Certain thinking not allowed?

 My local paper, The Macomb Daily,--in Macomb County Michigan--carried an editorial by Joan Bregstein, a health-care worker in a New York hospital extolling the arrival of a covid-19 vaccine as if it were another V-Day. But she laments the idea that there are others who declined the vaccine.

"But I was shocked to discover that several health care workers I know declined their vaccine dose. In the staff lounge this week, I heard: “Too early; I’ll wait and see.”

“Not interested.”

“Not for me.”

It’s the same attitude you find among people who don’t vote: “Too much trouble.”

“One more vote won’t count.”

“Someone else will do it.”

We cannot allow such thinking to take hold. As with voting, the only way our nation can succeed in moving on from this pandemic is if we all do our part."

What is meant here by "not allow such thinking to take hold"? Does she mean government should force everyone to get the vaccine? Or does she mean we must advocate--use persuasion--for the benefits of the vaccine? 

In a rights respecting nation people are not "allowed" to decide for themselves but have an inalienable right to do so. This right needs to be protected, adamantly.

So what is meant by "do our part"? Does that mean submit to government authority i.e. legal force? Or does she mean we should agree with her view of the virtue of vaccine?

Thankfully, she tell us:

"In March, we asked you to stay home to help us save lives. Now we are asking you to get vaccinated. Next phase will be the elderly and essential workers. When you are called, please say yes."

So persuasion is her preferred MO and that is a good thing. But we need to be careful of our choice of words, to qualify their meanings to avoid confusion like in the meaning of "allow such thinking", and "do your part" and  the vaccination is not enough. We need to get 61% of the population or herd immunity. 

While I disagree with this last, I think the vaccination should protect others from contagions from you since the vaccine is supposed to be preventing the virus from reproducing thus killing it. It's my hope that legislators will remove the governor's authority to order lock downs to fight viruses.

 

 

Promoting Objectivism

 Here is a copy of a letter from Tal Tsfany reporting on the growing success of the Ayn Rand institute. I reprint it here because I'm a big fan of Rand's ideas. This growth is great.

