Why did Germans follow Hitler so slavishly?

This has been something of a burning question ever since the war.  What historians have said about it is reviewed here. And the reviewer is right to say that none of the answers given is satisfactory.  Yet the answer is right there in plain sight.  It is in the name of Hitler's political party:  The national socialist German worker's party.

Before I elaborate on that, however, I must warn that I am about to mention Donald Trump. So I want to make clear from the outset that I am NOT going to say that Trump is a Nazi.  Leftists say that all the time and I have often pointed out how hollow such accusations are.

As we all know, Mr Trump came to power with the slogan:  "Make America great again".  And despite being just about as unpresidential as you can imagine, that slogan took Mr Trump to the top.  That slogan had to have great power to overcome all the negatives (real and imagined)  associated with Mr Trump.

So guess what Hitler's message to the German people was?  Paraphrased, it was "Make Germany great again". (Hitler didn't put it exactly that way.  He put it more emotionally.  For instance "Vor uns liegt Deutschland, in uns marschiert Deutschland und hinter uns kommt Deutschland!")  Germany was badly hit by WWI so that idea was very attractive to Germans.  So nationalism, particularly in a time of stress, has very strong appeal.

And Hitler added to that a form of socialism  -- where socialism is defined as redistributing the wealth from the rich to the poor -- "Gleichberechtigung" in Hitler's German.  Hitler campaigned using exactly that word. See below.



But here's the odd thing.  It's such an odd thing that I will be called a dangerous neo-Nazi for saying it. Socialism as we know it today is under Marxist influence and as such is basically motivated by hate.  Marx hated everybody. It masquerades as compassion but it's really an excuse to tear down the existing society and its arrangements.  And the various extreme socialist regimes -- Soviet Russia, Mao's China etc -- show exactly how vicious and destructive socialism can be.

But Hitler's socialism was different and more powerful.  It appeared to be and he claimed it to be motivated by love -- love of the German people ("Volk").  Hitler's love for his "Volk" and particularly German young people really stands out here.  In a word, Hitler convinced Germans that he loved them.  And it was out of that love that he wanted to benefit ordinary Germans at the expense of the rich, particularly rich Jews.

And he saw socialism as being secure only within a homogeneous society, which Germany would become once the Jews were ousted.  See below.  The quote is from Mein Kampf and translates as "There is no socialism except what arises from within one's own people".  So he saw nationalism and socialism as organically connected.



So he didn't tear down the existing society the way hate-motivated socialists do if they get the chance. He wanted to redistribute but not to destroy.  As you will see from the speech linked above, he wanted to build up a united and heroic Germany, not tear it down. The Marxist aim of class-war was anathema to him. And whatever its motivation, socialism has a lot of appeal to people to this day. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are evidence of that. Socialism offers security of all sorts.  It says: "You will be looked after".

So if someone is offering both socialism and nationalism all in one package, he has got a magic mix.  Hitler offered the perfect dream -- he offered it all.  And the offering was made all the more powerful by his success in convincing people that his "compassion" was sincere. So Germans shared his dream and marched on behind him to the bitter end.

Mr Trump too tends to convince people that he stands for the little guy but his means to his ends are very different.  Where Hitler wanted to redistribute the wealth, Trump wants to create it -- mainly by giving the unemployed jobs.  And because Trump is not wanting to take anything off anybody, he does not have to have an authoritarian State to enforce his wishes.  So he is in fact chopping away at the vast regulatory apparatus that Obama and some of his predecessors built up.   Trump is a capitalist, not a socialist, a deregulator, not an authoritarian -- and there is a world of difference there.

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Pelosi Progressives — The Winning Formula for Republicans

The San Francisco Democrat raises an awful lot of money for her party, but her unfavorable status helps the GOP

Political parties once had the power to stand on their own platforms of ideas and policies. Voters would ideologically or practically align with Democrats or Republicans based on values and issues. As money and the power of incumbency have grown, along with the now-24/7 cable news cycle and the rise of social media platforms, individuals in leadership, particularly those of significant tenure and position, have become the face of their respective partisan groups.

It’s true that some conservatives and Republicans cringe at that fact. Now that President Donald Trump is moving his agenda, complete with his, er, extraordinary mannerisms, as the face of the Grand Old Party, angst is on display among the Republican ranks. Democrats are buoyed by this fracture and perpetuating the fairytale of Russia/Trump collusion to derail any agenda.

But there’s a chink in the Left’s political battle armor that’s proving to be an existential threat to their work to regain the House majority in the 2018 mid-term elections: The face of the Democrat Party and the political Left is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

In the special congressional elections that have occurred following Trump Cabinet appointments, Democrats intentionally declared each one served as a referendum on Trump’s unpopularity. Yet all four special elections were lost by well-funded Democrats. So much for the all-out rejection that is supposedly brewing among the American electorate against Trump’s agenda.

Two of these congressional races must be noted. First, in Montana, the GOP candidate to replace Ryan Zinke was charged with misdemeanor assault of a reporter the evening before voters went to the polls. Despite his popular folksy Democrat rival looking to benefit from a nationwide flurry of horrible press for manhandling a member of the “fake media,” Greg Gianforte won — maybe because he manhandled the media. Not only did Trump not cost Republicans a seat, but the accepted belief that media is the problem worked in favor of a fed-up Gianforte, who was pressed with a hail of questions about the GOP health care proposal. Montanans chose that over the whole state being represented by Nancy Pelosi’s values.

In Georgia’s 6th congressional district, a peach of a race shaped up with historic fundraising. Democrat nominee Jon Ossoff, who hadn’t found it necessary to yet live in the district he sought to represent, couldn’t vote for himself, nor could most of his California donors and big money coming from Planned Parenthood. When records show that of the almost $24 million raised by the Democrat, nine times more contributions came from California than within Georgia, Karen Handel, the GOP candidate was accurately able to state, “He’s raised millions outside of Georgia from Nancy Pelosi and outsiders who just don’t share our priorities. My opponent doesn’t live here [and] doesn’t share our values.” Ossoff and Pelosi lost to Handel.

In short, Pelosi’s unabashed hard-left stances based on sensationalized information are rejected, as were Barack Obama’s. But Nancy gets a little extra help in her public disapproval due to some of her antics. Let’s walk down memory lane.

Who can forget the oldie but goodie during the cram-down-our-throats passage of the insultingly name “Affordable” Care Act? Then-House Speaker Pelosi declared, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Or what about her later declaration that “I believe the [Republican-controlled] House of Representatives, at this time, is an unsafe place for children and other living things”? In December 2016, the California congresswoman whose worth is estimated at $100 million avowed, “I don’t think people want a new direction. Our values unify us and our values are about supporting America’s working families.”

Another favorite videoed moment of Pelosi was in January 2017, just days after Trump’s inauguration. Democrats marched in protest of Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban,” which merely called for a temporary pause in travel from nations Barack Obama identified as being of risk. Oh, the theatrics as the anti-Trump crowd watched Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana trotted out to the microphone to challenge Trump’s move. The hot mic picked up Pelosi feeding lines to him: “Tell them you’re a Muslim. Tell them you’re a Muslim.”

So, as Pelosi provides reliable ammunition for Republicans — and no, the use of this metaphor is not a call to arms or violence — why does she remain as the face of the Democrats?

It’s simple, really. The 77-year-old, first elected to Congress in 1993, is a fundraising powerhouse on the Left. Since rising to House leadership for Democrats in 2002, she is credited with raising almost $568 million for leftist candidates. Perhaps it’s no wonder the Democrat Caucus has moved so hard-left.

Furthermore, as noted in the June 27 CNN analysis declaring “Nancy Pelosi Can’t Be Beaten,” you can’t beat anybody with nobody. The shallow pool of candidates who might oppose Pelosi’s leadership are not viewed as credible — there are no young guns in the wings who pose a threat.

Pelosi’s unpopularity is no recent development. Back in 2013, Gallup showed she earned the distinction of being the most unpopular congressional leader. Just over the last eight weeks in 11 House districts that are targeted by Democrats for 2018, Pelosi’s job favorability didn’t surpass 37.2%.

Democrats may want a new face of their party, but their blindness to the authentic issues facing working Americans has been exposed. Republicans have much work to do in the House (and Senate) to capitalize on what’s become a gaping hole in Democrat armor — the obstinacy of the hard-Left. Thank you, Madame Pelosi.

SOURCE

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Conservative group prods Walden over 'right to try' bill

The conservative group FreedomWorks is turning up the heat on a top House Republican to support bipartisan legislation that would allow terminally ill patients unrestricted access to experimental drug treatments.

FreedomWorks wants House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) to advance the Right to Try Act (H.R. 878), which was introduced in February but hasn’t moved through the committee.

“Right now there are millions of Americans lying in hospital beds, fighting for their lives. And Congressman Greg Walden isn't doing anything to help them!” the group wrote in an online ad urging its followers to tell Walden to support the bill.

