History Repeating: When 'Totalists' Refuse to Tolerate

America is a "house divided" and it cannot stand

Earlier today I cited Senator Rubio's warning,

“I don't know of a civilization in the history of the world that's been able to solve its problems when half the people in a country absolutely hate the other half of the people in that country.”

I said that what I hear and see today reminds me of the national polity of the 1850s, which ended badly.

I have before called the underlying ideology of the American Left, totalism. The label was first used by psychiatrist and historian Robert Lifton. Professor Anna Geifman explains the Totalist political world view:

... Its devotees — anarchists, Marxists, or Islamists — want to impose a new order based on an “all-or-nothing claim to truth.” They operate within distinctive parameters of a “theology of Armageddon — a final battle between good and evil” – in which the stakes are nothing less than universal salvation. As outlined in Eric Hoffer’s classic, The True Believer, such movements have mastered the art of “religiofication,” that is, converting political grievances into messianic aspirations and “practical purposes into holy causes.” [HT: American Digest]

No one gravitates to the Left in order to let others live their lives as they see fit. The beating heart of Totalism in all its forms is power and control over others. This is the raison d'etre of the entire American Left.

The First Civil War was a class war. The classes were, first of all, racial, with slave holders (Democrats, of course) vs. anti-slavery classical liberals; then geographical, South vs. North; and Constitutional, States Rights vs. Strong Federal Control. The identitarian, tribal Classist conflict was devastating. It started with the election of an "unacceptable" president, Lincoln. That event set the Democrats off like a bomb.

Today's Leftists appear to think that they have a moral mandate demanding violence, if necessary, to keep their power and narrative in total control. They showed no compromise or compassion under Obama, and they have only escalated that approach.

Whether the general population will drift into or out of Leftism is not yet determined. But the next few months will shed more light on that, as well as what must be done against the intractable, totalitarianism and Class War of the Left. Is the current environment just a huge Leftist tantrum? Or is it a precursor of larger turmoil ahead?

A very interesting time, we live in.

A final thought on Civil War I: The Democrats could have freed the slaves, hired them to work on their plantations at a living wage. They did not do that, because they could not: their embedded racism prohibited it. When they lost Civil War I, the Democrats oppressed the freed slaves with Jim Crow and KKK action against the blacks. They did not release their Class War; they redefined it and tightly institutionalized it through local law and official/unofficial violence. They are no different now.

Quote of the Decade

"Well, just like Big Brother in 1984, people don’t suppress opponents’ ideas because they are confident in their own. They suppress opponents’ ideas because they have more confidence in the argument of force than in the force of their arguments.

And that leads to a general rule: The people who are trying to silence their political enemies aren’t doing it because they’re right. They’re doing it because they’re afraid that otherwise, people will realize they’re running a scam. Bear that in mind, this election season, and beyond."
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, aka Instapundit

Violence and the Left.

The Class War and Identarian politics and policies promoted by the American Left has led to the racial schisms which produce the violence directed at attendees of Trump rallies. Now there is the idea that when the people leaving the rally PUNCH BACK, they are responsible for violence. The absurdity is being repeated often enough that it is obvious that the intent is to put the blame for the violence on Trump himself, for his supposed identarian statements, opinions NOT ALLOWED.

The constant class war from the Left has brought to fruition that which they falsely accused their hated opposition of from the start: white identity as a class, in the class war. The Tea Party was blamed for that, despite members of all colors-as-identities. But the consistency of the racial attacks from the Left has pushed whites into the position of defense, as a group, a class created ad hoc by the Left. The result is the acknowledgment that in the USA, the Class:Whites is under attack by numerous forces of racialists, from Holder and the DOJ, Obama, and the Leftists in the administration's bureaucracy, the judicial branch in certain states, to the Leftist organizations like ACLU, Southern Poverty Center, etc.

So the Left has successfully created what it really wanted: a coherent group to hate and attack.

This will very likely progress quite a bit further during the rest of the year. By "progress" I mean both increase in violence (blamed on Trump of course - the Left is "so enraged by Trump that they can't suppress their violence"), and also to follow the Leftists desire to foment violence based purely in racial hatred ("Make USA Mexican Again").

The Left's unsurpassable ability to take violent offense at any and all things uttered by both conservatives and specifically Trump is directly related to their presumption of moral authority to which they have anointed their elitist selves. If their every thought is moral without question (and that is the case they reassured us), then opposition is oviously Immoral without question. And that Immorality deserves only to be stamped out, as the Leftists install their own version of moral opinion (secularism and Class War) into both government and culture. After all,dissent is immoral and produces uncontrollable hysteria in those who hear it.

Because their own version of morality is just opinion without actual authority, the natural conclusion of Leftist Progress is always a disagreement between elitists as to the minutiae of "moral" decisions. This is closely followed by the eradication of one side of the debate by the other side of the debate: totalitarianism ensues as one opinion becomes the sole allowable dogma. This process is fully moral under the definitional understandings of the successful Progressive who emerges hegemonically intact at the end, which is the beginning of full repression of all contrary thought that might remain in some cranny somewhere.

