The puzzle of Matt. 5:38-41

In Matthew’s report of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,’ but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.  And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.  And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”

Mainstream Christians essentially ignore this pretty clear instruction.  They go to war, they fight back, they sue etc.  It is only some of the smaller denominations who take it seriously: Traditional Quakers, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses etc.  I respected my Bible from an early age so, at around age 14, I became a pacifist in obedience to that scripture.  Not long after I became an atheist, I joined the army.

But the reason why the scripture is mostly ignored is that it runs against all nature.  No-one naturally behaves that way.  It is anti-instinctual.  But despite my defection from Christianity, I have always wondered if I was missing something in that teaching.  And I now think I was.

As any serious Bible student will tell you, context can be enormously important in studying scripture.  The "proof-text" approach to exegesis can easily get it wrong.  You have to study what went before and after a passage as well as the passage itself.

So what context do we need to understand Matthew 5:38ff?  Is it the commandment to love others as ourselves?  That would certainly fit as equally unrealistic. But "I came not to bring peace but a sword" (Matthew 10:34) would seem an outright contradiction.

I think the context we need is in fact the whole of the Gospels.  We have to look at the whole message of the Gospels.  And that message is that Jesus knew from the beginning he was a new and different teacher and that his difference would get him killed.  And he saw great meaning in his life and death.  And the time he spent teaching his disciples tells us that he did not see his death as the end of his message.  He wanted his teachings to survive and be passed on. And exactly that happened, of course.

But part of his foresight was that his disciples would be persecuted -- so it was important that he give them ways of surviving that.  He had to tell them to behave in a way that would protect them.  He had to give them what modern-day psychologists call "de-escalation techniques".  Above all else they had to avoid getting killed by hostile others.  And in Matthew 5:38ff he taught exactly how.  He taught his disciples to be unthreatening and even likable when confronted with hostility.  He was giving them lessons in survival against great threat -- things to do right from that point onwards, not rules for all times and all situations.  And when modern-day psychologists look at his rules they will see that his de-escalation techniques were pretty good. You can turn down hostility if you go about it the right way.

So Matthew 5:38ff was the practical aspect of his teachings.  What at first sight seems totally impractical was in fact superbly practical. The survival of Christianity attests to that. -- JR

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A totally unhinged health-care debate

by Jeff Jacoby

Democrats protest in front of a Harlem school last week before the expected visit of House Speaker Paul Ryan.
THE ANONYMOUS comment sections of many publications are notorious for their incivility and malignant smears. But in the debate over replacing Obamacare with a Republican alternative, the American Health Care Act, the online trolls and fever-swamp fanatics have been hard to distinguish from mainstream politicians, journalists, and commentators.

Listen to some what passes for political discourse these days.

"Donald Trump and Republicans just celebrated voting to let thousands of Americans die so that billionaires get tax breaks." Those are the words of a prominent US senator.
"They" — Republican House members who voted for the AHCA — "should be lined up and shot. That's not hyperbole; blood is on their hands." So fumes a professor at the Art Institute of Washington.

"I hope every GOPer who voted for Trumpcare sees a family member get long-term condition, lose insurance, and die. I want the GOPers who support this to feel the pain in their own families. . . . I want them to be tortured." Those sentiments are expressed via Twitter by a senior writer at Newsweek.
"The GOP Plan For Obamacare Could Kill More People Each Year Than Gun Homicides." That's the headline in Vox, a popular news and opinion website.

There is no shortage of additional examples, just as enraged or hysterical.

So much fury over dead Americans! So much loathing for ghouls who murdered them! A neophyte in the public square, encountering all this shrieking about blood and killing, might imagine that the nation was erupting over a military operation gone wrong, or a plot to release terrorists from supermax prisons.

But this is what discussions of public policy sound like now — even when the issues in contention are about insurance subsidies and Medicaid waivers, not war and peace. The most deranged charges are casually lobbed at political opponents, with little regard for truth. Political debate in America has grown so poisonous that it no longer comes as a shock to hear Democrats accuse Republicans of favoring changes in Obamacare because they want people to die. It isn't only nameless crazies in some unpaved alley of the internet who verbalize a desire to see conservatives "lined up and shot." Now writers for well-known newsmagazines tweet such vitriol too.

Some progressives justify the shredding of civil discourse; with Trump in the White House, they say, courtesy is a luxury the nation can't afford. "America, don't be polite in the face of demagoguery," exhorts Jessica Valenti in the Guardian. Representative Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, is likewise unapologetic about resorting to rhetorical brutality. "This is a new time in politics where people are just blatantly lying and essentially producing policies that are going to kill people," Gallego tells CNN. "I think the old time of civility needs to go until we actually go back to the rules."

Trump's crude insults and noisome vulgarity are foul indeed. But the "old time of civility" was crumbling long before Trump entered national politics. An endless array of revolting political slanders was hurled against George W. Bush, for example — that he was a Nazi, that he ought to be assassinated, that he had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Those attacks came not just from moonbats on the far-left fringe, but from respectable, mainstream pundits and politicians.

The collapse of respectful discourse in public life began decades ago. And if for many years it was a more common phenomenon on the left, too many on the right have learned to traffic in wild accusations and hateful talking points as well.

It was a Republican, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who told senior citizens back in 2009 that if the Affordable Care Act passed, "you're going to die soon." It was Representative Michele Bachmann, another Republican, who railed on the House floor that Obamacare "literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens." It was Sarah Palin, a GOP governor and vice-presidential nominee, who warned that under the ACA, the sick and the elderly would "have to stand in front of Obama's 'Death Panel'" and have bureaucrats decide if they live or die.

If, as a liberal, you were disgusted when Republicans resorted to such toxic arguments then, you should be horrified to hear your fellow liberals resort to them now. Conversely, if you're a mainstream conservative sickened at the way Democrats now play the "death" card, did you have the same objection when the GOP was doing so during the Obama years?

There were legitimate arguments to be made for and against enacting Obamacare; there are legitimate arguments to be made for and against replacing it. There are decent ways to argue that a given bill may have grave unintended consequences.

But it is wholly illegitimate and indecent to portray those who disagree with your view as eager champions of death and suffering. It is vile beyond words to avidly wish for them to be "lined up and shot" or to "be tortured" by the death of loved ones. Such fury should be deployed against the real monsters who threaten us — not against fellow Americans guilty of only a different political outlook. If we have forgotten how to tell the difference, we are in bigger trouble than we know.

SOURCE

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Blonde in the Belly of the Beast

I like political arguments to be in writing so I rarely put up political videos.  But the young woman below is a "must" of an exception.  Just a sampling of her videos below.  Immediately below, she sees two of the layers of Leftism. I divide her group A into the purely emotional/feel good ones, and the image/status focused ones.



But she is a bit brutal. Considering what she suggests as a solution I am surprised this video of hers below has been allowed to remain on youtube.



She makes a point below that few will make. Many people side with  those who will do them most harm. Most lefties are basically cowards who lack individual initiative and principles. Therefore they will side with those who will ultimately do them most harm, not with those who are right, or who are good, or by those who would protect them and are their friends.



She has a website here with much more.  Incidentally, the "Belly of the Beast" appears to be Seattle.

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ABC Cancels hate-filled ‘Real O’Neals’

The show was bigoted, vile and unfunny. The characters were one-dimensional, the gags were as obvious as they were offensive, and the entire thing never rose above predictable anti-Catholic, pro-gay agitprop. The ratings were bad and even the critics didn’t care for it. So of course ABC went ahead with development and then gave The Real O’Neals a second season.

But there won’t be a third. According to Deadline Hollywood, “ABC has canceled sophomore [sophomoric is more like it] comedy The Real O’Neals. The family comedy showed enough promise in its midseason launch last spring to get a second season but has delivered disappointing ratings in its second year.”

