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Using kids and Gaming-Another one that didn’t make the Erie Times-News cut.

Posted by M. C. on July 5, 2019

Update:

I received an unusually late letter acknowledgement today.

The link is: https://medium.com/@richardnfreed/the-tech-industrys-psychological-war-on-kids-c452870464ce

Persuasive technology is not a new thing.

ice

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. George S. Patton

Someone wasn’t thinking when they came up with this idea.

Here it is…

On the same day I see the Erie Times-News article about esports and SmashErie I read in http://www.medium.com about Persuasive Technology and the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab.

…“a discipline in which digital machines and apps — including smartphones, social media, and video games — are configured to alter human thoughts and behaviors.”

A few more quotes from the extensive article:

…deliberately creating digital environments that users feel fulfill their basic human drives…better than real-world alternatives.

…Dopamine Labs boasts “Connect your app to our Persuasive AI [Artificial Intelligence] and lift your engagement and revenue up to 30% … it’s proven to re-wire user behavior and habits.”

…Facebook president Sean Parker – “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?”…Facebook exploits “vulnerability in human psychology” and remarked, “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

…Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook VP says “We want to psychologically figure out how to manipulate you as fast as possible and then give you back that dopamine hit.”

The ET-N article mentions universities are creating esports teams. Why persuade students to engage in potentially obsessive behavior? Why a Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab? Now we know.

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Video Game Addiction – Living The Hotmoms Life

Mind Controller

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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: The Economic Positions of Kamala Harris (And Her Father): What You Need to Know

Posted by M. C. on July 5, 2019

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2019/07/the-economic-positions-of-kamala-harris.html

When considering the economic policy positions of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (54), it should first be kept in mind that her father, Donald J. Harris, is Professor of Economics, Emeritus at Stanford University.

He is considered a post-Keynesian and should best be thought of as writing dense obscure papers from a post-Keynesian perspective that will have no impact on future economic thinking.

When he has taken a position on current day economic policy, it has been from an interventionist perspective. We are not dealing here with a Walter Block fellow traveler.

In 2008, he wrote an essay for the Stanford Daily supporting the presidential candidacy of Barak Obama because his “record bodes well for his ability to do an outstanding job as President and to secure passage of path-breaking healthcare legislation.”

And in the March 1993 edition of The Review of Black Political Economy, he penned an article, “Economic growth and equity: Complements or opposites?,” where he denies there are market mechanisms that work toward eliminating inequality (Though it is not clear whether he means eliminating inequality for doing the same type of work or a general lowering of unequal income). The paper’s argument suggests he likely supports affirmative action and other government interventions to fix inequality.

The paper’s abstract:

There is no automatic mechanism in a market economy to guarantee reduced inequality of income with growth. Some theories lead us to expect just the opposite. At best, there are self-limiting cyclical effects, associated with changes in unemployment. U.S. economic growth has actually been quite slow since the 1950s. Besides, there are structural barriers to reduced inequality that operate with or without growth. Historical evidence for different countries presents a mixed picture. For the U.S. economy, postwar growth has been associated with an upturn in measured inequality. Government intervention has been mildly equalizing, through transfers and expenditures but not through taxes.

It appears that his daughter, Kamala, has taken her father’s general interventionist-leanings and run with them in exponential fashion.

She co-sponsored Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-All bill.

She has announced a plan to give the average public school teacher a $13,500 salary increase.

She has proposed the Rent Relief Act, which would offer tax credits to help with rents.

She has signed on as a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal.

There is no indication she has any strong positions on such important issues as the Federal Reserve, Social Security or growing government deficits.

Bottom Line: Her economic policies are all early-stage socialist and she has little to no focus at all on any important economic issues and developing economic crises. Her post-Keynesian interventionist father would probably be even less of a danger than her. The only thing going for her is that she is not Elizabeth Warren.

