Friday, November 16, 2018



Howard Dean: Republicans will 'have a terrible time because they’re getting older and whiter'

The usual Leftist one-sided commentary.  He forgets that today's young Leftists will mostly be tomorrow's wiser conservatives: As life educates them, they become more conservative.  Both Churchill and Reagan started out as liberals.  The drift from Left to Right through the lifespan is very common

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean was pleased with the party’s performance in last week’s midterm elections — and not just because it regained control of the House.

According to Dean, a much more important trend emerged. “Young people are taking over the Democratic Party, and that’s a very good thing,” the former Vermont governor said in an interview with Yahoo News’ “Bots & Ballots.”

“There’s a huge grassroots movement in this country run by people who are mostly under 35,” Dean said. “And they basically did all of the organization.”

That youth movement, according to Dean, puts the party in a much better position than the GOP. “Republicans, I think, are going to have a terrible time because they’re getting older and whiter,” he said. “And that’s not the direction the country’s going in.”

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'Hate Crimes' and Demo Demonization of 'Racist' GOP

Leftist leaders blame Republicans 24/7, so it's no wonder the rank and file believe it.   

“Most Democrats see Republicans as racist, sexist,” blared the headline to a new Axios poll. An astounding 61% of Democrats view their Republican counterparts in this very negative light. (Frankly, we’re surprised it’s only 61%.) Other adjectives that a substantial number of Americans use to describe people of the other party include greedy, corrupt, ignorant, spiteful, and evil.

Granted, this wasn’t a reliably scientific poll and we don’t bring it up because the results are airtight. But they certainly do affirm what we’ve long warned: Heated political rhetoric has consequences, and primarily it’s being driven by the Democrat/Leftmedia complex.

These leftist leaders insist 24/7 that everything Republicans say, think, or do is racist. We’re even told that hiring people based on merit is racist. Notably, it is Republicans who fight for school choice for minorities stuck in failing inner-city schools, In some areas, minorities are noticing; in others, not so much. And it’s Republicans, not Democrats, who are lifting minorities out of poverty. Blacks in particular are thriving under President Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, just before the midterms, Sen. Bernie Sanders declared Trump “the most racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted president in history.” Is it any wonder that rank-and-file Democrat voters believe what they’re hearing?

Kim Hart of Axios explains the problem with that: “If Americans are this convinced that the other side isn’t just wrong, but dumb and evil, they’ll never be able to find enough common ground to solve real problems. And they’re more likely to elect leaders who can’t do it, either.” As we explained before Thanksgiving 2016, leftist demonization of half the country is why Trump won, though, granted, he wasn’t elected to “find common ground.”

In related news, the FBI reports that 2017 saw a 17% increase in reported “hate crimes,” including a 37% spike in crimes targeting Jews. The Washington Post reports, “Of the more than 7,000 hate crime incidents in 2017, more than 4,000 were crimes against people, ranging from threats and intimidation to assault [and] murder. More than 3,000 were crimes against property, ranging from vandalism to robbery to arson.”

A few observations:

First, this increase is fueled largely by more cities and law-enforcement agencies reporting a category called “hate crimes” — as in 1,000 additional sources nationwide. Second, we’ve long questioned the very category of “hate crimes” because it’s so subjective and because it motivates people in favored victim groups to report crimes that didn’t actually happen — a fad of hate-crime hoaxes. Third, the increase of anti-Semitic sentiments in the country is driven by Democrats and by so-called “alt-right” racists who are all “alt” and no “right.”

Finally — and the reason this relates to the poll where we began — is that leftists blame Trump. The leftist, hate-hustling Southern Poverty Law Center certainly does, and the Leftmedia takes its cues about “hate” from these supposedly unbiased propagandists. Moreover, writes Vox’s German Lopez, “The [FBI] report covers the first year of President Donald Trump’s time in the White House, and he’s been repeatedly criticized, from his campaign to his presidential statements and tweets, of stoking racist sentiment, particularly against immigrants and refugees.”

If “hate crimes” are “rising,” all the better to solidify that blame-Trump narrative and to further divide the country by vilifying all the “deplorables” on the Right. The predictable result is polls showing that everyday Democrat voters view their Republican counterparts as evil racists.

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Some people need to see socialism to believe it is bad

Seeing is believing.

People around the country were baffled when exit polls showed Robert or Beto O’Rourke won more votes from native Texans than incumbent Senator Ted Cruz in the midterm elections. But this should not be a surprise, it should be a lesson — some people need to experience socialism to understand its disastrous effects.

Exit polls found that 57 percent of people who moved to Texas (also known as transplants) voted for Cruz while 51 percent of those born in Texas voted for O’Rourke.

