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, 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. ■

Disney Blast From the Past: A Portuguese-American Unpacks the H-1B Kerfuffle For You, Adding Immigration Values to the Conversation

Over at her own website, Sarah Hoyt explains the H-1B kerfuffle (for Americans and foreigners alike).

I keep giggling when the media — even some on the right — refers to the lively… discussion last week about the appropriate use of H1B visas and when to import workers as “A MAGA civil war.”

 … This wasn’t a civil war. This was barely a family argument. 

Let me unpack it for you: Of course Musk and Trump had a prejudice pro H1B visas. The first came here with one, and he and the second see only the results after they’ve been normalized, tamped, cleared and made rational by their middle managers.

 … So, of course, Trump and Elon stepped in it, after Vivek really stepped in it by thinking America is how Hollywood portrays it.

But Elon and Trump have walked it back, and I really think they mean it.

 … The point is, as much as I’m sure Vivek didn’t know what he was stepping into, this argument is one that needed to be had. The pros and cons, and the justifiable anger of the people should be on open display.

 … American citizens are tax payers. They are also members of the culture, born and raised in it. If their buy in doesn’t get them at least equal consideration for work and the benefits of an economy they and their parents helped build, it’s on you to explain why not. America should be run for the benefit of Americans (of all colors.) I’m not suggesting we slam the gates shut. I’m suggesting small, a trickle really, and for very specific needs and circumstances …

 … In healthy families, nations and movements, things get discussed in the open without fear it will destroy everything.

And yes, the dems will think it’s a civil war and that we’re “falling apart” but that’s because they don’t tolerate dissent or even questioning, and frankly any questioning would cause them to fall apart, because they have no coherent philosophy.

Ignore them. The adults need to work through this stuff.

Read the whole thing.

The only time that this blog wrote about the H-1B law in its 20 years of existence was during the Obama administration, when a news report in the New York Times in June 2015 made me particularly furious (the fact that it was the Disney Corporation made me angrier still) and particularly willing to write a post dripping with icy sarcasm. 

As you read the following post (plus the NYT article) from 10 years ago, remember this sentence: "If their buy in [and culture] doesn’t get them at least equal consideration for work and the benefits of an economy [that American citizens] and their parents helped build, it’s on you to explain why not."

The Wondrous Benefits of Our Forward-Looking Leaders' Avant-Garde Attempts to Educate Us Bitter Racist Xenophobes to Be Tolerant of Foreigners, and to Generously Accept More of Them in Our Living (and Working) Spaces

From the New York Times, Julia Preston brings us a delightful article on the wondrous benefits of being open to our benevolent, forward-looking leaders (business leaders as well as political) to educate us — the bitter, racist xenophobes that we are — to be tolerant of foreigners, especially to (previously) illegal immigrants, and to generously accept more of them in our living (and working) spaces.

Some [American employees] were performing so well that they thought they had been called in for bonuses.

Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”

 … the layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States. These visas are at the center of a fierce debate in Congress over whether they complement American workers or displace them.

  … Too often, critics say, the visas are being used to bring in immigrants to do the work of Americans for less money, with laid-off American workers having to train their replacements.

“The program has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans,” said Ronil Hira, a professor of public policy at Howard University who studies visa programs and has testified before Congress about H-1B visas.

 … H-1B immigrants work for less than American tech workers, Professor Hira said at a hearing in March of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because of weaknesses in wage regulations. The savings have been 25 percent to 49 percent in recent cases, he told lawmakers.

Thank God Barack Obama is proceeding forward in his dream of radically transforming America, in making the USA more like other countries, and its citizens consequently poorer, more in need of help from the government, and more in need of bureaucracy oversight.

Yes, we can.

Yes we can make Americans poorer.

Yes we can make proud citizens more dependent on government help.

Yes we can make America more of a bureaucratic nation.

RIP Jimmy Carter, the American Chamberlain whose naïve foreign policy led Iran to became the world's biggest sponsor of terror

As Jimmy Carter is laid to rest at the age of 100, it is time to remember that, thanks to the Georgia Democrat (and Southern Baptist peanut farmer), the United States, along with the rest of the planet, has suffered for the past 45 years from the locofocos' (the Democrats') naïve foreign policy, that is, their traditional "be kind and understanding to our enemies, be tough on our friends" approach to foreign affairs. (After all, in the Far Left's Fairy Tale View of Foreign Policy, the only true enemy of the U.S. and of the rest of the world are America's dastardly Republicans…)

Like government itself, the party of government (at the time, Carter's Democrat administration) created a problem, here internationally, where none existed before (at the time, no radical Islamist régime of note opposing America, aka the Great Satan, and Western Europe, aka the Little Satan), to be resolved somehow — by, yes, government — in the future.

