London's Acid Test of Diversity

This is so true. Multiculturalism and diversity are destroyers of modern civilization. Both are cognitive package deals whose goal is to destroy diversity of thought. 

London's Acid Test of Diversity

America is Not a Nation Ruled by Judges

Good points.America is Not a Nation Ruled by Judges

Military History Book Reviews: Review: Pride, Prejudice and Politics: Roosevelt v...

Grant has an excellent post.
Military History Book Reviews: Review: Pride, Prejudice and Politics: Roosevelt v...: In the last few decades several excellent books have been published documenting the New Deal's failure. Amity Shlaes The Forgotten Man ...

Drain GOP swamp first

Wow! I get emails from Real Clear Politics every day. Today RCP editor Carl Cannon's round up of news items included this headline. "Senate approves news Russia sanctions, limits on Trump" by staffer James Arkin. The first paragraph reads:

"The Senate on Wednesday approved new sanctions against Russia for its interference in the 2016 election. Perhaps more significantly, the measure also includes a provision preventing President Trump from lifting or adjusting the sanctions without congressional approval."

This seems really far fetched to me. First of all, What interference? It is treating Russian interference in the election as established fact even though over 7 months of investigation has produced zero evidence to support it.

Secondly, the Senate is controlled by Republicans and since the vote was 97 to 2 this means Trump's own party is defying him, joining the Democrats' attempts to undermine him.

Thirdly, Obama placed sanctions on Russia by way of an executive order which can be reversed with a new EO by a subsequent president. Even if the original EO calls for the approval of congress, it is my understanding that EOs apply to the executive branch and not Congress. That would violate the separation of powers. Am I wrong on this?

It seems to me the Democrats are looking for WW3. They seem to forget that today's Russia is not the Soviet Union with desires of world domination. Putin is no friend of capitalism but he is concerned about Russia.

I find it amazing that Congress had no problem with Obama making nice with "Death to America" Iran and giving them $170 billion to achieve that death but go hysterical over Trump's hope to try a peaceful agreement with Russia.

I don't think Trump will have much success draining the swamp unless he drains the GOP swamp first.

4th Circuit Court deals blow to individual rights

     The Friday 5/26 Detroit News print edition ( I could not find a link in the online edition) carried a front page news item "Court deals new blow to travel ban" by David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau. Evidently, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 10 to 3 that "...it appears to discriminate based on religion and that the administration's argument that the order was needed to protect national security was a "pretext" offered in "bad faith."

     Please understand what this means: we should never have bombed Japan in WW2 because doing so was discriminating against their religion, Shinto. Their religion treated the emperor as a god or godlike. His every command was to be accepted on blind faith and obeyed. America's self defense then was just a "pretext" determined by our own "bad faith." Evidently, that 'bad faith' caused Pearl Harbor. Thankfully, none of these justices were around in WW2.

     This is what happens when justices drop context when considering legal decisions. They dropped several contexts big time in this one.

     First, is the question, what is the purpose of our laws? Generally speaking, their purpose is to provide justice. But that leads to the next question: according to what standard?  That standard is provided in our Declaration of Independence. It is man's unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed to all men equally. This should be the standard by which all laws are to be written.

     It's a simple formula actually: If an activity violates or threatens to violate a citizen's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Congress shall address it. If an activity does not violate or threaten to violate a citizen's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Congress shall make no law. This in turn means the Constitution and all its amendments must be held to this standard.

      So when the founders wrote the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,...." The context here has to mean that any religion that requires its followers to violate the rights of other humans cannot receive judicial sanction as a rights compatible religion and must be exempted from the first amendment. The reason is plain: a rights protecting society and a rights violating religion are incompatible.

     To hold that a rights violating religion should have the same legal status as rights compatible religions is to ignore the purpose of law: to protect individual human life in a social context. It is astonishing that these 4th Circuit Justices cannot see this. (The truth is that they are blinded by their previous acceptance of an out of context notion of the concept 'discrimination', a topic for another day)

     I understand that not all Muslims seek to kill infidels. But the fact remains that all the major religions have repudiated their more violent and brutal pasts, except one, Islam. Plus, their bible, the Koran, orders them to lie to all infidels to gain their confidence then kill them. So how can we infidels trust them? By what standard? For those Muslims already here however, it has to be the principle of assuming innocence until proven guilty.