Thus a Lenin is mysteriously disabled and a Trotsky is mysteriously struck in the brain with an ice-axe, leaving a Stalin without opposition. But like with Lenin, it always starts small. So the self-righteous, moral violence is justified, even against Progressives themselves as the Will To Power (the real moral principle) plays out.

"I, Pencil" and Economic Freedom

Creationists of the Secular Kind

"“Secular theists” — economist Don Boudreaux’s term — produce governments gripped by the fatal conceit that they are wiser than society’s spontaneous experimental order. Such governments’ imposed order suffocates improvisation and innovation. Like religious creationists gazing upon biological complexity, secular theists assume that social complexity requires an intentional design imposed from on high by wise designers, aka them.

In The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge, Matt Ridley refutes the secular creationists’ fallacious idea that because social complexity is the result of human actions, it must, or should, be the result of human design. In fact, Ridley says, “Far more than we like to admit, the world is to a remarkable extent a self-organizing, self-changing place.”

...

"Ridley applies to everything the perspective of Leonard E. Read’s famous 1958 essay “I, Pencil.” In it a pencil explains that “I am a mystery” because not a single person knows how to make me. The seemingly simple pencil is wood harvested by loggers using saws and ropes made elsewhere, wood transported by trucks and trains made by many thousands of people, to mills where machines — the products of ore mined by thousands and steel mills staffed by thousands more — prepare the wood to receive graphite mined abroad and the eraser from foreign rubber, held in place by aluminum mined somewhere and smelted somewhere else, before lacquer (castor beans and other ingredients) is applied, and . . .

Behind a pencil stand millions of cooperating people, but no mastermind. Which is why worshipers in the church of government, the source of top-down authority, disparage a free society’s genius for spontaneous order: It limits the importance of government and other supposed possessors of the expertise that supposedly is essential for imposing order from above.

No one, writes Ridley, anticipated that when Gutenberg made printed books affordable, increased literacy would create a market for spectacles, which would lead to improved lenses and the invention of telescopes, which would produce the discovery that the Earth orbits the sun. No one planned that one particular book’s argument for the fecundity of freedom would bolster the case for limited government the way Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations did when published in 1776."

The totalitarians are not creative, not engineers, not entrepreneurs, not even intelligent. What they are is arrogant, self-worshipping, Atheist, intellectual deviates.

And there is this:

The Godfather of American Liberalism

"Numerous fin de siècle writers had looked backward at a century of material and mechanical progress, both to praise its achievements and to condemn its running sore, the seemingly permanent misery of the urban working class. But [H.G.] Wells looked ahead, asserting that the future as well as the past had a pattern. He argued inductively about the nature of what was likely to come, based on the way the telephone, telegraph, and railroad had shrunk the world, and he populated his predictions with a dramatic cast of collective characters. Some he loathed: the idle, parasitic rich; the “vicious helpless pauper masses,” the “People of the Abyss”; and the yapping politicians and yellow journalists whom he considered instruments of patriotism and war.

But if these people were leading the world on the path to hell, there were also the redeemers, the “New Republicans,” the “capable men” of vision who might own the future. These scientist-poets and engineers could, Wells thought, redirect the Darwinian struggle away from a descent into savagery and toward a new and higher ground. Building on the social and sexual ideals of nineteenth-century utopian reformers, Wells generated a complete cosmology, a scientific socialism to compete with Marxism, which, he thought, reduced the complexities of life to simpleminded slogans of class war. Outflanking the Marxists on their own ground, he called for a different kind of struggle, a “revolt of the competent” against the confines of conventional middle-class morality."

Wells was a story teller who wanted a real life story of his own design to "come true". But it already was coming True in Russia; all he had to do was to look and observe the "elites" in action, as they slaughtered their way to power and they implemented foolish and stupid programs which never, ever produced economic security. Today's Prog/lib/Leftists are similarly ignorant of history. Ignorance is an essential element of arrogance.

Judith Curry:"You have signed the death warrant for science".

In case you still wonder if AGW "science" is an ideology, then read what Curry has to say about the 20 scientists who want dissent to be prosecuted under RICO:

RICO!

"Dear signatories of this letter:

I will try to clarify here what you have done, and why it is wrong.

First, you have been duped by the Merchants of Doubt book/movie. See my previous blog post Bankruptcy of the ‘merchants of doubt’ meme, which includes reviews by other social scientists.

Second, the consensus on human caused climate change is not as overwhelming as you seem to think. See my recent blog post The conceits of consensus, which includes a detailed analysis of an extensive survey of climate scientists (not to mention extensive critiques of the Cook et al. analysis).

Third, the source of funding is not the only bias in research, and the greatest bias does not necessarily come from industry funding, see these posts:

Conflicts of interest in climate science
Is federal funding biasing research?
Industry funding and bias
Industry funding: witch hunts
Scientific integrity versus ideologically fueled research

Fourth, scientists disagree about the causes of climate change for the following reasons:

Insufficient observational evidence
Disagreement about the value of different classes of evidence (e.g. models)
Disagreement about the appropriate logical framework for linking and assessing the evidence
Assessments of areas of ambiguity and ignorance
Belief polarization as a result of politicization of the science

The biggest disagreement however is about whether warming is ‘dangerous’ (values) and whether we can/should do something about it (politics). Why do you think your opinion, as scientists, matters on values and politics?

