The Mind Virus of the Affluent Woke Left

Noise-making radicals who live in mind-boggling affluence occupy a particularly conspicuous space on the woke Left and spew an especially noxious sort of invective.

By Paul Gottfried May 25, 2023 

Those who belong to the woke Left are held together by overlapping interests and shared passions. Not all wokesters support the same causes and certainly not with equal intensity. Thus, warriors against climate change like Karl Schwab and Bill Gates don’t often speak up for the sexual transitioning of children or call for allowing biological males claiming to be women to compete in female sports events. One can likewise read the racialist diatribes of Corey Bush, Ibram X. Kendi, or Al Sharpton without likely running into attacks on fossil fuels or gas stoves. The point is not that these allies never agree on anything. It is that their alliance is looser than some might imagine.

It also seems their collaboration is based mostly on what they loathe rather than what they like. Above all, these collaborators share a chief villain, whom all woke leftists can be counted on to hate, namely, a white male Christian, perhaps living in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s postal district and spewing politically incorrect speech, when he’s not reading the Bible or driving his gas-guzzling car.

It also seems necessary for all wokesters to have a large, intrusive state and ubiquitous surveillance agencies for keeping opposition in line. Equally useful, from their perspective, is a centralized educational system that requires compulsory attendance, except perhaps for designated victim groups, who may do as they like. We also supposedly need properly indoctrinated public educators to deal with all the “neo-Nazis,” or, as the Biden Administration classifies such types, “white nationalist terrorists.” While all elements of the woke Left seek to marginalize their shared enemies, some may also be eager to inflict violence on them. And they can do so while the media turn their collective back on the Left’s “peaceful protests.”

Miranda Devine provides us with a particularly revealing case study of a growing subspecies within this woke genus, the socially radical corporate capitalist. Devine focuses on Daniel Goldman, the usually nattily dressed and unfailingly politically correct representative of New York’s 10th Congressional District. According to his critic at the New York Post, Goldman is a “loathsome” example of “‘elite privilege,’ a blue-eyed son of Sidwell Friends, Stanford and Yale” with “entitlement oozing from every pore.”....................To Read More....

Are the Woke Morally Superior?

July 28, 2022 By Steve Rose

Defeating Wokeism isn’t merely a political, legal, or even cultural battle. We must also address what ultimately fuels Wokeness on a personal level: a delusional sense of moral superiority because it’s that moral superiority that is the vehicle for the left’s real power grab.

Are the Woke, in fact, morally superior? If you ask them, they certainly are. Their thinking seems to run something like this:

The world consists of people with different skin colors, genders, sexual orientations, etc. We are tolerant. The un-Woke aren’t. Therefore, we are morally superior.

This worldview is seductive. The basic idea is “I’m a good person, and you’re not.” Moral superiority is an addictive drug. But every claim in the above argument is off.

Take the concept that “The world consists of people with many different skin colors, genders, sexual orientations, and so on.” That seems true enough at first look. Yet the error lies in its implicit assumptions and in how it’s used. It implies that humanity’s most essential and important qualities can be reduced to these traits: skin color, gender, and sexual orientation........Clearly, the Woke actually aren’t tolerant of much beyond themselves. These modern Sophists merely redefine “tolerance.”.............To Read More....

 

Guns N' Roeses

Michael Walsh 27 Jun, 2022

It has long been a dictum of mine that, as far as the progressive Left is concerned, "they never stop, they never sleep, they never quit." After their twin defeats at the Supreme Court last week, regarding two of their most sensitive issues (both of which derive from their devotion to cultural suicide, which is their principal objective), don't expect them to give up easily. They subscribe to their version of Islamism or the Brezhnev Doctrine: once they've conquered moral or physical territory, it can never go back to the way it was. They see themselves as the heroes of their own movies, good red-diaper babies constantly battling the forces of revanchism and irrendentism, which are you. The idea that they're the bad guy never occurs to them:

These are, after all, the same people who refused to accept George W. Bush's narrow presidential victory in 2000 ("selected, not elected"); refused to accept Bush's win over John Kerry in 2004; rained hellfire and brimstone down on poor Sarah Palin, whose only crime was a surfeit of motherhood, and snarlingly turned on her running mate and their erstwhile favorite maverick, John McCain in 2008; and went bonkers over the surprise victory of Donald Trump in 2016, thus triggering the entire "Russian collusion" hoax that started with Hillary Clinton and eventually came to embrace the FBI, the intelligence community, the media, and the judicial system............To Read More...