Supposedly based loosely on the youth of noted anti-bullying bully, militant gay activist, bigot and sex columnist Dan Savage, The Real O’Neals centered on an Irish Catholic family and their gay teenage son. Far from being a gentle send-up, the sitcom was as nasty and contemptuous of traditional family life and religion as Savage is himself. In the first episode MRC counted 93 separate visual or verbal reminders that the show targeted Catholics, including a statue of the Blessed Virgin on the toilet back to remind the O’Neal boys to “put the seat down.”

The characters were mired in hypocrisy and thoughtless, superstitious piety. The parents were splitting up, the young teen daughter stole from the poor box and the parish priest cried poverty but drove a Lexus. Episodes discussed gay porn, chronic masturbation, underage boys using gay dating apps to pick up older men, a wedding-like divorce ceremony, God being a woman and endless derision for the Church, it’s teachings and its people.

After ABC ordered the pilot for The Real O’Neals in 2015, MRC organized a protest, along with other conservative and religious organizations. The show lost at least one sponsor during its brief run thanks to the efforts of The Catholic League. But the show collapsed under the weight of its own hatred.

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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Has Judas been misunderstood?

Apologies if that heading seems flippant but it does ask a serious question. It asks a question that just about no-one normally asks:  What was Judas's motivation?  It is normally assumed that it was greed for the famous 30 pieces of silver.  But if Judas was as callous as that, why did he commit suicide when he saw Jesus executed?  And what are we to make of it that Jesus predicted to him what he would do?

No-one at this distance can get into his mind but there is one explanation for his behaviour that does make considerable sense.  Could it be that he was overawed by the miraculous powers Jesus had displayed and wanted Jesus to use those powers on a large scale -- perhaps even to drive the Romans out?  Did he think Jesus only needed a small push to get him to do that?

And when Jesus predicted to him what he would do, did he take that as a sign that Jesus actually WANTED him to do that? And was he heartbroken at the actual outcome of his actions?  Was his suicide born out of a realization that he had got it tragically wrong?

Broadly, that explanation seems to explain what actually happened. It fits better than actions motivated by mere greed.

A Christian correspondent of mine has attempted to go even deeper into the matter, however, so I reproduce below his thoughts as well:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I don’t think Jesus so much prophesied that Judas would betray him as told Judas to betray him.

I think Judas was spiritually immature, a material man, a little too hooked on the material and emotional pleasures of life. He didn’t understand Jesus’s teachings in a spiritual/heart/soul sense.

He believed Jesus should be some sort of worldly king or leader.  Judas had seen or heard of Jesus perform many miracles, healing people, walking on water, disappearing from the midst of a crowd trying to kill him, killing the fig tree by pointing at it.

Judas was enraptured by Jesus’s power and presence. He thought something like, “Just let them try to take my master, and see what happens. My master will cast them aside and destroy them like he did the fig tree.”

Jesus knew that Judas would betray him, but not betray him out of spite, but out of immature love, like the childish love a little boy has for his father, thinking his father is the strongest man in the world and can beat up any other man.

Judas not only thought that Jesus would defeat any attempt to capture him, but he also thought that an attempt to capture him would force Jesus to demonstrate his powers upon the authorities, and thus give Jesus the recognition Judas believed he deserved. Then Jesus would be elevated to some sort of leader, as Judas believed he should be.

Jesus knew that Judas thought like that.

And he let Judas go and betray him, even told him when to go.
Not that Jesus encouraged him, but knew that he could not be stopped from doing it because of his immature love for Jesus.

And Jesus knew betrayal would serve his cause, and he also knew the awful suffering that would come back upon poor Judas afterwards when we would realise what he had done.

And that came true. When Judas saw Jesus powerless and being tortured to death, Judas could not bear it, he realised his awful error and went and hanged himself.

He was not a betrayer so much as an immature man with a childlike love.

The lesson is that betrayal need not be consciously treacherous, it can be merely immature.

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While the Left Ignores Voter Fraud, More Evidence Mounts to Prove Them Wrong

The 2016 elections have passed, but courts still have plenty of work to do sorting out cases of voter fraud throughout the country.

Convictions have continued to roll in this spring, and The Heritage Foundation’s voter fraud database is growing longer by the day.

This week, we are adding 19 convictions, including cases from Texas, Colorado, and Illinois. These are just the latest convictions. Yet despite the overwhelming evidence, the left prefers to bury its head in the sand and refuses to acknowledge the reality of Voter fraud.

Take one example from Kansas. When Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach claimed his first conviction in a voter fraud case against a non-U.S. citizen, opponents of the conviction had no interest in dealing with the facts.

Instead, some groups on the left—like the liberal news site Think Progress—accused Kobach of “voter suppression.” Another Salon article completely dismissed Kobach without addressing the evidence he found, saying, “Someday he’ll have evidence of a problem that doesn’t exist.”

In many states, voter registration requires proof of citizenship. The left calls such policies anti-American. But is that really such a radical idea, that voters in a U.S. election would have to be U.S. citizens?

If liberals want evidence, then Heritage has it. To date, we have documented 773 confirmed criminal convictions in 492 voter fraud cases spanning 44 states.

Here are a few of the newest entries to the database:

Toni Lee Newbill, of Colorado, pleaded guilty to voting twice for her deceased father, once in the 2013 general election and again in the Republican Primary of 2016. Newbill was sentenced to 18 months of unsupervised probation, 30 hours of community service, and was ordered to pay a $500 fine and additional court fees.

Noe Olvera, of Texas, pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge. Olvera, a postman, admitted to taking a $1,000 bribe from a paid campaign worker in exchange for a list of the names and addresses of mail-in ballot recipients on his postal route.

After a two-year investigation into local voting fraud, hidden camera footage surfaced revealing a uniformed and on-the-job Olvera “negotiating an exchange of money for mail-in voter lists.” Olvera is scheduled to be sentenced on May 25.

Steveland Kidd, of Illinois, pleaded guilty to two counts of absentee ballot abuse during a municipal election in April 2013. Kidd took possession of, and delivered, an absentee ballot to election authorities despite being legally barred from doing so.
The crime is a Class 3 felony. Kidd was sentenced to 12 days in the St. Clair County Jail and is now barred from engaging in campaign-related activities or electioneering.

Brian McDouglar, a resident of Cahokia, Illinois, was sentenced to two years in prison on charges of falsifying or tampering with an absentee ballot—a class 3 felony. McDouglar illegally took an absentee ballot from a voter he was not related to, and then placed it in the mail.

Clearly, absentee voting remains particularly vulnerable to fraud.

Simply put, in most states there are few measures in place to sufficiently verify the identity of those casting absentee ballots. Signatures can be forged—a problem that can be addressed by requiring the voter to include a photocopied valid ID along with the absentee ballot.

But more robust identification requirements would only solve part of the problem. They cannot defend against the pernicious targeting of absentee voters by pressuring, coercing, or “assisting” them in filling out their ballots in order to assure that particular candidates or causes prevail.

So long as states continue to allow the names of deceased voters and residents who have moved away to remain on their voter rolls, they are leaving the door wide open to fraudsters who are willing to take advantage of the system by voting in their names.

The Heritage Foundation published “Does Your Vote Count?,” a guide to help voters and policymakers understand the issue of election fraud. That report provides policy recommendations that states should adopt to help thwart illegal activity and ensure that the election process remains free and fair for all.

Procedures that can be implemented include requiring a photographic, government-issued ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote. In addition, participating in an interstate voter registration crosscheck program will help guarantee that people are not voting twice.

Secretaries of state should verify voter registration data with other state and federal agencies, such as the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the Social Security Administration. Such measures will offer a barrier of protection not only to eligible voters, but also to the electoral process in general.

A single fraudulent vote does more than just cancel out the vote of another American. It puts a stain on the results of the entire election.

If voters are discouraged to participate in what they perceive as a tainted process, it only empowers those who would seek to steal elections.

Instead of vilifying those who fulfill their duties to protect the electoral process, the left should embrace the facts. Voter fraud is real, and we must take seriously the task of securing the integrity of our elections.

