Category: Scratch a Lib-Find a Tyrant

Somebody needs to ask herself, “Are we the baddies?”

Pa. Democrat Congresswoman Goes Full Nazi, Says GOP Must Be ‘Cleansed

Despite being an advocate of “civility,” “decency,” and “unity” in the past, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) has apparently been so radicalized by her caucus that she now says the Republican Party is “diseased” and must be “cleansed.”

“This is, in my opinion, a diseased Republican Party. And it needs to be cured and cleansed,” Houlahan said on the Daily Beast‘s The New Abnormal podcast last month. “So the stakes of having a Republican, as an example, in my seat are more than just policy differences. They are democracy, in my opinion.”

The GOP is “diseased” and must be “cleansed?” Where have you heard such rhetoric before? It bears a shocking resemblance to the rhetoric of the Nazi Party.

Activists often make comparisons of their political enemies to Nazis, but in this case, this is not hyperbole.

Here’s what the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says about the Nazi’s racial science:

From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany carried out a campaign to “cleanse” German society of individuals viewed as biological threats to the nation’s “health.”

Houlahan’s language is dehumanizing and immoral, and yet I have no doubt she has drunk enough of the left-wing Kool-Aid since she took office in 2019 that she actually believes what she’s saying. This is the kind of rhetoric that inspires left-wing activists to want to assassinate conservative Supreme Court justices or members of Congress. They’ve been conditioned to believe that people who disagree with them on policy are less than human.

Constitutional Rights vs. Ideological Rights

On 31 July 1982 I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign, and domestic. Today I am the Executive Director of the American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU).

As a career military serviceman and combat veteran, I believe the oath that I took then has no statute of limitations.  As a Member of Congress, that oath was my guiding principle and light, as the Constitution is our rule of law.

The U.S. Constitution was established to restrain the powers of the federal government.  As a matter of fact, when you read Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution you will find the (18) enumerated duties of the legislative branch, the most powerful of our three branches of government.  Article II and Article III lay out the duties, qualifications, duties, responsibilities and scope of the executive and judicial branches.  Our founders intentionally described and limited the federal government.

Unfortunately, the left does not subscribe to these limitations.  Today there exists competing philosophies of governance — constitutional conservatism and progressive socialism. Leftists do not believe in the absolutism of the Constitution, our rule of law, and certainly not the ideal of constitutional rights. Leftists believe in the dangerous concept of ideological rights.

The left in America embraces an ideal that is the antithesis of our constitutional rights. They believe their ideology defines our rights.  They believe they can grant and take our rights away.

I find very disconcerting the repeated assertion by the current occupant of the oval office, Joe Biden, that no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.  His current focus is the Second Amendment, whose language is quite simple and forthright.  His line has been parroted by many progressive socialists, elected officials and media pundits.

The Second Amendment is part of our individual Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. It is established in our founding documents, along the principle of natural rights theory, that our unalienable rights and all individual rights come to us from our Creator God, the Judeo-Christian God. They do not emanate from the government, and that is codified in our Declaration of Independence which Thomas Jefferson referred to as the “laws of nature and nature’s God”.

Here we have the President of these United States of America who took an oath to uphold the Constitution declaring our constitutional rights are not absolute.

The left tells us that we have a right to healthcare. We have a right to free college education. We have a right to change our gender.  None of these are enumerated rights, but they are ideological rights of the Left.

Once upon a time, during the Carter administration, the Left told us that every American had a right to own a home. They passed legislation called the Community Reinvestment Act which led to the subprime mortgage crisis and financial meltdown some 30 years later.  Just last week a Democrat Congressman from Rhode Island publicly stated that he deemed constitutional rights as bovine excrement. Yes, a US Congressman who is supposed to have taken an oath to the Constitution says constitutional rights are BS!

Now you can see why we need an organization called the American Constitutional Rights Union?

If no amendment to the Constitution is absolute, then I guess the left wants to make me a slave again? Recall, Democrats did not support the 13th and 14th Amendments. Today, this same group, who now embraces socialism and Marxism, is promoting economic enslavement.