Dear friends, A few weeks ago, Ayn Rand Institute board member John Allison wrote an eloquent letter describing how, regardless of the state of the world, Ayn Rand’s ideas can transform your life for the better. And, he noted, ARI is helping countless people around the globe use Rand’s ideas to do just that—transform their lives for the better. One of the things I discovered when I became CEO of the Ayn Rand Institute two and half years ago was how much I, a long-time supporter, didn’t know about the scale of ARI’s impact. ARI was founded 35 years ago to advance the philosophy of Objectivism. As we near the end of 2020, I want to give you a brief glimpse into our achievements—and an indication of what lies ahead.  From the start, ARI has believed that the best spokesman for Ayn Rand’s ideas is Ayn Rand. And so, a core part of our strategy has been to promote her books—especially to young people, who are actively forming their philosophic convictions.  To date, our essay contests have attracted submissions from more than 440,000 students—and some of the best intellectuals we have today started as participants in our essay contest program. Our Free Books to Teachers program has distributed 4.5 millions books to students and we estimate that, in total, more than 9 million students have read these books as teachers reuse those books. With the awareness of Ayn Rand’s ideas that this program has created over the years, Rand is more widely regarded as an important writer today than she was during her lifetime. Her books keep inspiring young minds toward better, more fulfilled lives. Once someone has read Ayn Rand’s books, it’s vital that they have avenues through which they can increase their understanding of her ideas. On our YouTube channel, for example, ARI has made available nearly 1,000 videos, covering every topic from art to epistemology to morality to politics to current events. These videos have collectively been viewed over 7 million times and our channel is growing faster than ever. Last year, we saw our subscribers increase from 30,000 to 45,000; this year the number is more than 64,000. Thousands of people discover Ayn Rand and her ideas every month and go on to watch hours of Objectivist content on our YouTube channel, our mobile app and our online campus. ARI is charged with preserving Ayn Rand’s legacy, which includes storing, cataloguing and maintaining tens of thousands of items in the Ayn Rand Archives. We are currently heavily investing in upgrading the infrastructure, the systems and, eventually, the presentation and accessibility of the treasure trove that is the Ayn Rand Archives. Both the physical and digital items of the archives are managed with great care to ensure that Rand’s legacy is preserved for generations to come. We plan to bring forward many more collections that will allow interested individuals to learn more about Ayn Rand’s genius and the heroic life that she led. For the community of people who agree with Ayn Rand’s philosophy, we offer an array of products such as advanced courses and ARI’s annual summer conference, OCON, which this coming year takes place June 29–July 5 in Washington, D.C. For those who choose to become supporters of ARI, we offer a series of web meetings called ARI Donor Roundtables, where we dive into different aspects of the Objectivist philosophy and feature community members who are successfully applying Rand’s philosophy in their lives and productive careers. For those who are serious about careers as professional intellectuals or intellectual professionals, we’ve created the leading training program on Objectivism: the Objectivist Academic Center (OAC). Participation in the OAC has never been higher, with 120 students and auditors taking classes on Objectivism, philosophic thinking, and objective communication. In our view, the OAC is the best school of philosophy in the world. Starting with the Objectivist Graduate Center, the precursor to the OAC, more than 1,000 students have taken part in our training programs. Some of those students have gone on to become professors. Others are working at influential think tanks or have started their own successful think tanks. And yet others have launched or are engaged in successful businesses, careers in the arts, activism efforts, and other endeavors.  Finally, ARI believes that in order to help people to properly approach and grasp Ayn Rand's radical system of ideas, we need to offer meaningful educational engagements. Last year, despite the pandemic, we gathered the largest number of conference attendees (both in person and online) we’ve had in any year: 2,874 participants. The year before that, our in-person conference attendance reached 1,547. We are planning to continue to offer the unique experience of an Ayn Rand Conference in the US, Europe, Latin America and hopefully other regions of the world.  We are rightly proud of these achievements, and we’re grateful to you for helping make them possible. But the question we ask ourselves each and every day is: what more can we be doing?  I’ll be talking about this in our annual report, which you should be receiving in a few weeks. For now, I’ll just say that as we enter 2021, our core strategy is to better leverage our strengths—and to grow our skillset and become even better at reaching people. There are many exciting projects in the works. I’m an optimist. But I’m not blindly optimistic. My optimism about the future is based on the fact that Rand’s ideas are true—and that there is clear evidence of a continual increase in interest in Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. We see readers and viewers around the world discovering Objectivism and, with your help, we’ll continue to demonstrate how her ideas help people around the world live richer, happier, freer lives.  But I want to underscore “with your help.” Right now, the enemies of reason, individualism, and freedom are able to raise billions by appealing to duty, fear, guilt, and the phony moral superiority that comes with endorsing socially popular causes. What I’m appealing to is your self-interest.  Today is “Giving Tuesday”—though we prefer to call it Trading Tuesday. On this occasion, if you believe that Ayn Rand’s ideas are true, if you believe they are important, if you would like to see thousands more trained by the OAC and millions more reading and studying Ayn Rand, then please consider trading with ARI by increasing your support. We will make sure that whatever you rationally allocate to supporting this cause will be used effectively and efficiently to create a better world—for you and the people you love.  What could be more selfish than that? Tal Tsfany CEO, Ayn Rand Institute

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Formalism

 

Formalism - definition of formalism by The Free Dictionary

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/formalism

Define formalism. formalism synonyms, formalism pronunciation, formalism translation, English dictionary definition of formalism. n. 1. Rigorous or excessive adherence to recognized forms, as in religion or art. 2. An instance of rigorous or excessive adherence to recognized forms.

 

Or:

 

Formalism | Definition of Formalism by Oxford Dictionary ...

https://www.lexico.com/definition/formalism

'Juridical formalism is but a substitute for religious formalism.' 1.2 The basing of ethics on the form of the moral law without regard to intention or consequences. 'Analytic ethics has been very fairly impoverished given the postivist legacy of emotivism, the formalism of Kantian ethics and the technicalism of utilitarianism.'

 

 

 

In my view, Anthony Fauci has been practicing formalism by advising the Trump administration to deny people--especially those infected--the freedom to take a chance on the new vaccines which haven't been tested by a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled, clinical trial.yet. The Doctor was placing one aspect of medicine-testing-as if it were more important  than the purpose of medicine, to heal. Thus sick people just have to die. This should not happen in a freedom loving, rights respecting nation.

But it is happening because we are no longer one of those nations. Instead we are a nation not of rights but of permissions. How long do you think we can live like that? Especially since Dr Fauci recently said, from memory, "its time to do what you are told." Are those the words of a rights respecting government?

For now I want you to imagine that a baseball team recruits a new player. But at every at bat this player bunts the ball even if no teammate is on base. He doesn't swing the bat to get a single, double, triple or home run. He just bunts the ball. The coach sees that the player is placing one aspect of hitting--bunting--as more important than the purpose of hitting, getting on base and scoring runs. So the coach benches the player.