“There’s bipartisan support so I don’t know why it’s still sitting there. It should be a slam dunk for the committee,” said Jason Pye, FreedomWorks’ vice president of legislative affairs.

The legislation was introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and has 41 co-sponsors, but counts only four of the committee’s Democrats as supporters. An Energy and Commerce Committee spokesman didn’t respond to questions about the status of the legislation or about Walden’s support for the bill.
But a separate Senate version of the legislation, championed by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), is moving much quicker and a lobbyist familiar with the legislation said it could be on the Senate floor as soon as next week.

Without House action, the legislation could linger. Supporters of the bill say the federal government needs to cut through the bureaucratic red tape of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval process. They argue that people who are near the end of their life should have a right to take riskier medicines.

“Right to Try” laws are on the books in 37 states, but have yet to be implemented at a federal level.

Vice President Pence is an advocate of the laws and signed Indiana’s right to try law in 2015 while he was governor. Pence met with proponents of the federal law in February and pledged the support of President Trump.

During a meeting with pharmaceutical executives in January, Trump suggested he'd make changes to the drug rules for terminal patients.

“One thing that has always disturbed me, they come up with a new drug for a patient who is terminal and the FDA says, ‘We can’t have this drug used on the patient,’ ” Trump said.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The New Left’s Fake Patriotism

You can’t hate America and be a patriot

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

If anyone doubts that patriotism really is the last refuge of a scoundrel, a recent CNN article boasts that liberals are reclaiming patriotism. After going through their musty attics, tossing aside copies of Howard Zinn’s revisionist Marxist history of America and all the “U.S. Out of Everywhere” buttons, they found their patriotism, moth-eaten, covered in dust and a little worse for the wear. But otherwise intact.

That’s right, progressives are patriotic again. Again refers to the brief period between the end of the Hitler-Stalin pact when the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union necessitated a sudden outburst of pro-war sentiment and the beginning of the Cold War when the Communists became the enemy again.

When the left acts as if WW2 was the only good war, it’s because it was the only war that didn’t force them to choose between their sympathies for Communism and their United States citizenship.

Every time they did have to make that choice, history records their duplicity and sordid treason.

The new left-wing patriotism doesn’t consist of actually loving this country. Or discarding their conviction that America is the worst thing that ever happened to this continent and this planet.

Instead, conveniently, the new patriotism consists of hating President Trump.

When Hillary’s people decided to shift the blame for losing the election from their unlikable candidate, their incompetent campaign operation and the good sense of the voters to a vast Russian conspiracy, the left became patriotic. And by “patriotic”, they mean blaming the results of an election on Russia.

It’s not that the left actually hates Russia. Before Hillary decided to blame the Russians for her own unlikability, she was mugging for the camera with one of Putin’s henchmen and wielding a misspelled Reset Button.

Why a reset button?

Back then the born-again patriots of the left had accused President Bush of alienating Russia (and the rest of the world) with his cowboy diplomacy. Obama and his team of sensitive diplomats would replace cowboy diplomacy with cowardly diplomacy. That was why Hillary’s people pried a swimming pool button out of a pool so she could show off the new “Reset” with Russia. It was why Obama sold out traditional allies to appease Putin. It was why he was caught on a hot mic telling another of Putin’s people that he would have more flexibility to appease him after the election.

All this has been forgotten in a rush of revisionist patriotism. Traitors now masquerade as patriots. Last year’s appeasers now stick out their chests and act as if they’re Ronald Reagan, not Jimmy Carter.

Don’t expect it to last. If you doubt that, Al Gore once attacked Bush for being soft on Saddam.

As tensions with Russia grow over Syria, the born-again patriots will be reborn as appeasers. The next Democrat will run for the White House promising to restore our relationship with Russia. And he’ll blame President Trump for ruining our previously congenial relations with cowboy diplomacy.

History will once again be rewritten. Russia was always our friend. Lefties were always advocates of diplomatic relations and opponents of wars. But we will have always been at war with Eastasia.

That’s the disgusting farce of the new lefty Russia hawks. They don’t hate Russia. They hate America. Give it two years and they’ll be on television explaining how Putin will love President Elizabeth Warren because she won’t offend or provoke the rest of the world by insisting on American greatness.

After eight years of betraying America to Chinese hackers, Iranian nuclear negotiators, Islamic terrorists from Iraq to Libya, Cuban Communists, Columbian narcoterrorists and yes, the dreaded Russians, the left wants us to believe that they have left behind the error of their ways and love this country again.

The lefty patriot has a lot in common with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny: he doesn’t exist.

There’s more to patriotism than hating your political opponents. It’s not a negative emotion. It’s a positive one. It demands the degree of feeling that I heard from a man on a twilight porch in Montana as Fourth of July fireworks filled the sky, “God, I love this country!”

The difference is easy to spot.

Republicans stand by their country against foreign enemies no matter who is in the White House. Lefty patriotism however is a rare phenomenon that had previously only occurred when Democrats were in office. And even then, lefty patriotism is as unreliable as solar panels and wind turbines in January.

Every time we have fought a war, cameras could reliably spot leftists protesting against it. And yes, that even includes WW2.

Patriots don’t announce that they will move to Canada if the wrong guy wins the election.

The new progressive patriot doesn’t love this country. Even his newfound resentment of Russia is incidental. He hates Russia because of Trump. Once CNN and the New York Times detach Trump from Russia, he’ll see the wisdom of liking it again. Russia, like every other country except Israel, must be better than America. It’s better than the horrifying orgy of capitalists plundering the planet, racist police randomly shooting young black men, fundamentalists hating women, militarists plotting to bomb brown people and all the other hysterical leftist fantasies which are traced back to this country’s original sins.

America was founded by racist, capitalist slave-owners who stole the land from the Indians so they could open fast food franchises. That’s what the average college student is taught. It’s what the average leftist believes. How much love can he be expected to feel for America? About as much as you feel for Iran.

The new lefty patriotism is really anti-patriotism. It doesn’t really resent Russia. Instead it resents President Trump’s call for national greatness. Tying him to Russia is a cynical bid by traitors seeking their last refuge outside of their safe spaces and pronoun-free toilets in the sacred space of patriotism.

History tells us that lefty patriotism has a shorter life than some of the world’s rarest substances which can only be created in labs and whose very existence continues to be debated by feuding scientists.

This current phenomenon in which lefties briefly confuse their hatred of America, with their subsidiary hatred of President Trump and a sudden subsidiary resentment of Russia for foisting him on us by cleverly causing the Democrats to nominate a candidate with all the popular appeal of spoiled supermarket tuna, will pass. And it will pass quickly.

When the Washington Post fails to deliver their Watergate on time, when even the dimmest follower of Occupy Democrats realizes that pigs will fly into his front yard and uproot his Bernie 2020 sign before impeachment happens, they will turn to something else.

And the new tattered lefty patriotism will go back up to the attic to lie under their moldering American flags and their defaced copy of the Declaration of Independence. Sic transit gloria moonbat.

SOURCE

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Congress joins Trump war on regs, cuts a year's worth in one week

Congressional lawmakers have gone all in on President Trump's bid to slash Obama-era regulations, targeting $19 billion in rules and the elimination of enough red tape to free up 5,200 federal workers, according to a new analysis.

The cuts proposed by the House Appropriations Committee this week amount to a year's worth of regulations under the Obama administration, said the report from American Action Forum.

Analyst Sam Batkins wrote, "The suite of appropriations bills released this week goes further, curtailing more than $19 billion in total regulatory costs and eliminating 10.4 million hours of paperwork, the equivalent of eliminating all regulations from 2006 and freeing 5,200 employees from paperwork compliance."

His report, provided to Secrets in advance of its release today, said that the committee's funding bills target regulations in the areas of financial services, agriculture and energy. The biggest ticket item: "Repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill's Volcker rule, which originally estimated $4.3 billion in costs and 2.3 million new paperwork burden hours."

Batkins, AAF's director of regulatory policy, explained that Congress can be very slow in cutting regulations, but added that appropriators are moving with unusual speed at the same time Trump's team is also targeting rules within federal agencies for elimination.

"For those who thought the regulatory reform debate was limited to the executive branch and the administration's one-in, two-out executive order, Congress is proving it has plenty of power to curtail past rules. It can do so in a way that is faster than the regulatory process, and in some instances, far more durable than repeal through the executive branch," said the AAF report.

"The measures outlined here could repeal more than $19 billion in costs and eliminate 10.4 million hours of paperwork. If these riders successfully make it through the process, expect this practice to continue as other legacy regulations are addressed through the legislative branch," the report added.

Batkins highlighted the committee's targets:

Financial Services:

Repeal of Volcker Rule: $4.3 billion and 2.3 million hours.

Limiting Implementation of Blade-Contact Rule: $2.5 billion.