In its friendly obituary, Jimmy Carter was perhaps the most virtuous of all America’s presidents, The Economist writes that

The landmarks of his foreign policy—the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978, the Salt II disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union and the return of the Panama Canal to Panama, all criticised by many as giveaways at the time—were typical of a man intent on peace for its own sake.

Missing in that sentence about the "virtuous" "peacemaker" (one, again, in the same category as Neville "Peace in our time" Chamberlain) are two other giveaways, i.e., the betrayal of (admittedly distasteful) allies like Nicaragua and Iran. Like the Russian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution (how much better was JFK in the White House?), the Nicaraguan Revolution (also the result of a Carter policy, see details in the blockquote below), and innumerable other régime changes, the Iranian Revolution made the country a far worse and far more inhumane place, both for its own citizens and for the international community at large. (Thanks for the Instalink, Sarah.)

In spite of Carter achievements, such as, arguably, the Camp David peace accords (but surely Britain's Chamberlain also had achievements that the PM could boast of), the world and Iran itself have for 45 years suffered under the helm of the Ayatollahs' "Death to the Great Satan/Death to the West" Iran, which today, as Investor's Business Daily puts it, "is the world's biggest sponsor of terror" (see, e.g.,  October 7, 2023).

Other American Chamberlains followed Jimmy Carter: although unlike Barack "smart diplomacy" Obama and Joe "the grown-ups are back in charge" Biden, the British PM of the 1930s never seems to have thought it rational to deliver to the Democracy-hating Nazis pallets bearing millions and millions of dollars (or of pounds sterling) in cash in the middle of the night. However, along with the Clintons, Obama and Biden did manage to hand billions and billions to the Democracy-hating Communists of China.

In his History of the American People, Paul Johnson writes that

Carter actually added to American weakness by well-meaning but ill-thought-through ventures. One of them was his 'human rights' policy, based on the Helsinki Accords

 … A human rights lobby grew up within the administration, taking over a whole section of the State Department, which worked actively to enforce the Accords. Thus, it played a major role in the overthrow of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. … The 'sharp break' took the form, in 1979, of the overthrow of Somoza, a faithful if distasteful ally of America, and his replacement by a Marxist and pro-Soviet regime, whose attitude to human rights was even more contemptuous and which campaigned openly for the overthrow of America's allies in Guatemala, El Salvador, and elsewhere in Central America

 … The next year the State Department's Bureau of Human Rights played a significant part in undermining the position of another old ally, the Shah of Iran, whose pro-Western regime was overthrown by orchestrated street-mobs in 1979. It was replaced by a Moslem fundamentalist terror regime, which swiftly accumulated an unprecedented record of gross human rights abuses and characterized the US as the 'Great Satan.'

 … During the 1970s the Cold War spread to virtually every part of the globe and was marked by two developments: the contraction of US naval power, and the expansion of Soviet naval power.

 … While the Carter administration was adept at damaging friends and allies, it failed to develop any coherent response to this extension of the Cold War

The very first thing that followed Carter's brilliant foreign policy decision about abandoning America's ally, the Shah, was the humiliating Tehran embassy hostage crisis (which would last 444 days), compounded by Carter's incompetent 1980 rescue attempt (shades of Saigon 1975 and Kabul 2021, all of them incidentally involving helicopters and the Democrat Party, if not in the White House, at least in the Congress). 

As we reflect on Jimmy Carter, let us take a minute to pause and remember how Frank Gaffney defined the Obama Doctrine, aka smart diplomacy, an ideOlogy typical of all Drama Queens' naïve fairy tale foreign policy:

• Abandoning our allies,

• emboldening our enemies,

• and diminishing our country

Update: Will Tanner reminds us that Carter was instrumental in killing the free, prosperous state of Rhodesia and aiding Mugabe in … transforming it into hellish Zimbabwe, while Yehuda Teitelbaum, in turn, opines that the 39th president "might have done more damage to Israel’s security and international standing than any Western leader in history." For her part, Sarah Hoyt points out that the alleged hero, saint, and peacemaker "was responsible for letting the Soviets and their Cuban guerrilla lackeys put former Portuguese Africa to fire and blood".

