On this day in 1776, 56 of you pledged your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor when you signed a declaration that would birth perhaps the freest nation the world has ever seen. For several of you that document would constitute a death warrant.
Today, we vote overwhelmingly again and again to:
Have half our income confiscated.
Have ourselves incarcerated at the highest rate on earth.
Have ourselves groped as a condition of travel.
Over the last 4 months, depressingly yuuuge numbers of us have fervently embraced the flu d’etat. This included slamming the brakes on society, crashing the economy, sending the Bill of Rights through the shredder and re-engineering many fundamental aspects of human behavior in the name of protecting us from what is probably not even among the top 30 health challenges this country has faced.
It’s been said that whereas we once roared like lions for liberty, we now bleat like sheep for security.
There was a very cautious man,
Who never laughed or played,
He never risked, he never tried,
He never sang or prayed,
And when one day he passed away,
His insurance was denied,
For since he never really lived,
They claimed he never really died.
– Anonymous
What is the meaning of life? Only God Himself knows, so I am not going to attempt to answer this question. However, we can say with absolute certitude that the meaning of life is not about keeping you safe from any and all potential risks.
Just in case you live in a lead mine or North Korea or wherever, there’s a virus going around. These things happen once every few years. None of them are any good. This one is probably worse than some and undoubtedly not as bad as others. However, the powers that be have used this particular virus as an excuse to carry out what I’ll call a Flu D’etat – a destruction of massive amounts personal liberty and of so many things that bring joy in life in the name of keeping us safe.
Credit: Huffington Post
One of my favorite movie scenes of all-time is in the film Dead Poets Society. John Keating, an English teacher at a boarding school, deftly portrayed by Robin Williams, asks his students to huddle up and explains the importance of poetry.
“We don’t just read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering … these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But beauty, poetry, romance, love … these are the things we stay alive FOR!”
“To quote from Whitman:”
“Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
… What good amid these, O me, O life?”
“Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”
“That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse!”
“What will your verse be?”
To be sure, the life of an amoeba or a termite or a dung beetle is about nothing more than mere biological survival. Human life, however, is about much more. We incarcerate people as punishment for crimes they have committed. Yes, they are allowed to survive physically, but they are denied liberty and the so many avenues by which to pursue happiness, which are what we stay alive for.
In March, the powers that be urged us not to gather in groups of more than ten. This represented a fundamental transformation of American life beyond Obama’s wildest imaginings. (Trump was very much a part of this. And, yes, he played a yuuuge part in fanning the flames of fear.)
When Jared “Pol Pot” Polis, the governor of Colorado, where I live, decreed this, my first question was if this would include church, weddings and funerals. Sure enough, it would!
We may be able to survive for a short time in solitude. But to prolong this is to recklessly disregard what sets human beings apart from every other life form. We are designed by God – or, for you secular humanists, nature – to be in community with other human beings. Talking on the phone, watching YouTube or having Zoom parties simply does not fulfill this need. These are wonderful and immeasurably valuable technologies, but their capacity is limited.
Jonathan Sumption, a former British Supreme Court judge recently wrote:
“What sort of life do we think we are protecting? There is more to life than the avoidance of death. Life is a drink with friends. Life is a crowded football match or a live concert. Life is a family celebration with children and grandchildren. Life is companionship, an arm around one’s back, laughter or tears shared at less than two meters. These things are not just optional extras. They are life itself. They are fundamental to our humanity, to our existence as social beings. Of course, death is permanent, whereas joy may be temporarily suspended. But the force of that point depends on how temporary it really is.”
And please, in the name of all that is sacred and much that is profane, spare me your money-over-lives sanctimony. The economic shutdown is…not…saving…lives!
And the recent caterwauling about face masks isn’t prolonging life either. In early March, when the vise grip was tightening on so many of our civil and economic liberties, no one was cracking a whip on anyone about face masks. Science didn’t change in 90 days. It was all just a propaganda ploy to see how many people would unquestioningly obey. That number is depressingly high. What hoop will they jump through next?
