Helberg (@jacobhelberg) September 23, 2024

I'm not very religious myself, but if you read the books in Dennis Prager's Rational Bible series ("The title of [these five commentaries] is “The Rational Bible” because its approach is entirely reason-based … The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone"), you will get an idea of the real reason why religion has such a bad reputation. What does it mean to be religious? Does it mean believing in (alleged) fairy tales or going to Church/Synagogue with foolish believers with silly smiles on their faces?

It means nothing but this, says Dennis Prager: live and work (and… govern) while trying to integrate the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments into your life. Now, before you protest that you don't want, or need, a religious lesson: think of "do not steal" and "do not kill" (do not murder in the original Hebrew); isn't that pretty good governance for a society that even an atheist can, without renouncing his atheism or agnosticism and without joining any religion, subscribe to?!

Ah, but there's the rub: to the leftist, actually, the 10 Commandments turn out to be one heck of a major problem.

Leftists at the head of a nanny government obviously don't think you are their equals, socialists do not believe in "do not covet" (taxes), communists do not believe in "do not kill", nanny governments do not believe in "honoring your father and mother" (your family) — certainly not above Big Brother — and above all, all of the above do not believe in "Do not bear false witness."

(If you protest, "Let's not get carried away, Erik, surely you cannot deny that some amount of taxes are necessary in life?!", Harry Jaffa provides the answer: "Those who live under the law have an equal right in the making of the law, [while] those who make the law have a corresponding duty to live under the law." Incidentally, this also pertains to the January 6 kerfuffle…)

Bearing false witness: leftists allow themselves to lie to others, and they allow themselves to lie to themselves — all to bask in their own valor and glory, as these knights in shining armor turn everything upside down.

Because they are Drama Queens, leftists allow themselves to wield double standards and to lie about global warming, about the rise of the oceans, about Republicans being Hitler, about leftist riots versus right-wing protests, about illegal immigrants and how they have no papers, about racism, about COVID, about 1776 replaced with 1619, about American culture (structural racism), about sexism, about rape culture DANSK LINK, about men identifying as girls participating in women's sports, about suicide being a benevolent thing ("Do not kill" applies also to yourself), about the horrendous (Bible-based) Western civilization, about the ghastly sins of despicable Republicans like Donald Trump, George W Bush, and Ronald Reagan vs the  "ho-hum" at-best-insignificant lapses of valorous Democrats like Joe Biden, Barack Obama and the Clintons, about how the MAGA movement is traitorous, about how the January 6 protesters deserve up to two dozen years in prison while releasing true criminals onto the streets, about how the communists were honorable ("sure they killed millions of people, but, hey, they had good intentions"), and about wokeness uncovering a true picture of society.

In short, they can lie about how despicable their neighbors are and how valorous they themselves are to attack said neighbors, aka their (non-threatening) adversaries.

Speaking of the Bible, incidentally, does it not mention false pride as the cardinal sin? Wouldn't that cover yourself self-describing as valorous for "saving the planet" and "saving democracy"?

No wonder leftists praise l'état laïc and want the Judeo-Christian religion to have nothing to do with politics…

It also explains the antisemitism and anti-Americanism through the centuries and the millennia, Israel and the United States being the two nations that have most followed the precepts of the Judeo-Christian Bible, not least the Golden Rule (and have prospered as a consequence) — and thus at least tried to prevent politicians and citizens alike from lying to others as well as to themselves. This brings us, full circle, back to Dennis Prager, writing (in Whites Aren't Hated for Slavery but for Making America and the West),

the left … hates America, which it regards as the paragon of capitalism. By becoming the most successful country in history, America, the quintessential capitalist country, remains a living rebuke to everything the left stands for. If America can be brought down, every left-wing egalitarian dream can be realized. … What the left does very much seek is to destroy America as we have known it -- the capitalist and Judeo-Christian enclave of personal freedom.

As "media outlets, schools and universities publish their horseshit versions of our country's past", Ann Coulter has to ask the following questions: 

Has any group of people ever hated their own country as much as Democrats hate our country? … Has any group of people ever hated the accomplishments of their own ancestors as much as liberals hate our Founding Fathers?

Mark Levin's latest book is called The Democrat Party Hates America.  The truth, as we have seen with the Woke movement, is that leftist scholars and activists hate American institutions, the Left hates American values, leftists hate American history, leftists hate American liberty, leftists abhor the Judeo-Christian religion (because of its Golden Rule and its Ten Commandments), and Democrats have hated Republicans since the movement was born in 1854.

Lincoln in 1860: "when you [Democrats] speak of us Republicans, 

you do so only to denounce us as reptiles or [as] outlaws" 

Democratic peoples have a natural taste for freedom… 
But they have an ardent, insatiable, eternal, invincible passion
for equality; they want equality in freedom, and,
if they cannot attain equality in freedom,
they will want equality in slavery.
— Alexis de Tocqueville

And they have been quite willing to lie about all of the above. It has been common to debate to what degree the Civil War was caused by slavery or states' rights. I have a third explanation: the conflict was caused by the election, in 1860, of a "ghastly" Republican to the White House. (Shades of 2016…) And there was so much outrage among Democrats in 1860 that they proceeded to try to tear the nation apart over the next four years (in a far bloodier way, of course, than in the 21st century).  //// While slavery and states' rights have traditionally rivaled in the debate as the two main causes of the outbreak of Civil War, perhaps a third reason should be entertained: the election of a ghastly Republican.