Repeal Individual Mandate: 5 million paperwork hours.

Prohibits SEC from requiring companies to disclose political spending.

Requires OMB to report on costs of Dodd-Frank.

Energy and Water:

Withdrawing "Waters of the United States" Rule: $462 million.

Prohibits regulators from restricting firearms on Army Corps lands.

Agriculture:

Limiting "Trans Fat Ban:" $11 billion.

Limiting "Cigar and Vaping" Rule: $1.1 billion and 1.6 million paperwork hours.

Allows flexibility for schools implementing whole grain school lunch standards.

Prevents further implementation of school lunch sodium standards.

Allows flexibility for schools serving low-fat flavored milk.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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President Trump’s Remarkable Warsaw Speech

President Trump delivered one of the most important speeches of his young presidency on Thursday. Billed as "Remarks to the people of Poland," the address was as clear a statement we've heard of Trump's nation-state populism. This philosophy, which differs in emphasis and approach from that of other post-Cold War Republican presidents, is both enduring and undefined. Reaching as far back as Andrew Jackson, and carrying through, in different ways, William Jennings Bryan, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Spiro Agnew, Ronald Reagan, Ross Perot, Patrick Buchanan, James Webb, and Sarah Palin, the nation-state populist tradition has suffered from its lack of intellectuals, professors, and wordsmiths. But that is beginning to change.

The most important concept in nation-state populism is the people. These are citizens of the folk community, membership in which crosses ethnic, racial, and sectarian lines. Note, for example, Trump's reference to the Nazis' systematic murder of "millions of Poland's Jewish citizens, along with countless others, during that brutal occupation." Or as Trump put it, in a different context, in his Inaugural Address: "Whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag."

Together, the people constitute the nation. Borders define the nation's physical extent, but not its nature. Indeed, the nation may exist independent of statehood or political sovereignty. "While Poland could be invaded and occupied," Trump said, "and its borders even erased from the map, it could never be erased from history or from your hearts. In those dark days, you had lost your land but you never lost your pride." Nor is the nation always represented in the corridors of power. "Today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another," Trump said at the inaugural, "or from one party to another—but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C, and giving it back to you, the American people."

Poland and the United States are among the "free nations" that make up the "civilization" of "the West." And the West is unified, not only by "bonds of culture, faith, and tradition" and "history, culture, and memory," but also by shared values. These include "individual freedom and sovereignty," innovation, creativity, and exploration, meritocracy, "the rule of law," the "right to free speech and free expression," female empowerment, and "faith and family." And, "above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom."

Western civilization faces threats. Foremost among them is the heir to Nazism and communism. The "oppressive ideology" of radical Islam, Trump said, "seeks to export terrorism and extremism all around the globe." There are also "powers that seek to test our will, undermine our confidence, and challenge our interests"—namely Russia but also, farther away, China and North Korea. Finally, there is "the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people" and overrides their sovereignty.

How to respond? Material wealth, martial glory, and technological achievement are all necessary to sustain a nation. But they are not sufficient. What matters more, Trump said, is national spirit. In fact, the word "spirit" occurs no fewer than seven times in the address. There are also several mentions of related ideas such as "confidence" and "will."

Trump cited Bishop Michael Kozal, who died in Dachau: "More horrifying than a defeat of arms is a collapse of the human spirit." A nation can endure economic recession, and even military occupation. What it cannot recover from is loss of pride. "As the Polish experience reminds us," Trump said, "the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have."

SOURCE

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Fake News media caught in huge lie about Trump’s historic speech

The mainstream media were already on the edge of insanity.  After President Trump’s historic speech in Poland, they punched the gas and Thelma-and-Louised themselves into a lunatic abyss.

Speaking in Warsaw, Trump gave a full-throated defense of American values and Western civilization, vowing to protect the ideals of individual liberty and freedom.

To a psychotic media, it was a Klan rally. Shrieking through frothed mouths, the mainstream wailed about Trump’s use of “racist,” “white supremacist” and “white nationalisit” so-called “code words.”

“Trump’s speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto” whined Vox.com, peeing their pants with the subheadline, “For family, for freedom, for country, and for God.”

What were these secret “code words” the media claim Trump was using to secretly communicate with the KKK?

“Civilization” and “the West.”

Yes, the mainstream media have gone completely insane. Are “civilization” and “the West” secret racist code words, as the media babblingly claim?  Have they never been used before in a presidential address?

Below are three quotes in which the President speaks of defending “civilization” and “the West”…

…but only one came from President Trump.  The other two are from FDR and noted white supremacist Barack Obama.

Can you tell which one is the “hate speech” that came from “white nationalist” Trump, and which are from liberalism’s two most adored Presidents?

“Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization.”

“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”

“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”

SOURCE

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Trumped!

222,000 jobs added to US economy in June, exceeding expectations

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Liberal vs Leftist:  Is there a difference?

What is a liberal? Or maybe a better question is, what does the term liberal mean today? Well, according to Jacques Berlinerblau, a professor from Georgetown University who recently wrote an article for the Washington Post, there are liberals and then there are “radical leftists.” Berlinerblau admits that American academia is mostly comprised of liberal professors and that those professors who identify as politically conservative are utterly under-represented in America’s halls of higher learning, with humanities departments in particular being the least politically diverse. In other words, it is not wrong to suggest that leftist ideology is controlling most of the nation’s colleges and universities.

But while Berlinerblau rightly concludes that conservatives are not to blame for the recent havoc wreaked in places like Middlebury, UC Berkeley and Evergreen College, he also attempts to shift the blame away from liberals. According to Berlinerblau, three groups exist in academia: a small conservative minority, a sizable liberal contingent and the dominate radical left who he blames for the current campus intolerance. The question remains, what is the difference between a liberal and a leftist?

Berlinerblau’s answer to that question ends up sounding more like a disagreement over the manner of application rather than over opposing ideologies. He cites as examples liberals’ reactions to certain events, such as “liberals didn’t exult over Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution,” or that liberals didn’t “refer to the victims of 9/11 as ‘little Eichmanns.’” He also notes that “liberals are generally made highly uncomfortable by censorship, speaker boycotts, trigger warnings, safe spaces and the like.” Berlinerblau’s argument sounds eerily similar to the one made by Muslims who may reject the methods of Islamic terrorists, yet refuse to disavow Islamists.

The truth is that modern liberalism stands in stark contrast to the classical liberal values expressed by our nation’s Founding Fathers. It is today’s conservatives who hold most closely to those classical liberal principles. Today’s radical leftist social justice warrior is merely the logical manifestation of modern liberal ideology. Liberal and leftist is a distinction without a difference. It is modern liberalism that can be credited with teaching the ideology of socialism that glories in the utopian ideals of Karl Marx. It is modern liberalism that sees little value in Christianity and has long mocked Christians as backward fools. It is modern liberalism that has questioned the very nature of truth itself, opening a Pandora’s box of relativism. No, Professor Berlinerblau, liberals may not like it, but the radical left is their creation.

SOURCE

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Two more liberals arrested in latest plot to assassinate Republicans

Liberalism has a domestic terrorism problem, as still more liberal activists are arrested for plots to assassinate Republican lawmakers.

This time the target was Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake.

Tucson News Now reports:

Deputy Cody Gress, spokesman for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, said Mark Prichard and Patrick Diehl were arrested on charges of third-degree criminal trespass Thursday morning, July 6.

Gress said the 59-year-old Prichard is also facing a misdemeanor charge of threats and intimidation.

“Staffers working at the office indicated one of the protesters made comments referencing the shooting of Rep. Scalise, which prompted them to call the Sheriff’s Department as well as lock the office doors,” the PCSD said in a news release…

…Jason Samuels, Communications Director for Sen. Flake, said Prichard threatened a staff member and said the following:

“You know how liberals are going to solve the Republican problem? They are going to get better aim. That last guy tried, but he needed better aim. We will get better aim.”

Also on Thursday, police arrested five people outside of Flake’s Phoenix office as protests continued for the second day.
This is just the latest in a growing string of liberal activists arrested for vowing to assassinate, or actually assaulting and shooting, Republican lawmakers.  Since just May, at least 30 Republican members of Congress have the target of an assassination attempt, violent asssault, or explicit death threat.

Among those incidents:

On June 14, a Democrat Party activist opened fire on 16 Republican lawmakers practicing for a charity baseball game.  House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) was gravely wounded in the mass assassination attempt.

In May a liberal activist was arrested for plotting to assassinate Republican Congresswoman Martha McSally, also of Arizona.

Also in May, North Dakota Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer was grabbed by the neck at a town hall event, and Tennessee Republican Congressman David Kuster was forced off the road by a deranged liberal activist, who then tried to enter his car to assault him.