President Trump should have benched Dr Fauci long ago. 

 

We need to be on the lookout for other forms of irrational formalism in government regulations as well.

 

The Real Presidential Election was Rigged in 2018

The Real Presidential Election was Rigged in 2018

 From Sultan Knish aka Daniel Greenfield

"The Republican failure to put up a serious fight against Proposal 3 in 2018, long before the pandemic, had largely doomed Michigan."

 

A shameful expose of Republican weakness in the face of an all out assault on America's founding principle of individual rights. There are so many people in this world who would have no problem destroying this nation for the chance to be rich. They sold their souls to the collectivist devil, Marxism.

Democrats Say AT&T, Comcast and Disney Decide Presidential Elections

 Wow! A closer look at the powers that be. More importantly, a bird's eye view of how a nation is destroying itself by allowing government to regulate and thus place businesses in the service of politicians getting elected who then reward these businesses with lucrative government--taxpayer funded--contracts. It is a recipe for systemic corruption and that is what we have. MN

 

Democrats Say AT&T, Comcast and Disney Decide Presidential Elections

Post update

 I'm re-posting this from Sept 8th because I think it is very important and I noticed I failed to make a point I wanted to include. So I put it at the end of the essay in brackets.

Defund the Police update.

 The Antifa and BLM rioters have been calling for de-funding the police across the nation with a lot of support from the Democrat Party and the mainstream media (MSM). But what would that mean? To find out we have to take a more fundamental look at the concept of 'police.'

In my view, the American policeman is an enforcer and what he enforces is the laws of the U.S. Constitution as determined by the judicial branch. All those laws are supposed to  be based on our founding principle of inalienable individual right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But how many police men and women will continue to work for less or no money? My guess is next to none. So if there is no one protecting our rights, then in fact, we will not have any such rights. How can we have a right to anything, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,  if it isn't going to be enforced? We can't and won't.

But there will be order of some kind. There has to be in any human group activity. As soon as these Democrat governors and mayors discover that their anti-violence social workers cannot persuade thugs not to bash in their skulls with a tire iron, they will see a need for brute force enforcers.

Here we need to make a critical distinction in the kind of force used. The American policeman was supposed to be charged with the retaliatory use of force only and to be used on behalf of victims against their aggressors. 

But the new enforcers will have the power to use initiatory force--the starting of the use of force--to exact obedience to the governors' and mayors' notions of governance. Those notions will not include your right to life or anything else. Our Constitution will have been nullified when its enforcers were laid off (de-funded).

What will that future look like? I can only surmise it will be some version of the New World Order as determined by the United Nations and other globalists seeking a one world dictatorship. The Democrat Party is dying to make it happen. They see themselves as major commanders of that dictatorship. 

You see, the United States has the most powerful military on the planet. And the most productive/wealthiest economy. It is not unreasonable to conclude that many of today's Democrats lust for control of this future dictatorship.

History shows us that the bloodiest dictatorships of the last century, to retain power, had to reduce their  populations to a manageable number.  It's been estimated Soviet Russia starved and executed up to 20/30 million of its own citizens. Mao's Red China estimated to have starved up to 60 million of theirs.

If you think today's Democrat Party is not capable of this kid of behavior, well, look at the nonchalant, devil-may-care attitude of Democrat governors and mayors towards the wanton destruction of the lives and livelihoods and futures of their own citizens at the hands of terrorist groups like Antifa and BLM etc.

A global New World Order is the ultimate goal. But for now the goal of the America haters is to nullify the Constitution. Getting rid of its enforcers is the chosen method for now. We can't let that happen.

[ Speaking of enforcers, I forgot to point out from where the new enforcers will be recruited. They will come from the ranks of the thugs who are right now applying for that job,  Antifa, Black Lives Matter and any other fringe groups who may have joined in.

"Look at how destructive, brutal and deadly we can be! We'll be the best enforcers you ever had. No one will dare disobey your orders." 

If our government doesn't put an end to Antifa and BLM, this is the future I see coming our way.]

Private Censorship?

"Justice and liberty are ill-served by large concentrations of tyrannical, unaccountable power, regardless of whether those concentrated power sources are public or private."