–RW

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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: You Will Be Shocked at the Government Economics Behind Major Fires

Posted by M. C. on July 5, 2019

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2019/06/you-will-be-shocked-at-government.html

By Robert Wenzel

This “firefighting” story will give you an entirely new perspective on how government operatives can milk a situation for lucre. Government firefighting is a crony business.

There is a major fire burning near Fairbanks, Alaska, the Shovel Creek Fire.

It is now estimated that 3,424 acres have burned. More than 500 personnel are now battling the blaze.

But just how did this fire get out of control?

I spoke yesterday with Joshua Bennett who hosts Patriot’s Lament Radio, KFAR 660  in Fairbanks about the fire. Bennet is a hardcore anarcho-capitalist. His show is an awesome machine when it comes to converting people to libertarianism, so much so that if a libertarian revolution occurs, it just might start in Fairbanks. Which is to say he knows the deal, and what he told me about major fires based on what he knows about fires handled around Fairbanks is shocking.

He told me that the Shovel Creek Fire started out as a small 15-acre fire but that fires are moneymakers so you need a much larger fire to justify bringing in large quantities of men and equipment. “Many millions of dollars are involved,” he told me and that government firefighters have no incentive to knock the fire down quickly.

“I saw air water tankers dump water from hundreds of yards to a half-mile away from the fire. That is no way to fight a fire. You need to dump the water on the flames,” he said. He has video.

He said this Shovel Creek has gotten out of control even for the firefighters’ desires but that in general, they do like fires.

“It’s been known around here that fires are sometimes set to keep the firefighters working,” he said.

He tells me that any possible way government money can be spent fighting a fire, it will be.

He said that if a fire is big enough, a staging area is set up where MREs (ready to eat food) is brought in on pallets but once the fire is put out, the MREs are not taken to another fire or taken back to storage. The pallets are all put in dumpsters to be hauled away as trash.

Bennett suspects this type of chicanery is not limited to Alaska…

But think the bigger picture here. Just how many “crises” can be milked or created for the benefit of those in government or close to it?

The only solution is to shrink government and let the private sector solve problems. With private sector solutions, you have people with skin in the game watching how operations are being conducted and how money is spent.

–RW

Paul Combs's Blog - Fire Engineering Training Community

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This Isn’t About Sneakers, But People Who Want “No USA At All” | Zero Hedge

Posted by M. C. on July 5, 2019

So as you see, this is about more than just sneakers – or even vapid virtue-signaling. This is about people who insist on being the arbiters of morality, and “canceling” anyone who dares to think otherwise; who hate the Bad Orange Man so much that they are willing to destroy the country he presides over; who chant “no fascist USA” and “no USA at all” – but then blame Russia for “sowing discord,” in order to cover up their tracks.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-04/isnt-about-sneakers-people-who-want-no-usa-all

by Tyler Durden

Authored by Nebojsa Malic,

In just a few short years, the woke crusade against “hate” in the US has gone from demanding the removal of Confederate flags and monuments to targeting George Washington, the national anthem and now even the American flag.

Seen in isolation, the decision by Nike to scrap their sneaker design featuring the original flag of the 13 colonies that declared independence from the British crown in 1776 – reportedly at the urging of ex-football player turned social justice commissar Colin Kaepernick – seems like a tempest in a teapot. Seen from another perspective, though, it’s an alarming example of a trend that threatens to unravel the few remaining threads that keep America together.

Kaepernick’s reported reasoning was that the flag is associated with slavery – which indeed existed in the thirteen colonies at the time of their revolt against King George III, and later in what became the United States of America. By that logic, however, any American flag is inappropriate, because even though slavery was abolished in 1865, discriminatory laws persisted until 1964 – over a decade after Hawaii’s statehood brought the number of stars on the flag to 50.

Tell that to the 54th Massachusetts, an all-Black regiment that fought in the Civil War and was memorialized in the movie ‘Glory’. For that matter, tell it to Barack Obama, who flew the original flag at his second inauguration, just six years ago!