Only a dozen years ago, James Carville referred to (modern-day) Republicans as "reptiles". And over 160 years ago, when an Illinois lawyer felt the necessity to address himself to Southerners and Democrats (during his Cooper Union speech in February 1860), guess which term Abraham Lincoln reached for:

…when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles [!], or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans]. In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of [Republicanism] as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

"Reptiles, outlaws, pirates, murderers"… How often have Republicans been called (domestic) terrorists in the past dozen years? (And in the years, in the decades, before that?) Don't we hear every four years that the latest Republican candidate is showing signs of fascism and, indeed, that he probably is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler, one who can be expected to start World War III?

When you hear that your opponent is a Nazi or a racist, it from illogical to do everything in one's poser to prevent Adolf Hitler from becoming leader of your country. But the demonizing Drama Queens (especially those in Colorado, Maine, and Illinois) ought to remember that during the 1860 election, the name of Abe Lincoln was also removed from the ballots of ten states, to wit, 10 of the Southern slave states all of which were all under the firm hand of the Democrat Party.

We keep hearing that we — and that 2024's Republican candidate (be it Trump or one of his opponents) — should not re-litigate the 2020 election. That would be tedious and divisive and "it is time to move on and put it behind us." Doesn't that "rational" piece of advice come from the DNC as well?

Isn't the issue of stealing an election (along with… the attendant subversion of democracy) important? Isn't it paramount?

Isn't the main issue of our times issue that a major political party tried, successfully, to undermine America's democracy? And no, the culprits were not Donald Trump and the GOP.

In that perspective, never forget that it is not January 6 (2021) — repeated, deliberately, ad nauseam by the Democrats and the mainstream media alike — that is the critical date; no, the significant date is November 3 (2020).

The Founder of "MAGA France" Tells France's CNews and Europe 1 Stations the Bare Truth About Islamism

Islamism is a world-wide cancer, which is destablizing to all our societies.

A guest on the CNews TV Station called upon, not once but twice, for a debate about the New Orleans terrorist attack, Philippe Karsenty says there is a new cop coming onto the planet and after January 20, things will be changing. 

Later that evening, the founder of MAGA France later was a guest of Stéphanie De Muru on the Europe 1 radio channel, where he opined that there is no doubt about the act's intention and that the true issue is at the level of the penetration of the territory and of the penetration of ideology.

CNews:

Le porte-parole des Republicans in France, Philippe Karsenty, était invité de Midi News ce mercredi 1er janvier sur CNEWS. «Il n’y a plus de doute sur l’intentionnalité de l’acte, a-t-il déploré. Il va falloir réfléchir aux dérèglements mentaux dans nos sociétés.»

Thanks to Javier Milei, Argentina's Expenses Have Been Lowered by a Third

Thanks to Javier Milei, explains Sébastien Laye in Éric Revel's Valeurs Actuelles interview, Argentina's expenses have been lowered by a third.

Milei's intellectual approach to liberalism [in the true sense of the word], which has led to an entire community of admirers throughout the world, is serving as "Soft Power

The CCP's subtle method of turning members of China's diaspora into spies

In an article entitled How China turns members of its diaspora into spies, The Economist tells the story of Tang Yuanjun, a well-known bona fide Chinese dissident who 

participated in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and landed in prison as a result. He later defected to Taiwan, swimming to one of its outlying islands from a fishing boat. America granted him asylum and he settled in New York, becoming the leader of Chinese pro-democracy groups.

But in August 2024 Tang Yuanjun was arrested by the FBI.  

He admits to having used his position to collect information for the Chinese government and to report on his fellow activists. He did this so that the government would allow him to return to China to see his ailing parents.

China’s hacking of American computer networks and its efforts to steal Western military and trade secrets have made headlines in recent years. But it has also been pursuing a more subtle campaign, one that involves bribery, blackmail and secret deals, and which uses people such as Mr Tang and other members of the Chinese diaspora to carry out surveillance, information-gathering and influence operations around the world.

 … This year there have been several high-profile cases involving China. By publicising these investigations, the American government is sending a warning to would-be agents, say experts. … But China’s influence operations often occur in a grey area. … the line between voluntary action and work as an agent is fuzzy. Many overseas Chinese are genuine supporters of the Communist Party or, at least, willing to further its interests because it will help their businesses back home or keep their families in China safe. It is only when they receive covert funding, instructions or supervision from Chinese officials that they cross the line into being foreign agents. 

 … American authorities have struggled to combat these efforts without alienating the Chinese diaspora. An anti-espionage programme launched in 2018, called the China Initiative, aimed to stop the country from using “non-traditional collectors”, such as academics and scientists, to steal America’s trade and technology secrets. Nearly 90% of the defendants charged under the initiative were of Chinese heritage, according to a database compiled by the MIT Technology Review. 

 … The risk is that in its efforts to counter the Communist Party, [Donald Trump's] America drives more members of the diaspora into its hands. ■