Update 2: So far, no coverage that I have seen on
the killer rabbit attack on Jimmy Carter's canoe

Food for Thought About Canada: Should America Have a 51st State? 52 States? Or a Total of 60? How About Just the Current 50?

So Donald Trump has trolled Justin Trudeau, suggesting to the Canadian PM that his country become America's 51st state, one which he in turn could become the governor of.

Excluding more expansionist rhetoric, regarding Greenland and the Panama Canal (and as the Washington Free Beacon declares its 2024 Man of the year to be the Conservative Party's Pierre Poilievre (thanks to Instapundit's Ed Driscoll, eh?)), the thing about Canada is that it is a (con)federation of 10 sub-units (called provinces) in the same way that the U.S.A. is a (con)federation of 50 sub-units (called states).  

An Old Glory with extra stars
— via AI Magic Media

If Canada should be annexed, should it be as a single state/province, leading to an American total of 51, or as 10 states/provinces, leading to a total of 60 states in the newly enlarged nation?

There is much thought to be given to the matter. 

I actually gave it some thought decades ago, right after college, when I tried imagining what the new American flag might look like: should the Stars and Stripes be 60 stars or — what follows I knew was far-fetched — 50 stars plus 10 star-sized maple leafs on the bottom line of the canton?

It has been common throughout history to talk about Britain's 13 colonies in America, and all of said colonies uniting to become independent. This ignores that George III actually had 15 colonies in all, the 13 below the Saint Lawrence River, plus two above, then called Upper Canada and Lower Canada. The latter admittedly had a very different history, the former Nouvelle France being a conquered territory (and a conquered foreign people with a different language) by Britain a decade prior to the unrest further South. Being former subjects of the French Crown, why did Québec not join the 13, then? Should they not have the most fervent of les Américains resisting the hated roi des Anglais?

Many history scholars and teachers whom I asked this question to hummed and hawed. appearing to never have given a thought to the matter. The answer, I eventually fount out, were that the Québecois were Catholics and apparently, they trusted more in their British overlords than in the mainly Protestant radicals and hotheads of the lower colonies.

I wondered how history had been different had the 1775 invasion of Québec been successful, or had Britain's 14th and 15th colonies agreed to join the continental congresses in the early 1770s and agreed to provide a single united North American continent (down to Spain's Mexico border, anyway). How would the first half of the 19th century been different? Would the Civil War "four score and [about] seven years" years later — had it erupted at all — have been shorter, had the president (Abraham Lincoln or another commander-in-chief?) not needed to worry about an invasion from Queen Victoria's British America?

(An aside from down South: after the Mexican War, the U.S. annexed more than half of Mexico; however, there were plans in 1847 and 1848 to annex even more territory, with not the Rio Grande river serving as the U.S./(rump) Mexican border but the Sierra Madre mountain range. Anyway, the full name of the country is the Estados Unidos Mexicanos and if the 31 United Mexican States (plus the DF equivalent of DC) were also to join the US of A, it might lead to 81 stars on Old Glory, or along with Canada's provinces, 91.)

Population & Area

If Canada were to join as a single state, it would be far from a pushover; its 41 million inhabitants would surpass California's 38,000,000 as the most populous state of the (enlarged) Union. It would also — easily — become the largest state by area. Indeed, as the second-largest country on the planet by total area, the Great White North joining the U.S. would make the enlarged union jump to largest country on Earth, with its total 7.39 million square miles (19.3 million square km) surpassing Russia's 6.6 million square miles (17,000,000 square km).

Reminder: back in 1960, when Alaska became the largest state in the Union, some of The Last Frontier's inhabitants enjoyed provoking the previous largest state, Texas, telling its (very) proud citizens that their state (Alaska) was so much larger that they could split it it in two, making the Lone Star State only the third largest in the Union. By comparison, Canada might split into five, making Alaska the sixth-largest state and putting the proud Texans into (a humiliating?) 7th place.

But the fantasy of splitting Canada into five does not take into consideration that — as mentioned — the country is already split into 10 provinces — not to mention three territories.