Of course, everything is fine when Obama does it, from flying the Betsy Ross flag to running detention centers for illegal immigrants. They were magically transformed into a “symbol of hate” and “concentration camps” as soon as the Bad Orange Man – otherwise known as President Donald Trump – took over, however.

Cue the liberal “explainer” site Vox, which ignored Kaepernick’s reported reasoning about the flag to argue that the real problem was its use “as a symbol of white supremacy” since 2008, as a “racist” reaction to Obama’s election.

According to Vox, Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross had nothing to do with that flag anyway, the whole story was apocryphal and made up. Sure, and George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree, but he’s still revered as the Founding Father of America, right?

Of course not. Earlier this week, the San Francisco, California school board decided to remove a ‘racist’ mural of Washington that showed slaves in chains and dead bodies of Native Americans. Ironically, the mural itself was a social justice statement of its time – it was painted in 1936 by George Arnautoff, a Communist artist who studied under Diego Rivera, and wanted to depict Washington without any of the patriotic romanticism. Today, however, being woke means going all Taliban on art from the past.

The US national anthem has not been safe from scrutiny, either. Back in 2017, the statue of Francis Scott Key – who wrote the lyrics to the “Star-spangled Banner” – was defaced in Baltimore, after the liberal publication Salon denounced the anthem and Key himself as racist.

Incidentally, Kaepernick became famous – and a “moral authority,” according to Vox – when he began to kneel during the anthem at football games, saying he was protesting police violence against African-Americans.

Would “God Bless America” be safe? Not a chance. In April, sports teams rushed to banish any mention of Kate Smith –  for whom Irving Berlin wrote the song and who performed it for years at sporting events – because several songs she recorded in the 1930s “contain offensive lyrics.” Smith’s statue outside the Philadelphia Flyers arena was covered with a black tarp and then removed entirely, just like her recording of “God Bless America” was erased from the repertoire.

This is the same arena, by the way, where the Democrats held their convention in 2016 and anointed Hillary Clinton as their candidate. Somehow, Smith’s songs from the 1930s didn’t bother anyone then.

Woke warriors have also targeted the Pledge of Allegiance. Written in 1892 by a socialist, Francis Bellamy, as part of a marketing ploy to sell American flags, the Pledge has since become a secular ritual, involving school children swearing (or not) to the flag “and the republic for which it stands.” 

So if the pledge is oppression, the flag is racist, George Washington is racist, Betsy Ross didn’t exist, the anthem is racist, “God Bless America” is racist by association… where does that leave the US? Is it at least the “greatest country in the world” as its politicians – of both parties – so often declare? Actually, no, according to the New York Times.

It’s a myth “at best outdated and at worst, wildly inaccurate,” says the nation’s paper of record in an opinion video released on the eve of July 4 celebrations.

So as you see, this is about more than just sneakers – or even vapid virtue-signaling. This is about people who insist on being the arbiters of morality, and “canceling” anyone who dares to think otherwise; who hate the Bad Orange Man so much that they are willing to destroy the country he presides over; who chant “no fascist USA” and “no USA at all” – but then blame Russia for “sowing discord,” in order to cover up their tracks.

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The U.S. Killed 300 Iranian Citizens. Americans Don’t Remember This—But Iranians Do

Posted by M. C. on July 5, 2019

https://www.newsweek.com/iran-remembers-killed-americans-should-1445104

By

The downing of a U.S. spy drone, the near-launch of military action against Iran and recent unclaimed attacks against nearby oil tankers in the last month have not only set off tensions in the Persian Gulf, but invoked memories of an even deadlier time in the two rivals’ troubled history three decades ago when the U.S. killed nearly 300 Iranian civilians.

The U.S. and Iran have never officially fought a war but the two sides have engaged in bouts of violence since the CIA-backed coup that reinstalled Iran’s monarchy in 1953 and the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted that leadership for the current cleric-led government. The following decade would prove complex for Washington and Tehran amid the regional volatility of the Iran-Iraq War, during which the U.S. sought to protect Kuwaiti vessels in the Persian Gulf.