COP26 And The Hubris Of Our Political Overlords

October 31, 2021/ Francis Menton

There is a very reasonable argument to be made that the climate-related Conferences of Parties (COPs) that occur annually under UN auspices are terrible things. They cost (i.e., waste) enormous resources, and they have the potential to do great damage to the world economy and the well-being of the people. Fair enough. But on balance, my view is that it’s a good thing we have them. I can think of no other comparable activities that put on such dramatic and widely-viewed display the immeasurable foolishness and hubris of our political overlords.

By the time you read this, COP26 will likely have opened in Glasgow, Scotland. Thousands will be in attendance. Most every country of the world has sent at least some high-level delegation, and the majority are sending the President or Prime Minister. U.S. President Joe Biden will be there in person, along with PM Boris Johnson of the UK, President Emanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and comparable heads of state from across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Oceania, and North and South America. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry used his usual portentous tone to set the stage (as quoted by the BBC):

America's climate envoy John Kerry says the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow is the "last best hope for the world to get its act together".

The idea is that hundreds of global leaders, not a one of whom has much if any idea how the world’s energy systems work, will come together to agree and order that those systems must be completely discarded and replaced. Currently, all the world economies run mostly on fossil fuel energy; but these political leaders are oh so much smarter than that, so they will order that use of such energy must be reduced and then ended, and associated carbon emissions will of course decline commensurately. These people equally have no idea how or whether the newly-ordered alternative energy systems might work, or how much the new systems might cost when fully implemented. Those things, you see, are mere engineering details, too insignificant to warrant the attention of great potentates. What they do know is, as the magnificent Barack Obama put it in 2008, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. . . .”

Given that this is COP26 — that is, the 26th of these mostly-annual lollapaloozas since the game got started at the Rio “Earth Summit” back in 1992 — perhaps it is time to look back over these close-to-three-decades at how the whole model for controlling the world’s climate has been working out. For example, you may be wondering, since world leaders started making agreements intended to lower emissions of CO2, how much have those emissions actually gone down? Fortunately, a UN agency, the IEA, keeps a graph of annual “energy-related” CO2 emissions. Here is that graph since 1990:............To Read More....

When Will the COVID Revolt Come?

At some point, there will be a revolt. The longer the arbitrary insanity persists, the more violent the reaction will be.

  By Roger Kimball  July 31, 2021

 

The most cheerful headline I have seen in weeks was on Glenn Reynolds’ New York Post column: “No, Karen, we’re not masking again.” I hope he is right. I do wonder, though. I have no doubt that the second part of his headline—“A winning GOP message for 2022 [and] beyond”—is correct. At least it’s correct if it is expressed as a conditional: It would be a winning strategy were it adopted. As Reynolds notes, “There is a great deal of pent-up frustration and resentment over the inconvenience, the loss of freedom and the general climate of hectoring that the government’s pandemic response has created.” Indeed. And he’s right, too, that 

It’s irritating to be lectured by officials who claim to be smarter than you. It’s infuriating to be lectured by government officials who claim to be smarter than you—but clearly aren’t.

The on-again/off-again claims on masks and vaccination are just part of it. Tired of masks? Get vaccinated, they told us. Now they’re saying wear a mask, even if you’ve been vaccinated and even if you’re associating with others who’ve been vaccinated.

And there’s talk of more lockdowns, which a growing body of scientific evidence suggests were perfectly useless and downright harmful............

But to return to the question of hope, I am reminded that hope was said by some cynics to have been the last evil in Pandora’s pithos. It seems like only yesterday—in fact, it was just this past May—that both the president and the vice-president of the United States insisted that (as Joe himself put it) “Folks, if you’re fully vaccinated—you no longer need to wear a mask.” 

Of course, that was more than a year after “15 days to slow the spread,” Anthony Fauci’s steady stream of contradictory, though authoritatively delivered, advice, not to mention the recent advent of (cue the scary music) The Delta Variant. 