SOURCE

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David Horowitz: 'Democrats Are Blinded By Their Hate'

Author, historian, and activist David Horowiz, a red diaper baby who turned right in the late 1970s, criticized the Democratic Party for practicing "identity politics," which he said is "racist and anti-American" and fueld by hatred.

Identity politics focuses on groups instead of individuals and principles. For instance, assuming that all women support abortion and catering to that view, or assuming that all gays back transgender bathrooms and catering to that notion is a form of identity politics -- lumping people into groups by race, gender, ethnicity, economic status, etc., and then crafting public policies that appeal to these groups.

During a May 5 interview on the Sam Malone Show, AM 1070 in Houston, Texas, Horowitz, who runs the David Horowitz Freedom Center, said, “The Democrats are blinded by their hate. It’s a party of hate. That’s all it runs on – hate and character assassination. And they lie about everything.”

Host Sam Malone then commented, “I remember when Trump was appointing people to the cabinet. Everyone was a racist, everyone was an anti-Semite, everyone was a homophobe, everyone was horrible. They had not one nice thing to say about one appointee.”

Horowitz replied, “That’s because the Democratic Party is driven by identity politics, which is racist and anti-American. They use this phrase ‘people of color.’ It’s not even English. We don’t say [garbled] of color, do we?"

"It’s an ideological term to demonize white people," said Horowitz, author of Progressive Racism.  The whole world is people of color: Maharajas in India, Islamic beheaders in Syria and Iraq. They’re all people of color."

"The only people who are not people of color, the oppressors, are white people," said Horowitz.  "It is a racist party, the Democratic Party, and America has finally gotten fed up with 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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President two scoops

I have been having a great old chuckle about Mr Trump's latest appearance in the news. He put on a dinner for some "Time" magazine journalists but gave them lesser dinners than his own.  He had two scoops of ice-cream and a diet Coke whereas the journalists got only one scoop of ice-cream and only water to drink.

This utter triviality has attracted great attention, being reported even in Australian newspapers.  And what it says about Mr Trump has also generated a lot of opinion, with the most frequent opinion being that it shows Mr Trump as childish.  But that overlooks the obvious.

Leftists rarely listen to conservatives so tend to have strange and derogatory ideas about what makes conservatives tick. And on this occasion they have revealed that they don't even know the basics:  Conservatives DON'T believe in equality.  They think there never has been any equality and never will be and that seeking it is striving after wind.  So Mr Trump saw no problem in giving unequal serves of food and drink. It's as simple as that.

Because of the torrents of abuse that Leftists hurl at anyone they disagree with, it has become normal for conservatives to give lip service to Leftist beliefs.  It has become good manners not to emphasize inequality.  So any other President would have given equal serves of food and drink to both himself and his guests -- purely as a courtesy.  But Mr Trump is not any other President.  He is his own man and rewrites the rules all the time -- to the rage of Leftist journalists.  We have been living in a Leftist-dominated consensus about many things and Mr Trump has shone a light on that by violating the consensus almost daily. He has done a great service to us all by that -- JR

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Trump Defiles the Sanctity of Government, and It Drives the Center-Left Mad

Libertarian Jeffrey A. Tucker is pretty right in the excerpt below but he traces the idea of the State as a be-all and end-all only as far back as Von Mises. In truth it goes all the way back to G.W.F. Hegel, the founding philosopher of Leftism. Hegel mocked individual liberty as mere "caprice". The same concept of the state had a notable exponent in Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, famous for preaching: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" (Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State)

This frenzy even has a name: Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Has the center-left ever been more apoplectic about a presidency? It can’t have been this nuts even during the Nixon presidency. Every day, their publications fill up with articles that are breathless to the point of hysteria about the disgrace that the Trump administration is bringing to the affairs of government. His incessant tweeting, his violations of protocol, his attacks on the press, and even the very existence of this administration has them in permanent meltdown.

Their complaints are contradictory. He is terrible because he is doing terrible things! He is terrible because he is not really doing anything! This presidency is destroying the world! This presidency is all sound and fury and nothing else!

The Why

It finally struck me why. For this crowd, all their hopes and dreams are bound up with particular political processes, outcomes, and institutions. The state is their favorite tool for all the good they aspire to do in this world. It must be protected, guarded, defended, celebrated. The illusion that the government is not a taker but a giver and the source of all good things must be maintained. The gloss of the democratic process must be constantly refurbished so that the essential sanctity of the public sector can be constantly cited as the highest calling.

The center-left has at least one hundred years of work and resources invested in the state’s health, well being, reputation, and exalted moral status. Nothing must be allowed to threaten it or take it down a peg or two. Any failures must be deemed as temporary setbacks. The slightest sign of some success must be trumpeted constantly. The population must be subjected to unrelenting homilies on the essential holiness of the public sector.

Their education told them this. Their degrees and ruling-class pedigree were hard earned. This is what has inspired them. They believe so strongly that they can make the world a better place through the managerial state that it has become their religion. It’s their very core!

Above all else, the president is supposed to represent. His duty is to reflect and broadcast this sensibility.

This View Has a Name

Writing in 1944, Ludwig von Mises wrote that the debate over the future of freedom is not only about beating back socialism, communism, fascism, interventionism, and so on. There is broader discussion to be had. The core problem is the ideology of statism, a word he took from the French term etatism. It identified a view that the state should always and in everything be the central power, organizing principle, and spiritual core of any society. It must be the final judge, the final arbiter, the center of our loyalties, the one indispensable institution because it alone is deserving of our highest devotion and ideal. It must be forever built, larger and larger, taking on ever more responsibility and taking ever more money and power from the rest of us.

The president is supposed to at least pretend to be the high priest of the statist religion. That's his job, according to this outlook.

Everything seemed to being going so well under the Obama administration, which was so earnest, so decorous, so civil. He was funny, smart, respectful of process, and sincere in his pronouncements. He ran on hope and change but governed as the person who kept hope for a new freedom and any radical change at bay.

Change in the Matrix

Trump has profoundly disturbed the balance. He overthrew the respective establishments of two parties, tore right into the legitimacy of the national press, humiliated every expert who predicted his demise, and is now stumbling around Washington like a bum in a jewelry store. He is not actually cutting back on the size of the state; he is doing something even more terrifying from the center-left point of view: he is ruining the mystery of the state, and thereby discrediting their holy institutions.

After the election, I wrote that this might be our 1989 [When the Soviets imploded]. What I meant is that major aspects of what we always thought would be true were suddenly not true any more. New possibilities have opened up. An older establishment has been discredited if not overthrown. What comes next is another matter.

Trump is not a liberator in any sense. His temperament suggests the opposite. It was he who famously said in the campaign: “The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.” Moreover, and in many ways, the deep state has regrouped and bitten back to avoid losing power and influence in Washington.

Even so, he is everything that the center-left fears most, a person who works, despite himself, to discredit the thing they love the most. He has demoralized them beyond consoling. Now we are seeing talk of impeachment. This seems to be some people’s last hope for saving the old faith.

Unsustainable

But the truth is that, with or without Trump’s reign of chaos, the 20th-century project of enlightened and comprehensive statism is not sustainable for the long run. The welfare programs are drying up and their plans have constantly proven unviable and unworkable. We live in a world in which the miracles of the private commercial sector are all around us, while the failures of statism are everywhere present as well.

The old world of command and control just can’t last, not for the long run. Perhaps this is the role that Trump is inadvertently playing in this great drama of history. And this is precisely why his existence is driving the partisans of old-fashioned government planning to psychotropic drugs to control their anger and panic.

If you doubt it, I invite you to read the opinion columns of the mainstream press, tomorrow, the next day, the next day, the next day….

SOURCE

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What Do Leftists Celebrate?

By Walter E. Williams

May Day celebrations were held all across the fruited plain, with leftist radicals and unionists worshipping the ideals of communism. Communism is an ideology calling for government control over our lives. It was created by Karl Marx, who — along with his collaborator, Friedrich Engels — wrote a pamphlet called "Manifesto of the Communist Party." In 1867, Marx wrote the first volume of "Das Kapital." The second and third volumes were published posthumously, edited by Engels. Few people who call themselves Marxists have ever even bothered to read "Das Kapital." If one did read it, he would see that people who call themselves Marxists have little in common with Marx.