If the left in America is able to define our rights based upon their ideological agenda and have it enforced by the rule of the mob…America faces dark days ahead. And if the Left is successful in disarming the American populace, their sponsored mob, Antifa, will leverage coercion, threats, intimidation, fear, and violence against anyone not in compliance.

If the progressive socialist left does not like our Constitution, they can go through the amendment process. Passing ideologically based laws, or issuing edicts, orders, mandates, and decrees, does not override our constitutional rights.

Recall, our respective States would not ratify our constitution until it had an individual Bill of Rights. The 10th Amendment clearly states, “All the powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the States and to the People.” If the 10th Amendment is not absolute, then the leftists in America become the repository of all power in America.

America is the longest running Constitutional Republic because of individual constitutional rights…not rights based upon progressive, socialist, statist, Marxist ideology.

Steadfast and Loyal.

THE Red-Headed libertarian™ Profile picture

The Second Amendment was inspired by British plans to disarm every American.

A part of you probably already knew this, but didn’t have the details.

I’m about to chill you to the bones And give you every piece of evidence you need moving forward. So buckle up.
It began In 1768, “the freeholders” led by John Hancock and James Otis, met in Boston at Faneuil Hall and passed several resolutions. Including “that the Subjects being Protestants, may have Arms for their Defense.”

The royal governor rejected this proposal.

So this petition was circulated under the pseudonym “A.B.C.” (Who was more than likely Sam Adams)Image
Shortly after Sam Adams’ petition was circulated, per the Boston Evening Post, (Oct. 3, 1768) British troops took over Faneuil Hall.

And per The New York Journal, (Feb. 2, 1769) they ordered colonists turn in their guns.Image

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‘We Need Your Guidance’ — Joe Biden Meets with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Gun Control and Online Extremism

President Joe Biden warmly welcomed New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to the White House on Tuesday, expressing his interest in her views on gun control and online censorship in her country.

“We need your guidance,” Biden said as he welcomed Ardern to the Oval Office. “And it’s a pleasure to see you in person.”

He praised the prime minister warmly for making progress on issues like climate change, combatting “violent extremism online,” and gun control.

“You understand that your leadership has taken a critical role on this global change, it really has,” he said.

Ardern has become a darling of the left after she pushed forward strict gun control laws in New Zealand, banning most semi-automatic rifles after the horrific Christchurch shooting in 2019. She also has repeatedly called for more tech censorship of online extremism, blaming the internet for radicalizing the shooter.

Biden appeared impressed.

“I want to work with you on that effort and I want to talk with you about what those conversations are like if you’re willing,” he said.

Biden expressed sadness that mass shootings continued happening in the United States, renewing calls for change.

“There’s an expression by an Irish poet that says too long a suffering makes a stone of the heart,” he said, claiming he had been to more “mass shooting aftermaths” than any president in American history.

Biden said he met with about 250 of the family members of the victims of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, for about four hours on Sunday.

“Much of it is preventable, and the devastation is amazing,” he said.

Ardern said she was willing to work with Biden on issues of violence, noting that there was a need for global progress on the issue.

“If there is anything we can share that would be of any value, we are here to share it,” she said.
Biden told reporters he planned to meet with members of Congress on the issue of gun control.

“I will meet with the Congress on guns, I promise you,” he said.

White House defends DHS ‘disinformation’ board: ‘Not sure who opposes that effort’
Mayorkas announced the creation of the ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ on Wednesday

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday defended a recently-announced Department of Homeland Security effort to combat “disinformation” on issues related to COVID-19 and elections.

Asked by Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich for more information what DHS’ Disinformation Governance Board would be doing specifically, Psaki said, “I really haven’t dug into this exactly, I mean, we of course support this effort but let me see if I can get more specifics.”

The White House announced its support for an effort from the DHS to crack down on what it considers to be online disinformation.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified Wednesday that a Disinformation Governance Board had recently been created to combat online disinformation and Politico reported that Nina Jankowicz, who previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, will head the board as executive director.