Fifth, what you have done with this letter is advocacy. This is a very dicey role for a scientist to play, fraught with reputational and ethical land mines. Here are several essays on this topic, written from a range of perspectives:

[To access these links go to the source]
(Ir)responsible advocacy by scientists
Ins and outs of the ivory tower
The adversarial method versus Feynman integrity
Advocacy science and decision making
Too much advocacy?
Refocusing debate about advocacy
Rethinking climate advocacy
Ethics of communicating scientific uncertainty
Tamsin on scientists and policy advocacy
Mann on advocacy and responsibility
Climate scientists joining advocacy groups
Science, uncertainty and advocacy

What you have done with your letter is the worst kind of irresponsible advocacy, which is to attempt to silence scientists that disagree with you by invoking RICO. It is bad enough that politicians such as Whitehouse and Grijalvi are playing this sort of political game with science and scientists, but I regard it as highly unethical for scientists to support defeating scientists with whom you disagree by such methods. Since I was one of the scientists called out in Grijalvi’s witch hunts, I can only infer that I am one of the scientists you are seeking to silence.

Peter Webster did not exaggerate when he wrote:

You have signed the death warrant for science."

This conclusion is a bit rash; the death warrant will be for non-empirical science, and will hopefully serve to educate the masses on what constitutes actual objective knowledge as ascertained via responsible, valid, empirical science. The truly empirical sciences should be untouched in the long run, as (hopefully) real scientists like Curry come out against this sort of totalitarian, PC narrative-scientism. However, this does, indeed, illuminate the desperation of the advocacy "sciences", which cannot protect themselves with actual objective data in their defense.

It should not be forgotten that the other major advocacy narrative-scientism - evolution - also applied for, and received, government protection. Evolution is also plagued with the inability to objectively produce or reproduce any of its "scientific" claims. So, being without actual data for its defense, it was and is vulnerable to rational attack. That's why it needed a big brother to defend it.

AI and Human Values

'Artificial Intelligence is as dangerous as NUCLEAR WEAPONS': AI pioneer warns smart computers could doom mankind

Expert warns advances in AI mirrors research that led to nuclear weapons
He says AI systems could have objectives misaligned with human values
Companies and the military could allow this to get a technological edge
He urges the AI community to put human values at the centre of their work

And exactly which "human values" should AI focus on? Abortion? Elderly death panels (euthanasia via deprivation of care)? Possibly top down control of total "equality" in all aspects of life? Maybe complete "tolerance" of all computer behaviors regardless of how aberrant? The main value in play today is relativism; is that the "control" to implement?

"In an editorial in Science, editors Jelena Stajic, Richard Stone, Gilbert Chin and Brad Wible, said: 'Triumphs in the field of AI are bringing to the fore questions that, until recently, seemed better left to science fiction than to science.

'How will we ensure that the rise of the machines is entirely under human control? And what will the world be like if truly intelligent computers come to coexist with humankind?'"

"Under human control"? What does that even mean? Even humans are not always under human control, if that means rational, beneficial, enlightenment-values-oriented self-control. Too many humans want total control of all other humans; that is one human value, and it's been in play forever, and it still is in play.

It is probable that humans will be more dangerous to humans than computers, at least for a while. Those values are already being implemented in our own culture, and have been historically in other cultures with catastrophic effects, as can be seen by those who care to know.

Post Democracy

As Vox points out, the last week of SCOTUS bench-legislation is a firm indication that the USA is beyond rule "by the people". We are now post-democracy, post-republic. We are firmly Leftist oligarchy, with tycoon symbiosis. There is no assault on the constitutional rights of the individual which cannot be overturned in a flash by the SCOTUS coterie. Here's an example of legislation interruption due to lawsuits from "women's health" activists who want to preserve fetal death by dismemberment:

Kansas judge enjoins Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act

"On June 25, Shawnee County District Court Judge Larry Hendricks issued an injunction that bars the first-in-nation Kansas Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act [Senate Bill 95] from going into effect July 1.

The judge’s order will remain in effect while he considers the lawsuit further.

The lawsuit was filed and argued by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of the Overland Park Center for Women’s Health that had previously sued two other Kansas pro-life laws.

Kansans for Life is confident this law will eventually be upheld—mirroring the long, but successful partial-birth abortion battle in which the U.S. Supreme Court eventually acknowledged the validity of pro-life legislation."

This optimism is ill-deserved. There is little resemblance between killing a half-born baby and the killing of younger embryos by tearing them apart while still in the uterus. Two separate issues.

However, these two separate issues do illuminate the totally callous nature of "women's health" activism. This obvious drive to kill and keep killing also illuminates the Leftist propensity for violence being visited upon defenseless innocents, including their deaths in the dozens of millions - nearly 60 million in the USA alone. And the elderly are next:

Health-Care Rationing Is Inevitable
Let's stop debating the why of rationing and get on with the how."