For those who see Marx as their hero, there are a few historical tidbits they might find interesting. Nathaniel Weyl, himself a former communist, dug them up for his 1979 book, "Karl Marx: Racist." For example, Marx didn't think much of Mexicans. When the United States annexed California after the Mexican War, Marx sarcastically asked, "Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it?" Engels shared Marx's contempt for Mexicans, explaining: "In America we have witnessed the conquest of Mexico and have rejoiced at it. It is to the interest of its own development that Mexico will be placed under the tutelage of the United States."

Marx had a racial vision that might be interesting to his modern-day black supporters. In a letter to Engels, in reference to his socialist political competitor Ferdinand Lassalle, Marx wrote: "It is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes who had joined Moses' exodus from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother on the paternal side had not interbred with a nigger. Now this union of Judaism and Germanism with a basic Negro substance must produce a peculiar product. The obtrusiveness of the fellow is also nigger-like." Engels shared Marx's racial philosophy. In 1887, Paul Lafargue, who was Marx's son-in-law, was a candidate for a council seat in a Paris district that contained a zoo. Engels claimed that Lafargue had "one-eighth or one-twelfth nigger blood." In a letter to Lafargue's wife, Engels wrote, "Being in his quality as a nigger, a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district."

Marx was also an anti-Semite, as seen in his essay titled "On the Jewish Question," which was published in 1844. Marx asked: "What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. ... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man — and turns them into commodities. ... The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. ... The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general."

Despite the fact that in the 20th century alone communism was responsible for more than 100 million murders, much of the support for communism and socialism is among intellectuals. The reason they do not condemn the barbarism of communism is understandable. Dr. Richard Pipes explains: "Intellectuals, by the very nature of their professions, grant enormous attention to words and ideas. And they are attracted by socialist ideas. They find that the ideas of communism are praiseworthy and attractive; that, to them, is more important than the practice of communism. Now, Nazi ideals, on the other hand, were pure barbarism; nothing could be said in favor of them." That means leftists around the world will continue to celebrate the ideas of communism.

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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America's shadow bureaucracy

Daniel J. Mitchell

As Ronald Reagan pointed out many years ago, Washington is a company town. But rather than being home to a firm or industry that earns money by providing value to willing consumers, the “company” is a federal government that uses a coercive tax system to provide unearned wealth to various interest groups.

And the beneficiaries of that redistribution zealously guard their privileges and pay very close attention to any developments that might threaten their access to the public trough.

Government Looking out for Itself

Federal bureaucrats are particularly concerned whenever there is talk about spending restraint.

They get lavishly compensated compared to folks in the private sector, so they definitely fret whenever something might happen to derail their gravy train.

A recent segment on a local station in Washington, DC, focused on their angst, and I provided a contrary point of view.

The Bureaucracy Keeps Growing

Needless to say, my friends who work for the federal government generally don’t agree with my assessment. Some of them even sent me an article from the Washington Post that claims the number of bureaucrats hasn’t changed since the late 1960s.

They claim this is evidence that the bureaucracy has become more efficient.

But they’re wrong. The official federal workforce may not have changed, but research from the Brooking Institution reveals that this statistic is illusory because of a giant shadow bureaucracy.

George Will’s latest column is about this metastasizing hidden bureaucracy, referencing author John J. DiIulio Jr. and his study on government growth:

…government has prudently become stealthy about how it becomes ever bigger. In a new Brookings paper …government expands by indirection, using three kinds of “administrative proxies” — state and local government, for-profit businesses, and nonprofit organizations. Since 1960, the number of state and local government employees has tripled to more than 18 million, a growth driven by federal money: Between the early 1960s and early 2010s, the inflation-adjusted value of federal grants for the states increased more than tenfold …“By conservative estimates,” DiIulio writes, “there are about 3 million state and local government workers” — about 50 percent more than the number of federal workers — “funded via federal grants and contracts.” Then there are for-profit contractors, used, DiIulio says, “by every federal department, bureau and agency.” For almost a decade, the Defense Department’s full-time equivalent of 700,000 to 800,000 civilian workers have been supplemented by the full-time equivalent of 620,000 to 770,000 for-profit contract employees …the government spends more (about $350 billion) on defense contractors than on all official federal bureaucrats ($250 billion). Finally, “employment in the tax-exempt or independent sector more than doubled between 1977 and 2012 to more than 11 million.” Approximately a third of the revenues to nonprofits (e.g., Planned Parenthood) flow in one way or another from government. When you add it all together, the numbers are shocking.

“If,” DiIulio calculates, “only one-fifth of the 11 million nonprofit sector employees owe their jobs to federal or intergovernmental grant, contract or fee funding, that’s 2.2 million workers” — slightly more than the official federal workforce. To which add the estimated 7.5 million for-profit contractors. Plus the conservative estimate of 3 million federally funded employees of state and local governments. To this total of more than 12 million add the approximately 2 million federal employees. This 14 million is about 10 million more than the estimated 4 million federal employees and contractors during the Eisenhower administration.
Eliminate the Waste

In other words, the federal budget has expanded and so have the number of people with taxpayer-financed jobs.

By the way, there’s nothing theoretically wrong with a government bureaucracy using non-profits or contractors. And that was the point I tried to make in the interview.

I don’t care whether the Department of Agriculture or Department of Education is filled with official bureaucrats or shadow bureaucrats. What I do care about, however, is that they are part of an agency that should not exist.

And the same is true for the Department of Energy, Department of Labor, Department of Transportation, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Department of Housing and Urban Development.

SOURCE

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At long last, Hillary Clinton got what she wanted — FBI Director James Comey, fired!

Another proof that Leftists have no principles or even any  consistency

At long last, Hillary Clinton and her Democrat legions got what they pleaded for last year — FBI Director James Comey, fired!

Remember when they wanted Comey out — before they didn't...

Just prior to the 2016 election, Senate Minority Leader-in-waiting Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared, "I do not have confidence in him any longer," and he labeled Comey's letter about Hillary Clinton to Congress "appalling." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declared, "Maybe he's not in the right job."

Recall after Clinton lost, then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) protested, "This is not fake news. Intelligence officials are hiding connections to the Russian government. There is no question. Comey knew and deliberately kept this info a secret."

Most of the Demo rank-and-file followed in lock step. "The FBI director has no credibility," insisted Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) lamented, "My confidence in the FBI director's ability to lead this agency has been shaken."

Fact is, it was Clinton who, by proxy, finally fired Comey. Here's how:

Firing Comey has certainly been in the works since Donald Trump was elected. However, once the Democrats launched their post-election tin-hat diversionary assertions that Trump and Vladimir Putin conspired to steal the election from Clinton, and their mainstream media public relations outlets propagated that mind-numbing nonsense, if Trump had asked for Comey's resignation in January, that would have affirmed the Trump-Putin connection in the small Demo-constituency minds.

Of course, there is not even a puff of smoke regarding the "Trump-Putin connection" in the alleged Russian interference with the 2016 election — unless by "interference" they mean that Russian operatives may have hacked Clinton's illegal and insecure email server, where she was unlawfully maintaining official and classified communications to hide them from the public record — and they made some of those emails part of the public record...

For the record, if the Russians hacked Clinton's insecure communications, and those of the Democrat National Committee, it would have been with the objective of giving a hand up to her Socialist opponent Bernie Sanders, their preferred candidate. The fact that those communications were exposed would be retribution for the Clinton and DNC hacking and bushwacking of Sander's campaign.

But two things happened last week that opened Comey's exit door.

First would be Hillary Clinton's very public remarks, once again blaming Comey for her election loss: "If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president. It wasn't a perfect campaign, but I was on the way to winning until a combination of Comey's letter and Russian WikiLeaks. The reason why I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days."