(By the way, I am not judging you if wearing a mask gives you peace of mind. The trouble begins when you want to mandate a mask for all of society.)
Perhaps the saddest part of the whole Flu D’Etat is that so many people not only do not realize they are being tyrannized, but that they gleefully celebrate every new wave of tyranny.
But it’s to keep you safe, they proclaim. All tyranny is implemented in the name of some Higher Good, be it fighting drugs, poverty or climate change, thwarting terrorism, or For The People or Juche or la revolucion or Das Volk or whatever. Indeed, our entire contemporary philosophy of government may be summarized in six words: If it sounds good, do it!
John Keating in Dead Poets Society illustrated education at its noblest. The CDC’s recommendations for reopening schools this fall illustrate schooling at its worst. Yes, these are recommendations and not laws. However, what do the following tell children?
Requiring masks for children over the age of 2.
No sharing of any items or supplies; all belongings in individual cubbies or labeled containers; no sharing electronic devices, toys, games, learning aids.
Desks 6 feet apart, all facing the same way.
Social distancing on school buses, i.e. one child per seat, skip rows.
Install sneeze guards and partitions wherever you cannot space 6 feet apart.
One way routes in hallways; tape on sidewalks and walls to assure kids stay 6 feet apart.
No communal shared spaces – cafeterias, playgrounds.
Physical barriers or screens between sinks in bathrooms.
Only pre-packages boxes or bags of food instead of cafeteria food; kids eat in classrooms.
No field trips, assemblies, or external organizations in the schools. Limit volunteers and visitors.
Children stay with the same staff members all day. No switching groups, or teachers.
Stagger arrival and departure times for students to limit exposure to crowds of kids.
If possible, daily health and temperature checks.
And there are several more rules about cleaning and disinfecting throughout the day and handwashing frequently.
Schools in North Korea have more flexibility. You can read this document in detail here on pages 40-46.
This is a reckless attempt to re-engineer human nature. Che Guevara spoke of a New Socialist Man. Think of this as a Post-COVID Man, whose entire existence is reduced to the avoidance of COVID. Just think of it as avoidance Uber Alles.
Yes, government schools were already an unholy mess. However, you did children no favors whatsoever when you yanked them out of the environments to which they were accustomed and isolated them from companionship and play with their friends. And do you want children to group up in constant fear of taking even the slightest risk?
And it is worth noting that the COVID fatality rate for Americans under 15 is one in several million. But reality doesn’t matter here. Nothing matters except the triumphant march to the New Post-COVID Dawn.
Believe it or not, I am going to end on a positive note. Good things will come from this episode. A whole new wave of parents will remove their children from government schools. There will be a new wave of awareness about personal responsibility for one’s health with a special focus on immunity, which is really quite simple. And there will be a whole new generation of entrepreneurs because millions of traditional jobs have vanished because of the economic crash.
The great play will inevitably go on.
And you, reader, have the opportunity to contribute a verse.
What will your verse be?
I’ll just leave this here. It’s almost as if people WANT this to be the next bubonic plague.
This has been making its way around Facebook recently. The author is anonymous, so feel free to copy and paste.
I don’t post this to belittle the situation or any particular person, but you can’t deny the logic here.
Telling me I have to be as scared as you are is preposterous.
Considering all the videos that are considered conspiracy theories and are leaving people to wonder what the truth really is, there’s this. I can’t say 100% what the truth is. I know I’m finding it hard to believe anything. But I can still believe in the Constitution, and that’s what this statement is based on.
Anyone who thinks social distancing is a good idea for the next few years or thinks that a ‘benevolent’ dictatorship is for the good of humanity, just stop now because I won’t be giving that point of view my energy.
If you want to stay home, stay home. That’s your sovereign right to choose.
If you want to wear a mask, wear a mask. That’s your sovereign right to choose.
If you want to avoid large crowds, avoid large crowds. That’s your sovereign right to choose.
I am not required to descend into poverty for you.
I am not required to abstain from human contact for you.(I wish I could bold this part) B
I am not required to shop alone, without my friends and family, for you.
I refuse to participate in “quarantine life” until there’s a safe or unsafe, tested or untested vaccine released in eighteen months.