And:

Ration Roulette: U. S. House debates ObamaCare’s Death Panels

"As the former chief of Medicare said, it’s much cheaper for the government to let sick people die than care for them. So, the President’s team invented this Board, which would be hand-picked by the White House to determine who is worthy of care and who isn’t. Not only would IPAB be free of congressional oversight, but it would also operate without much input from health care providers. Instead of discussing the options with your doctor, IPAB will be sitting at the controls in Washington making health decisions for your family.

Essentially, the Board’s 15 members would be completely unaccountable — to Congress or anyone else. They’d have the power to limit which doctors you see, what treatments are available, and in some cases, whether you’re eligible for care at all. “The ‘independent’ part of IPAB’s name is no joke…” Forbes points out. “If Medicare spending exceeds limits set by law, then IPAB can impose its own set of cost controls… Once IPAB settles on its cuts, lawmakers must either offer an alternative plan that cuts the same level of spending or muster a super-majority to block the Board’s cuts from taking effect.”

Republicans have called it a “rationing board” — and even liberals agree."

There is no human right which cannot be sacrificed to Leftist "new rights" such as are invented in order to subvert the older, constitutional rights. Right to Life is subverted to the phony new "Right to Choose To Kill One's Progeny Violently". Right to Free Exercise of Religion is sacrificed to the phony new "Rights of the Mentally Disordered to the Sacraments of Normal Unions, to be Enforced Upon Religious Providers With Pain of Financial/Professional Destruction For Violation".

These newly discovered "rights" are actually merely attacks on morality which the Left hates and especially hates having imposed on them from the bottom up. The Left has its own diametrically inverse morality which it imposes in reverse, down onto the population. This is done by a coterie of Leftists in federal courts, culminating in the US Supreme Court. SCOTUS is infested with four Leftists who always vote against constitutional rights for individuals and for the Leftist new rights for designated classes. The remaining justices include two which bend with every Leftist wind, with only three justices who value the written constitution as the sole guide for judicial decisions. Since six justices do not value the US Constitution, they willingly violate their oaths of office to protect it. They are scofflaws and social engineers who drive the law of the land in whatever direction they wish. The essence of SCOTUS is that of outlaws making laws.

With a cowardly Congress (which constitutionally should defund the executive branch assaults on America and Americans, AND defund SCOTUS) which takes no reparative action at all, there seems to be no peaceful recourse to the loss of popular control of America to the pagan totalitarian outlaws who are currently in charge.

Twentieth Century Identity and Class War

It's ironic; those who bleat about not victim-shaming or denialism are also the ones who promote anti-Semitism. Some are even holocaust deniers, and these should be directed to the following:

"'Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' tells court he once spent 24 HOURS watching Jewish families separated to be either killed or used in medical experiments as he faces charges of accessory to 300,000 murders

Oskar Groening is being tried on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder

The former SS officer described how Jews were marched to gas chambers

One survivor, Eva Kor, told of her agony as her mother was ripped from her

"A former SS sergeant described how so many Jews were brought to the Auschwitz death camp at once that he was put on a 24-hour shift guarding the ramp where they disembarked from the trains.

He told in chilling detail how cattle cars full of Jews were brought to the Auschwitz death camp, the people stripped of their belongings and then most led directly into gas chambers.

Oskar Groening is being tried on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder, related to a period between May and July 1944 when around 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in Nazi-occupied Poland and most immediately gassed to death.

During that period, so many trains were arriving that often two would have to wait with closed doors as the first was 'processed,' Groening testified at the Lueneburg state court."

Class and identity war is not new; it has been done to death. It is marked by one salient feature: they are better than you and I are.

Tanya Cohen Advocates Speech Control

Let Tanya speak for totalitarianism:

The First Amendment Should Never Protect Hatred

"One of the most admirable things about Europe is that most (if not all) of the right-wing rhetoric that you hear in the US is explicitly against the law there. For example, attempting to link Islam with terrorism, saying that gay marriage isn’t really marriage, or saying that trans women aren’t really women would get you charged with discrimination and/or incitement to hatred. Numerous European public figures have been charged with hate crimes for implying that large-scale immigration is connected to higher crime. In fact, a politician in Sweden was prosecuted for hate crimes for posting statistics about immigrant crime on Facebook. Assaults on the human dignity of Muslims are simply not tolerated in Europe, and Europe cracks down hard on any attempts to incite hatred against Muslims. In a notable example, a woman in Austria was convicted of a hate crime for suggesting that the Islamic Prophet Muhammed was a pedophile. Recently, a man in Sweden was charged with incitement to ethnic hatred for wearing a T-shirt saying “Islam is the devil.” Nobody in Europe believes that these laws interfere with their sacred, guaranteed right to freedom of speech. Rather, these laws protect freedom of speech by ensuring that it is used responsibly and for the purposes of good.

In the US, however, no such laws exist. Right-wing hatemongers like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Bill Maher, and Sarah Palin (to name just a few) are allowed to freely incite hatred and violence, oppose human rights, and undermine progress with impunity. When people like this are allowed to sway public opinion against the common good, it can have disastrous consequences. Just ask the millions of people killed due to wars pushed by right-wingers, even though propaganda for war is illegal under international human rights law (the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights mandates that all countries outlaw propaganda for war)."

There is more, if you can stomach it.