Second would be that Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, to whom Comey directly reported, was just installed at the Department of Justice.

Tuesday, bolstered by Clinton's blame game, Attorney General Jeff Sessions endorsed a memorandum from Rosenstein that Comey should be fired based on his handling of the Clinton investigation last July and then again just before the election.

According to Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and longtime friend of Jim Comey, "The memorandum issued by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to explain Comey's dismissal Tuesday is well crafted and will make it very difficult for Democrats to attack President Trump's decision. Rosenstein bases the decision not merely on Comey's much discussed missteps in the Clinton e-mails investigation — viz., usurping the authority of the attorney general to close the case without prosecution; failing to avail himself of the normal procedures for raising concerns about Attorney General Lynch's conflict of interest. He goes on specifically to rebuke Comey's 'gratuitous' release of 'derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal prosecution.' That 'subject,' of course, would be Mrs. Clinton."

McCarthy notes, "This is exactly the line of attack Democrats have adopted since Clinton lost the election: Conveniently forget how ecstatic they were over Comey's confident public assessment that the case was not worth charging, and remember only his scathing public description of the evidence — even though both were improper. Significantly, Rosenstein avoids any suggestion that Comey was wrong in concluding Clinton should not be indicted; nor does he in any way imply that Comey's errors made it impossible to bring a wrongdoer to justice. ... Instead, Clinton is portrayed as a victim. This will appeal to Democrats — especially since it will keep alive the fiction that Comey, rather than Clinton herself, is responsible for the Democrats' stunning electoral defeat."

McCarthy is correct in his assessment of why Comey should have been fired — and indeed, by his then-boss Barack Obama, though that would have appeared like Obama was covering for Clinton (not that the mainstream media would have noticed). But the Demo/MSM alliance will have a field day insisting the firing was to subvert investigations into the alleged Trump-Putin connection.

Notably, in Trump's letter of dismissal to Comey, he wrote: "While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau. It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission."

Despite tying Comey's dismissal to Clinton's claims, the DemoDrama "Nixonian memo" protests were instant.

"This is Nixonian!” protested Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA).

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) declared that Trump fired Comey "in the midst of one of the most critical national security investigations in the history of our country — one that implicates senior officials in the Trump campaign and administration. This is nothing less than Nixonian."

Oh the horrors!

Thus begins a massive spin cycle to try and keep the Russian narrative alive.

But any Democrat or MSM talkinghead who mentions Trump and Russia in the same sentence is nothing more than a pandering dezinformatsiya propagandist. Clearly and demonstrably, while their socialist icon Barack Obama had a long history of ties to radical communist mentors and Marxist benefactors, Trump does not.

And a final note: There have been 11 FBI directors in its history. Only one other was fired — its fourth director, former federal judge William Sessions. He was fired by Bill Clinton in 1993, and it is no small irony that Comey's firing now is in part directly related to Bill Clinton's nefarious meeting with Obama's former AG, Loretta Lynch at the height of the Department of Justice investigation into Hillary Clinton.

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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Federal Judge Declares Constitution Void, Threatens Civil Defendant With Death

Most Americans believe that we have a reasonably fair justice system with scholarly judges at the helm. Well, how about a federal judge who suspends the Constitution, confiscates all of a litigant’s assets, orders him not to hire defense counsel, and pronounces his orders enforceable by death?

That’s exactly what federal Judge Royal Furgeson did to Internet pioneer Jeff Baron, in a case that, New York lawyer David Relkin says is “the most outrageous denial of a person’s basic constitutional and human rights in this Country since the abolition of slavery.”

In the Texas case, Judge Furgeson “sentenced” Baron to an unprecedented “human receivership” to enable the judge’s lawyers to loot Baron’s Juvenile Diabetes Research Trust.

His offense? Baron was accused of not paying his lawyers enough money — “charges” that were later proven to be completely fabricated.

The decision is historic: a human being has not been placed in a receivership since slavery ended in 1865. During one of the hearings, and prior to an appellate court ruling that Judge Furgeson “abused his discretion,” Furgeson reminded Baron of his power:

“I have the full force of the Navy, Army [and] Marines behind me.”. . . You are a fool, a fool, a fool to screw with a federal judge, and if you don’t understand that, I can make you understand it.”

Background:

Baron is an Internet pioneer who, on a shoestring budget invented technology competitive with Google during the early days of the Internet, according to The Daily Caller. He became incredibly successful and had web sites with over 1 million visitors per day and monthly traffic of 50 million. Baron earmarked nearly all of his earned wealth to finding a cure for juvenile (type 1) diabetes —  a disease afflicting Baron since early childhood.

His success attracted attention, and he was soon enticed by another investor who promised to develop a search engine that would eclipse Google if Baron would partner with him.

That relationship soured fast when the investor embezzled $8 million, prompting Baron to sue for recovery. After this, the partner employed an army of lawyers with Baron’s stolen wealth and sued Baron six times, attempting to take the rest of the company’s assets. The partner lost all six times, according to World Net Daily.

When the partner sued a seventh time, Furgeson became the judge in charge. Furgeson forced Baron to settle the case on unfavorable terms. After the settlement was completed, Furgeson held a private, off-record meeting with Baron’s adversaries where the judge inexplicably put Baron into a human receivership, seizing everything Baron owned — from his home to his cell phone. Furgeson also indefinitely suspended most of Baron’s civil liberties.

“Apparently, there is a lot of money to be had here,” Furgeson said.  “Whether it's a receiver, judgment or whatever, he's going to be accountable unless he wants to live on a desert island somewhere and escape the clutches of the U.S. Army and the Navy and the Marines and the Air Force and the U.S. Marshals.”

At another hearing where Furgeson thought that Baron might appeal his rulings, he responded with a tirade:

“You want to challenge the court order, I have the marshals behind me. I can come to your house, pick you up, put you in jail. I can seize your property, do anything I need to do to enforce my orders . . .  So any failure to comply with that order is contempt, punishable with lots of dollars, punishable by possible jail, death.”

Relkin, an accomplished New York federal attorney says, “The only accurate analogy to Baron’s situation while under the Receiver’s control is that he became an inmate at Guantanamo Bay.”

According to the appellate court, the judge’s orders were so draconian that all of Baron’s property was seized and his personal mail was diverted. Baron, a type 1 diabetic, had to obtain approval from the court before seeking medical treatment.

The result was that Furgeson illegally forced Baron to unpaid labor for years, under the cloak of absolute immunity which all federal judges enjoy.  Furgeson thundered:

“This [proceeding] is going on and on and on until Mr. Baron has nothing. I mean actually everything is depleted. I gather that Mr. Baron is worth a lot of money.  But it may be that we sell all the domain names. We may sell all of his stock. We may cash in all of his CDs, and we may seize all of his bank accounts,”
Professor Ben Stein recently commented to Fox News that Americans are becoming powerless against abuse of power by Stalinist, liberal judges who are “dictators in black robes.”

"The judiciary is out of control, not bound by anything except themselves.” said Stein. “Judges don’t have to be bound by the Constitution or the law.”

While sounding fantastic and-far fetched, Baron’s situation is becoming more commonplace, as California lawyer Conrad Herring explains: “What happened to Baron, can happen to anyone. The system is obviously broken.”

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, an authority on judicial corruption himself, called for Judge Furgeson’s impeachment, explaining:

“I’ve found case after case after case where our judiciary is being used and misused, whether it be politicians misusing the courts to stop people from giving money to campaigns, or this [Jeff Baron’s] situation where the federal government, through the federal judiciary, has illegally confiscated someone’s property and destroyed their lives because they have a vendetta against them.”

The scene of judges in Hawaii and the California 9th Circuit usurping President Trump’s power in the area of national security serves as a reminder of a much broader and increasingly growing problem.

While the president has an army of lawyers at his disposal to keep rogue and activist judges in check, most Americans are far more at risk and powerless to defend themselves when they become? targets personally.

An average American finds himself at the mercy of a radical or corrupt judge bent on inflicting harm and is stuck with the judge’s tyrannical commandments without recourse.