I refuse to receive said vaccine to make others feel more safe.
That IS my sovereign right to choose!!!
If you’re convinced the vaccine is safe and effective, you can get it.
Some of you are allowing fear and policies devoid of scientifically accurate data to destroy our country and ruin your life.
I can’t control your self-destructive behaviors, but we all have a say in the once great USA and the planet we live on.
We need to tell legislators that we demand options.
We have a constitutional right to take risks. Life is full of bacteria and viruses many of which spread before symptoms manifest and after they subside.
We have a Sovereign right to receive OR refuse vaccines.
The data was inaccurate at best; purposely overblown to justify government overreach at worst.
Stop allowing the government to destroy:
The Food Supply
Small Businesses
Medical Autonomy
Access to Healthcare
Religious Gatherings
Privacy Rights
Fellowship
Our Mental Health
Our Freedom
When the “new normal” is filled with starvation, depression, suicide, child abuse, domestic violence, imprisonment, governmental spying, and pure DESPERATION, the virus is going to look preferable to the world you helped facilitate.
I’m going to turn this around on people from now on. Those that say I’m (or anyone that supports the mission to get us back open) putting money over lives wanting the country back open for business.
Hear this:
YOU don’t care about the people that will kill themselves out of hopelessness.
YOU don’t care about small businesses that’ll close their doors (THEIR LIVELIHOOD) permanently.
YOU don’t care about the children/women/men that’ll be victims of domestic abuse.
YOU don’t care about people defaulting on their mortgages.
YOU don’t care about bills going unpaid by families with ZERO income right now.
YOU don’t care about people wondering where their next meal will come from.
YOU don’t care about the people that’ll lose their sobriety and slip back into addiction.
YOU don’t care about the people that will starve.
YOU support the inevitable looting that’ll take place.
YOU don’t care about anyone that’s murdered the longer this shut down goes on.
YOU don’t care about people’s mental health.
YOU don’t care about the children that DO need teachers and educators to guide & educate them.
YOU don’t care about the economy crashing down around us.
YOU REALLY DON’T CARE.
YOU love your shackles.
YOU are pathetic, begging your leaders for MORE shut down and MORE regulations.
I will NOT tolerate another person telling me that I don’t care about lives.
I tried drawing a Venn diagram the other day in order to illustrate this point. Eventually, I decided to write a quick blog article instead. The hypocrisy of statists abounds in the age of the Corona Panic.
Have you noticed yuuge overlap between leftists who either have “Resist” bumper stickers on their vehicles or who empathize with the movement, and those who are now cracking whips on the rest of us to close our businesses, stay at home, socially distance, wear a mask, take a vaccine and, well, whatever the powers that be want to order us all to do next week?
And have you likewise noticed the yuuge overlap between those who, not very long ago, insisted on unconditional support for law enforcement, and those who are now outraged – properly, mind you – every time the punitive priesthood* arrests people for reopening businesses, going to church, protesting, sitting on a beach, playing basketball, attending a house party or committing any number of absolutely victimless acts that are now verboten because of the Corona Panic?
As is almost always the case, only libertarians – regardless of party affiliation – can claim any sort of intellectual consistency.
When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead.
– Jefferson Airplane
Stop screaming.
Start listening.
Politics has always brought out the worst in people. However, things have descended to a new low in the age of COVID-19.
It is not just about being nasty with people who disagree with you anymore. It has become not just acceptable, but downright fashionable in recent months to ABSOLUTELY INSIST that COVID-19 will be worse than the bubonic plague, and to abuse, bully, crush, humiliate and pulverize any capitalist roader who raises even the slightest objection whatsoever to crashing the economy, putting millions out of work, and shredding the Bill of Rights. Call it Corona Derangement Syndrome.
Meanwhile, out if real life, another jobs report has been released. For the week ending May 2, 3.17 million Americans filed new unemployment claims. Over the last 7 weeks over 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment.
The official explanation is that this was necessary to protect people from COVID-19. Really? Then why didn’t the powers that be shut everything down during any of the other epidemics that periodically come to our shores?