Those who designate certain speech as "Hate Speech" are themselves indulging their own hatred - hatred of dissent, hatred of a universe containing people who are not like themselves, hatred of the Other. The concept of punishing Hate Speech is purely a totalitarian tactic for suppression of classes they do not like. It is identity war, class war on those not like Tanya Cohen.

Tanya claims to be a "human rights activist", who doesn't like free speech or those who use it. Those Others must be suppressed and their rights removed. In her utopia, Tanya will determine how that is to be done.

DARPA To Produce Big Brother Technology

A government which hates its own people will take steps to insulate and protect itself from its people.

DARPA Wants New Technology to Predict “Societal Unrest”
U.S. Defense Department looks to track "all human activities that can be measured"


"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting companies to provide new technology that would allow the U.S. Department of Defense to predict future “societal unrest” by keeping track of “all human activities that can be measured.”

A solicitation posted on FedBizOpps outlines DARPA’s intent to fund research and development of “game-changing technologies” that will “provide a decisive information advantage for the U.S. and its allies,” opening the door to “powerful ways to gain insight into the world.”

“Essentially all human activities that can be measured, from mercantile to military, are being quantitatively re-examined in the context of this new, “big data”, capability. Early demonstrations have produced remarkable insights into human activities and enabled quantitative decision making,” states the solicitation, adding that the agency is looking to develop new algorithms which can forecast “online correlation for societal unrest.”

DARPA has already been heavily engaged in research aimed at forecasting social unrest, most notably the agency’s Crisis Early Warning System (ICEWS), but the results have been patchy, with ICEWS only successful in predicting four out of sixteen rebellions, political upheavals and incidents of ethnic violence during the time period over which it was applied.

Over the past six years, the Pentagon has shown an increased interest in creating models that can forecast domestic and international disorder.

A report produced in 2008 by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute warned that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it termed “strategic shock.”

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” stated the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, adding that the military may be needed to quell “purposeful domestic resistance.”

We have also reported numerous times over the past several years on how the federal government is gearing up for civil unrest, including the Department of Homeland Security’s purchase last October of 240,000 pepper spray projectiles, 100 pepper spray launchers, as well as 36 “riot expansion kits.”

In 2011, the DHS announced that it would intensify its monitoring of social media in order to pre-empt social dislocation within the United States.

Back in 2012, we reported on FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations, a U.S. Army manual that describes how political activists in prison camps will be indoctrinated by specially assigned psychological operations officers. The document makes numerous references to how government agencies like the DHS, ICE and FEMA will be involved in the domestic internment of U.S. citizens during “civil support operations.”

A second US Army Military Police manual that was leaked months later also outlined how military assets would be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest in the aftermath of a crisis."

As the messiahs unleash the Victim Class hordes onto the country, the Oppressor Class is monitored and plans are in place for their neutering.

Religion vs. Model Trains

Megan McArdle, on the Hobby Lobby case:

"I think a few things are going on here. The first is that while the religious right views religion as a fundamental, and indeed essential, part of the human experience, the secular left views it as something more like a hobby, so for them it’s as if a major administrative rule was struck down because it unduly burdened model-train enthusiasts. That emotional disconnect makes it hard for the two sides to even debate; the emotional tenor quickly spirals into hysteria as one side says “Sacred!” and the other side says, essentially, “Seriously? Model trains?” That shows in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent, where it seems to me that she takes a very narrow view of what role religious groups play in the lives of believers and society as a whole.

The second, and probably more important, problem is that the long compromise worked out between the state and religious groups -- do what you want within very broad limits, but don’t expect the state to promote it -- is breaking down in the face of a shift in the way we view rights and the role of the government in public life.

To see what I mean, consider an argument I have now heard hundreds of times -- on Facebook, in my e-mail, in comment threads here and elsewhere: “Hobby Lobby’s owners have a right to their own religious views, but they don’t have a right to impose them on others.” As I wrote the day the decision came out, the statement itself is laudable, yet it rings strange when it’s applied to this particular circumstance. How is not buying you something equivalent to “imposing” on you?"

This is interesting, but it misses the Leftist point: As a Leftist, I demand that you do what I want you to do. Period. I, as a Leftist, am so far superior to you that what you think or want is inconsequential compared to what I think and want from you. You may be either a Victim or an Oppressor; that is your only choice. I will decide everything else.

The Left's War on Women, and Blacks

The Rutgers clowns are enraged over... Condoleezza Rice;

Headline:

Rutgers rage against Rice -- why do liberals have so much hate for black conservatives?

"Condoleezza Rice lacks “moral authority.” She fails to meet the standards of “exemplary citizenship” and she does not have what it takes to “inspire” graduating college seniors.

That crazy thinking comes from the New Brunswick Faculty Council of Rutgers University. They voted last week to ask university leadership to cancel Rice’s invitation to be this year’s Commencement Speaker and receive an honorary degree.

How is the public served by muzzling one of the most thoughtful, accomplished and respected political voices of her time just because she happens to be a Republican?

Yes, apparently the first African-American woman to serve as National Security Adviser and the nation’s Secretary of State doesn’t have what it takes to be honored by Rutgers.