     But in my view, those seeking to come here anew to establish Sharia law must be turned away. It is an admission of wanting to overthrow the government. The attempt to establish Sharia Law here in the US should be grounds for deportation or imprisonment for the same reason as an attempt to overthrow the government.

      The second major context dropping is accepting a principle, moral or political, out of the context of rights protection. For example, if you accept the principle 'honesty is the best policy' without ever putting it in context, it can hurt you. A thug breaks into your house and demands your wallet. Then asks 'do you have any more'? You say 'yes, $300 in the second dresser drawer under the socks.' He takes it and leaves. Your honesty just cost you an extra $300. Loyalty to the virtue of honesty here leads to the destruction of life values, not their survival.  In this context honesty was the worst policy.

     And so it is with immigration. Allowing massive amounts of unvetted, uncontrolled immigration the pretext that immigration is always a moral virtue regardless of any hostile intentions by those immigrants is risking suicide. I contend there are contexts in which immigration needs to be supervised or controlled like in war or at least vetted for diseases if coming from a stricken nation.

     This leads to the third evasion of context: treating immigration as though it were exclusively a domestic policy issue. It is also a foreign policy issue which I wrote about here.

     In that essay I imagined what I had hoped then President Obama would have said in his speech on immigration but didn't. One paragraph:

"We need to find out why our neighbors to the south are not creating the conditions in their nations that exist here in the US so their citizens don't have to come here to be free and prosperous. Again, this is something that needs to be discussed not only by our congressional houses but by the State Department as well. Foreign Policy is this Department's domain. It needs to be developing policies with perhaps incentives or even disincentives to be applied to and/or negotiated with our southern neighbors. This isn't happening right now. It will going forward."

Although that paragraph was about immigration from our southern neighbors it applies to all immigrants. Yes immigrants have a right to their pursuit of happiness which includes the right to try and come here. Yes we are a nation of immigrants and need to stay that way. I'm all in favor of open borders but not from nations that have sworn "Death to America." Even though we did not declare war on them, the Muslims in Iran declared war on the U.S. long ago.

It was President Obama who first identified the 7 nations as terrorist hot spots that Trump wants vetted. But do you think if Obama had followed up with a ban from those nations the Democrat Party and news media would have gone hysterical like they are now? There would be not only silence but eager approval.

These 10 justices are engaging in blatant obstructionism and should be rebuked by the Supreme court. From the New's article:

"All 10 judges in the majority were Democratic appointees. The three Republican appointees dissented."

That's all the evidence we need to know that these justices (and the Democrat Party and the news media) have no interest in law, justice or individual rights.

The Climate Confederacy

 Their hatred of mankind knows no bounds. Committing treason is OK with them.

The Climate Confederacy

The UK's Libyan Jihadist Problem

The UK's Libyan Jihadist Problem

Double Standards for me but not thee

It could be a candidate for the eighth wonder of the world. I'm referring to the bulldogged resistance of the Democratic Party and its acolytes in the media. After losing the white house to Republicans, they have a born again concern for things like the Constitution, principles, rule of law and separation of powers among others. Although Democrats paid lip service to these values when in power, they were largely ignored by the party leaders and their media champions.

Case in point: the Sunday 5/14 Detroit Free Press' Brian Dickerson posted an oped on how Trump's judicial appointees could protect us from an imperious president if we examine them closely. The need to examine them critically is true enough. But his first paragraph says:

"The men who wrote the U.S. Constitution never met Donald Trump. But he was precisely the sort of president they had in mind when they invested the other two branches of government with the authority to corral a commander-in-chief with pretensions of autocratic power."

One has to ask where was Mr Dickerson's concern for the separation of powers while Obama routinely sidestepped congress to get what he wanted? For example, when the president signs into law legislation passed by congress, only congress can alter it. But Obama altered or postponed several parts of the ACA until after the then next election. That is supposed to be unconstitutional. Evidently loyalty to the separation of powers is only expected of Republicans not Democrats. He continues:

"The good news for champions of a robust judiciary is that Trump is not terribly interested in the judicial process, and that he has largely delegated the business of identifying and vetting candidates for judicial office to people who are."

I agree. That is exactly what Trump with no judicial experience, should do, rely on those who do have such experience. Dickerson then adds:

"The bad news is that some of those people are less interested in promoting the rule of law than with greasing the judicial skids for the same special interests that already wield outsize influence in the other two branches of government."