This from the New York Post reveals an enormous ignorance of the difference between political power (legalized force) and economic power (the power to voluntarily trade with other people for mutual benefit. 

https://nypost.com/2020/10/16/

The New York Post  is claiming Facebook and Twitter are practicing censorship by deleting conservative views. But those companies are private companies that offer private citizens a wide platform for citizens to express whatever views they want, within certain decency standards. 

Only a government can forcefully suppress freedom of speech. Facebook and Twitter do not have the power to forcefully suppress anything. There are other social networks out there that citizens can use on which to express their views and they are growing.

I want to add there has been a particularly insidious attack on capitalism and free markets for a long time by its enemies: the alleged evil of "bigness" as some kind of uber evil that must not be allowed to exist. Big Oil, big Agriculture, big Labor, big Pharma, and now big Tech et al.

I was disappointed to see one of my favorite Senators Ted Cruz, jump on the "big tech is evil bandwagon." Size is no indication of good or evil. That lots of people like to use Facebook is a tribute to the owner's ability to make its customers happy

On this point I think FB owner Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey should each be wanting to have as many people as possible on his platform and viewing as many commercials and ads as possible regardless of political orientation. Evidently, such is not the case. 

 What might be the case though, is an answer to the question are the political powers that be putting any political pressure on these two formats to delete conservative views? I'd like to know.

It may be true that many people use Facebook and Twitter to post liberal or collectivist/Democrat views which seem to dominate. So what? The power Facebook enjoys is economic power not the political power to silence opposing views. I will be checking out Parler as an alternative to FB. There are others as well. But we must not support any attempts by government to censure or promote any private political beliefs.

 

The Chinese Lockdown-and-Mask Model Failed. Now Its Proponents Need Scapegoats

This is one of Mr Greenfield's best essays.  It shows the utter destruction of life when governments are given the power to forcibly collect sacrifices. It also shows how eager democrats are to start the use of force against their own citizens, something no government should be allowed to do.


The Chinese Lockdown-and-Mask Model Failed. Now Its Proponents Need Scapegoats

The blame Trump game.

 The Sunday Sept 20th Detroit Free Press carried an editorial smearing President Trump blaming him for doing nothing about the virus early on. It starts:

"Donald Trump's election was a tragedy whose cost Americans have scarcely begun to reckon. It's most conspicuous casualties are the disproportionate number American lives extinguished by a pandemic that raged unchecked for months while the president shrugged off, mocked and occasionally obstructed the medical community's urgent efforts to contain it."

This of course is a wild rewrite of what actually happened. Trump did play down the importance of the virus at first because that is what he was advised to do by government so-called 'experts' Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. Dr Fauci actually said masks were not necessary then later said they were. But the Free Press won't mention that because it might interfere with their desire to blame Trump. The editorial continues:

"Continuing to pay the price of Trump's negligence are the tens of millions of U.S. workers still languishing in unemployment, even as their counterparts in other developed countries - countries whose leaders recognized the the pandemic's seriousness and acted promptly to curtail the spread--return to work, and secure incomes."

The actual negligence was the CDC's regulation forbidding all the labs and diagnostic clinics that were begging the CDC to let them make testing kits, from doing so. The CDC insisted on forcing the nation to use its--the CDC's--kits. In another failure of the Freep's god--the government--those kits were flawed. They didn't work. Americans-like the ones the Freep pretends to care about--died. Obviously their lives are not as important as getting rid of Trump. 

Lastly, it wasn't the virus that caused those 'tens of millions of U.S. workers still languishing in unemployment.' It was the states' governments irrational exuberance to use initiatory force against their own citizens by shutting down everyone's livelihood over a virus that 99.7% of those who get it will survive it. 

It is the lust to use legalized force against their own citizens as a means of solving social problems that has infected the Democrat Party and the mainstream media. And they get it from the professors in our college departments of social sciences which is why it should be everyone's goal to get government out of education.

Defund the Police?

 The Antifa and BLM rioters have been calling for de-funding the police across the nation with a lot of support from the Democrat Party and the mainstream media (MSM). But what would that mean? To find out we have to take a more fundamental look at the concept of 'police.'

In my view, the American policeman is an enforcer and what he enforces is the laws of the U.S. Constitution as determined by the judicial branch. All those laws are supposed to  be based on our founding principle of inalienable individual right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But how many police men and women will continue to work for less or no money? My guess is next to none. So if there is no one protecting our rights, then in fact, we will not have any such rights. How can we have a right to anything, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,  if it isn't going to be enforced? We can't and won't.