It was the New York Post, again, that cut to the chase on the latest (unless we’re on to the epsilon variant already) with its cover of July 30. “Insanity!” read its oversized headline and below was a large grid with a tiny bit of the upper right square marked. Of the 161 million people who have been vaccinated, only 5,601 have been hospitalized with the new version of the virus. Of those, only 1,141 have died. That’s .0007 percent. (And how old, one wonders, were those who succumbed and from what comorbidities did they suffer?)

Now it turns out that the latest CDC advice was based largely on an outbreak at Provincetown after the informal party time of “Bear Week” in early July. Andrew Sullivan treated the news with some portion of the skepticism it deserves. In fact, as another commentator pointed out, what the Provincetown outbreak really shows is that “even under perfect conditions for a superspreader event, the vaccine works spectacularly well.”

But even to talk about studies and statistics and “expert” advice is to assume that we are talking primarily about an issue of public health. We aren’t. Consider this list from Jim Treacher: 

1. Absolutely do not wear a mask
2. You must, must, must wear a mask or you’re killing Grandma
3. Don’t leave the house or you’re killing Grandma
4. If you can’t avoid leaving the house, stay at least six feet away from any other human being you see or you’re killing Grandma
5. Wash your hands 20 times a day
6. Do not touch your face or anything else, ever
7. Get vaccinated so you don’t have to wear a mask
8. You have to wear a mask even if you’re vaccinated
9. When the above rules change, and then change back, and then change back again, shut up about it or you’re a stupid MAGA-head
10. Don’t forget to vote Democrat!

Of course, the last item is more often left unspoken than it is overtly expressed, but it is a sentiment, an assumption, that infuses the whole shifting kaleidoscope of contradictory advice. Treacher is right. “This isn’t about science. It’s about control. You will do as you’re told, peasants, and your moral, ethical and intellectual betters will continue to do whatever they please.”..........

It’s all about social control, as Jim Treacher says. At some point, there will be a revolt. The longer the arbitrary insanity persists, the more violent the reaction will be. The question is whether we are at or are approaching the point of crisis. Will the voters stand for another lockdown as we approach the 2022 election? Lockdowns markedly increased the opportunities for voter fraud; 2020 showed that. That is precisely why the swamp is prepping us for another go. Let’s see if we stand by grumbling impotently or if, finally, we actually do something. I am not holding my breath. ........ Read More....@ American Greatness

How Progressives Rewrote American History

Despite these modern progressives’ positions of privilege and systemic advantage, a new constitutionalist critique of progressivism prevents them from claiming final victory. 

By Bradley C.S. Watson August 11, 2021 

America’s founders understood that political change is inevitable. They thought it must come about through constitutional mechanisms, with the consent of the governed, and must never infringe on the natural rights of citizens. Progressives—rejecting the idea that any rights, including the right of consent to government, are natural—accept no such limits. 

Progressivism insists that the principled American constitutionalism of fixed natural rights and limited and dispersed powers must be overturned and replaced by an organic, evolutionary model of the Constitution. 

Historical progress should be facilitated by experts dedicated to the expansion of the public sphere and political control—especially at the national level. As progressivism has grown into modern liberalism, the commitment to extra-constitutional “progress” is broadly shared across elite political, academic, legal, and religious circles. Politics is thus increasingly identified with a mix of activism, expertise, and the desire for “change.”.........To Read More......

 

Defective Democrat Nominees Provide Absolute Proof of Leftism's Smugly Destructive Cult

By Kelly O'Connell ——Bio and Archives--July 16, 2021

Cover Story | 5 Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us

(Editor's Note:  Ignore the video as it appears someone messed up and the address to this video isn't the correct address as it has nothing to do with the article.    However, here are  three videos that cover this issue involving Cotton's questions, Grassley's questions, Hawley's questions, all of which  are pertinent to this article. RK)

Having watched a number of Biden court nominee hearings, you can’t help but admire the incisive questioning by Senators Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz. And nothing is more entertaining than John Kennedy’s homespun wit, when to leftist advocate Myrna Perez he remarked: 

“And I understand you’ve been advised to say ‘precedent’. Precedent, precedent, precedent. When in doubt. Is it raining outside? ‘Precedent!’ But it inhibits our ability to have a rational discussion.” 