The war often spilled over into these narrow, strategic waters, where the guided-missile frigate USS Stark was bombed by a modified Iraqi warplane, killing 37 sailors in May 1987, and fellow warship USS Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine in April 1988.

The U.S. blamed Iran for the latter incident and conducted one of the largest naval operations since World War II, destroying a number of Iranian ships and killing dozens of sailors.

Less than two months later, on July 3, 1988, Aegis-armed guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes opened fire at what its crew would later claim they thought to be an attacking Iranian F-14 fighter jet.

Instead, the aircraft was Iran Air Flight 655, a Dubai-bound civilian Airbus A300 with 290 people on board—all of whom were killed.

“The incident still resonates with Iranians,” Reza H. Akbari, program manager at the U.K.-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting, told Newsweek. “Once a year, the country’s state media rebroadcasts the tragic footage of the plane’s wreckage and civilian bodies floating in the Persian Gulf. For a few days, heart-wrenching images of family members crying over the loss of their loved ones and painful facts like the number of children on board are reviewed…

As Tehran’s embassies around the world broadcast reminders of the Iran Air Flight 655 shooting in recent days, its Washington building has since remained vacant, with diplomacy between the two seeming less likely than ever before, even as the State Department touted its efforts to upkeep the property should things ever change.

Khamenei just last week referenced the airliner downing while addressing Iranian judiciary and justice officials, calling it “human rights American style!”

Noting the history of U.S. intervention in his country, he argued: “You cannot be an agent of progress, but only a factor in making this country backward. The Iranian nation will move forward provided only that you do not get involved.”

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Goodbye Dollar, It Was Nice Knowing You! — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on July 5, 2019

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/07/04/goodbye-dollar-it-was-nice-knowing-you/

Philip Giraldi

 

Over the past two years, the White House has initiated trade disputes, insulted allies and enemies alike, and withdrawn from or refused to ratify multinational treaties and agreements. It has also expanded the reach of its unilaterally imposed rules, forcing other nations to abide by its demands or face economic sanctions. While the stated Trump Administration intention has been to enter into new arrangements more favorable to the United States, the end result has been quite different, creating a broad consensus within the international community that Washington is unstable, not a reliable partner and cannot be trusted. This sentiment has, in turn, resulted in conversations among foreign governments regarding how to circumvent the American banking system, which is the primary offensive weapon apart from dropping bombs that Washington has to force compliance with its dictates.

Consequently, there has been considerable blowback from the Make America Great Again campaign, particularly as the flip side of the coin appears to be that the “greatness” will be obtained by making everyone else less great. The only country in the world that currently regards the United States favorably is Israel, which certainly has good reason to do so given the largesse that has come from the Trump Administration. Everyone else is keen to get out from under the American heel.

Well the worm has finally turned, maybe. Even the feckless Angela Merkel’s Germany now understands that national interests must prevail when the United States is demanding that it do the unspeakable. At the recently concluded G20 meeting in Tokyo Britain, France and Germany announced that the special trade mechanism that they have been working on this year is now up and running. It is called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (Instex) and it will permit companies in Europe to do business with countries like Iran, avoiding American sanctions by trading outside the SWIFT system, which is dollar denominated and de facto controlled by the US Treasury.

The significance of the European move cannot be understated. It is the first major step in moving away from the dominance of the dollar as the world’s trading and reserve currency. As is often the case, the damage to US perceived interests is self-inflicted. There has been talk for years regarding setting up trade mechanisms that would not be dollar based, but they did not gain any momentum until the Trump Administration abruptly withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran over a year ago…

Indeed, the White House appears to be willing to engage in economic warfare with Europe over the issue of punishing Iran. The Treasury Department issued a statement regarding the Mandelker letter, saying “entities that transact in trade with the Iranian regime through any means may expose themselves to considerable sanctions risk, and Treasury intends to aggressively enforce our authorities.” Mike Pompeo also was explicit during a visit to London on May 8th when he stated that “…it doesn’t matter what vehicle’s out there, if the transaction is sanctionable, we will evaluate it, review it, and if appropriate, levy sanctions against those that were involved in that transaction. It’s very straightforward.”