But there will be order of some kind. There has to be in any human group activity. As soon as these Democrat governors and mayors discover that their anti-violence social workers cannot persuade thugs not to bash in their skulls with a tire iron, they will see a need for brute force enforcers.

Here we need to make a critical distinction in the kind of force used. The American policeman was supposed to be charged with the retaliatory use of force only and to be used on behalf of victims against their aggressors. 

But the new enforcers will have the power to use initiatory force--the starting of the use of force--to exact obedience to the governors' and mayors' notions of governance. Those notions will not include your right to life or anything else. Our Constitution will have been nullified when its enforcers were laid off (de-funded).

What will that future look like? I can only surmise it will be some version of the New World Order as determined by the United Nations and other globalists seeking a one world dictatorship. The Democrat Party is dying to make it happen. They see themselves as major commanders of that dictatorship. 

You see, the United States has the most powerful military on the planet. And the most productive/wealthiest economy. It is not unreasonable to conclude that many of today's Democrats lust for control of this future dictatorship.

History shows us that the bloodiest dictatorships of the last century, to retain power, had to reduce their  populations to a manageable number.  It's been estimated Soviet Russia starved and executed up to 20/30 million of its own citizens. Mao's Red China estimated to have starved up to 60 million of theirs.

If you think today's Democrat Party is not capable of this kid of behavior, well, look at the nonchalant, devil-may-care attitude of Democrat governors and mayors towards the wanton destruction of the lives and livelihoods and futures of their own citizens at the hands of terrorist groups like Antifa and BLM etc.

A global New World Order is the ultimate goal. But for now the goal of the America haters is to nullify the Constitution. Getting rid of its enforcers is the chosen method for now. We can't let that happen.

"Systemic Racism" a false demon.

The June 25th print edition of the Detroit Free Press carried an oped by Suzette Hackney, Indianapolis Star columnist  who claimed that now is the time to crush "systemic racism."

We had "systemic racism" during the slavery years and again during the Jim Crow years. There is still some racism today but in no way is it 'systemic."

I reject the notion that every alleged instance of injustice by white cops to black suspects is caused by racism suggested in the phrases "we have all the facts we need" and "systemic racism." Really? I question that.

I watched that video many times of policeman Chauvin kneeling on Mr Floyd's neck. I looked for some clue that could indicate racist motive. I watched Chauvin's face for a hint of a smile that might reveal a racist pleasure. I saw and heard nothing. Kneeling on a suspect's neck while in handcuffs should be cause for punishment in my view. I can see kneeling to put cuffs on a suspect but not after he's been rendered harmless.

The whole thing looked very calm, calculated, deliberate as if the public were the intended audience. Chauvin knew he was being recorded and could not fail to know that it would cause riots if made public and probably the end of his police career. But why would he do that over a small time thief like Floyd? Self sacrifice for a higher goal? I saw no evidence of that or of racism. The coldness of it made no sense.

But these two men knew each other for some time. Was there any animosity between them? Grudges? Sure, it could have been rank racism on the part of Chauvin and I would like this question posed to him: What was your motive? But even then, we have to remember that a crime is in the action not the motive. Murder is murder regardless of motive.

I grew up in the Jim Crow era and I know there was much more racism then than there is now. The famous psychologist Eric Hoffer once said "Mass movements can rise and spread without the belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil." I submit that Ms. Hackney is presenting a demon--"systemic racism"--to be destroyed. But destroying an evil is not the same as creating a good, especially when that evil is a manufactured one.

To defeat an evil like racism one must define it precisely. However, in America today we have a systemic attack on defining anything precisely: Progressive Education. It is a pedagogic philosophy that teaches students to think in the approximate, the almost, the close enough. Progressive Ed teaches this stuff in reading and math curriculum in our schools today. If 23 + 23 = 44, well that's close enough. If an appearance of racism can be postulated, well, that's good enough too, he's guilty. No more evidence needed ("We have all the facts we need.")

I don't think so. In my view we need to get government out of education. Today all young people are not being taught how to think conceptually, so all they have to guide their actions are their feelings. Feelings not controlled by thoughts are political and moral disasters.

What powers are behind the shutdowns?

Some thoughts I had a few weeks ago. Still relevant.

As far as I can see this virus seems to be more contagious than others but also seemingly less deadly. I don't believe the death numbers projected by the government in past months.. The government on 04/09 reduced their death projections significantly with the possibility of further reductions to come. It is known in the testing industry there are often things called false positives.   But even if it was as deadly as the seasonal flu, why close the economy?