So the grilling of Pérez, and her impressive helmet of hair, may have seemed like a moment of transcendent wit and chess playing to progressives. 

Smug Nominees Expose Biden

Yet, in reality it was a bad moment for leftism. On leave from the Brennan Center, Ms. Perez, in her gorgon-like locks, invoked “precedent” for nearly every question. She refrained from commenting on most cases because the issue could be litigated in her court. Perez also stated that rights emanated from the legislature not court opinions—in direct contradiction to recent US history. But listening to Perez one felt her non-responsive, repetitive, smug replies were a criticism and insult to Republicans. 

While her previous activist published articles often criticizing cases she then refused to comment upon months later made her sound disingenuous, overly partisan, doctrinaire and ultimately foolish. It would be like Rosie O’Donnell going in for a Biden Cabinet interview for ATF Head, pretending she had no strong opinions on guns.

Perez refused the obvious point that judicial activists regularly find new rights in cases, like “privacy” to support abortion in Roe v. Wade. And, Perez wasn’t being cut off because she was giving substantial answers which Senators didn’t like. She was offering a false Catch-22: She couldn’t comment on any subject which could theoretically be heard in her court. If that was really true then you couldn’t hold such hearings. But she made a fool of herself by first voicing various political legal opinions which she then pretended she couldn’t comment upon. If you’re a leftist marinated in socialist cant and love ostentatious displays of resistance to the GOP, this was tofu turkey for vegans. But if you’re a normal patriotic American, it was an asinine display of “up-yours” by an already out-of-the-closet radical leftist who thinks she’s smarter than Einstein..........To Read More.....

Gaslights all over: San Francisco D.A. Chesa Boudin smears his critics and defends his record as crime engulfs city

July 11, 2021  By Monica Showalter

Now that Neiman-Marcus has been openly looted, Target has cut its hours to stave shoplifting losses, and Walgreens can't take it anymore and has shut 17 stores, what does San Francisco's pro-criminal far-left district attorney, Chesa Boudin have to say for himself?

Everyone else is at fault. Oh, and he's got a good record, too.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin took aim Thursday at recall campaigns targeting him and other progressive leaders, saying they’re not about removing bad actors from office but instead about changing the outcome of elections.

In his first in-person discussion with an audience since the pandemic restrictions forbade gatherings, the progressive district attorney fielded questions at Manny’s, a cafe in the Mission District, from friend and venue owner Manny Yekutiel about his first 18 months in office.

Which is kind of ironic in itself, given that Manny's joint just got slammed with another round of anti-Semitic graffiti on that very same day, according to a separate story in the San Francisco Chronicle; unpunished, of course.  I wrote about the previous anti-Semitic attacks on Manny's place in 2018. The Chronicle says there have been a series of them since.

Here's another idiocy coming out from him: That anyone who opposes him or criticizes his record is a flat-out Trumpster. Here's what he said at his Manny's meeting on Friday:...........Had enough? It gets worse. Anyone who has a problem with how Chesa is failing to do his job is actually a full-hooded Klansman, according to his hard-faced comrade and top aide............Chesa tells us all he's doing a good job, so ignore your lying eyes, that video of Neiman-Marcus being looted, and anything else you've read about because he's "working hard.".........It's crap. Crimes are not being reported, and cops are rarely bringing cases, knowing they'll be ignored. Yet he gaslights with this:..................To Read More....

•   San Francisco DA Official Says Crime Surge Fears Linked to Racism - Peter Hasson, Fox News, July 5, 2021 - A senior official in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office linked fears of a crime surge to racism {snip} Kate Chatfield, a senior director in far-left District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office, downplayed safety concerns amid a nationwide crime spike.Chatfield was reacting to a Twitter user who said that “every single one of my friends right now is considering leaving” San Francisco due to crime fears. “My friends are scared for their children, and their husbands are scared for their wives,” the user wrote. “‘Husbands are scared for their wives’ —-your reminder that the ‘crime surge’ crowd shares the same ideology as The Birth of a Nation,” Chatfield fired back, referring to an early 20th century White supremacist film.