Danger: Leftists Galore

The danger of having/asking/requesting (?) the 10 provinces join is that the second-most populous province (among others?) might not want to join at all. There are fewer more anti-American people on this planet than the Quebécois, proud to the Heavens of their French language and heritage, going so far as regularly lecturing the French population on the matter. 

Having worked for the Québec government in a Dallas office as my first summer job — it was a standing requirement that the name of the province always be written with its French accent, whatever the language (English or other) it was written in (as you can see in this very post).  With support from France, sometimes — notably when Charles de Gaulle shouted "Vive le Québec libre!" during his 1967 tour, leading him to cut his state visit short — the Québecois regularly hold referendums about splitting from the rest of English-speaking Canada and becoming independent.

The last time Quebec (no accent here for Search Result purposes) tried this, in 1995, I wrote about it in The Globe and Mail (an upgrade of a 1992 text in the International Herald Tribune), which got me a trans-Atlantic call from a Canadian radio station (since they would be interviewing a foreign observer in Paris), where they had trouble believing my view that the French population did not seem that interested in the issue at all.

The danger of having Canada join at all, whether as one or as 10 (9?) sub-units, is the leftist mentality that dominates (the media being worse than America's, as observed, say, during the truckers' Covid revolt).

Twenty years ago, indeed, the Canadian sanctimocracy ("rule by the holier-than-thou") was described during the Iraq War as a nation crippled by a dishonest pacifism, while No Pasarán quoted the International Herald Tribune as saying that Because Canadian Mentality Is Closer to That in Europe, They Are More Generous and More Security-Conscious than Dollar-Hungry American Capitalists Are.

The following year, in March 2005, one Michael Coren wrote in the Toronto Sun that it pained him to say it, but

I'm so very tired of the way … that we Canadians have come to define ourselves not by who we are but by who we are not. … With a malodorous stew of ignorance and malice, [publicly funded mediocrities screaming abuse at a great and noble nation] pump Canada at the expense of deflating the United States" 

The writer's mailbox was soon overflowing, with 1,000 letters from Canadians of all backgrounds and ages. To Coren's delight, over 90% "wrote to say that I had spoken for them."

Unsurprisingly, the remainder, filled with insults such as "collaborationist, double-crossing fifth columnist, fraternizer, quisling, saboteur, security risk, subversive traitor, treasonous turncoat, two-timing quisling", only served to prove… exactly what Coren had written the previous week, "deliciously [illustrating] Canadian hypocrisy and self-delusion": 

We flatter ourselves into a false sense of grandeur by flippant assumptions of our own tolerance and liberalism. 

 … Goodness me, I'm as bad as the Norwegian fascist who sold his country to the Nazis because I wrote that the United States is not the ugly bully so many Canadians make it out to be.

 … Conclusion? The chauvinistic neurosis of the Canadian liberal is in many ways even more repugnant than the insularity of some Americans. 

Back to the 2024 meeting at Mar-a-Largo: PJMedia's Robert Spencer mentions that

Someone at the meeting, according to Fox News, then warned Trump that as a state, Canada would be deep blue, whereupon Trump suggested it become two states, a leftist one and a patriotic one.

So, according to Donald Trump, that makes neither 51 nor 60 (59?), but a total of 52.

Insurrection and Treason: What Did the Words of the 14th Amendment Mean in the 1860s?

Are these dozens of Capitol policemen lying dead or wounded
in the aftermath of the January 6th "insurrection",
or is it a scene from a Victor Fleming film?

The way the January 6 protests at the Capitol have been described by the usual Drama Queens, you would think that you are in Georgia when Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler are galloping through the flames devouring Atlanta and that, in the aftermath, dozens of Capitol policemen are lying dead or wounded like in the harrowing outdoors hospital scene of Gone with the Wind. 

As The Hill cites Article 3 of the 14th Amendment to urge Congress to block Donald Trump from returning to the White Hose (as reported by Yael Halon on Fox News), a central question (beyond double standards) arises: What did insurrection and treason mean to the authors of the 1868 Amendment as well as to the rest of the population, i.e., in the 1860s?  (Thanks for the Instalink, Sarah.)