Before that, Virginia Republican Congressman Tom Garrett was forced to hire armed security for a town hall meeting after liberal activists described in detail how they planned to assassinate his wife and children.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Russia fantasies from The Washington Post

A recent propaganda piece from The Washington Post, "Obama's secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin's election assault," is based, as usual, mostly on anonymous sources determined to make former President Barack Obama look good. The gist is that Obama tried his best to punish Russia for alleged interference in the 2016 election, but he fell short and left the matter in the hands of President Donald Trump, who has done nothing.

So Trump is blamed for Obama's failure. How convenient.

The essence of the piece is that "intelligence" was "captured" that somehow proved that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave "specific instructions" that he wanted  to "defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump."

Pardon me, but I don't believe this for a moment. This "intelligence" may be what the Post seeks to expose-Russian "active measures" or disinformation.

As we reported back in January, "Looking at the election objectively, it is possible to say that Russian leader Vladimir Putin may have had a personal vendetta against the former U.S. secretary of state for some reason, stemming from allegations of U.S. meddling in Russian internal affairs. On the other hand, Putin may have preferred that Clinton become the U.S. president because her failed Russian ‘reset' had facilitated Russian military intervention in Ukraine and Syria, and he believed he could continue to take advantage of her."

This makes far more sense than the Post story.

Remember that Obama won the 2012 election after dismissing his Republican opponent Mitt Romney's claim that Russia was a geopolitical threat to the United States. Obama had also been caught on an open mic before the election promising to be "flexible" in changing his positions to benefit Russia.

"These comments provide more evidence that Obama was never the anti-Russian figure he postured as in the final days of his second term," we noted.

The Post story by Greg Miller and others is an obvious response to the observation that, if Obama thought the Russian interference was such a big deal, what did Obama try to do about it?

One can read the entire article if you are interested in how pro-Obama propaganda is manufactured by the Post. Some parts of the article are more ludicrous than others, such as this paragraph:

    "Throughout his presidency, Obama's approach to national security challenges was deliberate and cautious. He came into office seeking to end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was loath to act without support from allies overseas and firm political footing at home. He was drawn only reluctantly into foreign crises, such as the civil war in Syria, that presented no clear exit for the United States."

The paragraph is designed to mask Obama's indifference to Russian aggression in places like Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. In regard to the latter, Obama failed to save Syria from Russian aggression and facilitated a conflict-through secret arms shipments to the region-that now stands at 500,000 dead.

Obama's alleged "cautious" approach in the Middle East was to support jihadist groups in Syria and Libya, and back regimes such as the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, which was overthrown by the military backed by the people.

The hero in the Post account is Obama's CIA director John Brennan, who joined the agency after admitting to voting for Moscow's man in the 1976 presidential election, Gus Hall of the Communist Party USA. Suddenly, we are led to believe, as CIA director, he became anti-Russian after discovering a Moscow plot in 2016 to disrupt the presidential election.

"In political terms," the paper said, "Russia's interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy."

This is complete nonsense. There is no evidence any votes were changed as a result of this so-called "interference."

The crime of the century is bad journalism based on anonymous sources who hide behind papers like the Post to spread their self-serving and partisan propaganda.

"This account of the Obama administration's response to Russia's interference is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former U.S. officials in senior positions in government, including at the White House, the State, Defense and Homeland Security departments, and U.S. intelligence services," the Post said. "Most agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue."

One paragraph in particular tells you everything you know about the anonymous sources behind this story. "Those closest to Obama defend the administration's response to Russia's meddling," the Post said. Yes, indeed, those "closest to Obama" would certainly do so.

Then we're told that that "They believe that a series of warnings-including one that Obama delivered to Putin in September-prompted Moscow to abandon any plans of further aggression, such as sabotage of U.S. voting systems."

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for this dramatic statement. It's completely made up.

Remember, this is the same Obama who once assured Putin that after he won his re-election campaign in 2012, he would have "more flexibility" with the Russian leader and be able to offer more concessions.

Now, all of a sudden, Obama is rough and tough and gets things done with the Russian leader. What a joke.

The paper reported that "Obama confronted Putin directly during a meeting of world leaders in Hangzhou, China. Accompanied only by interpreters, Obama told Putin that ‘we knew what he was doing and [he] better stop or else,' according to a senior aide who subsequently spoke with Obama. Putin responded by demanding proof and accusing the United States of interfering in Russia's internal affairs."

Or else? It sounds like the red line in Syria that Obama had warned the Syrian regime not to cross. But they crossed it anyway.

Obama's so-called "secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin's election assault" exists in the minds of Post reporters who are waging a not-so-secret struggle to rehabilitate the former president's disastrous foreign policy toward Russia and most of the rest of the world.

Let's not forget one more debacle-Obama's deal with Russian client state Iran to facilitate the regime's nuclear weapons program and world-wide terrorism.

That may end up being another crime of the century, on par with President Bill Clinton's deal with North Korea that was supposed to prevent the communist regime from getting its hands on nuclear weapons.

Speaking of North Korea, whose nuclear weapons program accelerated under Obama, hear the words of Otto Warmbier's father about his son being released after Trump took office: "I think the results speak for themselves."

Obama's "cautious and deliberate" approach was to let the young man languish in a North Korean prison while being tortured to near death.

SOURCE

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What Do Americans Think of Patriotism and Liberty?

America has just celebrated the 241st anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. Our nation boasts a rich history and myriad reasons for that celebration. But there are some troubling things worth pondering.

For example, a recent YouGov poll holds some disturbing numbers about patriotism. Four in 10 say they are very patriotic, and eight in ten are at least somewhat so — but nearly half the country thinks other people are losing patriotic fervor. Perhaps that’s because of the unbelievably rancorous political rhetoric these days. Indeed, the partisan split is stark — almost two-thirds of Republicans call themselves very patriotic, as opposed to just one-third of Democrats.

Another group of Americans is also troublingly unpatriotic — Millennials. More than a third of them aren’t patriotic. Hot Air’s Allahpundit elucidates, “They’ve grown up in a bad economy, saddled with skyrocketing education debt, reminded daily that their standard of living may well be worse than their parents’, and forced to live with the reality that federal entitlements won’t be there for them when they’re 65.” And yet Millennials are evidently blaming the country instead of bad, leftist policy.

In another interesting Fox News poll, while the majority (51%) of Americans are proud of the U.S., a whopping 79% of voters don’t believe George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and our other Founders would be all that impressed.

The question is worth asking: Are we honoring the sacrifice made by those who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to secure our independence and Liberty? Are we stewarding what was bequeathed to us at great cost?

In 1776, after the signing of the Declaration, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail: “I am apt to believe that [the signing of the Declaration] will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”

Let’s work to secure our Liberty, and to make sure that all Americans have reason to celebrate.

SOURCE

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'The Resistance' Tries to Foil Voter Fraud Probe

Donald Trump’s task of exposing voter fraud has run into some hurdles. Unsurprisingly, some states are simply unwilling to aid Trump’s effort, whereas legal concerns are barring another group of state officials from supplying unabridged voter data. Last week, the committee implored every state to make “publicly-available voter roll data  including, if publicly available under the laws of your state, the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, [and] voter history from 2006 onward.”

As of Friday, half of the states had either scoffed at the request or declared that state law precludes unfiltered dissemination of voter data. Some of the more haughty responses came from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes and Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. According to McAuliffe, “This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November.” Lundergan Grimes complained, “This commission was formed to try to find basis for the lie that President Trump put forward that has no foundation.” Hosemann suggested, “They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from.” This is what “Resistance Summer” sounds like.

Many media outlets are making a big deal out of states’ refusal to dispense private information, but that’s their prerogative, and if state law forbids it, that’s not resistance. Even the committee letter clearly states that it is requesting only “publicly-available voter roll data.” What is resistance is the vindictiveness of states like California and New York, which are flatly and boldly saying, “No way,” even in regards to public data. The problem is that this takes a comprehensive examination off the table. Which was the entire point of the committee — to get a better, more complete view of voter issues. The committee is merely asking states to work with it as best they can. But some officials just won’t accept the possibility that voter fraud, which some research affirms could include millions of voters, has merit that’s worth investigating.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Statins give you a bad back

Researchers in Texas led a retrospective study to investigate the link between statin therapy and risk of spondylosis, intervertebral disc disorder, or other back problems. The team dug into de-identified health care data from 2003–12 for San Antonio-area patients aged 30 years or older who were covered under the military's TRICARE system.

Using 115 baseline characteristics—including age, gender, comorbidities, medication use, and health care utilization—they created a propensity score and matched treatment groups in a 1:1 ratio. From the overall study sample of 60,455 patients, they matched 6,728 statin users with a like number of nonusers.

Data analysis indicated that patients in the user group, who received the same care at the same cost as nonusers, were more likely to be diagnosed with back disorders. In addition, statin users were characterized by prolonged use and higher dosages compared with nonusers. The findings, the investigators conclude, speak to the need for more study into the overall effect of statin use on musculoskeletal health.