While many Texas conservatives blamed the liberalization of the state on transplants from California and New York moving to the area for lower property values, it seems the opposite is taking place. These people are not bringing their liberal ideas, but running away from them.

Chuck DeVore of the Washington Examiner explains, “The lack of economic freedom in California compared to Texas is likely why, according to census, from 2012 to 2016, a net of 521,052 Californians left the state. Texas was their most popular destination, with a net of 114,413 Californians moving 1,300 miles east to the Lone Star State.  In the five years through 2016, some 542,432 more Americans moved to Texas than moved out, supporting a growth rate double that of California’s.”

It seems those who have experienced the socialist policies of high tax states are fleeing to Texas and voting to keep those taxes and regulations low.

Conversely, youth in Texas have rallied behind O’Rourke, increasing youth turnout by 500 percent in the midterm election.

For the youth and those unexposed to progressive policies, increasing government spending with expanded Medicare and free tuition seem like good ideas. But for those who just left a state burdened by these policies, they are reprehensive to reinstitute them.

Nationally, this can also be seen by some immigrant groups who tend back the Republican Party after legally entering the country to escape socialism at home.

In Florida, Cuban voters have historically leaned right, and in 2018 tended to pick Ron DeSantis for Governor and Rick Scott for Senator — the Republican picks.

Similarly, Russian immigrants, particularly Russian-speaking Jews, who grew up under Soviet rule, backed Donald Trump in 2016 and rejected progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders.

Janna Sundeyeva told the Atlantic in 2016, “I don’t like big government… I would ask [left wingers]: Have you ever lived under a revolution? Do you know what it’s like? When someone comes and takes your family member in the night?”

Another Russian immigrant simply said, “To defend the country from Hillary, I would vote [for] a dinosaur.”

Immigrants who have experienced the harm of big government policies and socialism that strip individuals of their rights overwhelmingly lean Republican so as to avoid bringing that danger to this country. Individuals living in high tax, big government states are fleeing to low tax, individual liberty-based states. The pattern is the same — those who know socialism, know it does not work. Yet the left is working tirelessly to convince young voters there is a chance for the socialism to bloom here in the United States, it is critical the populations who have experienced this harm work to prevent that from coming true.

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Trump is not a bad dream

A bit of realism from the Left

Donald Trump is not a bad dream. The world has to accept that he's a waking reality. Remember all the talk of impeachment? It's been two years now. Far from being impeached, he's entrenched himself.

After an ineffectual first year in the presidency, he has worked out how to exert power. He now has a solid record of getting his way. At the end of two full terms, Barack Obama had kept 48 per cent of his election promises, according to the non-partisan Politifact. After just half of one term, Trump has either delivered or is working towards 53 per cent of his. He's broken just 8 per cent.

He's accomplished most of his topline pledges. Among them, stopping immigration from terror-prone countries (the so-called Muslim ban), income tax cuts, company tax cuts, tearing up trade deals, putting taxes on China, pulling out of the Paris accord, impaling the Iran one. He has delivered a majority of the US Supreme Court to conservatives. And the midterm elections last week his party increased its dominance of the Senate.

And in the House? In the 153 years since the US Civil War, the president's party has lost an average of 35 House seats in midterm elections. On the current count, Trump's party has lost 32. This result is "so very normal", writes sociologist Musa al-Gharbi of Columbia University in The Washington Post, that Democrats need to adjust their frame of reference. The midterm results for Trump are eerily similar to those for Ronald Reagan, he points out. Reagan went on to win a second term in a landslide.

But Trump is hated, isn't he? Depends who you ask. He remains unpopular with most of his people, yes. But his grip on the Republican Party is extraordinary. His approval rating among Republicans remains around 90 per cent. The American left talks of waging "resistance". But America is becoming more like Trump, not less. The Democrats have fallen in behind Trump on trade. They aren't proposing bigger immigration intakes, either. "Most Americans in both parties also agree with Mr Trump that America's old allies need to look out for themselves and stop relying on the US to protect them," writes US foreign affairs analyst Robert Kagan in The New York Times.

As time goes on, Trump looks less like an aberration, more like a culmination. The foreign governments who prefer to think that he's just a passing squall need to realise that Trump's America is "not a spasm but a new direction in American foreign policy, or rather a return to older traditions," says Kagan, traditions of "the kind that kept us on the sidelines while fascism and militarism almost conquered the world". The headline on his analysis: "'America First' Has Won."

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Capitalism: Understanding Its Secret

The socialists of today, who would have you believe that competition under capitalism is merely another exploitative form of anarchy, do not appreciate the actual situation.