“We know there has been a range of [disinformation] out there about a range of topics, I mean, including COVID for example, and also elections and eligibility,” Psaki said, adding that she would check for additional information on what the board plans to do.

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Obama Calls for Internet Speech Regulation

In a speech delivered at Stanford University, President Barack Obama called for more censorship of social media speech. He argued that without regulation, social media will have “frightening implications.”

“People are dying because of misinformation,” Obama said.

Obama continued to say that the “profound change that’s taken place and how we communicate and consume information,” is one of the greatest threats to democracy.

“Social media platforms aren’t just our window into the internet. They serve as our primary source of news and information. No one tells us that the window is blurred, subject to unseen distortions and subtle manipulations,” the former president noted.

Obama said that social media companies need to be regulated, including being held responsible for content posted by users.

“If we do nothing, I am convinced that the trends we are seeing will get worse,” he said.

“Without some standards, the implications of this technology for our elections, for our legal system, for our democracy, for rules of evidence, for our entire social order, are frightening and profound.

“Tech platforms need to accept that they play a unique role in how we as a people and people around the world are consuming information, and that their decisions have an impact on every aspect of society. With that power comes accountability and in democracies, like ours, at least, the need for some democratic oversight.”

Obama singled out former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and Russia’s President Vladamir Putin as people who have leveraged misinformation.

“Autocrats like Putin have used these platforms as a strategic weapon against democratic countries that they consider a threat,” he said. “People like Putin and Steve Bannon, for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage. Is that to raise enough questions spread enough dirt? Plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe?”

Obama said he was not surprised to learn that Putin was accused of trying to influence the 2016 presidential election through social media.

“What does still nag me though was my failure to fully appreciate at the time just how susceptible we had become to lies and conspiracy theories – despite having spent years being a target of disinformation myself,” he said.

“Putin didn’t do that. He didn’t have to. We did it to ourselves.”

American Occupation.

I lived for very many years in rural Vermont. I’d bought a long-abandoned, post-and-beam farmhouse on a third-class dirt road. The realtor was a German immigrant who’d come to Vermont with his wife and infant children just after the war. He suggested that I call a local builder, Bob, to inspect the house, which was superficially in dreadful shape, but the farm and basement were sound. Bob said he’d be glad to put it right, and he and his brother-in-law restored it to its 1805 perfection.

Bob’s family had lived through the war in Germany, and through the famine afterward, and through relocation in America, ignorant of the language. Bob taught himself carpentry and all the building trades, and became a much-respected member of the small town, where all of his contemporary men had fought against the Axis in World War II. His brother-in-law, Eric, had been in the Hitler Youth, and Bob was a glider commando in the Luftwaffe—the equivalent, today, of Delta Force, or the Navy Seals.

My family became friends with Bob, and his wife, Ilse, became a surrogate grandmother—or better, great-aunt—to my kids. His family was my first encounter with the German national character—hard working, honest, and uncomplaining.

Of course I was seldom unaware that the regime he had fought for was dedicated to the destruction of my people and my race (if Jews are a race … in any case, to my like). I asked Eric about the Hitler Youth, and he said that he’d missed one meeting, and was told by his group leader that, should he miss another, he’d be shot. And, Bob, and every other man of fighting age and ability, was conscripted, and what were they to do?

Just as Eric explained, and perhaps apologized for, his membership in the Hitler Youth, Bob would tell me that his father had risked his life saving a Jew of his acquaintance.

To both cases: perhaps, and perhaps not. I never met a German who had lived through that wartime period who did not share with me the history of his family helping the Jews. Putting aside the question of the stories’ truth, I was struck by their seeming necessity for the teller. The current self-protective rationale of the Nazi era invokes an occupation by the forces of evil, which they were mostly too powerless to fight. Most of the people who lived through it are gone, and their descendants are entitled to imagine a history with which they can live—neither absolutely false nor true, but one in which someone tried to act.