SOURCE

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Washington Post Concocts anti-Trump news, massages real news about Obama

The bald-faced Leftist double standards never stop

No section of the Post deviates from the Leftist favoritism. Let us look at the Tech section – and a “reporter” by the name of Brian Fung.

On Friday, Fung dropped the following “bombshell.” Except the key components – were entirely fake news.

The FCC’s Independent Chair is Getting Too Cozy with the White House, Critics Say: “(S)eparate meetings organized around the same event have also included a smattering of government officials, including on Thursday the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Ajit Pai….

“On another level, though, Pai’s presence was unusual: As the head of an agency that’s supposed to keep its distance from the White House, Pai has shown no qualms about appearing on the same agenda with President Trump. And that is now raising questions among some about his overall independence from the Trump administration.”

Cue the uber-Left “sources” the Washington Post and all the rest of the “media” keep on speed dial:

“It is a White House function in which he should not have taken part,’ said John Simpson, an advocate at Consumer Watchdog. ‘They should be going the extra mile to be independent from the White House. It is incumbent upon the chairman and the commissioners not only to act independently, but to avoid any appearance of conflict.’”

One small narrative problem – that never happened.

‘A Complete Fabrication’: FCC Blasts The Washington Post: “Pai’s chief of staff, Matthew Berry, said in a tweet that WaPo reporter Brian Fung invented a fake meeting between President Donald Trump and Chairman Pai.

“The Washington Post suggested that Pai met with Trump on Thursday as part of a larger meeting with tech industry leaders. While Pai did attend a breakout session with tech leaders as part of a general conversation about policy, he did not meet with Trump. “He left at 9:45 a.m. for an FCC Open Meeting, according to the spokesman.

“Nathan Leamer, a policy advisor with Pai’s office, also took issue with the story.  “‘It was not based on the facts of yesterday’s events,” (said) a source close to the Chairman….”

Fung and his Post – delivering us a heaping helping of fake news.

Now, let us flashback to some actual, very-much-in-evidence collusion between an FCC Chairman and a White House. It’s early 2015. It’s President Barack Obama, his FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler – and their push for a huge new Internet regulatory power grab (known as reclassification) so as to then impose the totally awful Network Neutrality.

Well it wasn’t Wheeler’s push for reclassification – until Obama demanded it. Wheeler wan’t going to reclassify, but then….

“President Obama is urging the FCC to reclassify consumer broadband service — to open it to broader government oversight and regulation — with the goal of protecting the net neutrality principles that his administration has long supported.

“In a lengthy statement that also included a video, Obama asserted ‘there is no higher calling than protecting an open, accessible and free Internet.’ He urged the FCC to reclassify broadband service as a Title II telecommunications service….”

That just screams “independent agency,” does it not?

Chairman Wheeler – then suddenly, magically decided to reclassify the Internet. And ludicrously offered up: "No, the White House Didn’t Give Me ‘Secret Instructions’ on Net Neutrality"

No, Obama and his White House were quite open and straightforward about it. It was on WhiteHouse.gov. There was video involved. And lots and lots of news stories. Including by…the Washington Post’s Brian Fung:

Obama to the FCC: Adopt ‘The Strongest Possible Rules’ on Net Neutrality, Including Title II: “President Obama on Monday called for the government to aggressively regulate Internet service providers such as Verizon and Comcast, treating broadband like a public utility as essential as water, phone service and electricity….

“This is Obama’s most aggressive statement yet in favor of a free and open Internet and against allowing Internet service providers to charge content companies like Netflix for faster access to their customers. The president’s statement, released online Monday while he traveled to Asia, calls for the FCC to adopt the strictest rules possible for ensuring so-called net neutrality, or the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.”

Where was Fung’s nose for collusion news? Where were the frantic calls to sources for corroborating collusion quotes?

Nowhere to be found. And when Republicans pointed out the very obvious White House-FCC coordination – Fung went into full-spin defensive mode.

“House Republicans are putting the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, through the wringer this week over his agency’s recent vote to apply strong new regulations on Internet providers.”

As opposed to you and the rest of the media putting Trump and Chairman Pai “through the wringer” – over nonsense nothing. More Fung:

“The GOP’s chief criticism these days is that Wheeler and his staff improperly coordinated with the White House over how to write those regulations.”

Yes, Fung, you reported on it. There was those WhiteHouse.gov Web pages, and the video – remember? But the “wringer” Republicans had more than just that:

“GOP lawmakers…are releasing previously redacted e-mails between FCC officials and members of the White House staff, lobbyists and others.…”

All of this seems to be a whole lot more coordinate-y than a Trump White House tech event – at which Trump and Chairman Pai were never even in the same room. Fung didn’t freak out – he fell in line behind the Obama Administration spin.

TWICE. The aforementioned “FCC Chair: No, the White House Didn’t Give Me ‘Secret Instructions’ on Net Neutrality” – was also Fung. In which he “reported”:

“‘Nine times you went to the White House,’ Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said. ‘On Nov. 6, Jeff Zients comes to you. … My contention is, Jeff Zients came to you and said, “Hey, things have changed.”’”

Nine times. How very Ferris Bueller of them.

Yet nowhere in either of Fung’s two stories does he mention collusion, coordination or collaboration – unless he’s quoting Republicans making the assertion.

One Trump White House tech event – at which Trump and Pai never even share a room – and Fung is throwing around every word that starts with “C” of which he can think. And doing it un-factually – in fake news fashion.

“Not even a smidgen” of Washington Post bias, eh?

SOURCE

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Media priorities



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CA vs. Texas

CALIFORNIA: The Governor of  California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps  out, bites the Governor and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie “Bambi” and then realizes he should stop; the coyote is  only doing what is natural.

2. He calls animal control. Animal Control  captures the coyote and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases and $500  for relocating it.

3. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects  the dead dog and bills the State $200 for testing it for diseases.

4. The Governor goes to hospital and spends  $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and on getting his  bite wound bandaged.

5. The running trail gets shut down for  6 months while Fish & Game conducts a $100,000 survey to  make sure the area is free of dangerous animals.

6. The Governor spends $50,000 in state funds to  implement a “coyote awareness” program for residents of the area.

7. The State Legislature spends $2 million  to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently  eradicate the  disease throughout the world.

8. The Governor’s security agent is  fired for not stopping the attack somehow and for letting the  Governor attempt to intervene.

9. Additional cost to State of California:  $75,000 to hire and train a new security agent with additional special  training re: the nature of coyotes.

10. PETA protests the coyote’s  relocation and files suit against the State.

TEXAS: The Governor of Texas is  jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A Coyote jumps out, bites the Governor’s leather boot, and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor shoots the coyote with his State-issued  pistol and keeps jogging. The Governor has spent $0.50 on a .45 ACP  hollow point cartridge.

2. The buzzards eat the dead coyote.

And that, boys and girls, is why California is  broke………..

SOURCE (Joke)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Anger Privilege

If you want to know who has privilege in a society and who doesn't, follow the anger.

There are people in this country who can safely express their anger. And those who can't. If you're angry that Trump won, your anger is socially acceptable. If you were angry that Obama won, it wasn't.

James Hodgkinson's rage was socially acceptable. It continued to be socially acceptable until he crossed the line into murder. And he's not alone. There's Micah Xavier Johnson, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Dallas, and Gavin Long, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Baton Rouge. If you're black and angry about the police, your anger is celebrated. If you're white and angry about the Terror travel ban, the Paris Climate treaty, ObamaCare repeal or any leftist cause, you're on the side of the angry angels.

But if you're white and angry that your job is going to China or that you just missed being killed in a Muslim suicide bombing, your anger is unacceptable.

If you're an angry leftist, your party leader, Tom Perez will scream and curse into a microphone, and your aspiring presidential candidate, Kirsten Gillibrand, will curse along, to channel the anger of the base. But if you're an angry conservative, then Trump channeling your anger is "dangerous" because you aren't allowed to be angry.

Not all anger is created equal. Some anger is privileged rage.

Good anger gets you a gig as a CNN commentator. Bad anger gets you hounded out of your job. Good anger isn't described as anger at all. Instead it's linguistically whitewashed as "passionate" or "courageous". Bad anger however is "worrying" or "dangerous". Angry left-wing protesters "call out", angry right-wing protesters "threaten". Good anger is left-wing. Bad anger is right-wing.

Socially acceptable displays of anger, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter riots to the anti-Trump marches to the furious campus protests, are invariably left-wing.

Left-wing anger over the elections of Bush and Trump was sanctified. Right-wing outrage over Obama's victory was demonized. Now that left-wing anger led a Bernie Sanders volunteer to open fire at a Republican charity baseball practice outing. And the media reluctantly concedes that maybe both sides should moderate their rhetoric. Before listing examples that lean to the right like "Lock her up".