Who are 'those people'? Who are the special interests that wield 'outsize influence'? No answer. They are simply evil bad guys lurking about, which we are to take on faith.

 But 'greasing the judicial skids' has been on the Democratic Party's dream list going all the way back to FDR and his attempts to pack the SCOTUS with progressives. Evidently, greasing the skids is OK for Democrats but not Republicans. Later Mr Dickerson claims:

"Trump took office with the opportunity to fill an unusually large number of seats on the federal bench. Now, after hustling to fill the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia's death (and prolonged by the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's unprincipled refusal to schedule confirmation hearings for President Barack Obama's nominee to replace Scalia) the White House is turning its attention to 129 lower court openings."

I think those 129 seats are what the Democrats and media really fear. But why was Senate Leader Mitch McConnell's refusal to schedule a  hearing on Obama's nominee 'unprincipled'? From the NYTimes:

"WASHINGTON — As a senator more than two decades ago, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. argued that President George Bush should delay filling a Supreme Court vacancy, should one arise, until the presidential election was over, and that it was “essential” that the Senate refuse to confirm a nominee to the court until then."

The above statement is in the form of a principle. Just not one Mr Dickerson or the MSM feels loyalty to this year. Perhaps loyalty to that principle will be born again in the next Democrat administration. Mr Dickerson concludes with:

"Last week's transparent attempt to take the wind out of the FBI's investigation into the administration's ties to Russia is only the latest signal that Trump's grandiose conception of presidential prerogative is on a collision course with the constitutional reality."

No it isn't. It's on a collision course with the wishes, whims and feelings of the Democrat Party and their baggage handlers in the media. Nor is any wind taken out of the Russia investigations. Mr Comey did very little if any investigating himself. He had a vast number of investigators working on many cases. His job is that of an administrator coordinating teams and helping where needed and turning over results to the Attorney General.

I wonder where the concern about presidential prerogative was when Bill Clinton, under investigation by the FBI for the Whitewater scandal, decided to fire the FBI director? Was that director getting close to discovering something pernicious? Obviously, firing FBI directors is only permissible when Democrats do it but a no-no when Republicans do so.

I think what we are seeing today is a clash between a false reality adopted by an intellectual class of concrete bound mentalities no longer able or willing to think in terms of principles, and a public that can still do so but lacks the integration needed to form a coherent philosophy which is needed for a consistent movement. So a frustrated public is striking back at the establishments the only way it can, by supporting an administration that wants to punch the establishment in the nose.

This can be futile because the intellectuals are well organized and united by their common anti-conceptual method of thinking. Novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand pointed this out nicely:

"This kind of psycho-epistemology works so long as no part of it is challenged. But all hell breaks loose when it is--because what is threatened then is not a particular idea, but that mind's whole structure. The hell ranges from fear to resentment to stubborn evasion to hostility to panic to malice to hatred." (from the essay "The Missing Link" in her book "Philosophy: who needs it"pg40          

This hatred is what we are seeing today. While Mr Dickerson's oped is one of the more milder ones, it is representative of how media pundits often employ a double standard against Trump as opposed to any Democrat.

 If America can get principled intellectual leadership, principled political leaders will follow. But it can't be done backwards, by focusing on politics first. Perhaps Trump can buy enough time for such a principled leader to emerge. Hopefully.

They only care about maintaining control

      The tooth and nail tenacity with which the Democrat, Republican and media establishments are resisting President Donald Trump's attempts to drain these swamps reminds me of a commercial I saw a few years ago on local TV. It showed an elderly gentleman standing in an auto repair shop in front of a larger man in mechanic's coveralls. The elderly man looks at the camera and proudly announces: "I always take my car to Joe's. He's fixed my transmission 26 times."

     I think we can all agree that TV commercials are prone to wild exaggerations and this is certainly one of the wilder ones.

     I now ask you to imagine with me that this commercial was not an exaggeration after all, but rather true: this gentleman-we'll call him Phil-actually did take his car to Joe's to have his transmission fixed 26 times. Fact.