And if this was oh so necessary, why don’t our benevolent overseers that be shut everything down for 3 months each year in order to protect everyone from the flu? After all, anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 die from flu each year.
I mean, like, it sure sounds good. Just think of the lives it would save!
About 38,000 Americans die each year in car crashes. Why not implement a nationwide maximum speed limit of, say, 20 miles per hour?
Heart disease and cancer claim well over 1 million lives annually. This equates to a 9/11 body count every single day. So why doesn’t the gub’mint criminalize all commodities and activities that lead to heart disease and cancer?
Because human life.
Doing any of these would collapse the economy permanently. And life expectancy would plummet.
The freer people are the wealthier they become. People live longer in wealthy countries and shorter in poor ones. People live longer in Switzerland than in Chad. Japan leads the world in life expectancy while the Central African Republic is last.
Recently, the UN warned that famines of “biblical proportions” could happen because of the economic collapse and that 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation.
I don’t know what you believe, but the God I follow doesn’t value these lives any less than He values American lives – Matthew 25:40. He doesn’t value the soul of someone who starves to death in Eritrea any less than the soul of someone who dies from COVID-19 in Scarsdale.
But, no. You had to crack whips on people to strictly limit business hours or even close businesses altogether, to stay at home, not gather in groups of more than 10, stay 6 feet apart from anyone else, wear masks, take vaccines, blah, blah, blah. It got very tiresome very fast.
The laws of economics are like those of physics. You are free to ignore them, but you are not free from the consequences of ignoring them.
All deaths matter.
And so does economics.
Is this what air travel will look like in the “new normal”? Please note that this article is from Forbes & not Infowars or some such site.
”Do exactly what you are told and no one gets hurt” is what hostages are told, not a free people. ~ D.K. Williams
You can like certain things certain people do and abhor others. You can praise people when they do right and demand accountability when they do wrong. It’s called thinking.
I, for instance, applaud police when they properly – key word! – arrest violent criminals and I thank them when they direct traffic at accident scenes and around things like concerts and sporting events.
But I also demand that they be punished accordingly when they commit crimes. Badges, blue uniforms and unlimited tabs at Dunkin’ Donuts must not make them immune from the punishments you or I would receive for the same acts.
Police are merely tasked with certain duties. They are not above the rest of us. And, unless they can provide probable cause of wrongdoing, they are not even authority figures. You don’t have to do whatever they say.
In 2014, I filmed an arrest in southwest Denver. The arrestee was wanted on domestic violence charges and had fled from a nearby apartment building. The arrest itself was uneventful and there was no excessive force.
A few minutes later, a Denver police officer approached me and asked to see my cellphone. As he had no warrant, I politely refused. He did not pursue the matter any further. Thank God it was this officer.
It is always inherently risky to say “no” to the police. As Judge Andrew Napolitano puts it, “It is dangerous to be right when your government is wrong”. Yet it is our duty to do just this if we wish to retain what is left of our rapidly diminishing liberty.
The police are the business end of the government, and hence the most dangerous part. We remember the names of tyrants throughout history – Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kims, etc. Yet it was police – and soldiers – whose names we don’t remember, who did the actual dirty fingernail work of implementing that tyranny.
Enter one-time evangelist and philanthropist – I used to donate to one of his ministries – turned unabashed pimp for all things politically right-wing Franklin Graham. Earlier this week, one of his Facebook posts from 2015 made the rounds on its fourth anniversary. The post was in response to some recent high-profile shootings by police.
In short, do whatever the police tell you to do and nobody gets hurt. Police violence is the fault of its victims’ failure to do exactly as told.
This might sound good to the badge-sniffing, blue supremacist right. Yet its real-world implications ought to be downright scary to anyone with the capacity to think just a few steps forward.
When you give unlimited power to segments of the government you like, just know that there are other people who like other segments of the government and are more than willing to give them unlimited power. You reap what you sow. What goes around comes around and does so good and hard.
Consider three policy proposals from the resurgent radical left.