Over the last two years in America, I’ve witnessed our own forces of evil with incredulity, despair, and rage. Corruption, blasphemy, and absurdity have been accepted by one-half of the electorate as the cost of doing business; as has the fear this acceptance generates. Does anyone actually believe that men change into women and women into men who can give birth, that the Earth is burning, the seas are rising, and we’ll all perish unless we cover our faces with strips of cotton?

No one does. These proclamations are an act of faith, in a new, as yet unnamed religion, and the vehemence with which one proclaims allegiance to these untruths is an exercise no different from any other ecstatic religious oath. They become the Apostles’ Creed of the left, their proclamation committing the adherent physically to their strictures, exactly as the oath taken on induction to the armed services. The inductee is told to “take one step forward,” and once they do he or she can no longer claim, “I misunderstood the instruction.”

Those currently in power insist on masking, but don’t wear masks. They claim the seas are rising and build mansions on the shore. They abhor the expenditure of fossil fuels and fly exclusively in private jets. And all the while half of the country will not name the disease. Why?

Because the cost of challenging this oppressive orthodoxy has, for them, become too high. Upon a possible awakening, they—or more likely their children—might say that the country was occupied. And they would be right.

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BLUF:
In sum, we are watching a rare laboratory experiment in which the traditional American fringe is now in control of the government. In pursuit of its utopian omelet, the Left cares little about the millions of middle-class Americans it must break to make it. The result is an unmitigated disaster that not only has tarred the Democratic Party, corrupted once-revered agencies, and alienated half the country from our cultural institutions, but now endangers the very health and security of the United States.

The Nihilism of the Left.
In pursuit of its utopian omelet, the Left cares little about the millions of middle-class Americans it must break to make it.

The last 14 months have offered one of the rare occasions in recent American history when the hard Left has operated all the levers of federal government. The presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the permanent bureaucratic state are all in progressive hands. And the result is a disaster that is uniting Americans in their revulsion of elitists whose crazy ideas are tearing apart the fabric of the country.

For understandable reasons, socialists and leftists are usually kept out of the inner circles of the Democratic Party, and especially kept away from control of the country. A now resuscitated Bernie Sanders for most of his political career was an inert outlier. The brief flirtations with old-style hardcore liberals such as George McGovern in 1972 and Mike Dukakis in 1988 imploded the Democratic Party. Their crash-and-burn campaigns were followed by corrective nominees who actually won the presidency: Southern governors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Such was the nation’s innate distrust of the Left, and in particular the East Coast elite liberal. For nearly half a century between the elections of John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, it was assumed that no Democratic presidential candidate could win the popular vote unless he had a reassuring Southern accent.

How did the extreme Left manage its rare takeover of the country between 2018 and 2020? Certainly, Obama’s election helped accelerate the woke movement and energized identity politics. One could also argue over the political opportunities in 2020 following the devastation of COVID-19.

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Lasting COVID legacy: a nation of rulers, not laws

SACRAMENTO – “The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced,” noted the late musician and satirist Frank Zappa. I often think of that snarky comment as I write about the sausage-making process in city councils, state legislatures and the federal government. Did I mention that California’s state government has 518 agencies, boards and commissions?

Our system of checks, balances, more checks, additional balances, impact reports, legal challenges, voter initiatives, regulatory rulemakings and administrative hearings frustrates people who want to “get something done.” Americans spent $14 billion on the 2020 election cycle to influence political outcomes – and that was just for the presidential and congressional races.

I once ran a modest state bill to reduce the insanely onerous licensing regulations for people who shampoo hair at salons. After months of hearings and debate, the Assembly defeated it for going too far. That explains the public’s desire to cut through the red tape and, as Arnold Schwarzenegger once promised, “blow up the boxes” of government.

Yet after COVID-19, it’s obvious our democratic system of lawmaking is, as Winston Churchill put it, “the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Given the choice between a system resembling a Rube Goldberg cartoon (with his bizarre and overly complex contraptions designed to complete simple tasks) and one that’s streamlined and efficient, I’ll take Goldberg’s vision any day.