Those of us who are fans of capitalism deeply understand that capitalism is the source of wealth in our modern economy. We also know that governments do not create wealth but merely acquire funds by taking money (via taxes) from productive people who can manage to earn a profit from their business endeavors.

Many of the people who disagree with us think that capitalism is just an anarchistic, zero-sum game that paves the way for rich folks to exploit poor folks and to steal the products of workers’ labor. So which side of this contentious debate is on the right track?

The Law of the Jungle

For a clue, let us first look at some of the things that differentiate humans from animals. Wild animals exist in a state of true anarchy. This word “anarchy” means “no government,” which is the environment where these creatures must live out their lives.

Animals must compete for survival under the law of the jungle, where might makes right and violence is the arbiter of all conflicts.

Animals must compete for survival under the law of the jungle, where might makes right, the ends justify the means, and violence is the arbiter of all conflicts. The animals set up a pecking order in their flock or herd. All of them compete for the top spot and eventually arrange themselves into a hierarchy that defines who gets to do what in their society.

Humans, on the other hand, do not necessarily need to live in anarchy but may form various forms of government to decide how to control behavior among members of their society. Regardless, people also set up pecking orders, except with more nuanced detail. The boss is in charge, and the workers mostly do his bidding while jockeying for better positions among themselves. Everyone who has ever held a job has observed this type of behavior in the workplace.

Producers vs. Consumers

Now let us compare competition in the primitive realm of animals to competition among the more advanced society of humans. Consider a community of lions that live on the Okavango Delta in Botswana and feeds on a herd of Cape buffalo. When a lion kills a buffalo, the chief lion, depending on the pecking order established in the pride, gets first dibs on the carcass. When the chief has satisfied his hunger, the other lions get to feed based on their standing in the lion hierarchy.

In an economic sense, the animals are consumers with no way to become producers.

Lions are at the mercy of nature in providing the limited resource of food, the buffalo herd. If their environment suffers a drought, the buffalo herd will decline, and thus the lions will also suffer a decline in their food resource. When the weather and the flow of the river are more generous, the buffalo herd will flourish and thus so will the lions. The lions have no way otherwise to manage the health and well-being of the buffalo, even though this represents their only food source. The animals are stuck in their limited natural environment with no way to improve upon their anarchistic lifestyle. In an economic sense, the animals are consumers with no way to become producers.

What does the human do in a similar situation? People may discover they like to eat lamb chops, so they gather a bunch of sheep together and build a fence around a pasture to keep the animals safe from other predators. They provide the sheep with food and water and an environment where they can breed and grow a larger herd. These folks realize their sheep have wool coats that may be harvested without harm to the animals and be fashioned into cloth for clothes and many other items.

Somebody discovers he likes the taste of apples, so he saves some of his harvest from the one apple tree he discovered in the forest and plants the seeds to make a grove of trees, and eventually an orchard. Once he has more apples than he can eat himself, he can use the surplus to help feed the sheep, or he can sell his apples to other folks who wish to buy them.

People, through their ingenuity and labor, create wealth where no wealth existed before.

The Creation of Wealth

People, through their ingenuity and labor, create wealth where no wealth existed before. They may engage in production until they have more lamb chops and applesauce than they know what to do with. This wealth becomes a benefit to their society. So the humans have an ability to use their intellect and labor to advance the flourishing of their species, whereas the lions may only exert their labor to carve an existence from the limited resources provided by an uncaring Mother Nature.

Under a system of economic freedom and freedom of competition where the individual human owns the means of production and is free to dispose of his property as he sees fit (a viable definition of capitalism), he is motivated to continue working so he may create even more wealth and trade it with other like-minded people for the fruits of their labor. Unlike the animals, humans can become producers as well as consumers.

The Secret

Note that men and women will lose their motivation to work and create wealth if they are not permitted to benefit from it. If someone creates a large herd of sheep and an orchard of apple trees and is then heavily taxed by the government, this person may decide his or her labor is not worth the effort. Similarly, if roving bands of thieves steal the fruit and run off with the lambs, the owner will have to divert some labor into hiding wealth and thus be unable to be as productive as before.

The socialists of today, who would have you believe that competition under capitalism is merely another exploitative form of anarchy, do not appreciate the actual situation.

Now, here is the secret I promised in the title to this essay. It is a quote from the book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics by George Reisman. In Section 10 of Chapter 10, Reisman states the concept succinctly: “ ... under capitalism, competition is the diametric opposite of the law of the jungle: it is a competition of producers in the production of wealth, not of consumers in the consumption of wealth.”

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