Why were chants of "Lock her up" immoderate, but not Bush era cries of "Jail to the chief"? Why were Tea Party rallies "ominous" but the latest We Hate Trump march is "courageous"? Why is killing Trump on stage the hottest thing to hit Shakespeare while a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask was hounded by everyone from the Lieutenant Governor of Missouri to the NAACP?

Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded. Left-wing anger is good because its ideological foundations are good. Right-wing anger is bad because its ideology is bad.

It's not the level of anger, its intensity or its threatening nature that makes it good or bad.

And that is why the left so easily slips into violence. All its ideological ends are good. Therefore its means, from mass starvation to gulags to riots and tyranny, must be good. If I slash your tires because of your Obama bumper sticker", I'm a monster. But if you key my car because of my Trump bumper sticker, you're fighting racism and fascism. Your tactics might be in error, but your viewpoint isn't.

There are no universal standards of behavior. Civility, like everything else, is ideologically limited.

Intersectionality frowns on expecting civil behavior from "oppressed" protesters. Asking that shrieking campus crybully not to scream threats in your face is "tone policing". An African-American millionaire's child at Yale is fighting for her "existence", unlike the Pennsylvania coal miner, the Baltimore police officer and the Christian florist whose existences really are threatened.

Tone policing is how the anger of privileged leftists is protected while the frustration of their victims is suppressed. The existence of tone policing as a specific term to protect displays of left-wing anger shows the collapse of civility into anger privilege. Civility has been replaced by a political entitlement to anger.

The left prides itself on an unearned moral superiority ("When they go low, we go high") reinforced by its own echo chamber even as it has become incapable of controlling its angry outbursts. The national tantrum after Trump's victory has all but shut down the government, turned every media outlet into a non-stop feed of conspiracy theories and set off protests that quickly escalated into street violence.

But Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of a problem with the left that existed before he was born. The left is an angry movement. It is animated by an outraged self-righteousness whose moral superiority doubles as dehumanization. And its machinery of culture glamorizes its anger. The media dresses up the seething rage so that the left never has to look at its inner Hodgkinson in the mirror.

The left is as angry as ever. Campus riots and assassinations of Republican politicians are nothing new. What is changing is that its opponents are beginning to match its anger. The left still clings to the same anger it had when it was a theoretical movement with plans, but little impact on the country. The outrage at the left is no longer ideological. There are millions of people whose health care was destroyed by ObamaCare, whose First Amendment rights were taken away, whose land was seized, whose children were turned against them and whose livelihoods were destroyed.

The angry left has gained a great deal of power. It has used that power to wreck lives. It is feverishly plotting to deprive nearly 63 million Americans of their vote by using its entrenched power in the government, the media and the non-profit sector. And it is too blinded by its own anger over the results of the election to realize the anger over its wholesale abuses of power and privileged tantrums.

But monopolies on anger only work in totalitarian states. In a free society, both sides are expected to control their anger and find terms on which to debate and settle issues. The left rejects civility and refuses to control its anger. The only settlement it will accept is absolute power. If an election doesn't go its way, it will overturn the results. If someone offends it, he must be punished. Or there will be anger.

The angry left demands that everyone recognize the absolute righteousness of its anger as the basis for its power. This anger privilege, like tone policing, is often cast in terms of oppressed groups. But its anger isn't in defiance of oppression, but in pursuit of oppression.

Anger privilege is used to silence opposition, to enforce illegal policies and to seize power. But the left's monopolies on anger are cultural, not political. The entertainment industry and the media can enforce anger privilege norms through public shaming, but their smears can't stop the consequences of the collapse of civility in public life. There are no monopolies on emotion.

When anger becomes the basis for political power, then it won't stop with Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders. That's what the left found out in the last election. Its phony pearl clutching was a reaction to the consequences of its destruction of civility. Its reaction to that show of anger by conservatives and independents was to escalate the conflict. Instead of being the opposition, the left became the "resistance". Trump was simultaneously Hitler and a traitor. Republicans were evil beasts.

James Hodgkinson absorbed all this. The left fed his anger. And eventually he snapped.

Anger has to go somewhere.

The left likes to think that its anger is good anger because it's angry over the plight of illegal aliens, Muslim terrorists, transgender bathrooms, the lack of abortion in South Carolina, the minimum wage at Taco Bell, budget cuts, tax cuts, police arrests, drone strikes and all the other ways in which reality differs from its utopia. But all that anger isn't the road to a better world, but to hate and violence.

Millions of leftists, just like Hodgkinson, are told every day that Republicans are responsible for everything wrong with their lives, the country and the planet. Despite everything they do, all the petitions they sign, the marches they attend, the donations, the angry letters, the social media rants, Republicans continue to exist and even be elected to public office. Where does that anger go?

Either we have a political system based on existing laws and norms of civility. Or we have one based on coups and populist leftist anger. And there are already a whole bunch of those south of the border.

Leftist anger is a privileged bubble of entitlement that bursts every other election. Its choice is to try to understand the rest of the country or to intimidate, censor, oppress and eventually kill them.

James Hodgkinson took the latter course. His personal leftist revolution ended, as all leftist revolutions do, in blood and violence. The left can check its anger privilege and examine its entitlement. Or his violence will be our future.    

SOURCE

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But Reality Isn't Fair

By Ben Shapiro

In 2014, I debated Seattle City Council member and avowed socialist Kshama Sawant. Sawant was one of the chief proponents of a city ordinance that would create a $15 minimum wage. Eventually, the city adopted a three-phase transition plan that would push minimum wage to $11 per hour, then $13 per hour, then $15 per hour. In our debate, I asked Sawant directly whether she would support a $1,000 minimum wage. She deflected the question, of course. She deflected the question because reality would not allow for a $1,000 minimum wage. Were the government to mandate such an idiocy, every business in the Seattle area would immediately cut back employment, and all of those seeking minimum wage jobs would end up losing their income.

As it turns out, it didn't take a $1,000 minimum wage to destroy the income for minimum wage workers. Thirteen dollars was plenty. According to a paper from The National Bureau of Economic Research, "the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees' earnings by an average of $125 per months in 2016."

All of this was foreseeable, given the fact that businesses compete with one another to lower cost and thus operate with slim profit margins. That means businesses have two choices when government forcibly raises labor costs: increase prices and thereby lower demand, or cut back on the work force. Businesses opted to do the latter in order to stay competitive.

Reality is unpleasant. Perhaps that's why so few politicians seem willing to face up to it.

On a larger scale, the bipartisan consensus in favor of regulations that force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions mirrors the minimum wage debate. It is perfectly obvious that forcing insurance companies — professional risk assessors that determine pricing based on actuarial estimates as to health — to cover those with pre-existing conditions costs them an enormous amount of money. If you are a consumer, why would you bother buying a health insurance plan while healthy, when you could wait to do so until after your costs materialize? Yet both parties would rather cater to the foolish notion that it is "unfair" for insurance companies to act as insurance companies than allow insurance companies to do what they do best: create a market to allow Americans to exercise choice.

But in economics, once one heresy has been advanced, a slew of other heresies follow. Coverage of pre-existing conditions has to be subsidized somehow. Democrats propose to mandate that people buy health insurance; this violates freedom of choice and artificially increases premiums for the healthy in order to pay for the sick. Republicans propose subsidies to encourage purchase, artificially creating demand without allowing the competition among health plans that would keep premiums down.

But everyone is surprised when such schemes fail.

They shouldn't be. Politics used to be the art of educating the public about reality and pushing for change where change is possible. Now politics is the art of convincing the public that you can make reality disappear if it votes for you. Sadly, our politicians can't make reality disappear. And every time they try to do so, reality comes rushing back with a vengeance.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Lawfare: Hindering President Trump from Investigating Obama

The defeated Democrats are colluding with the mainstream media to create an echo chamber of false accusations, fake news, and demands for groundless investigations and frivolous lawsuits to impede President Trump and sabotage his administration by preoccupying them in court. The Trump administration is under siege.

The Democratic Party is not your mother's Democratic Party. Today the party is composed of radical left-wing liberals and anarchists fully committed to destroying American democracy and replacing it with socialism. The Democrats today have no interest in making America strong and great again - they have the opposite agenda and intend to pursue Obama's goal of weakening America toward socialism in preparation for Obama's globalist ambition of one-world government.

The "resistance" movement lead by lawless Obama is designed to topple constitutionally elected President Donald Trump and create social chaos.

There are two tiers to the Democrats' attack strategy. The blatant goal of toppling President Donald Trump disguises the primary objective of preventing Trump's Department of Justice from investigating the criminal activities of the Obama administration. Investigations of Obama, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Lois Lerner, John Brennan, James Comey and the corrupt Clinton Foundation would be devastating to the Democratic Party.