I think that what we are seeing with this shutdown of our economy is a trial run by the political powers that be who are following the orders of the philosophical powers that be.

These philosophical powers are the university professors in the social sciences. They are the army of foot soldiers marching to the strategy of political Progressivism.

The generals are the professors following the philosophic strategy of postmodernism. For more on this I recommend this essay Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks.

 These generals of philosophy are taking notes. They want to see how many Americans are willing to surrender their rights, freedoms and cash for a little safety. They're learning.

Progressives also want to see who and how many are resisting this policy of partial house arrest. They're also learning who they can rely on to be their enforcers when next the Democrats regain all three branches of government and declare martial law to save us from climate change.

They have to like certain governors and mayors who have reflexively threatened to prosecute doctors and other medical professionals for not 'following orders.'

* Here is link Mr Hicks essay on Postmodernism.

Our Birthday

Today we celebrate the 4th of July because it was then in 1776 we declared our independence from the British monarchy of King George. But it wasn't just the King that we were free from. It was freedom from tyranny, the rule by force of some men over the lives of others.

The founders had a new idea for creating a "more perfect union." It was to create a government that gets its just powers from the consent of the governed, an idea so radical it is still not understood as clearly as it should be today.

It was the concept of inalienable individual rights that made such a society possible. Even this concept of rights is also poorly understood today. Some people--and some politicians-- think a right is a right to things before before one earns them, like a right to a job or health care.

The right to life does not mean the government must provide us with the food, clothing and shelter we need. It means only that we are free to provide these things for ourselves with only one requirement: that we refrain from violating the same rights of everyone else.

In such a free market system the government does have a role. It is that of a protector of rights thus it must have a presence like that of a patrolman who is there to be summoned if a citizen's rights are violated.

It is a system where people are free to make a dollar servicing the wants and needs of other people. What a great win-win, life promoting, happiness creating system that is!

But this system is under attack because its principles are not being taught in our schools anymore. Our young people are finding it difficult to love and respect a nation they know nothing about and whose history has been reoriented to focus on most of her mistakes and not her accomplishments.

We have turned over to government our roads and bridges to maintain at their leisure, our children's education for it to decide what our kids will be taught and not taught. We let the government control our health care so the Gavin Newsomes, (California) Gretchen Whitmers (Michigan) and Andrew Cuomos (New York) et al, can decide what is good and bad for us and force it on us with the force of law.

Benjamin Franklin when asked what kind of society he and the founders were creating said: "A  Republic, if you can keep it."

Well we are in danger of losing it. Look how many so-called educated people today think we are supposed to be a democracy. So today let's thank the founders and resolve to take back our marketplace from the government and keep that freedom for future generations.

Euthanasia of the elderly not a new idea.

  [Some people may have wondered where did some of our governors and mayors get the notion that the elderly are disposable in a pandemic so we can expose them to things like viruses? That kind of thinking isn't new. This post from my blog of May 2008 originally included a post on our military erecting a golf course in Iraq which is irrelevant to this post below. I did some editing for clarity.]

Disgusting

The May 5th 2008 Detroit News has two stories that are disgusting in their premises and implications. The first is what I call introduction to euthanasia and is titled "Medical disaster plan touts whom to let die" by AP writer Lindsey Tanner. It says in part:

" CHICAGO -- Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won't get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die."

   "Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn't be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia. (....) The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals "so that everybody will be thinking in the same way" when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report. The idea is to try to make sure that scarce resources -- including ventilators, medicine and doctors and nurses -- are used in a uniform, objective way, task force members said."

This isn't some right or left wing wacko group. It's your friendly altruistic (Sacrificing life to death) government.

   "The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services."

So who gets to die?

     "To prepare, hospitals should designate a triage team with the task of deciding who will and who won't get lifesaving care, the task force wrote. Those out of luck are the people at high risk of death and a slim chance of long-term survival. But the recommendations get much more specific, and include:

    • People older than 85.

    • Those with severe trauma, which could include critical car crash injuries and shootings.

    • Severely burned patients older than 60.

    • Those with severe mental impairment, which may include advanced Alzheimer's disease.

    • Those with a severe chronic disease, such as advanced heart failure, lung disease or poorly controlled diabetes. "

Please understand that this policy reverses the usual hospital practice that those most critically injured be attended before those who are not. If you have one leg in the grave and the other on a banana peel, well, to hell with you. But if you're healthier than that, you get care.

Look at those guidelines closer. Everyone over the age of 85 is doomed. What are their chances of "long-term survival"?