It is perhaps not unreasonable to wish the Europeans success, as they are supporting free trade while also registering their opposition to the White House’s bullying tactics using the world financial system. And if the dollar ceases to be the world’s trade and reserve currency, what of it? It would mean that the Treasury might have to cease printing surplus dollars and the US ability to establish global hegemony on a credit card might well be impeded. Those would be good results and one might also hope that some day soon the United States might once again become a normal country that Americans would be proud to call home.

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Monopoly Fiat Money ? | 2012 Patriot

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“Raise My Taxes” Really Just Means “Raise Others’ Taxes” | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 4, 2019

https://mises.org/wire/raise-my-taxes-really-just-means-raise-others-taxes

…First we must question how the rich got that way. What if they did so by force, fraud, or deception? If so, they got rich by harming others. In that case, which reveals government failure to do an effective job of protecting their citizens against predatory actions, the appropriate response is to compensate those harmed and prevent similar harms in the future. It is not to pay government more in taxes. That doesn’t make those harmed whole. In fact, it may do nothing for them. And, however utopian the beliefs about how the government would spend the money, in fact, government will spend the resources however it chooses (and remember, the “other” party will also be in charge part of the time). Further, we must take into account the long record of government failure to do anything efficiently and effectively, not to mention the harm its policies often impose on those not at the top (e.g., licensing laws, supply restrictions, and import barriers), which makes it a poor mechanism to actually achieve something more like utopia than dystopia.

Alternatively, what about people who got rich via voluntary arrangements without force, fraud, or deception? They benefited by making others better off, not at their expense. Further, since the market provides a premium reward for finding ways to benefit large numbers of others, to get really rich often means benefiting millions. And the benefits to others can easily dwarf the benefits captured by their creators. Yet while income and wealth data count the market wealth increases of producers, it omits the wealth (or well-being) increases to the benefited consumers, allowing mutual gains to appear as the rich benefiting at the expense of others because their share of measured income or wealth rises (this is also only one of many measurement misdemeanors behind inequality rhetoric and promises to fix it). The core takeaway, though, is that when one earned more because he or she benefited others, there is no harm to society or unfair burden to others that needs to be atoned for with higher taxes in order to pay one’s “fair share.”

In either of the cases above, paying more taxes to government is not a solution, much less an effective or justified one. Therefore, “fair share” rhetoric often reduces to “more for me” desires by those who expect more for themselves from the arrangement (including far-from-poor government employees who will administer the bureaucracies behind the utopia-to-be). In addition, it represents envy on the part of those who wish to punish the successful. But not only is relying on one of the seven deadly sins a poor basis for governing that either defends our unalienable rights or our general welfare, we must remember that punishing the successful means giving them far less of an incentive to use their assets to improve others’ lives as the means to improving their own, which is a highly questionable way to help those others.

The inadequate logic of the “fair share” claim is reinforced by the fact that the group being accused of violating that standard in fact bears far greater tax burdens, in total and as a share of their income, than those accusing them. And those far higher taxes aren’t paying for proportionately greater benefits to them. And there is never a cogent reason provided for why someone who has a lower income—whose market efforts benefitted others less–thereby acquires a greater property right to others’ earnings acquired voluntarily, which is the obverse side of “fair share” complaints. And it is not as if the non-rich get no government assistance now, given the trillions of dollars that have been spent on poverty programs and income redistribution in America.