     Now, given this fact, would you say that Phil's highest goal was to get his car fixed right? Or that his highest goal was to keep Joe in charge of fixing his car? It's rather obvious that after 26 times, Phil's main goal is to keep Joe in charge of fixing his car, and that the goal of getting it fixed right is further down on his priority list, and probably not even on it. I'm sure we can all be telling ourselves yes, that makes sense but I for one would never be guilty of that. Right?

     Well, I'm here to say wrong. We are guilty of it. All of us.

     First, year after year we see our roads and bridges crumbling. Pot holes that require more money to patch this year than two years ago. Endless lines of orange barrels turning our roads into obstacle courses. Yet our political and intellectual leaders in academia and the media keep advising us of the practicality of  putting our transportation needs in the hands of Joe's public transportation.

     Second, not year after year but decade after decade we see our kids coming out of school, especially in the inner cities, unable to read, can't write coherently about what they read, can't give change for a dollar without a calculator and can't get into college without taking two, three or more remedial classes.

     Even outside of the big cities, many graduates cannot think in principles. They can't identify the premise on which a particular idea is based. Our primary and secondary schools are failures. Yet our professional leaders insist it is practical and moral to continue placing our children's minds under the auspices of Joe's public education.

     Third, now we are told that it is practical and moral to put our lives and that of our loved ones under the control of Joe's public health care. In fact we are constantly told to let the government provide almost everything our lives require. So the question is, why are we allowing ourselves to be put into these boxes? Why can't we start thinking outside the box of Joe's government control?

     This is my main point. It is we who have to teach ourselves how to think outside the box of Joe's government control. It is you and I that have to research things like private roads in America, toll roads in America and how else can they be funded. We must look at private for profit and non-profit educational systems, private health care and so on. How can we identify a candidate's ability to think outside the box if we don't know what that looks like ourselves? Happily, some of this research has already been done.

     For example:

     There are lots of private roads in America and they are maintained nicely. We need to study these and call for the government to begin a process of auctioning off some of its roads.*

     The same with education. The public school problems have been around for a long time. A March 25 2002 Detroit News article headline reads "Voters to politicians: improve the schools"

Another Detroit News article on Dec 11th 2003 headline "District parents: Dump new math"

A Detroit Free Press article of Oct 16th 2004 says "Detroit students fall farther behind state." Those articles are 13 to 15 yrs old. So what have the media been saying recently?

     A Mar 17 2016 Detroit News article by Ingrid Jacques headlined "Mich. residents believe public schools failing." She cites a poll showing "...less than 30% of residents believe Michigan's school-age children get or have access to, the best education possible."**

     Another editorial this time in the Detroit Free Press by staff writer Nancy Kaffer is titled "To fix Michigan schools, we must fund them."***  It's an endless plea for more money which has never helped in the past. So we see nothing has changed in at least 15 years.

     The same with health care. First Lady Hillary Clinton tried to get Hillary Care passed during President  Bill's first term. It didn't fly then but with constant pressure from academia and the media to put our health in the hands of Joe's government, they tried again with President Obama and succeeded, for now anyway.

     So it is up to us to make it happen, to educate ourselves and seek out candidates of like mind. The politicians aren't going to do it themselves. They are the Joes who are determined to stay in power and maintain control over us. Do you really think our present Senators and Congressmen are going to start thinking outside the box of government control anytime soon? They have spent their entire careers creating these boxes and nudging us into them. It's time we climbed out.

     I would like at this point, to indicate what I think are two first steps to climbing out of these boxes: shutting down Joe's federal Dept of Education and electing freedom candidates to local school boards.

     The Dept of  Education doesn't teach a single thing to a single student. Instead it controls the purse strings of indoctrination. It actually threatens our kids by declaring for example that the states had better teach subject X or it will have to withhold federal dollars. It is child abuse.

     By turning education over to the states it will begin the process of decentralization which should continue within the states down to the local level where it belongs. The states will do things differently from each other. Best practices will tend have best results and those results will be out there for all to see, debate and copy.

     In closing I want to emphasize this point: when Joe controls education he will be sure to teach all his students the value of....Joe, that Joe cares about them and that Joe's control--and Joe's money--will be the solution to all of their future problems. Sadly, there have been several generations of American adults who have gone through Progressive Education and have been thusly indoctrinated. That's why it's absolutely critical that if we want to get education fixed right, we must first break the stranglehold that Joe has on the minds of our young, and do it soon. We need to stop being Phils and make sure our kids don't become new Phils.