"Those with severe trauma.." That would include most people in a widespread disaster wouldn't it? Since when does being over 60 disqualify burn patients from care? Since when did human life become worthless after 60 or 85 or any age?

If the mentally impaired are among the victims, well, they are out of luck too along with those with "poorly managed diabetes"!!!

"Those with severe chronic disease..." Evidently, only those with a good chance of survival will get care. Man! have you ever heard of a more anti-life, anti-human proposal before? Adolph Hitler would love such a policy. Oh wait! He had one didn't he? Did you ever see that video of German newborn infants moving down a conveyor belt and being thrown alive onto a huge pile of writhing and dying babies if there was the slightest physical defect?

Remember, it's not the doctors and nurses who are deciding to do this. They are just "scarce resources" like "ventilators" and "medicine" who will be following orders. And how degrading is it to regard doctors and nurses who spent years learning medicine to be regarded as "scarce resources" like "ventilators and medicine?"

 If you're wondering why would anyone want such a policy? Power. The lust for control over others. There is no mistake about it. The desire by some to regulate the health care of others is the desire to control all of it including the end points, birth and death.

This proposal is essential altruism, human sacrifice. Its only antidote is a life-respecting, man-respecting moral code, rational egoism. In a laissez-faire capitalist society there would be no Homeland Security, or dept. of Human Resources, and the CDC, if it existed, would be entirely private and probably making a ton of money testing for the medical industry.

 But are any of these regulators actually ok with the idea of deciding who gets to live or die? It's hard to say. More likely they just think that making such decisions is doing their altruistic sacrificial duty and that is what is wrong with altruism.

There are other things wrong with that news story as well. One of them is the notion of who to let  die. It is not a matter of letting people die. It is just a fact of reality that some people will die simply because the doctors can't get to them in time. To frame it as a matter of 'letting' or 'allowing'  is suggesting a controller deciding who lives or dies.

A second is "so that everybody will be thinking in the same way." Does this mean no independent thinking by doctors will be allowed?

[This above post was written 12 yrs ago. Government euthanasia of the elderly and weak is not a new idea. To prevent more of this government imposed death control we need to begin a campaign to get government out of health care completely and let the doctors and other medical professionals make those decisions.]

Did the Lockdown Model Cause Half the Coronavirus Deaths in New Jersey?

I would say yes and why we need to get government out of healthcare.

Did the Lockdown Model Cause Half the Coronavirus Deaths in New Jersey?

The questionable value of models

I post this because the current virus alarmism  is using models to make predictions just like the climate change alarmists. The CC predictions have been massively wrong so far and I am sure the predictions of doom from this virus will be found to be also wildly wrong.

"Using the same scientific method that put the man on the moon,’ NASA scientists have concluded there is no climate ‘problem.’ Doiron noted that the slogan at NASA: was ‘In God we trust, all others bring data.’ ‘I am here to report today: Houston,we do not have a problem. It is impossible to think global warming will cause any problem especially when you look at the benefits of adding CO2 to the atmosphere. We are convinced that we don’t have a problem with fossil fuels. There is no problem."[Boldface added]

1-800-INFORM

 "The true tragedy is not that government bureaucrats want people to inform on their neighbors, it’s that so many people are eager to do the informing. Totalitarian systems are a lot easier to defeat than the internalized totalitarian mindset that we have seen in socialist countries around the world."


Time is running out for Americans to discover America's founding principle of individual rights and the moral principle of rational self interest implied in that concept.



1-800-INFORM

Blue State Governors Lied, Thousands of Nursing Home Residents Died

Here is another excellent reason to get government out of health care. (And education and science and infrastructure everything  else.)

Blue State Governors Lied, Thousands of Nursing Home Residents Died

Is Michigan's economy a nonessential?

I mentioned Michigan in the title because I live there but that question can be asked of many other states in this country who have shut down their economies also. I could see some states shutting down for maybe 2 weeks so that a massive campaign to produce testing kits could get under way. But, thanks to government regulations, that production didn't happen.

Instead, some governors and mayors decided to quarantine everyone regardless of health status. In doing so they shut down about 80% of their state's economies on the seeming premise that a fully running economy is a nonessential. The essential then was to prevent hospitals from being over whelmed, not fighting the virus. For this they locked down their states.