Related: • The January 6 Protest Summarized in One Single Sentence
• Let's Stop Using the Words "Trump Tried to Overturn the 2020 Election"; It's Unprofessional Journalism
Insurrection and treason meant raising armies, equipping them with uniforms, firearms, and artillery, and going to war and to the battlefield — resulting in a number of American deaths in four short years in the middle of the 19th century greater than that of all America's wars of the 20th Century (including World Wars I and II) combined. (The current post is a major update of a post that appeared almost one year ago, to wit on on January 6, 2024.)

Are these a mob of violent MAGA nuts, deranged Tea Partiers, and other
treacherous  "insurrectionists" on January 6, or are they extras in a Hollywood movie?

During the administration of James Buchanan (the 15th president preceding Abraham Lincoln), his secretary of war stealthily gathered large stores of government arms and sent them to federal arsenals in the South, effectively anticipating the outbreak of civil war.

After the conflict of 1861-1865, Ulysses S Grant wrote in his memoirs that John B Floyd, the Secretary of War, 

scattered the army so that much of it could be captured when hostilities should commence, and distributed the cannon and small arms from Northern arsenals throughout the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them.

The name of John Floyd's predecessor as Secretary of War was Jefferson Davis, and when first seven, then 11, states attempted to secede over the winter of 1860-1861 (related: During the Winter of 1860-1861, Did the South's Democrats Obtain Their Aim — the Secession of 7 Slave States — Thanks to Elections Filled with Stealth, Lies, Voter Fraud, Intimidation, Violence, and Murder?), he would duly become president of the newly-formed Confederate States of America

So there you have it: To the people in the 1860s, to the writers of the 14th Amendment, insurrection and treason meant months and years of preparations, hoarding weapons, both light and heavy, raising armies, and engaging in warfare against the central government, the mother nation, and the Stars and Stripes, leading not to thousands upon thousands of deaths, but to hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Who in their right mind — besides the usual gang of Drama Queens, that is — could in any way reasonably compare January 6 to the Civil War or, for that matter, to 9-11 or to Pearl Harbor?

Indeed, only one words fits that comparison.

That word is: Preposterous.

CAPTION: Clark (Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn) Gable to Vivian Leigh,
sounding like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden: "With them
[the retreating USA-hating CSA rebel soldiers] goes the last semblance of law and order"

Related (Civil War era): • What Caused Secession and Ergo the Civil War? Was It Slavery and/or States' Rights? Or Wasn't It Rather Something Else — the Election of a Ghastly Republican to the White House?
• During the Winter of 1860-1861, Did the South's Democrats Obtain Their Aim — the Secession of 7 Slave States — Thanks to Elections Filled with Stealth, Lies, Voter Fraud, Intimidation, Violence, and Murder? (Wait 'til You Hear About… Georgia's Dark Secret)
• 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"
• Why Does Nobody Ever Fret About Scandinavia's — Dreadful — 19th-C Slavery Conditions?
• The Confederate Flag: Another Brick in the Leftwing Activists' (Self-Serving) Demonization of America and Rewriting of History

To end this post, let us quote, approvingly, from (believe it or not) the New York Times. After spending half his column considering a counterfactual in The Antidemocratic Quest to Save Democracy From Trump, Ross Douthat gets to the main point:

Had [Hillary] Clinton explicitly tried to induce Congress to overturn the result of the 2016 race and had a left-wing protest on her behalf turned into a certification-disrupting riot, almost none of the people currently insisting that we need to take the challenge to Trump’s ballot access very seriously would be saying the same about a challenge to her eligibility. Instead, they would be accusing that challenge of being incipiently authoritarian, a right-wing attack on our sacred democracy.

And they would have a point. Removing an opposition candidate from the ballot, indeed, a candidate currently leading in some polling averages (pending the economic boom of 2024 that we can all hope is coming), through the exercise of judicial power is a remarkably antidemocratic act. It is more antidemocratic than impeachment, because the impeachers and convicters, representatives and senators, are themselves democratically elected and subject to swift democratic punishment. It is more antidemocratic than putting an opposition politician on trial, because the voters who regard that trial as illegitimate are still allowed to vote for an indicted or convicted politician, as almost a million Americans did for Eugene V. Debs while he languished in prison in 1920.

Sometimes the rules of a republic require doing antidemocratic things. But if the rule you claim to be invoking treats Jan. 6 as the same kind of event as the secession of the Confederacy, consider the possibility that you have taken the tropes of anti-Trump punditry too literally.