 

Kamala Harris and the Mean Girl Syndrome

Someone needs to have a heart-to-heart discussion with the vice president of the United States.

By Leesa K. Donner June 13, 2021 Articles, Opinion, Politics @ Liberty Nation News

 

Two recent incidents with relatively friendly reporters needlessly took on an uncomfortable tone when Kamala Harris channeled her inner mean girl. So why all the animosity directed toward those who are already on your side? That is an excellent question.

Turn off the Vitriol

When NBC’s Lester Holt queried the vice president about not going to the nation’s border following her assignment by the president to tackle the current migration crisis, Harris was dismissive and sarcastic. It was clear her behavior stunned Holt. After all, NBC is not exactly public enemy number one to the Biden administration.

 

But that was merely an opening salvo for the first female vice president of the United States. This week Ms. Harris barked at a Univision program host to let her finish when Ilia Calderón asked a similar question. The interjection was enough to change the interview tenor, and one could see Calderón bristle at Harris’s brusque manner.

Perhaps the former California senator has forgotten that people on television are there to ask questions of those they interview. Neither Holt nor Calderón can be accused of racism here – they were simply doing their jobs. Harris’s lack of self-control – or, as Liberty Nation’s Andrew Moran so aptly put it, her “self-sabotage” – is not a good look.

Psychologists have pinpointed this type of behavior as the mean girl syndrome, which they say is primarily driven by insecurity. In general, these are girls/women who “engage in mean behavior” and are “often willing to go to great lengths to come out on top.” Experts also say that “adult mean girls use relational aggression such as verbal bullying” to “intimidate and harass their targets.” Another characteristic of this disorder is that these people “are manipulative and sometimes narcissistic, and their goal is to have complete control over others around them.”

Unfortunately, Ms. Harris has a history of bullying, intimidation, and harassment. In 2017, the California Democrat was front and center during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. During the proceeding, the senator attacked and bullied then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the three intelligence chiefs in attendance. 

National Review’s Jonathan Tobin noted: “Harris clearly tried to bully both Sessions and Rosenstein, cutting them off as they spoke and not giving them a chance to speak before she moved on to a new insinuation.” Her rapid-fire interrogations demonstrated a lack of civility, and her bullying tactics were demeaning and rancorous.

This behavior was on display again during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Just as the Judiciary Committee chairman, Charles Grassley, was opening the day, Harris could repeatedly be heard interrupting with “Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman.” She continued talking even though her comments were gaveled out of order. Harris’s behavior gave permission to her Democratic colleagues to follow suit, and within minutes the entire hearing turned into a circus, complete with people shouting from the gallery. But make no mistake – it was Ms. Harris who got the ball rolling.

Ironically, all of these antics and outbursts have been lauded by the advocacy media. According to MSN News, her conduct during the Kavanaugh hearings “won the senator praise for her prosecutorial skill.” Yet another time when Harris was labeled “nasty and angry,” Lester Holt’s network called the comments “racist” tropes.

In HuffPost, writer and podcaster Candace Howze went one step further in defending Kamala:

“The truth is that anger is completely constructive and has long been the catalyst for reformation in modern society.

The soul of virtually every modern American protest was rooted in a form of anger, including the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution, the women’s suffrage movement, the Vietnam War protests, ACT UP and Black Lives Matter, just to name a few.”

Conflating significant societal issues with personal behavior is quite the stretch. Whether Kamala Harris’s propensity to treat others with disrespect and incivility has served her well is not in question. However, as the occupant of the second-highest elected office in the land, this might be a time to drop the mean girl routine. 

But if the NBC and Univision interviews are any indication, this conduct is something she no longer has control over and cannot turn off. Should she ever decide to run for president, Kamala Harris might want to look at the data that shows people most often vote for someone they like – and it’s hard to like someone who is so dismissive and contemptuous of others. Analysts from both sides of the political aisle say this likeability factor was a serious problem for Hillary Clinton. 

We all know how that turned out.