 An economy is the life blood of a society. It is individuals living, trading, sustaining and even enhancing their lives. To be prosperous an economy must have a free marketplace. In a free market people are free to make a dollar satisfying the wants and needs of others. No physical force is involved. Everything is voluntary

A beautiful feature is that people are free to compete with each other to see who can best serve those wants/needs of other's. It is the kind of pro-freedom, pro-prosperity, pro-human flourishing system that you'd think everyone would be trying to create. So why are state governments trying to shut them down? Do they really think a state's marketplace is a nonessential?

Some of these governors and mayors have come out with lists of what they call essential and nonessential jobs. They call them services. Police, fire and health care jobs are considered essential while most others are deemed nonessential. But essential to whom and for what purpose?

Every job out there, no matter how mundane or menial, is serving some person's life. That job is essential to that person's life. To designate it as nonessential is to regard his life as nonessential. Yet that's what these politicians do.

Here in Michigan our Governor Gretchen Whitmer  says we can't buy seeds to plant in our own back yards. But we can go to party stores and buy booze and lottery tickets. Yep! We must not sacrifice the State's income, just our own.

Our Governor is substituting her judgement for that of her constituents in area's that have little or nothing to do with fighting the virus. She wants to decide what we should buy and not buy. What we should have access to and not. It's what dictators and their wannabes do.

Governor Whitmer should immediately throw open Michigan's enormously productive market place and watch the explosion of life saving personal protection equipment (PPEs) and other medical equipment. (private volunteers are already doing this.) But by prolonging this lock down she is guaranteeing a second wave in the winter when the virus will come back.

Today, too many people don't understand what a free market is supposed to be free from. The answer of course is the initiatory--starting--of the use of force by other men, whether by criminals or government regulations. People haven't seen the difference between laws that protect rights which are based on the presumption of innocence and regulations which are all based on the presumption of guilt.

But we citizens and our recent family ancestors have brought much of this on ourselves. We and they have repeatedly elected politicians who promised to invest in health care, or more fair care or affordable care etc.

We did not notice that politics is the management of force and medicine is the management of health and to combine the two is to force health care to be in service to politicians. And that is what we see today.

If you had just come down with a new disease wouldn't you want to have hundreds of testing labs and diagnostic clinics going full blast on finding a cure? So why did we limit our chances to two government regulators--the CDC and FDA--from whom they all have to get permission to budge? 

President Reagan promised to shut down the Dept of Education. He didn't. In 2016 Sen Ted Cruz promised to eliminate 5 regulatory agencies. He lost to Trump. Trump has promised to "drain the swamp." But he has not eliminated one agency that I can see.

We have to search for candidates that will start shutting down these regulatory agencies. We have to do it because it looks like Trump isn't going to. He's been busy fighting impeachment and enormous obstructionism by Democrats.We have to put medicine back in the hands of doctors and health scientists.

Regulatory failure.

Today my Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer announced steady as she goes with her economic and political shutdown. Although she hopes for an end soon, she said we have to rely on the scientific facts. Well, I say no. We should be relying on the Constitution and its founding principle of inalienable individual rights. The economy should have been left running while people were encouraged to self protect.

The alleged reason for the shutdown was to prevent the hospitals from being overwhelmed. But our hospitals have been overwhelmed before from things like tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, etc. and they simply did their best. Yes some people died unable to be attended to as happens in all such overloads.

These can be managed better if the health care industry were privatized. A private market in medicine means hospitals, clinics even doctors offices would have their own stockpiles. I can see a chain of private warehouses stockpiling vast amounts of test kits, ventilators and other PPEs and rotating them as needed.

But our health care industry is heavily regulated by government. Did you know that the Center for Disease Control wrote regulations forbidding private companies from making test kits without getting permission from the CDC?

 There were hundreds of testing labs and diagnostic clinics across the country asking for permission to make testing kits. The CDC said no. It required them to use the CDCs own kits. In another massive failure of government, those kits were flawed. They didn't work. So people died as a result.

I don't know if President Trump was aware of this or even knew that the National Strategic Supply had been depleted fighting the swine flu during the Obama administration and never fully restocked. If he did he should have been outraged at the gross incompetence of the regulators.

In my view he should have issued an executive order temporarily suspending the permission granting powers of the CDC and the FDA (with a view toward making them permanent) and then unleashed all those private labs to go full blast creating test kits. We would have been drowning in them in a week or two.

Then we could have had a massive testing campaign (like South Korea did) to see who tested positive and quarantined them while letting the negatives go about their lives but still practicing protective measures. Alas, that did not happen here.

Next post on why the economy should have stayed running.