As we saw throughout the country but in California in particular, governors were happy to dispense with the usual checks and balances and impose rules by executive order and fiat. Some initial rules were defensible during a public-health crisis, but it wasn’t long before elected officials operated like czars – imposing illogical and contradictory restrictions that made no rhyme or reason.

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Prescience

Tone-Deaf Team Biden Responds to High Gas Prices With Electric Car Sales Pitch.

I have long had the good fortune of never having to deal with a work commute, unless, of course, one considers air travel to gigs as a commute. Still, I’ve been blessed to have spent a quarter of a century in Los Angeles without having to endure sitting on the 405 for hours a day, gaining a deeper understanding of road rage with each passing minute.

Never have I been more grateful to not have to leave my house much as I am here in Joe Biden’s America, with gas prices hiking up to vertiginous heights. It’s quite economical to only have to travel from my bedroom to my living room office each morning.

Because nothing can work out too well anymore — especially while the Biden clown car is in charge — the gas price nightmare is coinciding with American workers actually heading back to their offices after a couple of years of mostly remote work.

Fret not, working men and women of the Republic, the court at Versailles trotted out its two dimmest bulbs not named Joe Biden — Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg — on Monday to offer an easy fix. Chris wrote about the Mayor Pete portion of the Grand Solution:

When will we ever learn not to fret over what’s going on in the world? Our Democrat party overlords know what’s best for us, and all we have to do is simply follow their suggestions. After all, their solutions are so simple.

Take high gas prices for example. So many of us peons worry about the skyrocketing price of gas at the pump, but America’s brilliant Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has a fix for gas prices that’s so easy it’s almost ridiculous. Why, you just need to buy an electric vehicle, you silly goose.

“Clean transportation can bring significant cost savings for the American people as well,” Buttigieg said in a speech. “Last month, we announced a $5 billion investment to build out a nationwide electric vehicle charging network so that people from rural to suburban to urban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.”

Pre-Bat Flu pandemic, I wasn’t much given to conspiracy theories but now it’s not a stretch to believe that these climate church freaks are trying to price us out of functional fossil fuels and into electric vehicles.

As Chris points out in his post, the entry price into the electric vehicle life isn’t a real economic boon for someone trying to make ends meet. Of course, this administration isn’t very adept at reading the room. It’s safe to say that Mayor Pete doesn’t go within 100 yards of an electric vehicle unless it’s for a photo op.

Electric vehicles may very well be the future, but they aren’t the present, at least not in any capacity that could bring wide-scale relief from current gas prices. Mayor Pete’s suggestion is merely further evidence that this administration doesn’t have solutions to any of the problems it is causing. Team Biden has nothing but platitudes, agendas, and enough cluelessness to fill the Pacific Ocean.

I’ll be extra super staying home for a while.

Trudeau’s Dictatorial Crackdown on Protesters Is Popular Among One Group of US Voters

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s descent into dictatorship to rein in the Freedom Convoy protest has support from a majority of likely Democratic voters in America.

According to a survey conducted by Trafalgar Group and Convention of States Action, 55 percent of likely voters disapproved of Trudeau’s handling of the demonstration, while 35 percent approved.

When broken down by party affiliation, 65 percent of Democrats backed Trudeau’s heavy-handed response compared to 17 percent who disapproved, while 87 percent of likely Republican voters opposed the prime minister’s crackdown and 8 percent approved.

One hundred percent of young voters, meanwhile, (those 25 to 35-years-old), disapproved of Trudeau’s response.

On Feb. 14, the Canadian prime minister invoked the Emergencies Act to crack down on demonstrators who had been in Ottawa since late last month protesting the country’s vaccine mandates and other Covid-19 restrictions.