Conrad Herring observes:

“The judicial system is prohibitively expensive for most citizens. When a judge acts beyond his or her authority, and sometimes abuses that authority as in the case of Jeff Baron, there is often little recourse unless a lawyer is willing to work pro bono to defend and protect the citizen’s rights. The abuse in the Baron receivership case was doubly egregious because it was initiated by unethical lawyers. Rather than hold these lawyers accountable, the judge in the case allowed them to thoroughly corrupt the legal process. Baron was stripped of most of his constitutional rights without due process, and then stripped of his assets. Although Baron was successful in his appeal of the unlawful receivership order, he is still today, five years later, fighting to recover the assets that were illegally taken from him.”

With a new day dawning in America, Baron is turning his efforts toward making America Great Again. His new Internet Freedom Project (IFP) is leading the drive to restore America’s stewardship of the Internet.

SOURCE

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Texas Takes Strong and Needed Action on Sanctuary Cities

Do you think more states should stand up to unlawful and dangerous sanctuary city policies? Let us know in the comments. – Ed.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott acted to protect the citizens of Texas on Sunday when he signed into law SB 4, a bill to punish (and deter) local cities and counties like Austin from implementing sanctuary policies.

Abbott and the legislators who sponsored this bill are trying to stop the Lone Star State from being a sanctuary for criminal aliens. They want to make sure that criminals are removed from the state and deported from the country, rather than remaining in Texas so they can victimize even more citizens of the state.

SB 4 requires local governments in the state to comply with federal immigration law. That includes 8 U.S.C. § 1373, which forbids state and local governments from preventing their officials from exchanging information with the federal government on the citizenship status of any individual.

Under the new Texas law, local governments can’t prevent their law enforcement officials from sending information to the feds on criminals they have arrested or detained.

City and county officials also can’t prevent federal immigration officers from enforcing immigration laws in local jails, and are charged with “assisting or cooperating with a federal immigration officer as reasonable or necessary” to provide “enforcement assistance.”

Further, Texas law enforcement agencies are directed to “comply with, honor, and fulfill any request made in the detainer request provided by the federal government.”

This means that local jurisdictions that fail to honor federal detainer warrants—which are requests issued by federal immigration authorities to hold illegal aliens for pickup—will also be in violation of state law.

SB 4 imposes a civil penalty on sanctuary cities of up to $25,500 for each day of intentionally violating this law. In a fitting sense of justice, the civil penalties collected will be deposited in a special victim’s crime fund set up by the state.

This means that those who have been victimized by criminal illegal aliens will be able to seek compensation from this fund. Local law enforcement officials, such as sheriffs and chiefs of police, can also be charged with a Class A misdemeanor for failing to comply with federal detainer warrants.

Finally, local officials who refuse to comply with SB 4 and who implement sanctuary policies or ordinances can be removed from office. Petitions for their removal are filed by the attorney general of Texas, and such petitions will get the same precedence as election contests under Texas law.

This ensures that such petitions will not languish in court behind other cases. And Texas courts are directed to remove that official if he or she is found guilty—judges have no discretion to keep the official in office.

Abbott said he signed this bill because public safety is his top priority: “This bill furthers that objective by keeping dangerous criminals off our streets.”

Abbott added that it is “inexcusable to release individuals from jail that have been charged with heinous crimes like sexual assault against minors, domestic violence, and robbery.”

He said that such behavior by local officials would no longer be “tolerated,” and that SB 4 was “doing away with those that seek to promote lawlessness in Texas.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who also supports the new law, pointed out that “in the past six years, criminal aliens have been charged with more than 566,000 crimes in Texas including kidnapping, homicide, burglary and much more.”

As he said, “there is no excuse for endangering our communities by allowing criminal aliens who have committed a crime to go free.”

Given the large number of crimes committed by recidivist criminal aliens, the claim by some in Texas that this bill will make “our communities more dangerous” defies common sense.

This is particularly true because the new law exempts an illegal alien who “is a victim of or witness to a criminal offense,” or “is reporting a criminal offense.” Thus, it will not deter the reporting of crimes.

As I have pointed out before, sanctuary policies endanger the residents of the very cities they are claimed to “help.” Criminal aliens who would otherwise be detained and removed from sanctuary cities are instead released back into the community, where they can commit more crimes.

One Government Accountability Office study of the criminal histories of 55,322 illegal aliens showed that they had been arrested 459,614 times and committed almost 700,000 offenses.

The vast majority of these crimes would never have been committed if we had a secure border that prevented these criminal aliens from entering the country in the first place, or if we had an effective policy of removing them once they did make it here, or after being detained or arrested for committing a crime.

The Texas governor and legislators are trying to protect their state’s residents from the reckless and irresponsible decisions being made by local jurisdictions to release criminal aliens and to obstruct enforcement of federal immigration law.

This is a good start and the right thing for them to do.

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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Deceptive language about Health-Care Provision

The House of Representatives has just passed a statute it represents as “repealing and replacing Obamacare.” This legislation, now awaiting what promises to be major challenges in gaining the Senate’s approval, does amend certain aspects of the Obamacare setup, but all in all the changes are less than earth-shaking, and the previous system will continue in important regards even if the House version should gain approval in the Senate.

One critical aspect of the continuity is the requirement that, absent certain state-level options that might but need not be implemented, health-care insurers will still be forbidden to deny coverage to anyone because of a preexisting condition.

Under Obamacare, insurers had to charge people the same amount, regardless of their health status. The AHCA [American Health Care Act] would change that, allowing states to apply for waivers to charge sicker people more if those people had a gap in their insurance coverage. Those states would then get $138 billion over 10 years to help defray costs for sick people by creating high-risk pools, among other things.

The idea behind this provision is that it would make health insurance cheaper for people who are relatively healthy, while sick people would be in their own, subsidized risk pool. As they debated on the House floor Thursday, Republican members consistently assured their audience that their bill would still protect preexisting conditions.

As many knowledgeable commentators have noted over the years, forbidding insurers to discriminate among people according to their health condition (e.g., according to what types of illnesses, injuries, and risk factors they have had in the past or have currently) flies in the face of the insurance principle. Insurance is a means of pooling risks. Subscribers of an insurance policy all pay a regular premium for coverage. In the event that a subscriber happens to fall victim to a covered contingency—for example, someone develops lung cancer—that person will be eligible to make a benefit claim against the insurance to pay for care of the cancer. Such coverage can be actuarially sound because even though any one person’s coming down with lung cancer is unpredictable, the probability of someone’s coming down with this disease in a large population can be determined with a high degree of accuracy, and premiums can be set so that for the group as a whole, the premiums will suffice to cover the plan’s promised pay-outs and leave enough for the insurer to cover its costs and earn a normal return on its investment in the insurance business.

If, however, people who had not been insured could, upon being diagnosed with a particular disease, then apply for insurance covering treatment of this condition, the insurance principle would be cast into the trash bin. This feature would be similar to letting people on their death bed purchase life insurance at the same rate as healthy people, or letting people whose houses had just caught fire purchase homeowner’s insurance at the same rate as people whose houses are in sound condition. In short, requiring insurers to cover preexisting conditions at the same premium paid by covered subscribers who do not have those conditions transforms insurance into an arrangement for making healthy people pay too much for coverage in order to subsidize people who pay too little—because the law forbids insurers to charge them according to the risk of the covered contingency they actually present.

Likewise, requiring insurers to cover a wide range of conditions against which some subscribers do not wish to insure—indeed, against certain contingencies that cannot apply to them in any event (e.g., costs associated with pregnancy for male subscribers)—turns the insurance system into a complex system of overcharges and cross-subsidies, that is, turns the system into a legally prescribed welfare system rather than an insurance system.