America is no stranger to war - we are just not used to Americans waging war against a sitting president. It is an extremely unAmerican and treasonous strategy the Democrats have embraced. Instead of complying with the rules of law and fielding a stronger candidate for the 2020 elections they have adopted the tactics of revolution and anarchy - it is appalling. The Democratic party is fomenting anarchy and attempting to delegitimize, destabilize, and topple the government of our constitutionally elected President Donald Trump.

The current strategy of the defeated Democrats still crying and trying to destroy American democracy is lawfare. Lawfare is a form of asymmetric warfare consisting of using the legal system against an enemy. Lawfare is designed to damage or delegitimize the enemy, tying up their time or winning a public relations victory by casting the pall of criminality and suspicion over them. The theory of lawfare against President Trump is that if the President and his administration are spending their time and resources defending themselves in court he will not be able to govern effectively, keep his promises to strengthen and make America great again, or investigate the criminal activities of Obama and his gang. The Democrats hope disappointment in President Trump will reward the Democrats with a gain of enough seats in the midterm election to impeach President Trump.

Even if the Democrats are unsuccessful in their goal to reverse the balance of power in the midterm elections, their objective is to make it impossible for President Trump to govern effectively and investigate criminality in Obama's term. Lawfare is the preferred method being used by the Democrats to protect their lord and master Barack Hussein Obama - the greatest threat to American sovereignty and democracy since 1776.

First on the current list of lawfare activists is deceitful James Comey who deliberately leaked a memorandum of a conversation with President Trump saying he thought it might prompt the appointment of a special counsel to discover the truth about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Comey leaked the memo through Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman who took it to the NYT. Comey deviously made his case for a special counsel by manipulating the colluding media. Later Comey contradicted himself and exposed his actual motive saying he hoped for a special counsel to corroborate his claims that President Trump had asked for his loyalty. Comey implicated himself and revealed his deceit - he was not looking to find the truth about Russia he was looking to bring down President Trump.

Comey was disingenuously presented to the American people by the colluding mainstream media as being bipartisan. In fact, Comey was the FBI director who replaced Mueller under Obama's lawless presidency and with Lynch's Justice Department refused to prosecute criminal acts of the Obama Administration. Obama was the King of of Lawlessness in America for eight years and Comey, Clinton, Holder, Lynch, Lerner, Brennan, and Rice were his vassals. This is a short list of unprosecuted crimes that Comey ignored or supported provided by The Millennium Report:

James Comey has been the fixer for the Clinton crime family for decades beginning in the 1990's with Whitewater and most famously making the strong case for prosecuting Hillary Clinton for her illegal unsecured private basement server and then stunningly recommending against prosecution. What the public did not realize is that prosecuting Clinton could expose Comey himself which is why he is actually part of the Clinton email coverup.

Next on the lawfare list is Robert Mueller, James Comey's mentor and predecessor. Instead of investigating the blatant crimes of Obama and his administration for which there is ample evidence, Robert Mueller is now empowered as special prosecutor to investigate the imaginary crimes of President Trump with a twin purpose. Mueller will keep President Trump bogged down for two years under a false veil of suspicion until the midterm elections in service of the defeated Democrats hoping to regain seats, and more importantly Mueller's deceitful investigation will hinder any investigation into the Obama administration by President Trump's Justice Department.

It is incomprehensible why the Trump administration would ever have considered Clinton loyalist James Comey for FBI director or his equally biased mentor Robert Mueller for special prosecutor. Both are proven Obama/Clinton loyalists willing to sabotage President Trump's presidency.

Third on the lawfare list are Governors Brown, Cuomo, and Inslee. These men are not stupid - they know that what they are doing is not legal and they cannot possibly win - but they do not care. Their bluster narrative is pure political theater intended to tie Trump up in court - more lawfare. Governors do not have the Constitutional authority to make agreements with foreign countries. They cannot usurp the power of the presidency. This treasonous ploy of theirs is just another ignominious example of the Democratic Party's tactic of lawfare against President Trump.

The Climate Alliance of California, New York, Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Virginia and Rhode Island has publicly declared on the New York State government website its intention to treasonously "convene U.S. states committed to upholding the Paris Climate Agreement." Governor Jerry Brown pompously described President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accord saying, "This is an insane move by this president - deviant behavior from the highest office in the land."

Really? Insane? Deviant?

Let's talk about the meaning of insanity and deviant behavior because words matter.

Insanity is defined as unsoundness of mind or lack of the ability to understand that prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or that releases one from criminal or civil responsibility. President Donald Trump was perfectly clear when he explained in a cogent argument that the Paris Accord was extremely harmful to America. So, by definition President Trump's withdrawal from Obama's unlawful ant-American agreement was not insane.

The Governors Three by contrast all seem to have serious identity issues - they are out of touch with reality and do not seem to know who they are. They appear confused and  without the soundness of mind to correctly identify themselves as governors and not the president of the United States. Perhaps they missed or slept through the civics class that taught that governors have zero authority to enter agreements or treaties with foreign nations and, in fact, such agreements are a criminal offense in strict violation of the Logan Act. The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that details the fine and/or imprisonment of unauthorized citizens who negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States.

Deviant is defined as departing from usual or accepted standards. If anyone's behavior was deviant it was Obama's when he made the unsanctioned Paris Agreement because he failed to protect the economic interests of the United States. The agreement itself was contemptuous of Congress and the democratic process. It was an example of Obama's executive overreach and deeply divisive governance.

President Donald Trump recognized the non-binding Paris Agreement made by Obama without Congressional approval to be harmful to the United States. So, by definition President Trump's decision to withdraw from the agreement followed the accepted standard of an American president protecting America and American interests.

All three governors are public officers sworn to protect America and uphold the Constitution - by entering into agreements they are not authorized to make, particularly agreements that fail to protect American interest, they are derelict in their duties and have, like Obama, deviated from accepted norms. This left-wing liberal threesome are colluding with the international community to de-industrialize America by damaging our mining industries and redistributing our wealth to non-industrialized nations.

It appears that if anyone is insane or deviant the award goes to Democratic Governors Brown, Cuomo, and Inslee.

Perhaps California Governor Brown, New York Governor Cuomo, and Washington Governor Inslee will use an insanity defense to absolve themselves of treason charges for their U.S. Climate Alliance attempts to uphold the anti-American Paris Climate Agreement that President Donald Trump decisively rejected.

Carolyn Glick summarized the path forward for President Trump succinctly saying, "It is time for Trump to delegate the dirty work of attacking his opponents to his attorneys, advisers and supporters. He must devote his public appearances entirely to advancing his own presidential agenda. By firing Mueller, appointing a special counsel to investigate the Obama administration, removing Obama's political appointees from government and replacing them with his own hires, and concentrating on implementing his agenda, Trump will end the siege on his presidency. He will defeat the self-proclaimed "resistance" whose purpose is to defeat him politically through administrative and bureaucratic abuses."

It is also time for President Trump to renew an American tradition of speaking (not tweeting) directly to the American people in weekly televised broadcasts from the Oval Office that inform Americans about the efforts and accomplishments of his administration and their progress in making America great again. President Trump was elected by the people for the people and he must speak directly to the people because the mainstream media is colluding with the defeated Democrats to destroy him. President Trump can resist the resistance movement and expose the fabricated lawfare being waged against him by ignoring the media and speaking directly to the American public.

SOURCE

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Russia allegedly 'jealous' of Royal Navy's new £3bn aircraft carrier

The Defence Secretary has taunted the Kremlin over fears it will attempt to spy on HMS Queen Elizabeth during its sea trials, saying Russia will envy Britain’s new flagship.

Sir Michael Fallon contrasted the Royal Navy’s new 65,000-ton carrier with what he called the “dilapidated” Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which sailed through the Channel late last year.

The largest warship Britain has ever possessed later used low tide to glide under the Forth Rail Bridge shortly before midnight on Monday, before anchoring in Kirkcaldy Bay ahead of sailing into the North Sea.

Royal Navy commanders have said they expect Russian vessels and aircraft to spy on the Navy’s new aircraft carrier as it undergoes sea trials in the North Sea.

Sir Michael said: “It's really routine for the Russians to collect intelligence on our ships. We will take every precaution to make sure that they don't get too close, but I think they will be admiring her.”

He went on: “When you saw that old, dilapidated Kuznetsov sailing through the Channel, a few months ago, I think the Russians will look at this ship with a little bit of envy.”

The 55,000 ton Kutnetsov has been plagued by years of technical problems and is accompanied everywhere by a tug in case it breaks down.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Liberal advocates genocide

No mystery where the racism is to be found these days

“White supremacy” is the new liberal rage.  Like “global warming” and “”misogyny,” it exists everywhere, in all places, at all times, but only they can see it.

And now they have a plan to fight  it — by aborting all white babies.

Nicole Valentine, writing in “Medusa” magazine, claims American society is hopelessly racist, and the only way to solve it is through the wholesale elimination of “white family units.”