The government announced they would freeze bank accounts of those even loosely attached to the protest, while Ontario’s premier threatened to revoke driver’s licenses. Protesters’ pets weren’t even off-limits.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland also said the government would be broadening its “Terrorist Financing” rules to include cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding platforms as part of the Act.

The Canadian Parliament voted on Monday night to extend its emergency powers for another 30 days despite the blockade being over.

The survey of 1080 likely general election voters was conducted Feb. 18-20 and was provided exclusively to The Daily Wire.

Western Authoritarianism

The original question was: “What lies at the root of the authoritarianism that seems to be asserting itself in free societies in today’s West?”

Here’s my answer:

The same root that causes irritating busybodies to take over Home Owner Associations. Some people have a lust for power. Government is the ultimate well of power. Author Frank Herbert expressed it well:

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”

Also:

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong – faster and faster and faster.”

Leftism is itself a religion, complete with an Eden (Earth), an original sin (Capitalism), and a god (government – aka “power over others.”) Another quote I’m fond of by a gentleman by the name of Glenn Wishard:

“The rise and fall of the Marxist ideal is rather neatly contained in the Twentieth Century, and comprises its central political phenomenon. Fascism and democratic defeatism are its sun-dogs.
The common theme is politics as a theology of salvation, with a heroic transformation of the human condition (nothing less) promised to those who will agitate for it.
Political activity becomes the highest human vocation.
The various socialisms are only the most prominent manifestation of this delusion, which our future historian calls “politicism”.
In all its forms, it defines human beings as exclusively political animals, based on characteristics which are largely or entirely beyond human control: ethnicity, nationality, gender, and social class.
It claims universal relevance, and so divides the entire human race into heroes and enemies.
To be on the correct side of this equation is considered full moral justification in and of itself, while no courtesy or concession can be afforded to those on the other.
Therefore, politicism has no conscience whatsoever, no charity, and no mercy.”

When your quest is to drag the rest of the world, kicking and screaming, into your utopia, authoritarianism is the way to get there. Never mind that you’re enabling the most greedy, rapacious and psychopathic to grab the levers of power.

In short, it’s human nature.

When Boring People Turn Dangerous: Canada’s Insane Power Grab

On Christmas Eve, 2018, New York Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin published, “How Banks Unwittingly Finance Mass Shootings.” Chronicling the credit card history of the man who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida Sorkin noted Omar Mateen had not merely spent $26,532 on weapons and ammo in the eight months before the 2016 attack, but had wondered if his doing so had raised red flags:

Two days before Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, he went on Google and typed “Credit card unusual spending…” His web browsing history chronicled his anxiety: “Credit card reports all three bureaus,” “FBI,” and “Why banks stop your purchases.”

He needn’t have worried. None of the banks, credit-card network operators or payment processors alerted law enforcement officials about the purchases he thought were so suspicious.

Sorkin’s piece ended up being an argument in favor of credit-card companies, payment processors, banks, and others working together to bring about a Minority Report-style panacea in which society’s dangerous folk could be cyber-identified and stopped before they commit horrific acts. At one point he quoted George Brauchler, the District Attorney who prosecuted the Century 16 movie shooter in Aurora Colorado, James Holmes:

“Do I wish someone from law enforcement had been able to go to his door and knock on his door and figure out a way to talk their way into it or to freak him out?” he said of Mr. Holmes. “Yeah, absolutely.”

I’ve never owned a gun and have been sympathetic to gun control ideas for as long as I can remember. Sorkin, however, was not talking about gun control. He was theorizing a quasi-privatized vision of social control that would bypass laws by merging surveillance capitalism and law enforcement.

In a rhetorical trick that’s since become common, he described how the failure of companies like Visa to block Mateen’s purchases made them “enablers of carnage.” Clearly, someone made the mistake of letting Sorkin see Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, and Cliff Robertson now whispers from the beyond to him too. If those with power to act don’t stop wrongdoing, aren’t they just shirking their great responsibility?