They might eventually sit in grand edifices in places like Washington, Denver, Sacramento and Albany and enact mandatory vaccinations into law. However, it will be the police who will actually enforce those laws.
They might eventually make the Green New Deal the law of the land. However, it will be the police who will go door-to-door enforcing it.
Will the badge-sniffing, blue supremacist right still absolutely insist that it is our duty to comply with the demands of the police? They’ll sure have a dilemma on their hands.
If a police officer tells you to give him your gun, will you just give him your gun. Or will this finally be your wake-up call?
Credit: CNN
By the way, complying with the demands of the police is still no guarantee that you won’t be killed. Watch what happened to Daniel Shaver in Mesa, Arizona, in January 2016.
Franklin concludes his post by saying “The Bible says to submit to your leaders and to those in authority ‘because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account’”. (Hebrews 13:17, NIV)
Never mind that the author of Hebrews was speaking of church leadership. The police are not “leaders”, nor do they have any true “authority” unless they have probable cause of wrongdoing. The burden of proof must always be on the accuser, even if the accuser is a police officer.
To repeat the words of Judge Andrew Napolitano, it is dangerous to be right when your government is wrong. It is even more dangerous to look the other way when your government is wrong and expect to avoid the consequences. One day you’ll be sorry.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Colorado General Assembly,
I would like to tell you about 2 friends who died all too young as a result of gun violence.
In 2012, a friend of several years was killed in the Aurora theater shooting. And in early 2010, a lifelong friend committed suicide by shooting himself.
While my friends were killed with guns, they were not killed by guns. Someone could have detonated a bomb outside the Century 16 Theater that horrible evening while hundreds of people stood outside waiting to enter, killing 12 just as dead and injuring 60 just as severely.
My other friend could have committed suicide with a knife, a rope or a bottle full of pills.
Stricter gun laws would not have prevented either tragedy.
I will not pretend to speak for anyone else affected by these tragedies. However, I will not yield one inch to the demands of those who wish to infringe on my God-given constitutionally-guaranteed right to defend myself. In a world where bad people with guns are undeterred by laws, good people must not be limited in their right to self-defense.
And we cannot rely on the police, as they can only show up after a crime has been committed. This could take minutes or hours. It has been said many times before, that “when seconds count, the cops are just minutes away.”
Hence, I strongly urge a “NO” vote on House Bill 19-1177.
I could go on very extensively about the futility and counterproductive nature of gun control. However, I will just leave a few points for you to ponder as well as research:
House Bill 19-1177 not only violates the Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms”, but also the Fifth and Sixth Amendment guarantees of Due Process.
Even though America has more guns than ever, violent crime rates have declined by almost half in the last 25 years.
Even though America leads the world in gun ownership, 90 countries have higher homicide rates.
There is simply no correlation between stringency of gun laws, rates of gun ownership and rates of violent crime. This holds true both domestically as well as internationally. Mexico, for instance, has several times the homicide rate of Australia, despite having an identical rate of gun ownership.
As the 9/11 attacks and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing demonstrate, you can kill lots of people without using a gun.
Every genocidal madman in history has first disarmed his subjects.
There is a world of difference between what sounds good and what is good. It is never good to deny people their rights to self-defense and due process. Furthermore, history demonstrates again and again and again that stricter gun laws do not prevent crime.
Have you noticed yuuge overlap between leftists who either have “Resist” bumper stickers on their vehicles or who empathize with the movement, and those who are now cracking whips on the rest of us to close our businesses, stay at home, socially distance, wear a mask, take a vaccine and, well, whatever the powers that be want to order us all to do next week?
And have you likewise noticed the yuuge overlap between those who, not very long ago, insisted on unconditional support for law enforcement, and those who are now outraged – properly, mind you – every time the punitive priesthood* arrests people for reopening businesses, going to church, protesting, sitting on a beach, playing basketball, attending a house party or committing any number of absolutely victimless acts that are now verboten because of the Corona Panic?
In short, do whatever the police tell you to do and nobody gets hurt. Police violence is the fault of its victims’ failure to do exactly as told.
Food for the Thinkers