“America’s fascination with the white family unit has gone hand-in-hand with the historical proliferation of white supremacy,” says Valentine, who uses the term “white supremacy” an obsessive 17 times in a short article, but produces zero examples of an institutional belief in the debunked theory that one race is superior than the other.

So how do racists like Valentine plan to fight perceived racism?  With actual, blood-soaked racism.

“White women: it is time to do your part! Your white children reinforce the white supremacist society that benefits you. If you claim to be progressive, and yet willingly birth white children by your own choice, you are a hypocrite,” claims Valentine. “White women should be encouraged to abort their white children, and to use their freed-up time and resources to assist women of color who have no other choice but to raise their children.”

Apparently as confused as she is obsessive and racist, Valentine claims the very notion of abortion itself is racist.

“It is critical to understand that the appeal to abortions being ‘Constitutional’ reinforces white supremacy. There is no way around it. The Constitution was drafted and signed by white men, for white men…Constitutionality is often synonymous with ‘exclusively beneficial to the white race,'” Valentine rambles, adding “the notion of ‘choice’ in abortion is inherently white supremacist and ableist.”

Instead of suggesting that Planned Parenthood be shut down for deliberately targeting minority neighborhoods and disproportionately aborting black babies, Valentine believes the group, founded on explicit racism, is her ally.

“Women of color simply do not have the absolute choice when it comes to their bodies. It is time to stop pretending that they stand on equal footing with white women, when it has been proven that the embedded systems of white supremacy do not act impartially to all women,” claims Valentine. “Because white supremacy prevents women of color from their freedom to choose, we must level the playing field by other means.”

By “other means,” she means killing all white babies.

Let’s hope Valentine gets the counseling and racial sensitivity training she needs.

SOURCE

UPDATE:  It occurs to me that the above may be some warped Leftist's idea of satire

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More Dishonest “Poverty” Research that Doesn’t Measure Poverty

I periodically share data showing that living standards are higher in the United States than in Europe.

My goal isn’t to be jingoistic. Instead, I’m warning readers that we won’t be as prosperous if we copy out tax-and-spend friends on the other side of the Atlantic (just like I try to draw certain conclusions when showing how many low-tax jurisdictions have higher levels of economic output than the United States).

I’m sometimes asked, though, how America can be doing better than Europe when we have more poverty.

And when I ask them why they thinks that’s the case, they will point to sources such as this study from the German-based Institute of Labor Economics. Here’s some attention-grabbing data from the report.

The United States has the highest poverty rate both overall and among households with an employed person, but it stands farther away from the other countries on its in-work poverty rate than its overall poverty rate. The contrast between the US and three other English-speaking countries — Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom — is particularly striking. Compared to those three nations, the United States has an overall poverty rate only a little higher but an in-work poverty rate that is much higher.
And here’s the main chart from the study, with the United States as the bottom. It appears that there twice as much poverty in the USA as there is in a stagnant economy like France.

There even appears to be more poverty in America than there is in Spain and Italy, both of which are so economically shaky that they required bailouts during the recent fiscal/financial crisis.



Sounds horrible, right?

Yes, it does sound really bad. However, it’s total nonsense. Because what you read in the excerpt and see in the graph has nothing to do with poverty.

Instead, it’s a measure of income distribution.

And, if you read carefully, the study actually admits there’s a bait-and-switch.

The…approach to measuring poverty is a “relative” one, with the poverty line set at 60 or 50 percent of the median income.
Think about what this means. A country where everyone is impoverished will have zero or close-to-zero poverty because everyone is at the median income. But as I’ve explained before, a very wealthy society can have lots of “poverty” if some people are a lot richer than others.

And since the United States is much richer than other nations, this means an American household with $35,000 of income can be poor, even though they wouldn’t count as poor if they earned that much elsewhere.

This is like grading on a rigged curve. And if you read the fine print of the IZA study, you’ll see that the “poverty” threshold for a four-person household magically jumps by $16,260.

For a household of four (two adults, two children) the difference between the official US threshold and the 60-percent-of-median threshold amounts to more than $16,000 ($24,000 versus $40,260). This means that the size of the working poor population in America according to the official poverty measure is significantly lower than the size obtained in studies using a relative threshold.

In other words, you can calculate a much higher poverty rate if you include people who aren’t poor.

By the way, since the IZA report acknowledges this bait-and-switch approach, I guess one would have to say that the study technically is honest.

But it’s still misleading because most people aren’t going to read the fine print.  Instead, they’ll see the main chart showing higher “poverty” and assume that there is a much higher percentage of actual poor people in the United States.

Moreover, some people may understand that there’s a bait-and-switch and simply want to help fool additional people.

And I’m guessing that this is exactly what the authors and the IZA staff expected and wanted. And if that’s the case, then the study is deliberately misleading, even if not technically dishonest.

I’ll close by stating that I don’t mind if folks on the left want to argue that market-based societies are somehow unfair because some people are richer than others. And it’s also fine for them to argue that we should be willing sacrifice some of our national prosperity to achieve more after-the-fact equality of income.

But I’d like for them to be upfront about their agenda and not hide behind dodgy data manipulation.

P.S.When you do apples-to-apples comparisons of the United States with the best-performing economies of Europe, you find that the poor tend to be at the same level, but every other group is better off in America.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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The left's health-care rhetoric is unhinged

by Jeff Jacoby

The left's most popular "argument" against replacing Obamacare is the slander that Republicans want to kill people.

REMEMBER HOW liberal politicians promised to tone down the partisan rhetoric after a heavily armed Bernie Sanders fan opened fire on GOP lawmakers taking batting practice on June 14? Remember how they signed on to a "pledge of civility?" Remember how they said they would use the near-massacre as a jolt that "brings us together"?

You don't remember? Apparently they don't either. For no sooner had Senate Republicans released their proposed health-insurance bill last week than Democrats were once again dialing the hate speech up to 11.

Before Representative Steve Scalise was even out of intensive care, Democrats were back to calling his party and its legislation not just "heartless" and "evil," but downright homicidal. Sanders, in a tweet he later deleted, charged Republicans with "trying to pass a bill that could kill up to 27,000" in order to "give tax cuts to the wealthy."

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, in her usual caustic style, said the legislation amounts to "blood money" and that "people will die" if it is enacted. Hillary Clinton added to the slander: "If Republicans pass this bill, they're the death party."

So much for dialing back the unhinged rhetoric.

The toxic contempt that so many prominent voices on the left bring to the public discourse is by now wearily familiar. In 2009 Sarah Palin was disdained for claiming that Obamacare would empower "death panels." Yet liberals and Democrats in 2017 not only insist ad nauseam that Republicans want to kill people, they won't stop saying such things even after one of their own tries to perpetrate a massacre.

I've no doubt that many of those playing the death card sincerely believe that rolling back Obamacare will keep thousands of Americans from getting lifesaving medical treatment. Human beings have a great capacity for convincing themselves that their opinions and prejudices are obvious truths — particularly when they have a strong political incentive to believe it.

In my view, the keening on the left about how the GOP bills will strike people dead is sheer hysteria. For years, it has been a familiar liberal claim that if conservative policies prevail — on health care, on fossil fuels, on welfare reform, on abortion rights, on the Second Amendment, even on rent control — more people will die. The dire warnings about rewriting Obamacare are just more of the same.

Something no advocates of Obamacare saw coming: Mortality rates in the United States are up

But for the sake of argument, let's take the claim at face value. If changing Obamacare is a prescription for higher death rates, that must mean enacting Obamacare led to lower death rates.

Only — it didn't.

When Barack Obama came to office, mortality rates in the United States had been declining for decades. By the time he left the White House, deaths were on the rise. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), America's overall death rate rose by 1.2 percent in 2015 (the most recent year for which data is available). It marked the first significant increase in death rates since 1999, and it was broad-based:

"Increases occurred among white men and women as well as black men," The Wall Street Journal reported. "Death rates rose for eight of the top 10 leading causes of death," including respiratory diseases, injuries, Alzheimer's, diabetes, kidney disease, and suicide. Most ominous was the increase in deaths from heart disease, which is the nation's leading killer.

As a result of the climbing death rate, US life expectancy shrank — something that hadn't happened since the early 1990s, when AIDS and homicide were cutting down tens of thousands of lives each year.

It isn't clear why Americans are dying at higher rates. But this much is plain: In the aggregate, the Affordable Care Act hasn't kept more people alive. So lawmakers who supported the law should be accused of sending more Americans to their graves, right? Defenders of Obamacare should be smeared as "heartless" and "evil" and the "death party." Shouldn't they?

Of course they shouldn't. Obamacare is a grievously flawed government program, and its implementation has coincided with higher death rates. But it would be vile to scream "Killers!" at the Democrats who passed Obamacare. It is no less vile to scream it at the Republicans who want to repeal it.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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