By the way, this same Sorkin once suggested he wouldn’t stop at arresting Edward Snowden, but go after the reporter who broke his story, too. “I would arrest him and now I’d almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, the journalist… he wants to help him get to Ecuador,” he said, on CNBC’s Squawk Box. It’s amazing how selective one can be in one’s authoritarian leanings. After Goldman, Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein appeared to commit perjury in 2011 when he told the Senate, “We didn’t bet against our clients,” Sorkin rushed an apologia into print saying “Mr. Blankfein wasn’t lying,” failing to remind audiences that his Dealbook blog at the Times was sponsored by… Goldman, Sachs.

Sorkin’s Visa piece is suddenly relevant again, after fellow former finance reporter Chrystia Freeland — someone I’ve known since we were both expat journalists in Russia in the nineties — announced last week that her native Canada would be making Sorkin’s vision a reality. Freeland arouses strong feelings among old Russia hands. Before the Yeltsin era collapsed, she had consistent, remarkable access to gangster-oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, who appeared in her Financial Times articles described as aw-shucks humans just doing their best to make sure “big capital” maintained its “necessary role” in Russia’s political life. “Berezovsky was one of several financiers who came together in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Communists out of the Kremlin” was typical Freeland fare in, say, 1998.

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The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West
Those who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists continue to embrace and wield the defining weapons of despotism.

When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.

When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes supported by the West — from Riyadh to Cairo — are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.

But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West’s official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.

The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework is democracy. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical scrutiny. The premise of the U.S. Constitution and others like it is that majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the extreme; the Bill of Rights consists of little more than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might seek to democratically enact (the expression of ideas cannot be criminalized even if majorities want them to be; religious freedom cannot be abolished even if large majorities demand it; life and liberty cannot be deprived without due process even if nine of out ten citizens favor doing so, etc.). More inconveniently still, many of the foreign leaders we are instructed to view as despots are popular or even every bit as democratically elected as our own beloved freedom-safeguarding officials.

As potent as this mythological framework is, reinforced by large media corporations over so many decades, it cannot withstand the increasingly glaring use of precisely these despotic tactics in the West. Watching Justin Trudeau — the sweet, well-mannered, well-raised good-boy prince of one of the West’s nicest countries featuring such a pretty visage (even on the numerous occasions when marred by blackface) — invoke and then harshly impose dubious emergency, civil-liberties-denying powers is just the latest swing of the hammer causing this Western sculpture to crumble. In sum, you are required by Western propaganda to treat the two images below as fundamentally different; indeed, huge numbers of people in the West vehemently denounce the one on the left while enthusiastically applauding the one on the right. Such brittle mythology can be sustained only for so long:

Reuters, Aug. 8, 2019 (left); BBC, Feb. 15, 2022 (right)

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Canada’s Hoax of a Democracy & Tyrant Trudeau : #TruckersForFreedom protesters treated like animals.

  • An Ottawa gelato shop owner who was revealed to have donated to the Freedom Convoy claims she has since been doxxed and had her information posted online

  • Tammy Giuliani, who owns the Stella Luna Café, received constant abusive phone calls calling her a Nazi, and a sign saying ‘Tammy supports terrorists’

  • Giuliani spoke of the backlash she’s faced since news came to light of her donation to the group of Canadian truckers protesting against COVID mandates

  • ‘You know, we have been called terrorists. For the first 60 to 36 hours, we were inundated with hatred, with threats of violence,’ she said

  • Giuliani is among roughly 92,000 supporters of the Freedom Convoy that had their information hacked after donating to the cause through GiveSendGo

  • The crowdfunding website, which describes itself as the ‘number one Christian crowdfunding site,’ had raised more than $9 million of the $16 million goal

  • The website Distributed Denial of Secrets said it was given donor information that included including names, email addresses, ZIP codes and IP addresses.

Seven Great Truths [to emerge from the truckers’ protest]

Robert Gore:

The truckers’ rallying cry—Freedom!—inspires the many and thrusts greatness on a few.