 

Psaki calls inflation surge a sign of Biden's 'successful economic strategy'

May 14, 2021 By Monica Showalter

The Biden administration seems to be proud of its inflation surge, brought on by low interest rates and monster government spending. How else to explain this?

According to the White House transcript, Psaki, answering a reporter's inflation question, said:

Obviously, we’ve seen, over the last couple of days — to your point — some reaction to the CPI numbers that came out just yesterday. And, you know, our view on that is it reflects the reality of an economy that’s rapidly turning back on because of a successful economic strategy.

And if you dig into the data, there are a couple of factors at play that I think people are taking a look at now that we’ve dug into the data more, including the fact that, you know, for example, airfare is increased by 10 percent but are still almost 20 percent below pre-pandemic levels. The — one of the biggest impacts we saw on the data yesterday was on used car sales, and that is a direct impact of the semiconductor chip shortage.

So, point is: There’s a number of factors here that can be explained and we’re working to address. And I think as we continue to communicate that, hopefully that will give some comfort to the American people and, of course, industries.

So they're "working to address" all this inflation and we're supposed to be "comforted" by their communication to us about all that "work" to address, and never mind the high prices. Intentions, you know, and lots of deep thinking. Results you see, are for people like Trump.  They seem to think they can command prices down with all that communication, much as Hugo Chavez used to do, creating shortages to accompany their runaway inflation as their big comforting answer....... but that they're still convinced that they can fool all of the people all of the time on an uncontrollable monster like inflation.....To Read More....

Virginia County School Advisory Board Demands Firing of Teachers who Disagree with Critical Race Theory

By Eric Lendrum March 31, 2021

In Loudoun County, Virginia, an advisory board for the school district demanded that any and all teachers who criticize critical race theory, and other far-left ideas being infused into the curriculum, be fired from their positions, according to Fox News.

The demand was made in an email sent by Keaira Jennings, the head of the Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee (MSAAC), which serves the Loudoun County Public School (LCPS) district. In the email that was sent to the LCPS superintendent, the NAACP, and other officials with the school district, Jennings said that she was “disheartened” by criticism of the new curriculum from teachers within the district.

“That simply cannot and should not be tolerated by anyone employed by LCPS! If our teachers and staff cannot be open and willing to learn how to be culturally competent then they do not need to be in the classrooms any longer,” Jennings declared. “They will only hinder the process and most importantly cause irreparable harm to the vulnerable hearts and minds of our students.”

Jennings also demanded that the district hire an “equity consultant” so that they “can get it right this time” in forcing all teachers to comply with the new policies and curriculum. Jennings claimed, without evidence, that “LCPS has missed the mark in this area time and time again,” before adding that “we are uniquely positioned to stand tall on the right side of history and let hate know it has no place in our community schools.”...........To Read More...

•  'Commitment to Equity' -- Equal Racial Outcomes -- Now a 'Performance Standard' for Virginia Teachers
• Civics Bill Would Devote $6 Billion to Woke Education

Appeals court rules against university that forced prof to call a man 'miss'

First Amendment forbids such 'alarming power to compel ideological conformity'

By Bob UnruhMarch 27, 2021 

In a rebuke to the "woke" ideology permeating academia, a federal appeals court ruled a university violated the First Amendment when it punished a professor who declined to call a man "miss." The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court's dismissal of a lawsuit by philosphy professor Nicholas Meriwether against Shawnee State University in Ohio. 

"The university punished Meriwether because he declined a male student’s demand to be referred to as a woman, with feminine titles and pronouns," explained the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the professor. The court ruled that, based on the allegations in the complaint, the university violated Meriwether’s First Amendment rights............To Read More...

Ain’t Nobody Home at the Kafkaesque White House

Please leave a message after the tone, you ungrateful Americans.

 By: Sarah Cowgill March 23, 2021Articles, Politics @ Liberty Nation News

The president should be fighting off hoards of willing, brilliant, hard-working folks who wish to be a part of Joe Biden’s massive Unity Movement. But apparently not. It seems that there are not enough folks to answer the phone at the White House who can direct questions and inquiries to the appropriate staffer. When constituents press the issue, well, they hear the big click of disconnection.