Rice holds a Ph.D. in political science. She has taught college for decades. She was Provost of Stanford University. She worked her way up from a working-class family in the segregated South to the highest echelon of world power and politics.

But according to the Rutgers faculty council, all of that is negated by her service in President George W. Bush’s administration."

The Rutgers Leftists are the models for where the toleranti of the west are going: they tolerate any race or gender or nongender or... well, that's about it. They tolerate people who look different so long as they are in lock-think with themselves. Otherwise, an actual freely thinking person is to be silenced, demeaned and gotten rid of. In other words, totalitarians.

Tales Of Freedom Fighters

"Reporter Halya Coynash points to the Yanukovych regime’s record of media control and censorship: “It proved unnervingly easy within a matter of months of Yanukovych’s [2010] election to remove most critical analysis, negative reports about those in power, and inconvenient information from television.” Whatever new government is formed, that sorry record must not be repeated in a new Ukraine.

As someone who reported from Eastern Europe during the fall of Communist regimes there, I recognized a recurring pattern in the collapse a quarter century later of the regime in Kiev. Regimes can stay in power in an age of mass media only if they have enough murderers willing to gun down people in the street. Snipers were willing to kill their fellow countrymen in the streets around the Maidan last Thursday, but their superiors reached a breaking point when the shots didn’t achieve the desired level of fear. “The shooting stopped when the security chiefs realized the game was over — not because they didn’t have enough Kalashnikovs, but because they proved ineffective: For one person killed, many more came out on the Maidan,” Maria Semykoz, a Ukrainian economist from Lvov, told me by e-mail.

The American Revolution required similar commitment to freedom - commitment of one's life, by many, many who hated despotism, and fought back with squirrel guns and bare feet.

Note the role of the press in the subjugation of the Ukraine.

And from other sources, note that the rebels used rocks and slingshots, and protected their bodies with wooden boards. And they consciously gave their lives. Apparently the utopians are on the run.

The EU is Looking To Confiscate Private Savings, For The Good of The EU.

"...everything that the depositors and citizens of Cyprus had to live through, seems on the verge of going continental. In a nutshell, and in Reuters' own words, "the savings of the European Union's 500 million citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says." What is left unsaid is that the "usage" will be on a purely involuntary basis, at the discretion of the "union", and can thus best be described as confiscation."

The Left will NOT be denied its cash to support all the programs it feeds to the herd, after siphonage, of course. The herd will pay for it. If they don't run on the banks. The government and the banks are not your friend.

Governments are increasingly entropic, closed systems, devouring their own metabolisms.

ADDENDUM:

From sovereignman (HT: Michael)

"This is basically the offer that the President of the United States floated last night.

And like an unctuously overgeled used car salesman, he actually pitched Americans on loaning their retirement savings to the US government with a straight face, guaranteeing “a decent return with no risk of losing what you put in. . .”

This is his new “MyRA” program. And the aim is simple– dupe unwitting Americans to plow their retirement savings into the US government’s shrinking coffers.

We’ve been talking about this for years. I have personally written since 2009 that the US government would one day push US citizens into the ‘safety and security’ of US Treasuries.

Back in 2009, almost everyone else thought I was nuts for even suggesting something so sacrilegious about the US government and financial system.

But the day has arrived. And POTUS stated almost VERBATIM what I have been writing for years.

The government is flat broke. Even by their own assessment, the US government’s “net worth” is NEGATIVE 16 trillion. That’s as of the end of 2012 (the 2013 numbers aren’t out yet). But the trend is actually worsening.

In 2009, the government’s net worth was negative $11.45 trillion. By 2010, it had dropped to minus $13.47 trillion. By 2011, minus $14.78 trillion. And by 2012, minus $16.1 trillion.

Here’s the thing: according to the IRS, there is well over $5 trillion in US individual retirement accounts. For a government as bankrupt as Uncle Sam is, $5 trillion is irresistible.

They need that money. They need YOUR money. And this MyRA program is the critical first step to corralling your hard earned retirement funds.

At our event here in Chile last year, Jim Rogers nailed this right on the head when he and Ron Paul told our audience that the government would try to take your retirement funds:"

"I don’t know how much more clear I can be: this is happening. This is exactly what bankrupt governments do. And it’s time to give serious, serious consideration to shipping your retirement funds overseas before they take yours."

I think it's a race between hyperinflation and confiscation. With confiscation there will also be hyperinflation, after the government has run through all the confiscated cash. With hyperinflation first, the need to confiscate is reduced, because the IRAs become less valuable.

However, confiscation can be more deviously employed. It's a race.

De-Normalization By Leftist Thuggery

The origin of normalization of any and all sexual activity was with the Kinsey report, which conceptually normalized sexual behaviors by claiming that they exist along a spectrum of "normal behaviors". The concept of culturally normalizing homosexuality was publicized in the book, "After The Ball", by Kirk and Madsen. Using Alinsky style techniques, homosexuals would ultimately place themselves into the position of being, rather than a disorder, a normal sexual and social state of human existence. Further, they are Victims. In other words, they would force society to normalize homosexuality.

This requires the de-normalization of all criticism of homosexuality, of course; there is to be no tolerance of dissent. Dissent is Oppression of the perpetual Victims. And that means the demonization of critics in the pursuit of destroying them as a message to other, lurking, critics. Criticism is to be jackbooted into non-existence.