The federal government and the state governments have intervened haphazardly in the health-care insurance business so pervasively and for so long that by now the whole setup is nothing but a gigantic mess that flies in the face of the insurance principle and dictates a host of requirements that make no sense except as answers to the prayers of special-interest groups and rent seekers. Once a net benefit has been created, however, each beneficiary group will scream to the heavens if reforms should threaten to remove its privilege, and legislators will be reluctant to buck such organized political insistence on continued subsidies and privileges no matter how irrational these interventionist distortions are as components of an insurance system. This sort of “transitional-gains trap,” which Gordon Tullock analyzed astutely in an article published almost fifty years ago, produces an inertia in the political process that makes it practically impossible to make substantial changes even as the overall system sinks into financial ruin and drags down much of the related economy with it.

A helpful first step toward actually remedying the whole ungodly mess would be to change the language we use to talk about it and to propose reforms. People would be well advised to stop using the word “insurance” to talk about what amounts to prepaid care for one and all, and to stop regarding every special-interest subsidy and privilege as if, having once been blessed by legislators, it has become an eternal “right.” If people cannot forthrightly recognize gifts financed from the public trough as distinct from real insurance payouts, there is little chance that any reforms can ever make economic sense or bring about a viable system for financing health-care expenses.

SOURCE

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Are You Ready for Single-payer Healthcare?

America is well down a slippery slope

Chalk up another victory for the elephants and one more defeat for the donkeys. Yep, the Republicans have finally managed to get a healthcare bill through the House, and depending upon who you listen to, the bill is anything from a complete Republican sellout to a major move in the direction of freedom and fiscal responsibility.

That said, let’s take a deep breath and set aside all the B.S. and talking points coming from politicians and the media and look at the healthcare puzzle like rational, grown-up folks. The fact is that we’ve had government-controlled healthcare from the time progressives first convinced a significant percentage of the population that the government had an obligation to provide medical services to all citizens. Today, of course, that belief has evolved to mean “all people living in the United States, citizens or otherwise.”

It sounds nice, but as every halfway intelligent, honest adult understands, healthcare is not a right. Every human being is born with only one natural right: the right to freedom. Specifically, that means the right to do whatever he pleases, so long as his actions do not violate the freedom of any other human being.

The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness contains two redundancies. First, technically speaking, you don’t have a right to life. If you did, you could choose to live forever. Good luck to you on your choice, but the reality is that a higher power decides the outcome of that one for you. You do, however, have a right to do anything you please to try to improve your life, which comes under the heading of freedom (or liberty, which is the word used by the Founding Fathers).

Second, the right to happiness is simply one aspect of freedom. You do not have a right to be happy, but you do have a right to pursue happiness (as in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). The problems start when people come to believe the perverse notion that government (read, “taxpayers”) has an obligation to do whatever it takes to make them happy. Once a society crosses that line, it begins its death spiral, though it can still survive, in the words of Margaret Thatcher, until you “run out of other people’s money.”

Now, back to healthcare. In this day and age of ever-increasing lifespans, healthcare is an issue of life-and-death importance. But it’s important to understand that it has nothing to do with rights. It has to do with compassion.

This may surprise you, but, in theory, I believe in universal, or single-payer, healthcare. That’s right, if I had supernatural powers, I’d see to it that everyone, young and old alike, had access to the best healthcare possible, without having to wait weeks, or even months, to see a doctor or have an operation.

The reason I qualified my statement with “in theory” is because even though I don’t want to see any human being suffer unnecessarily or die from a lack of medical care, I also don’t want the government to be involved in any way, shape, or form in anything as serious as healthcare.

It baffles me why so many people blind themselves to the truth about government. A government is nothing more than a collection of avaricious, power- and money-hungry men and women whom we refer to as “politicians,” and we already know, through firsthand experience, that they not only are untrustworthy, they’re incompetent.

The theoretical single-payer system I envision would be run by experienced, private-industry executives and overseen by a board of directors that would consist of the most prominent accomplished, civic-minded people among us, men and women whose reputations would be beyond reproach. They would get no compensation other than reimbursement for travel and other direct expenses, so you would never need to worry about them basing their decisions on their financial well-being.

Now, back to reality: Do I believe this will ever happen? No, I don’t. The sad reality is that the United States will get single-payer healthcare in the not-too-distant future, but, unfortunately, it will be run by the same avaricious politicians who have been stealing from us since the inception of our nation.

Based on experience, we already know that everything the government touches costs more and delivers less value. Amtrak has always operated in the red. The Post Office has always operated in the red. And politicians don’t even make a pretense of wanting to adopt a breakeven budget for the United States.

Isn’t it ironic that Medicare and Medicaid are going broke (not to mention the transfer-of-wealth program known as Obamacare), yet the government arrogantly believes it can run healthcare for everyone successfully? Absurd, of course, but nevertheless government-run healthcare is on the horizon.

Obama and the rest of the Dirty Dems were well aware that the only way Obamacare could be pushed through was by telling massive lies to the public. Their strategy was that when the system collapsed, they would then make the case that the only way to save people from suffering and death would be to implement a full-blown, single-payer system run by the government. A deceitful plan, to be sure, but a very clever one.

And it was all moving along right on schedule toward its ultimate goal when Chappaqua’s most famous liar found a way to blow the presidential election and Obama’s third term against an opponent whom her supporters looked upon as nothing more than a bad joke. Whereupon the guy pulling her strings hightailed it out of town to Tahiti and began cashing in on the eight-year scam he had so successfully pulled off.

I’d like to be wrong and see the Republicans come up with a miracle and find a way to make healthcare work, but my guess is that Horrible Hillary’s gift to Republicans will only prolong the inevitable: government-run, single payer healthcare.

The irony is that the most famous government-run healthcare debacle, the VA, has been such a disaster that there’s serious talk of turning it over to the free market. I guess the message is that you have to suffer through years of government incompetency before you’re given the freedom to try and better your situation.

P.S. Allow me to close on an obvious note: Given the insoluble healthcare problems in the United States, I believe immigration (not just illegal, but legal) should be cut as close to zero as possible for at least five years. The fact is that there are simply too many people in this country, which puts a strain on all kinds of services. If we can’t afford healthcare for those already living here, why in the world should we add to the problem by bringing in even more people?

All answers to that question are welcomed.

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 Dirty Red Secrets of May

American leftists celebrated the venerable Communist holiday of May Day in the traditional fashion. Portland grad students, who have never worked a day in their lives, marked International Workers Day by smashing the windows of local businesses. There's a long proud tradition of the revolutions of the working class being led by rich leftists like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Castro to whom work is an evil mystery that they spent their miserable lives resolving never to become acquainted with.

The New York Times, which has far too many of its own windows to go around smashing those of others, instead offered some sickening nostalgia for the red dead past with a little piece titled, "When Communism Inspired Americans."

Which Americans did Communism inspire? Communists and their fellow travelers. Despite the news stories cheerfully reporting on May Day protesters in the United States waving Soviet flags, there aren't very many Communists in this country. Communism is a demanding mistress. It requires knowing a whole lot, not so much about the real world, but about Communism.

Most leftists are dilettantes. They admired and admire Communism's commitment to murdering millions of people and arguing the esoteric dogmas of the party line. It's this latter that Gornick's New York Times piece bleeds with nostalgia for. She tells us, again and again, that the Communists were wonderfully inspirational because they sat around kitchen tables arguing about ideas.

So did the Nazis. But the New York Times doesn't print fond recollections of debates over whether the Japanese really counted as Aryans and how National Socialism should approach the rights of workers. Nostalgia for the Third Reich is rightly regarded as abominable. And the hobby of those who have a soft spot for its murderous totalitarian ideology.

Curiously, the left never applies this same indictment to its own fondness for Communism. Instead it traffics in nostalgia for Communism's idealism, as if its ideals were any nobler than those of Nazism. But the left believes they were. And how could it not? Communism is just the left taken to its inevitable conclusion. And so the left excuses Communism's excess of enthusiasm for the cause.

Mistakes were made. The mass murder of millions being one of them. Generations of repression being another. Forced abortions, mass starvation, forced labor, slavery, death camps, virulent racism, psychiatric torture, invasion and terrorism being a few others. But their ideals were so idealistic.