The “tax me more” saints are also mainly proposing to tax others for their purposes…

The small fraction of the highest earners or the wealthiest who claim to be more noble higher tax volunteers are doing so only if others similarly situated are forced to do the same, whether they agree or not. If there are, say, a couple dozen “tax me more” volunteers out of a top wealth or income tier with 70,000 households, it is clear that the volunteers are actually promising to pay very little of the total cost of what they advocate. The main effect is actually to force others, who need not in any way share their views or evaluations of the programs in question, to pay for their favored causes, by exploiting voters’ envy and desires to get something for nothing…

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Lincoln and Trump: Two of a Kind? | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 4, 2019

Did you learn this in government school? Me neither.

https://mises.org/wire/lincoln-and-trump-two-kind

President Trump has outraged legions of political opponents with his plan to give a Fourth of July speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. A Washington Post columnist frets that Trump’s speech will leave a “stain” that “won’t ever completely wash away.” But before any more teeth-gnashing occurs, we should recognize the surprising parallels between Trump and President Lincoln.

Trump sparked an uproar in 2017 by tweeting derisively about the “so-called judge” who blocked his order severely restricting immigration from seven nations. Twitter was not around in the 1860s so Lincoln never took online swipes at the judiciary. However, when Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled in 1861 that Lincoln had no right to suspend habeas corpus along a railroad corridor, Lincoln ignored his decision. The following year, Lincoln greatly expanded the suspension, resulting in the arrest and military trials of people who had done nothing more than insult the president. Up to 15,000 northerners became political prisoners as a result of Lincoln’s orders.

Trump mortifies the press corps and millions of non-ink-stained wretches when he denounces that the media is “the enemy of the American people.” Lincoln refrained from such rude comments during his four years in the White House. However, on May 18, 1864, Lincoln issued an executive order for “arrest and imprisonment of irresponsible newspaper reporters and editors” after the New York World and Journal of Commerce published an incorrect report on a pending expansion of conscription. Lincoln forcibly shut down 300 newspapers in the North that were insufficiently supportive of military policies and hundreds of editors, publishers, and reporters were tossed into prison without charges.

Trump has been widely condemned for canceling the Obama administration mandate compelling every public school to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice. Transgender rights were not an issue in the 1860s, but Lincoln’s treatment of the most reviled ethnic group of his era was not his finest hour. In 1862, Lincoln approved the largest mass execution in American history — 39 Sioux Indians. In 1863, Lincoln approved brutally expelling Navajos and Apaches from the New Mexico territory. In 1864, John Evans, a personal friend of Lincoln’s and his appointee as Colorado territorial governor, launched a military campaign that culminated in the U.S. cavalry slaughtering more than 100 peaceful Indian women and children at Sand Creek, an unprovoked attack that even Congress labeled a “massacre.”

Trump was denounced for his “tyrannical and despotic” attempt to withhold federal funds from self-proclaimed “sanctuary cities” that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Rather than sanctuary cities, Lincoln dealt with border states that threatened to secede and he did not rely on sweet words alone. In September 1861, Lincoln sent federal troops to arrest pro-southern members of the Maryland legislature. In Kentucky, Union commanders targeted Southern sympathizers with roving “execution squads,” as the New York Times noted. Vast swaths of southern Missouri were devastated and depopulated to prevent any support for Confederate forces.

Trump suggested in 2016 that the U.S. government could kill the families of terrorists to dissuade others from launching attacks — and to hell with Geneva Conventions rules protecting non-combatants. Lincoln also relied on a catch-all notion of collective guilt. Shortly before his 1864 march across Georgia, Union Gen. William Sherman telegramed Washington that “there is a class of people — men, women, and children — who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.” Lincoln congratulated Sherman for a ruthless destructive campaign that made “Georgia howl.” After Union Gen. Phil Sheridan torched much of Virginia, Lincoln sent him a message declaring “my own personal admiration and gratitude for the month’s operation in the Shenandoah Valley.” Historians swept Lincoln’s brutal tactics under the rug long before his memorial was consecrated in 1922.