The homosexual jackbooting was especially visible during the Prop 8 debacle in California, where actual violence and threats of ever more violence against dissenters resulted from a democratic vote in which the homosexuals did not get the normalization which they demanded. It was demonstrated again during the vandalism of Chik Fil A and the shooting at FRC.

So now they have have been normalized, and it is literally hazardous to express a dissenting opinion. It is no accident that thought crime laws started up as repression tactics for the normalization of homosexuality and the denormalization of dissent.

When thought crimes are normalized as acceptable tactics, then the totalitarians have also normalized jackbooting. It is now the common homosexual reaction to dissent.

Celebrating 200 Days of the IRS Scandal

Without any real progress. The culture remains intact; some top officials have split and are probably in Venezuela or someplace without extradition (just a guess). Stonewalling is still in effect. Nothing to see here, keep moving...

The Approaching Wave

The recent invective from the White House has included the labels of "terrorists", "knives at the throat", and other miscellaneous comparisons to enemies of the state, directed at the intellectual and political opposition to government lawless overspending and debt transfer to future generations.

The invective is not over, even though the Left got what it wanted (an unlimited Gold Card), and the truth is coming out via the empassioned hatred which the Left has for opposition. We are now Domestic Enemies: Enemies of the State. Is it any wonder that they want to import an all new constituency, and to remove weapons however possible? Not to mention ultimately bringing the dollar to valuelessness through inflationary printing by the Fed to support the leftist attack on the "traditionals".

Leftism In Action

The Left no longer even pretends to be anything other than attack dogs for socialism. The acrimony pouring from the white house is appalling, and increasingly common.

But perhaps the worst is the old, decrepit "mainstream" media. Their position as the media arm of the Democrat Party is no longer challengeable, and they don't bother. With MSM "journalists" flocking into the White House to receive their lucrative government appointments, and with their attacks on anything resembling constitutional speech, the MSM has rendered itself totally useless as far as getting information from. They have protected Democrat operatives from Gun Walker, Benghazi, and all of the IRS scandals and other federal agency abuses of the American people. But the scandals go on and on and on. Here's the Wall Street Journal:

ABC, CBS and NBC have so far refused to report the latest bombshell in the IRS scandal - a newly released list from the agency that showed it flagged political groups for "anti-Obama rhetoric." On September 18 USA Today, in a front page story, reported the following: "Newly uncovered IRS documents show the agency flagged political groups based on the content of their literature, raising concerns specifically about 'anti-Obama rhetoric,' inflammatory language and 'emotional' statements made by non-profits seeking tax-exempt status."

Not only have ABC, CBS and NBC not reported this story they've flat out stopped covering the IRS scandal on their evening and morning shows. It's been 85 days since ABC last touched the story on June 26. NBC hasn't done a report for 84 days and CBS last mentioned the IRS scandal 56 days ago on July 24.

The article by Gregory Korte went on to report: "The internal 2011 documents, obtained by USA TODAY, list 162 groups by name, with comments by Internal Revenue Service lawyers in Washington raising issues about their political, lobbying and advocacy activities. In 21 cases, those activities were characterized as 'propaganda.' The list provides the most specific public accounting to date of which groups were targeted for extra scrutiny and why. The IRS has not publicly identified the groups, repeatedly citing a provision of the tax code prohibiting it from releasing tax return information."

The American Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit legal institute that represents 33 of the groups appearing on the IRS list, said it appears to be 'the most powerful evidence yet of a coordinated effort' by the IRS to target Tea Party groups. 'The political motivations of this are so patently obvious, but then to have a document that spells it out like this is very damaging to the IRS,' said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the ACLJ. 'I hope the FBI has seen these documents.'"
[emphasis added]

The ACLU and the NRA Team Up, And Obama Loses A Union

Snowden will likely go down in history as an American hero. His courage is the equivalent of that of the single man stopping an entire column of tanks in Tiananmen Square during the Chinese revolt. Only Snowden has produced real results, if congress actually acts to regain its Constitutional powers.

Snowden releases new abuses by the NSA almost daily. Now the ACLU and the NRA have teamed up to fight the civil rights issues regarding the NSA's monitoring of the American populace. It probably won't make a difference with the crew in power right now.

Even unions are finally coming to their senses, with the ICE challenging the rogue president:

"...the head of the union representing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents [Chris Crane] called on Congress to investigate the administration’s immigration policies.

“And it doesn’t matter what type of legislation we pass, until we address that problem, we will never have an immigration system that works,” he added. “As long as one person can act like a dictator and ignore the law and make his own laws through policy, we will never have a system that works.”

"There is no more of a clear cut case in our country of the president overstepping his authority, ignoring the law, ignoring the Constitution, than the president’s ordering of ICE agents not to enforce U.S. immigration law,” he said. “Yet we have no investigations from Congress into this whatsoever.”

And,

"Crane continued, saying that while his union applauds congressional investigations into the IRS and Benghazi, lawmakers have failed to investigate what has been going on at his agency and “that’s got to stop.”