Communism didn't inspire Americans, it did inspire the left to try and turn America into a totalitarian state. It still does. This is the dirty little secret that leaks out of the left. When the media runs these evocative nostalgic pieces about Communism, it's the equivalent of a pedophile sharing snapshots of summer camp. It's the disgusting secret of truly vile people leaking out.

And the vile people are the cultural leftist elites claiming to be our moral superiors on account of their commitment to total government control of everything... for the benefit of the people.

Sound familiar?

The double standard is why Nazi historical revisionism is evil, but Communist historical revisionism gets a wink and a nod. It also makes a mockery of the conviction that the mass murder of Jews for the sake of a totalitarian ideology during the 20th century was a bad thing that we ought to deplore.

The Soviet Union began murdering Jews when the Holocaust was just an evil twinkle in a mad Fuhrer's eye. It went on murdering Jews long after he shot himself in the head. Stalin liked Hitler's Holocaust so much that he tried to plan his own version of it. He would have gotten away with it too if he hadn't died, throwing the Soviet Union and his various malicious plans into chaos with it.

The left doesn't believe that Hitler was bad because he killed Jews. Mass murder isn't a crime in the left's eyes. Just ask Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest of the gang of monsters whom the left defended in papers just like the New York Times until they had committed the worst of their crimes.

As long as the Hitler-Stalin pact held, leftists vehemently campaigned against war. There were plenty of "Hitler is bad, but" pieces of the sort that they're running about North Korea or Iran. Hitler only became truly irredeemable when he invaded the Soviet Union. And then everyone, except the Trotskyists, decided that Nazi Germany was utterly evil. Leftist fellow travelers went, in the span of days, from protesting "warmongering" and "militarism" to demanding action yesterday.

And that too is another dirty red secret of the left.

It's inconceivable that the New York Times or any paper would run a glowing piece titled, "When Nazis Inspired Americans". No fond recollections from participants in the Madison Square Garden rally. No fond memories of Bund camps. No sugar-coated recollections of how the Thousand Year Reich would create a better world... only to then learn that Hitler wasn't a very nice man.

But "When Communism Inspired Americans".regurgitates the same exact message. And it remains acceptable because the left feels an emotional and intellectual connection with Communists.

That is the ugly truth at the root of our conflict.

Liberalism, the old vintage that actually stood up to Communists, is as dead as the dodo. In its place are smug leftists eager to repeat the same old sins.

Nazis don't get a forum to pour out their romantic nostalgia for attending Hitler rallies. Communists do because the left sympathizes with them. It must offers occasional apologies and disavowals, but the love for a horrifying ideology that was totalitarian all the way down, whose mass murder of millions was not an accident of fate, but was always an integral part of it, tells the truth about the left.

"The party was possessed of a moral authority that lent shape and substance, through its passion for structure and the eloquence of its rhetoric, to an urgent sense of social injustice," Gornick writes.

Gornick begins with individuals and concludes with the ugly collectivist mass of the party. It is always the party in the end. The individuals are disposable. They are, as Stalin said, statistics.

The rest is tiresome. The same recitations of "We knew nothing". As if the crimes of Communism had been some sort of mystery until Khrushchev admitted them.

And what were the Moscow Trials? What were the decades of reports about abuses and atrocities?

Like Pol Pot's crimes, an outraged left denied it all.

After all the mass murders and crimes have been admitted, the left always returns to this nostalgia. To that emotional linkage to the total commitment to a totalitarian state.

To the party.

This is the left. It returns, like a dog to its vomit, to the dream of the true radicalism of a totalitarian leftist state. It occasionally deals with uncomfortable truths. Circles around them. And then it lapses back into an opium dream of Marxists sitting around a kitchen table and debating which windows to smash first and whom to shoot first.

SOURCE

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An Unhinged Left Doubles Down

Long used to congratulating themselves for their inclusiveness and tolerance, leftists are revealed as utter frauds.

Despite all the maddening uncertainty surrounding Donald Trump and the GOP, the 2016 election represented one of the most clarifying moments in American history: “Progressives,” the Democrat Party and their Leftmedia allies — long used to congratulating themselves for their inclusiveness, tolerance and fairness — were revealed as utter frauds.

“In the wake of the Trumpocalypse, many in the deepest blue cores have turned on those parts of America that supported the president’s election, developing oikophobia — an irrational fear of their fellow citizens,” writes Daily Beast columnist Joel Kotkin.

Not fear. Loathing. Loathing epitomized by “comedian” Stephen Colbert, who referred to Trump’s mouth as “Putin’s c—k holster” on his late-night TV show.

Loathing so intense, New Republic columnist Kevin Baker wants to separate “We Pay Our Own Damn Way” blue states from “poor” red states he hopes will wallow in misery without their leftist “benefactors.” “We have funded massive infrastructure projects in your rural counties, subsidized your schools and your power plants and your nursing homes, sent you entire industries, and simultaneously absorbed the most destitute, unskilled, and oppressed portions of your populations, white and black alike,” he writes. “All of which, it turns out, only left you more bitter, white, and alt-right than ever.”

More bitter than Baker himself? He and Colbert exemplify the pompous hypocrisy that animates far too many leftists. Leftists who regularly eviscerate conservatives for their “homophobia,” but will hail Colbert for his “edginess.” Leftists like Baker, et al, who tend to forget, despite Kotkin’s reminder, that “the bulk of the food, energy, and manufactured goods consumed in blue America” is supplied by those “bitter clingers” who feed what Kotkin calls the “blue bourgeoisie.” A blue bourgeoisie who “might seek to give the unwashed red masses ‘cake’ in the form of free health care and welfare,” he writes, but nothing more “than a future status as serfs of the cognitive aristocracy.”

Serfs dismissed as beneath contempt by self-serving progressives.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson aptly illuminates how that poisonous mindset affects his home state of California, where progressive coastal elites “virtue-signal from the world’s most exclusive and beautiful enclaves,” while ordinary Californians endure “another perfect storm of increased crime, decreased incarceration, still ongoing illegal immigration, and record poverty.”

Columnist Aaron M. Renn sees a bigger and far more troubling picture. “Those who are succeeding in America no longer need the overall prosperity of the country in order to personally do well,” he explains. “They can become enriched as a small, albeit sizable, minority.”

It is a minority scrupulously protected and reverently promoted by the Leftmedia. A Leftmedia that “really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008,” Politico columnists Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty reveal. “And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county — odds are that you reside in one of the nation’s most pro-Clinton counties.”

Leftists apparently need their media-manufactured bubble. That became evident when the New York Times published a column by newly hired conservative (and virulent NeverTrumper) Bret Stephens questioning the legitimacy of the progressive global warming agenda. After it was published, the paper was flooded with threats of cancellations by furious readers. Leftists also slammed Stephens himself via Twitter, and nearly 30,000 signed a Change.org petition demanding the Times fire him.

From whom do such “tolerant” people take their cue? President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan “don’t give a s— about people,” newly elected DNC chairman Tom Perez has stated — on more than one occasion. On Monday Perez upped the ante on his mindlessness, insisting, “[N]o human being is illegal” during one of the many Communist Party-supported May Day protests across the nation. One suspects the families of victims murdered by MS-13 gang-bangers on Long Island — 92% of whom are here illegally — might disagree.

Perez is the tip of the iceberg. “Democrats are completely focused on placating their frothing, left-wing, anti-Trump base — and the American heartland thinks these people are insane,” writes Marc Thiessen. “They see women marching in anti-Trump rallies wearing ‘pussy’ hats. They see left-wing mobs attacking Charles Murray at Middlebury College and trying to stop Ann Coulter from speaking at the UC Berkeley. They see ‘Bill Nye the Liberal Guy’ … asking whether people should be punished for having ‘extra kids.’”

Day after day, a demonstrably unhinged army of progressive rabble-rousers reminds America they have made anger, hatred and violence their political platform.

More HERE

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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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