Justin Trudeau and his globalist ilk are an unimpressive lot. Trudeau’s interminable Wikipedia profile is over 8000 words and has 324 references. Never has so much been said about so little except, perhaps, in other globalist profiles. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, was, like Trudeau, one of Klaus Schwab’s Young Global Leaders, a finishing school for the Davos set.

Trudeau’s resumé lists bachelors’ degrees in literature and education, and studies but no degrees in engineering and environmental geography. He was a substitute and then a permanent teacher in secondary schools. Wikipedia says he gave his father, Pierre, prime minister from 1980 to 1984, a nice eulogy. He started a winter sports safety fund after his brother was killed in an avalanche, portrayed a distant relative in a CBC miniseries, started the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto, fought a zinc mine in the Northwest Territories, and was master of ceremonies at an award show and a political rally. (That comprehensive summation took three sentences and 105 words.)

His featherweight resumé screams politics and government as an ultimate career. He’s a Canadian Barack Obama. See the fawning Wikipedia entry for thousands of words on his ascent up the political ladder. In 2015 he was elected Prime Minister, a position he holds to this day, but perhaps not much longer.

Ottawa, Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels are filled with globalist politicians, functionaries, and toadies who differ from Trudeau only superficially. Power, their “right” to tell and force others how to live, is really a self-bestowed entitlement. They are the insiders, and outsiders are ignored or deplored. Whatever differences they have among themselves, they close ranks when fellow insiders are under attack. The Wikipedia profile mentions several Trudeau scandals, including blackface photos, that might have ended the career of an outsider politician, but from which he survived.

Once in a while something cuts through the muck of modern life with diamond-cutter precision and finality, yielding a moment of clarity. The juxtaposition of two images creates just such a moment. The one: thousands of Canadians braving the the bitter cold to cheer and succor 18-wheelers and their drivers rolling towards Ottawa. The other: the empty chair of an empty-suit prime minister who absented himself rather than face what his arrogant totalitarianism had wrought.

Revolutions dawn when an appreciable number of the ruled realize their rulers are intellectual and moral inferiors.

“Much More Than Trump,” Robert Gore, March 3, 2016

Justin Trudeau has done more to usher in that dawn than any other globalist. His invective and cowardice have rendered him contemptible in the eyes of millions of Canadians and others around the world despite the best efforts of the kept media to protect him. That he and his ilk are intellectual and moral inferiors is the first great truth to emerge from the truckers’ protest.

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‘2 weeks to flatten the curve’…………

WARMINGTON: Police horses trample demonstrators at Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa

Turns out the lasting image of the Freedom Convoy protest at Parliament Hill will not be bouncy castles but that of a woman with a walker being trampled by a police horse.

The violence the Prime Minister has expressed concern about during the three-week protest in Ottawa didn’t unfold until Justin Trudeau’s Emergencies Act police army was sent in to disperse the crowd.

The three major incidents Friday, under a form of martial law, were grotesque.

Video of Toronto Police Mounted Unit officers charging into the crowd and at least one horse trampling multiple people — including an elderly woman with a walker — was disturbing.

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Cold War-era East Berlin had armed checkpoints — now Ottawa does too.

It has already been nicknamed Checkpoint Trudeau.

Actually, like Cold War East Berlin, there may be need for many checkpoint names.

“The secured area includes almost 100 checkpoints that will have police presence to ensure that those seeking entry to that secure area for a unlawful reason, such as joining a protest, cannot enter the downtown core,” acting Ottawa Police Chief Steve Bell said Thursday.

Canada’s capital, operating under the Emergencies Act, now has ‘no go zones” similar to a police state. Authorities set up checkpoints with armed police officers in downtown Ottawa on Thursday — from Highway 417 (Queensway) to Parliament Hill, where dozens of trucks have been parked for three weeks.

To get through the Berlin Wall under communism, people had to go through entry points known as Checkpoint Alpha, Checkpoint Bravo and, of course, Checkpoint Charlie. Now to get into through Ottawa’s police manned border points, people must produce papers to prove they live in the area or have a reason to be there.

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