“You tell me, how do I call on Congress to conduct investigations because, you know, being involved in this process as I have been, it seems to me the only people that really get to be at the table to have a say about our laws are the people that have pockets full of money,” Crane said. “You know, you have to be a Mark Zuckerberg or you have to be a Chamber of Commerce to be a participant, a real participant in the creation of our nation’s laws.”
[Emphasis Added]

More Leftist Lies

The Oprah-tinged movie, "The Butler", has gotten rave reviews, yet it is factually wrong about the Reagans and their relationship with their butler, according to four presidential biographers. In an article in the Washington Post, no less, the biographers take on the portrayal of President Reagan as neutral-to-hostile regarding racial issues.

The comments, as one might expect at WaPo, are loaded with foaming hate rants about the Reagans and their supposed racism. This is boiled down to several common issues.

First, Reagan referred to a "welfare queen" who was abusing the system.  This is exceedingly racist according to the commenters; no "welfare queen" existed; it was a racist creation by Reagan. But true, according to The Washington Post itself, which documented this:

Welfare queen, Linda Taylor, was further documented in the NYT:

"But as the original manuscript for Reagan biographer Craig Shirley’s book about the 1980 campaign, “Rendezvous with Destiny,” shows — not only did the Washington Post document that Reagan was right — but so did the New York Times:

Chicago’s justice system was cracking down on people such as Reagan’s famed “welfare queen” Linda Taylor who was finally convicted of using multiple aliases and bilking the taxpayers out of thousands of dollars. (New York Times, March 19, 1977) Reagan had made much of the woman in the 1976 campaign as an example of the “waste, fraud and abuse” that the federal and state welfare agencies engaged in. It was much disputed at the time over exactly how much she stole. Human Events, Reagan’s favorite weekly newspaper, claimed one thing and some in the media claimed another about the amount of her excesses. The Washington Post account verified the conservatives’ charges about the woman, stating that she’d stolen over $150,000, had 26 aliases, three Social Security numbers, 30 different addresses around the city and “owned a portfolio of stocks and bonds under various names and a garage full of autos including a Cadillac, Lincoln and a Chevy wagon.” She incidentally had several dead husbands and had just returned from a trip to Hawaii, presumably to avoid the last bit of the winter of 1977. All of her ill-gotten goods were courtesy of the US taxpayer. “Prosecutors say there is no category of public aid—welfare payments, rent subsidies, medical reimbursements, food stamps, transportations allowances, child-care expenses, survivors’ benefits –that Taylor had neglected to apply” for. The Post re-dubbed her, “The Chutzpa Queen.” (Washington post, march 13, 1977 page 3)

From Dailycaller

The next objection is to Reagan's observation about "working people angry about the 'strapping young buck' using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store", because no one can use the word "buck" since everyone knows that it is racist - along with who knows how many other sacred words which can't be used. I lived in the South during my upbringing, and I never heard the term used that way, ever. But they can have their sacred terms, I suppose.

Actually, Reagan's point struck home because I personally have witnessed many, many incidents which are close to just that: abuse of food stamps to buy, among other things, lottery tickets, cartons of cigarettes, booze, cases of candy and pop, etc. - all on my dime. It was very common, back then, and I suspect that a great many working folks did, in fact, get angry as I did, and I was incensed.

But it is racist to point out any defect in the behavior of some who are abusing welfare, even though not all of the abusers were black, and no one said they were. Not only did Reagan NOT single out blacks, his thrust was against illegal fraud, not race. The charge of "racist" is itself racist, abusive, nasty, and pointedly protective of the dole on which the Victim Class is dependent; moreover, it is by default protective of actual fraud. And that, in pursuit of maintaining the Victim Class. The Victim Class must be maintained, or the Messiah Class is without a cause-celebre, and their self-ordained uber-morality is without a focus and has no outlet, no raison d'etre. Without a showcase, their moral superpowers are kaput. So any attack on the dole must be countered with the only weapon they have: verbal abuse. Well, that and hate crime laws.

The third objection is Reagan's use of the term: "States Rights", a Constitutional reference to the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution, and part of the Bill of Rights. This term is also now sacred and cannot be used, because it is designated as a "code word" for racism, probably because of the Democrats' use of the term when they started the Civil War. The Race Baiters are really big on secret racism, unconscious conspiracies, and sacred code words taken out of context in order to pretend racism where it does not actually exist. Racism is very important to the Race Baiters. If it doesn't exist, it must be created.

So the Bill Of Rights is racist - several parts of it. Anyone who believes that federalism should prevail rather than the current oligarchy of government-wealthy patrons, is racist. Hmm. Probably the term "federalism" is racist, too, who knows?

So who, then, is actually racist, those who need racism for their own purposes to be realized? Or those who do not?

In her recent speech Hilary Clinton claimed that the Supreme Court decision was discriminatory against blacks (and the crowd went wild). The obvious implication is that blacks are too simple, too inferior to actually obtain IDs in order to vote. Either that, OR: voter fraud is necessary for the maintenance of the Democrat Party. So which is it? Racism? Fraud? Both? (It can't be "neither": she was emphatic, so that would be an obvious lie rather than a covert lie).

The Left; they would be a hoot... if they weren't in charge.