   *http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimpowell/2012/07/29/no-president-obama-it-was-private-business-that-made-our-

**http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/ingrid-jacques/2016/03/16/michigan-public-schools-fail/

***http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2016/12/29/school-reform-michigan-funding/9570479

Here comes the moral agonizing over Trump's budget cuts.

     Well it didn't take long for the leftist media to roll out its predictable orgy of bleeding heart anguish over President Trump's recent budget cut proposals. Sunday's Mar 26th leftist Detroit Free Press carried three opeds decrying those cuts.

     They appear to be written by staff writer Nancy Kaffer which the paper titled "Promises to Keep" regarding said budget cuts.

     First, it shows a picture of a young lady whose life was saved by a doctor when she was an infant. The doctor invented an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine which saved her life. He was able to create the machine because of a grant from the National Institute of Health, the very program president Trump's budget seeks to cut.

     Second, is one subtitled 'feeding the hungry' which shows food being loaded into cars to be delivered to needy elderly as part of the Meals on Wheels program which is now jeopardized by Trump's cuts.

     The third, subtitled 'staying warm' is about a lady whose electricity was shut off and had to rely on The Heat and Warmth Fund (THAW) for help with heat. It's another federally and state funded program which Trump's budget would 'wipe out' according to the article.

     The theme is quite obvious: government spending is doing lots of good for a small price so Trump's budget cuts should be rejected and the taxes on the people to pay for them should be continued. There are several unAmerican premises underlying this theme.

     First is the notion that it's moral to forcibly take money via taxation from people who earned it and could then use it to donate to charities of their choice, and give it to government so that it can decide which charity will get the money. This in turn is usurping the morality of kindness from the people and embedding it firmly in the government. Such charity taxing would be fine if taxation were voluntary but it isn't. This federal program of robbing Peter to give to Paul is designed to destroy in the minds of the public the fact that the moral is the chosen, not the forced.

     A second premise is that the needs of some people are a claim to the money of others. Again, no it isn't. The worship of need is replacing respect for and protection of, rights. Those who aren't in need are targeted to have their money taken to benefit those who do need. Sadly, it can be said that many of the needy are needy precisely because in their productive years their money was taken to benefit the poor of the time thus depriving them of the ability to save for a more secure future for themselves.

     A third premise is the idea that if government didn't provide grants for science, feed elderly, and provide heat, people would be dying for lack of medical technology,  starving in the streets, and freezing in their homes. This of course is utter nonsense.

     Perhaps that particular lady's life would not have been saved by that particular machine at that time in a free market. But in all probability it would have been invented sooner. More millions of people allowed to keep their tax dollars would mean many more people deciding which charity to help would have increased the odds of its creation.

     As for Meals on Wheels, it is mostly privately funded. About $3 million federal dollars are given to Meals on Wheels America which is an advocacy group that does not feed a single person. That is what Trump wants to cut. There is no reason MOWA can't do its own fundraising.

     As for the lady with no heat, there are private charities that will help with that. The American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and United Way just to name a few off the top of my head, provide help with paying heating bills. Besides, THAW is partly funded by state money which is not affected by federal cuts so it isn't all going to be 'wiped out.' And if the state money is tied to the federal money a simple bill to untie it would be easy.

     There is the further implication that past private charity was woefully lacking so government had to step in with its forced charity. From his excellent book "Rooseveltcare: how social security is sabotaging the land of self reliance" author Don Watkins writes"

"In 1910, in New York Sate, for instance, 151 private benevolent groups provided care for children, and 216 provided care for adults and children. If you were homeless in Chicago in 1933, you could have found shelter at one of the city's 614 YMCAs, or one of 89 Salvation Army barracks, or one of the seventy-five Goodwill Industries dormitories, among others."

     No there was no shortage of private benevolence before government decided to usurp it on a large scale.

     But President Trump is not going to return government charity to the private sector. He just wants to drain the corruption in it. He isn't going to make an unjust system just. But he can lay the ground work for a successor to the finish the job if he stays the course now.

     The media and the Democrats will fight tooth and nail and won't let up until he gives in. So, we can expect to see a lot more of this emotional agony as the media will try to blame every social, political and economic ill on Trump's budget cuts. President Trump and his various spokespersons need to arm themselves with the moral and practical arguments against these and other government enforced sacrifices.