Trump and Lincoln are soulmates on today’s most contentious economic issue. Trump portrays imports as a pox while his trade wars are ravaging American farmers and many manufacturers. Promising high tariffs helped Lincoln capture the presidency in 1860 and he cheered in February 1861 when congressional Republicans boosted tariffs as high as 216%. The New York Times denounced that bill as a “disastrous measure” that “alienates extensive sections of the country we seek to retain” and will “deal a deadly blow … at the measures now in progress to heal our political differences.” That tariff law helped drive Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee out of the Union, thereby making the Civil War far more destructive. Protectionism remains as idiotic now as it was 150 years ago but politicians continue to demagogue the issue…

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'Welcome to 'All Sides of the Issues.' Here's our panel of commentators -- a communist, a socialist, a liberal, and a progressive....'

 

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5 reasons Independence Day is for the anti-government rebels | The Daily Bell

Posted by M. C. on July 4, 2019

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/5-reasons-independence-day-is-for-the-anti-government-rebels/

By Joe Jarvis

No matter how many things are wrong with this nation, Independence Day is not a time for cynicism and pessimism.

Celebrate America, and celebrate it hard.

Because the 4th of July is NOT about supporting this government or blind patriotism.

Independence Day is about the rebel American spirit that gave a big middle finger to the government oppressors.

Yes, the government will try to take this holiday and make it about them. But true rebels know, this holiday is as anti-government as they come.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The equality of all human beings, regardless of race religion, or NATIONALITY…

These are these self-evident truths made explicit in the Declaration of Independence that we celebrate today.

1. It is your right, and DUTY to ABOLISH a government that no longer represents you.

The entire point of governments is to protect your life, liberty, and property and

whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

[W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations… reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

2. Governments are authorized ONLY by the “consent of the governed.”

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This means it is the right of any individual to withdraw their consent in a peaceful way. Government has no right to bring you violently back into the fold.

And if you find yourself in a group that is not in unanimous agreement, you have the right to leave that group.

ALL government power stems from the people. If the people delegate our powers to the government, that means the government cannot justly do anything that an individual is not justified in doing.

Can you violently attack your neighbor if he does not pay you? Can you force him into your group without his consent? Then the government can’t do it on your behalf.

At that point, it has become an unjust government, and lacks the consent required to be legitimate.

3. Rights come from the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”

[I]n the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.

Whatever you want to call it, God-given or natural law, rights exists independent of government.

The fact that someone or a group violates your rights does not render them non-existent. They are a concept, an idea that sets out the best way to interact peacefully in a society.

These natural rights say that you can associate, or dissassociate with whomever you wish.

It is your right to dissolve ties with someone–or a group–who abuses you.

4. “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” are “unalienable Rights.”

Most people might not realize that when you extrapolite these rights, they include any action that doesn’t hurt someone else.

Life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness covers the right to own the fruits of your labor. To enter into contracts, to sell, to buy, to own property.

To protect yourself against any and all aggression.

And there is a clear line that governments and individuals are wrong when they cross.

Here’s the test: is that action interfering in anyone else’s rights to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness?

No? Then it’s a right.

5. We tried to do this the easy way…

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury…

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our… brethren…

We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice…

We have not been silent about the abuses the US government have piled on top of the American people, and people of other nations.

They, and many of our brtehren have ignored and mocked these injustices.

They got fair warning, and unfortunaly one of these days, we might have to protect our rights the hard way, just like in 1776.

Be seeing you

God Bless America: The Religious Values Of The Declaration ...

 

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Why are we encouraging girls to mutilate their bodies? – spiked

Posted by M. C. on July 4, 2019

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/07/03/why-are-we-encouraging-girls-to-mutilate-their-bodies/

Joanna Williams

The Tavistock, the NHS clinic that specialises in treating children ‘who experience difficulties in the development of their gender identity’, has just released its annual batch of statistics. The figures reveal that the children being referred to the clinic are younger than ever, and that far more girls than boys are seeking treatment.