The absence of needed staff in the bloviated Biden administration is a tad alarming – yet not surprising. When the press secretary appears to be the kid in seventh grade giving an oral report on the book she never read, things in Bidenland appear to be dicey. Or, perhaps, there are so many applicants for volunteer positions, the line for an interview is clear out to Pennsylvania Avenue. Maybe prospective minions are at home, instead, collecting checks from the government coffers. Regardless, Americans aren’t going to be able to talk to their “House” on matters most concerning.

Operator, Can You Help Me Place This Call?

This cautionary tale of dismissing constituents as irritants was sparked when a woman reached out for help with issues regarding her veteran husband. She committed the worst of offenses: asking for a live person in a specific department. Denied. The person on the other end of the switchboard line said that option “has not been available for over 10 years.” The operator then insisted that getting any response requires filling out a form online and waiting for the anointed ones to care enough to respond.

The caller then went for the low-hanging West Wing fruit, inquiring about the State of the Union (SOTU). Our constituent asked when said important speech might be given. The operator told her to call her state representatives. This is perhaps where the caller screwed up. She persisted:

“I said my legislators don’t give the ‘Address’ the president does and asked again when that might be. He told me he ‘doesn’t answer’ questions. I asked what his role was. He replied to ‘refer callers to the website.’ I asked what if ‘someone doesn’t have a computer or the internet?’ He replied. ‘do you have any valid questions?’”

The conversation went round and round until the frustrated minion attempting to deflect a voter from getting a simple answer blew his stack. He explained there were no comment lines for voters because they didn’t have any people to staff them – like, saving the soul of the nation was not even an important position. And then he had the Barack Obama audacity to hang up on our curious constituent.

Will no one volunteer for the Big Guy?

Please Leave a Message After the Tone

Is this an isolated incident? Could the People’s House be shuttered to, well, the people? Liberty Nation decided to see if this was a molehill and not a mountain of a problem: We called. The nice young woman who answered explained the date for the SOTU was not available. When pressed, the operator transferred our call to a recorded message — for commenting online — without as much as a thank you. The bum’s rush, so to speak.

Did the Biden administration forget about uniting to save the soul of America? Winners do not dodge the press; they bask in the attention. They do not avoid the SOTU, the ultimate venue for self-congratulations, and it is not the way staffers should respond to general and relatively innocuous inquiries.

Perhaps others might have better luck in speaking with a live person at the White House. But since there are fences and the National Guard keeping folks at bay, America’s House may, for the time being, be out of order.

~

Read more from Sarah Cowgill.

Policing Speech

Bill de Blasio wants the NYPD to investigate constitutionally protected conduct. 

Seth Barron March 19, 2021 @ City Journal.   I recommend subscribing, it's free. 

 

Amid a staggering wave of gun violence in New York City, with shootings this year measuring 42 percent higher than the same period in 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he plans to deploy the NYPD to track down and question people who have expressed “hate,” albeit without committing any crime or violation.

Speaking to reporters about anti-Asian attacks that have occurred around the country, the mayor encouraged people who have “witnessed or experienced any act of hate” to report it. “Even if something is not a criminal case,” the mayor explained, “a perpetrator being confronted by the city, whether it’s NYPD or another agency, and being told that what they’ve done was very hurtful to another person and could if ever repeated, lead to criminal charges, that’s another important piece of the puzzle.”

Asked how the NYPD would confront someone who has done something “hateful” but committed no crime, de Blasio enlarged on his prescription. “One of the things officers are trained to do is to give warnings,” he said. “If someone has done something wrong, but not rising to a criminal level, it’s perfectly appropriate for an NYPD officer to talk to them to say that was not appropriate. . . . I assure you if an NYPD officer calls you or shows up at your door to ask about something that you did, that makes people think twice.”

The mayor did not go into detail about the kind of behavior he was talking about, but we can surmise—since he explicitly stated that it wouldn’t rise to the level of criminality—that it must involve speech. Racial slurs or negative references to racial or ethnic identity, while nasty and rightfully unacceptable in civil society, are generally not prosecutable. Promising to involve the police in pursuing people who make intemperate, obnoxious remarks seems like an odd way to prioritize public-safety concerns.