The term “insurrection,” New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait wrote on Wednesday, is “a defensible shorthand for Jan. 6.” But it’s not “the most precise” term, because while “Trump attempted to secure an unelected second term in office,” he “was not trying to seize and hold the Capitol nor declare a breakaway republic.”

This concession prompted howls of online derision from his left-wing critics, but Chait is obviously, crashingly correct. There are arguments about precedent and implementation that tell against the case for Trump’s ineligibility and prudential arguments about the wisdom of suppressing populist fervor by judicial fiat. But the most important point is that there are many things a politician can do to subvert a democratic outcome, all of them impeachable and some of them potentially illegal, that are simply not equivalent to military rebellion, even if a bunch of protesters and rioters get involved.

To insist otherwise, in the supposed service of the Constitution, is to demonstrate yet again that too many would-be saviors of our Republic would cut a great road through reason and good sense if they could only be assured of finally getting rid of Donald Trump.

Related (January 6): • The January 6 Protest Summarized in One Single Sentence
• Let's Stop Using the Words "Trump Tried to Overturn the 2020 Election"; It's Unprofessional Journalism
• The Central Absurd Inconsistency of the Ray Epps Conundrum Described in Two Sentences
• Kabuki Theater: the "top 12 strange, stand-out moments" of the January 6th Committee's interview with Ray Epps
• Only about 1% of the January 6 protesters actually entered the Capitol (often at the invitation of the Speaker's Capitol Police); In fact, it was the 99% who stayed out of the Capitol who heeded Trump's words
• Déjà Vu All Over Again in the Banana Republic of Biden: No, the Democrats did not run better campaigns in 2022; they cheated, as usual
• Isn’t it strange that in Florida, with all those strict rules against cheating, the GOP red tsunami happened as predicted? The Democrats have again fixed, rigged, and stolen an election
• Let’s dispense with the myth that liberals are really against voter fraud; Voter fraud is actually an essential part of their election strategy
• If the Democrats learned anything from their 2016 debacle it’s that they didn’t cheat nearly enough
• What the January 6th protest actually reveals is the criminal determination of the Democrats to establish a one-party state at whatever the cost
• Democrats don't support voter fraud; they just worry about disenfranchising the deceased
• Voter ID: Apparently not allowing minorities to cheat is a form of racial oppression
• Of the 47 countries in Europe today — the nations and the continent that the Democrats are always telling us to emulate — 46 of them currently require government-issued photo IDs to vote
• Joe Biden, Why Are You Calling Denmark a White Supremacist Country? And You, Barack Obama: Why Are You Calling Africa a Racist Continent?
• 2020: an almost totalitarian effort by the national political and social media to suppress and ridicule any doubt of the accuracy of the election result
The DOJ and the FBI "have no conscience or soul": “There is a fervor to attack the J6 protesters, ruin their lives, and bankrupt them”
• "I believed a farrago of lies" Writes VIP Whose Leftist Half of the American Electorate was "Taken in By Full-Spectrum Propaganda" Regarding the Jan. 6 (Non-)Riots
• Our élites constantly lecture everyone about "disinformation," about "big lies", etc; They're the biggest liars of all, with zero accountability
• Isn't America Being Governed by a Mafia Family Dynasty, setting things up so that there will always be Democrats in power?
• Inside of a month, Democrats have redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy — And by “democracy”, they mean the Democrat Party
• Voter Fraud: A Note to Leftists Who Claim that "Not a shred of hard evidence has been produced"
• Dennis Prager: The Numerous (and Sweeping) Anomalies Regarding the 2020 Election That Cannot Be Ignored
• How to Prevent America from Becoming a Totalitarian State

Sébastien Laye: "Politicians Understand Nothing About Economic Liberty"

L'économiste et entrepreneur Sébastien Laye, est l'invité exceptionnel du grand entretien de Frontières. 

Sébastien Laye : "Les politiciens ne comprennent pas la liberté économique !"

SOMMAIRE 00:00 : Citation d'Etienne de la Boétie: "il y a chez l'homme, une préférence pour la servitude volontaire" 03:30 : Quel partie est libéral en France ? 11:30 : Vers un Trump Français ? 24:30 : La prise de conscience d'un besoin de souveraineté 35:07 : Immigration et écologie du point de vue d'un libéral