As The Times reports, over half of all the children seen by the Tavistock are now under the age of 14. The number of 13-year-olds referred in the past year rose by 30 per cent to 331, while the number of 11-year-olds is up by 28 per cent. The youngest patients were just three years old.

Three quarters of children who want help to change their gender are now girls – the highest proportion ever recorded. We urgently need to ask why girls in particular are so unhappy with the prospect of growing up to be women that they would prefer to change gender altogether.

The disparity between the proportion of boys and girls wanting to change gender exposes the myth put about by trans activists that we have an innate sense of gender identity in the brain. According to trans ideology, brains and bodies are aligned for most people – that is, their biological sex matches the gender identity in their brain – while trans individuals apparently experience a mismatch between the two. That means their bodies need to be changed and brought into line with their brains in order for their true gender to be realised. But if this really were the case, we would expect just as many males and females to experience this disjuncture between their brains and bodies. That so many more girls than boys are raising concerns about their gender identity suggests this is a social and cultural phenomenon, rather than a biological one.

The increasing number of girls looking to change gender also calls into question the view held by many radical feminists, that transgenderism is a form of ‘autogynephilia’. According to this theory, some men feel so sexually aroused by the thought of themselves as women that they transition in order to make this state permanent. This may well account for a small number of trans women who fetishise and ape stereotypical womanhood, complete with dresses, make-up and high-heeled shoes. In turn, some feminists accuse autogynephilic men of effectively grooming children on the internet to become trans. But even if these men are all-powerful and extremely persuasive, this clearly cannot account for such a sharp rise in teenage girls seeking gender reassignment.

 

The messages children receive about gender are shaped by our culture. Ironically, now that many children are taught that they can choose their own gender, the limits of acceptable behaviour within the genders seem more fixed than ever. Trans activists and campaigners would have us believe that the boy who wants to wear a dress must really be a girl, and that the girl who prefers getting into fights to experimenting with make-up must be a boy. Rather than society changing to accommodate a broader range of behaviour from boys and girls, children are told that they must change. This is a cruel lesson for adults to inflict on children.

Adolescence is a difficult time in which girls, in particular, can develop a complicated relationship with their bodies, sometimes leading to self-harm. One explanation for anorexia is that it is an attempt by adolescent girls to stop growing up and to keep their body childlike. Anorexia is taken very seriously by parents, teachers and health professionals who encourage girls to eat. But when teenage girls want to harm their bodies by chest-binding or taking puberty-blockers, they can find that these behaviours are not just validated but actively supported by schools and social workers. Charities and pressure groups like Mermaids or Stonewall need to be held to account for promoting the idea that changing gender is an answer to the problems some young people face.

Adolescents, influenced by their friends, experiment with different identities in a bid to work out who they are. For girls struggling with their sexuality, being a lesbian is rarely presented as a positive choice. Increasingly, homosexual women in the public eye describe themselves as ‘gay’ rather than ‘lesbian’. Whereas openly gay men front popular television shows, pop bands and become YouTube stars, lesbian women are hardly as visible or as aspirational. For girls today, it can seem easier to come out as transgender than to come out as a lesbian.

Feminists must also take some responsibility. Girls today grow up with feminists telling them, at every turn, that life as a woman is awful: they will be sexually harassed, paid less than men, face a lifetime of domestic drudgery, and still be judged and found wanting. This is hardly something for girls to look forward to. At the same time, feminism saves its biggest respect for those who have suffered most. Turning trans is a surefire way for girls to achieve the moral beatification doled out to victims. Sadly, this seems to be a very enticing prospect for many teenage girls.

For young people today, publicly struggling with your gender identity can mark you out as being at the cutting edge of progressive thought, and as more sensitive and more troubled than everyone else. We are at risk of making gender reassignment something fashionable. What’s truly appalling is that a significant number of adults are not just going along with this, but are actively encouraging teenage girls to mutilate their bodies. They should be condemned for child abuse.

Joanna Williams is associate editor at spiked.

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