The idea of a special category of “hateful” crime violates good sense. If a crime is a crime, sufficient mechanisms already exist to prosecute and punish offenders. What makes beating someone up “hatefully” worse than beating them up . . . lovably? The point of hate crimes as a category is to express how especially heinous society finds crimes motivated by ideologies of bias like racism, anti-Semitism, or homophobia. To this extent, hate crimes legislation essentially creates a class of political crime.

Hating people on the basis of their race, creed, or sexuality does not constitute legitimate politics for anyone but fringe extremists—but expressions of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia, while loathsome, are constitutionally protected in the United States. What de Blasio seems to be proposing—sending the police after people who say things that his administration finds offensive—is hard to distinguish from what goes on in authoritarian police states, where any political speech that opposes the government is illegal.

Following the national Democratic Party line, de Blasio is explicitly connecting bias crimes of all sorts to Donald Trump and his followers. “This is a problem, and let’s be blunt and honest,” he said. “It’s a problem that emerged, particularly in the last four years in this city and in this country. We all know that the forces of hatred were unleashed by Donald Trump.” Making this claim, in conjunction with a promise to investigate constitutionally protected speech, clears a path for the NYPD to start harassing Trump supporters, Second Amendment activists, or anyone else whom de Blasio finds politically objectionable.

The irony is that Mayor de Blasio, following the demands of the anti-policing movement, has made clear that he wants less NYPD involvement in public safety. This week, he unveiled an anti-gun-violence program that involves not cops but community groups and “violence interrupters,” and he has promised to reduce police response to mental-illness crisis calls. The mayor has thus clarified his beliefs: real crime in New York City is overpoliced, while speech is over-tolerated.

Seth Barron is managing editor of The American Mind. His book, The Last Days of New York, will be published in May 2021.

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

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The leftists’ arrogance will be their downfall

March 1, 2021 By Terry Paulding 

The left has grown drunk with power. All subtleties have been shoved aside, in favor of feeding the insatiable beast of their own success. You know all the examples, you’ve heard them, seen them, a hundred times over. They’re reiterated because, often, pundits offer no solutions, so they re-state the obvious. The problem for the left is that they have created such ugliness along their pathway to temporary power.

It’s just like a homeless encampment that can’t exist without creating mounds of fetid garbage. It’s inevitable since they’re circumventing the norms of society, where we do things like pay for trash pick-up. The homeless don’t pay property tax, rent, or take responsibility for themselves. Instead, they demand we take care of it all for them.

left has preyed upon the country the same way. They won’t admit to destroying cities, businesses, or the livelihoods of citizens. They don’t have to because they control our tax money. They suffer no consequences from their decisions, just like the homeless in the encampment.

There’s an important difference, though: The homeless are mobile. They can pick up and move to another underpass. Our ruling class is stuck in place. They can’t just leave it all for someone else to clean up. It will become apparent since their spending exceeds tax revenues. Their true intentions will surface and people, even people of the disinterested left, will be horrified. Having the product of one’s hard work in life summarily diminished, whether by wealth taxes or massive inflation, will stress everyone. Example: The wheelbarrows of money now needed in Venezuela to buy basic necessities..............To Read More...

Why do the French insist on their ‘cultural exception’?

By David Ellwood September 25th, 2013

Is French culture exceptional, exceptionalist, or just… unique? The question was raised again this year by the row which broke out just before the start of US-EU trade talks. The French government insisted that cultural products, particularly film and television, should be left out of the negotiations due to their special status as timeless acts of artistic creation. So, said Paris, they should be considered beyond and outside the hard rules of market-driven commerce, so overwhelmingly favourable to the scale and priorities of America’s creative industries. This position was greeted with derision by a wide selection of Anglo-American commentators in politics, business, and the media. Most of the critics choose to forget or ignore what lay behind this very French-looking story. But Europe and America had been here before.

In 1993, as the GATT process was about to give way to the new World Trade Organisation, President Mitterand and a wide array of French, European, and even some American film makers threw the entire procedure into disarray by insisting on what they called the ‘cultural exception’. GATT, they said, had always recognized that culture should not be regulated like bananas or machine tools. But by now wider issues had arisen to justify this position and ensure its relevance. Mitterand said:- See more at: