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Home Schooling: Here’s What Our Masters Say

Posted by M. C. on May 24, 2022

And you’d better pay attention

“James Dwyer, a law professor at the College of William and Mary. He is the professor famous for claiming that ‘The reason parent-child relationships exist is because the State confers legal parenthood …’ In his 1994 law review article ‘Parents’ Religion and Children’s Welfare: Debunking the Doctrine of Parents’ Rights’ (82 Calif. L. Rev. 1371), Dwyer argued that ‘the claim that parents should have child-rearing rights—rather than simply being permitted to perform parental duties and to make certain decisions on a child’s behalf in accordance with the child’s rights—is inconsistent with principles deeply embedded in our law and morality’.”

By Jon Rappoport

Jon Rappoport’s blog

Daniel Greenfield, writing at Front Page Magazine, offers this gem:

“Elizabeth Bartholet, the director of Harvard Law’s Child Advocacy Program, described the ‘homeschooling phenomenon’ as a ‘threat’ to society, claiming that conservative parents ‘homeschool because they want to isolate their children from ideas and values central to our democracy’, ‘promote racial segregation and female subservience’, and ‘question science’.”

“Her paper called for a ‘presumptive ban on homeschooling, with the burden on parents to demonstrate justification for permission to homeschool.’ These views are not fringe.”

Of course, this elite Harvard titan, Bartholet, knows which ideas and values are central to our democracy; and the place to drill them into children’s heads is public school.

Which pretty much sums up what public schools are for.

She also has a complete grasp of science in all fields, and she can identify disruptive questions which would lead unsuspecting people down the wrong track.

Appoint her the head of Something Big immediately.

Like all of her super-educated colleagues, she manages to forget that the United States is a Republic, not a democracy. But a democracy is what she needs, because under that system the well-oiled systems of money determine which voices are heard and which are silenced.

The voices that are heard are called “the will of The People.” So says the press, which is basically a PR and marketing operation on behalf of Money. As a cover, the press pretends to be an advocate for the poor and the underserved.

Elizabeth Bartholet should be pumping gas and collecting tumbleweed at a station in Death Valley, where she can talk to herself and right all the wrongs of society.

It’s always this way with elites; they know what we need because we can’t know it. They labor to supply us with their values because ours are worthless.

Their bottom line, when it comes to education? Children don’t belong to their parents. They belong to the State. So you see, their territory of operation is far wider than schools. They’re werewolves, and parents are silver bullets.

In 2020, Bartholet was a co-organizer of a Harvard summit on homeschooling, along with law professor James Dwyer. The announcement for this summit included the following profile of Dwyer. Buckle up:

“James Dwyer, a law professor at the College of William and Mary. He is the professor famous for claiming that ‘The reason parent-child relationships exist is because the State confers legal parenthood …’ In his 1994 law review article ‘Parents’ Religion and Children’s Welfare: Debunking the Doctrine of Parents’ Rights’ (82 Calif. L. Rev. 1371), Dwyer argued that ‘the claim that parents should have child-rearing rights—rather than simply being permitted to perform parental duties and to make certain decisions on a child’s behalf in accordance with the child’s rights—is inconsistent with principles deeply embedded in our law and morality’.”

Yes. Democracy. Certainly.

Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted? Permission from the State to perform certain limited parental duties?

Dwyer’s deep understanding of the Constitution is evident here. He realizes that, contrary to popular belief, the founding document never intended to limit and constrain central government and guarantee wide freedom to the individual.

No. Instead, it embedded government EVERYWHERE, especially within the family. Parents, the Founders reasoned, were no better than British Kings. They had to be hamstrung and placed in homes as carefully watched and monitored agents of the State, to carry out instructions on how to raise children.

Aha. Yes. Of course. How could we have missed that?

And it’s only fitting that we should receive such wisdom from Harvard, where posing as guardians of the disenfranchised while sitting on a pile of endowment money that reaches to the moon has been raised to an art form.

At Harvard, the elites play in the fields of the Lord and stoop to offer us mandates about the basics of life itself.

Mother? Father? Son? Daughter? These are grave misnomers which arose owing to parental ignorance and overreach.

A vast course correction is needed, and our rulers will define the law and guide the way.

Bow the head, bend the knee, and give thanks.

Or you could build a moat around your home and fill it with crocodiles. While you home school your children.

You know, mothers—the children YOU GAVE BIRTH TO.

Unless you believer sex, conception, pregnancy, and birth are mere footnotes of State law.

Decreed by Harvard.

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DOLBY Atmos for MUSIC, here to stay?

Posted by M. C. on May 23, 2022

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Stop TRACKING LINKS from following you!

Posted by M. C. on May 23, 2022

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Why Rothbardians Should Oppose Roe v. Wade

Posted by M. C. on May 23, 2022

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

It means that libertarians should cease putting all their judicial eggs in the basket of hoping to get good guys, like Richard Epstein or Alex Kozinski, on the Supreme Court. Far more important is getting rid of federal judicial tyranny altogether, and to decentralize our polity radically—to return to the forgotten Tenth Amendment.”

Like most of us who write for LewRockwell.com, I’m opposed to the Supreme Court’s pro-abortion Roe v.Wade decision. If the leak proves to be accurate and the decision is reversed, I’d be glad. As the great Dr. Ron Paul says, “All who support limited, constitutional government should support overturning Roe. The Constitution does not give any branch of the federal government authority to decide what does, and does not, constitute murder. Therefore, federal courts — including the Supreme Court — have no jurisdiction to decide what the penalty should be for performing an abortion.

Overturning Roe would not create a nationwide abortion ban. Instead, it would return to the individual states responsibility for deciding what, if any, restrictions to place on abortion.

If supporters of abortion ‘followed the science,’ they would have to admit that abortion is the taking of human life. A fetus with a heartbeat is developing, but is also still a human with a right to life.

The Biden Justice Department is supporting efforts to overturn the Texas heartbeat law in federal court. President Biden is also supporting the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of federal funds for abortions. If Biden and Congress are going to use tax dollars to support abortions, then they should allow anti-abortion taxpayers to withhold the percentage of their taxes that would be used to support abortion. The same should go for those with moral objections to America’s militaristic foreign policy that forces US taxpayers to subsidize the killing of innocent men, women, and even children. . . To ensure pro-life Americans are not forced to subsidize abortions — either directly or indirectly, it could be forbidden for organizations that promote or perform abortions to receive any federal funds. Denying federal funds to international organizations that promote or perform abortions might help reduce resentment of the US in other countries.

It is no coincidence that Roe v. Wade came at a time when respect for natural rights of life, liberty, and property was on the decline. Roe contributed to the decline in respect for rights and the rise in public and private immorality. These changes have led to violent crimes, people believing they have a moral claim — that must be enforced by the government — to the property of their neighbors, and acceptance of torture and ‘preemptive’ war. The way to reverse these developments is to restore respect for the inalienable right to life, liberty, and property of all human beings, both born and unborn. The cause of life is inseparable from the cause of liberty.”

Some pro-abortionists, especially so-called “left libertarians,” criticize us in this way. “You claim to be Rothbardians, but Murray Rothbard supported abortion. You are going against Rothbard!” As usual, these phonies have it all wrong. Murray supported reversal of Roe v. Wade. As you would expect, he gives a brilliant argument for reversal.

Rothbard says something few other people would think of. Even if you are “pro-choice,” you should still favor overturning Roe v. Wade. “But even apart from the funding issue, there are other arguments for a rapprochement with pro-lifers. There is a prudential consideration: a ban on something as murder is not going to be enforceable if only a minority considers it as murder. A national prohibition is simply not going to work, in addition to being politically impossible to get through in the first place. Pro-choice paleo-libertarians can tell the pro-lifers: ‘Look, a national prohibition is hopeless. Stop trying to pass a human life amendment to the Constitution. Instead, for this and many other reasons, we should radically decentralize political and judicial decisions in this country; we must end the despotism of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary, and return political decisions to state and local levels.’ Pro-choice paleos should therefore hope that Roe v. Wade is someday overthrown, and abortion questions go back to the state and local levels—the more decentralized the better. Let Oklahoma and Missouri restrict or outlaw abortions, while California and New York retain abortion rights. Hopefully, some day we will have localities within each state making such decisions. Conflict will then be largely defused. Those who want to have, or to practice, abortions can move or travel to California (or Marin County) or New York (or the West Side of Manhattan.)” https://www.rothbard.it/articles/religious-right.pdf

Many “pro-choice” people oppose reversal because if abortion is left to the state or local community to regulate, then a poor woman who lives in an area where abortion isn’t allowed would have to travel to another area. She might not have the funds to do so, For that reason, they say, leaving abortion up for popular decision is an undue “hardship” on her. Rothbard skewers this so-called “argument:” “The standard rebuttal of the pro-abortionists that ‘poor women’ who haven’t got the money to travel would be deprived of abortions of course reverts back to a general egalitarian redistributionist argument. Aren’t the poor ‘deprived’ of vacation travel now? Again, it demonstrates the hidden agenda of the proabortionists in favor of socialized medicine and collectivism generally”

Murray also opposes forcing taxpayers to subsidize pro-abortionist physicians and counselors. “An unfortunate act of President-elect Clinton was to reverse the Bush policy of not funding physicians who counsel abortions. Leftists cleverly distorted this action as an ‘invasion of the free speech of physicians.’ But no ‘freedom of speech’ was involved. People should be free to speak, but this does not mean they must be shielded from the consequences of such speech. No person, and hence no physician, has a ‘right’ to receive taxpayer funding. Everyone may have the right to say whatever they like, but not the right to say whatever they like and still be funded by the taxpayers. And just as taxpayers should not be forced to fund abortions, neither should they be forced to fund people who counsel abortions.”

As always with Murray, he sees things in their broader context. It isn’t enough to reverse Roe v. Wade, Our target should be the whole system of federal judicial tyranny. “A commitment to radical decentralization means that pro-choicers should give up the Freedom of Choice Act, which would impose abortion rights by the federal government upon the entire country. It means that libertarians should cease putting all their judicial eggs in the basket of hoping to get good guys, like Richard Epstein or Alex Kozinski, on the Supreme Court. Far more important is getting rid of federal judicial tyranny altogether, and to decentralize our polity radically—to return to the forgotten Tenth Amendment.”

The so-called “left libertarians” don’t like Murray’s answer. They aren’t Rothbardians in any sense. We are the true Rothbardians, and we agree with Murray on this vital issue.

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That Hideous Strength

Posted by M. C. on May 23, 2022

By Ira Katz

By-the-way, the course did not go very well. One young woman said to me as we were walking out of class, “I don’t like your class.” This was surprising because students were normally less direct in those days. When I asked her why she responded, “I have to think too much.”

When I am on a driving trip with my family it is my daughter’s music or nothing on the media player. So I took the opportunity on a recent solo trip to listen to an audio book, Out of the Silent Planet, the first of the Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis. I have read a lot of Lewis, but I am normally not a fan of science fiction or fantasy. But Heather Heying mentioned this book on the Dark Horse Podcast she co-hosts with her husband Bret Weinstein, so when I came across the free audio version I went for it. As free audio versions of the two other novels in the trilogy, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, were also available, I listened to them too. Here I will primarily write about That Hideous Strength (Online version).

In Out of the Silent Planet, Dr. Elwin Ransom, a professor of philology (the branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language or languages) is kidnapped and transported to Mars. While there, he meets the planet’s various inhabitants and discovers that Earth is exiled from the rest of the Solar System. In Perelandra Ransom is transported to Venus (called Perelandra) to continue a battle against the evil forces exiled on Earth but doing mischief on this “new” planet. In both books Lewis went wild describing the landscape, the beings and their languages of the planets Mars and Venus. The influence of fellow members of the Inklings is apparent. I suppose this is all good if you like that sort of thing.

That Hideous Strength is set on Earth. A scientific think tank called the N.I.C.E. (The National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments) is secretly in touch with demonic entities who plan to assume control of the Earth. Dr. Ransom is leading a small band against the great potential danger to the human race and the planet.

Twenty-five years ago I taught a seminar for first-year university students. The concept for the course came from the university, “This course is intended to induct the student into an intellectual discussion of substantive issues, and to enhance their speaking, writing and bibliographic skills.” I described my version of the seminar in the syllabus. “The topic for this particular seminar is Truth.  The seminar will begin with readings from philosophy and theology which lead to the question of the meaning of personal existence and hence to the truth of morals.  We will next consider the role of truth in the academic disciplines history and science.  The following topic is the application of truth in the professions such as law, journalism, and politics.  The final areas of discussion will be on the arts and aesthetics, in that when we call something “good” do we imply an objective truth?” I thought a lot about what makes a good novel (also see this about my bibliophilia). I came to the conclusion that a good novel exposes the truth of the human condition through giving the reader a sense of the inner workings of the minds of the characters; and hence, of other people. A prime example is Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. I would add now that goodness can include giving the reader a vivid description of a particular time and place. As an example I include the Aubrey–Maturin series of sea novels by Patrick O’brian. A further way to judge a novel, if it is old enough, is through its precience. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four comes to many people’s minds today for its explanatory power of the current world situation.

That Hideous Strength is a “good” book on at least two of these levels, 

See the rest here

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It’s Time to Walk Away from a Hopelessly Corrupt Federal Government that Facilitates Biden’s Destruction of America

Posted by M. C. on May 23, 2022

We need to start walking away now because we no longer have the luxury of time, waiting for salvation from another potentially rigged election and depending on feckless politicians, who abuse their power and ignore the needs of their constituents.

By Lawrence Sellin
Gateway Pundit

Historically, all “revolutions” arise from societal disruption, chaos, if you will.

Case in point is the rise of Nazism.

In the 1928 German elections, the Nazis received 2.6% of the vote. In 1930, a year after the 1929 Wall Street crash, the Nazis received 18.3% of the vote. By November 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, the Nazis were the dominant party with 33.1% of the vote.

What we are now witnessing in the U.S. is planned chaos to lay the foundation for “revolution.”

That is, the Biden regime wishes to impose a global one-party totalitarian state, a retrograde hybrid governance model combining the most tyrannical aspects of the Chinese Communist Party and the World Economic Forum, in which there are no nations, but only land and people to exploit.

It is Neo-Feudalism, a world of lords and serfs.

It is possible because the American ruling class no longer identifies with the American people, but with other global elites.

In my December 2013 article “A Government Separated from the People Cannot Stand,” I described what many Americans now recognize, that the United States has become a Totalitarian Democracy, one step short of Neo-Feudalism.

The federal government is an entity unto itself operating outside of Constitutional constraints and unaccountable to the American people.

It is a system in which “elected” representatives rule a nation state whose citizens, although granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of government.

Power rests with a relatively small group of politicians and financiers, who enhance their personal wealth and privilege by looting the country through a self-serving legislative process. They maintain their authority by adjusting the levers of government and using the media to manipulate public perception and opinion.

There is now a sharp division between the bipartisan ruling class and the rest of the American populace, the “deplorables,” who are considered retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly controlled by the dictates of a central authority.

When blatant and outrageous lies are no longer sufficient to soothe the electorate into complacency, such a government must begin to curtail freedom and oppress the people in order to remain in power.

Using the false excuse of fighting “domestic terrorism” and “white supremacy,” the Biden regime has turned the U.S. security state against the American people and stripped citizens of their constitutional rights.

That is, the U.S. federal government has de facto seceded from the American People.

Already in 2014, pollster Pat Caddell noted the alienation of the American people from the federal government:

“Eighty-six percent of all voters believe political leaders are more interested in protecting their power than in doing what’s right for the American people. Eighty-three percent believe the country is run by an alliance of incumbent politicians, media pundits, lobbyists, and other interests for their own gain. Further, 79% believe that powerful interests from Wall Street banks to corporations, unions, and PACs use campaign and lobbying money to rig the system to serve themselves and that they loot the national treasury at the expense of every American. … Ninety-two percent say we must recruit and support for public office more ordinary citizens and fewer professional politicians. Not surprising when you consider that 81% believe both political parties do what’s in it for them rather than fix our nation’s problems.”

It was neither conservatism nor liberalism or Vladimir Putin, but that widespread alienation which launched Donald Trump into the presidency in 2016.

Read the Whole Article

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The Way to Stop Fake Monkey Virus Epidemic is to Not Get Injection

Posted by M. C. on May 23, 2022

By Wayne Lusvardi

Coincidentally, Monkey Pox symptoms are consistent with the abuse of the drug amyl nitrate (allergic reaction like rash; hives itching; red, swollen, blistered, or peeling skin with or without fever).  Amyl Nitrate poppers are an aphrodisiac to enhance sexual sensations. Amyl Nitrate is a toxin that can trigger viruses to naturally begin the purging process that can cause infection in the liver when the liver is infected.  Amyl Nitrate is a molecule of the salt of amyl alcohol and nitric acid.  It increases the acidity of urine.

Resveratrol Reduces Perceived Replication of Monkey Virus

The virus scare of the day, the fake Monkey Virus epidemic, now being produced at the CDC virus factory, is reported to be spreading across the U.S. and Europe. Lesser mention is made that it exclusively occurs in men who have sex with other men and spreads only within narrow sexual networks. But the media is stoking fear that the pseudo-Monkey Virus, which purportedly has already spread across animal species to humans, will spread in some non-sexual way within humans.

But viruses are not germs or microtoxins, are not contagious by airborne spit or mucus, and cannot be spread across species.  The only way for a human to get an animal virus is by injection. There are 300,000 varieties of any one virus or flu because of the 300,000 types of different tissues in the human body. A virus is a natural detergent self-made by the human body to mainly purge bacteria (called a cold) or remove inorganic chemicals and drugs (called a flu or virus). The internal activation of viruses is dependent on seasonal climate-temperature change or temperature-controlled buildings, not the ventilation in buildings (see audio Aajonus Vonderplanitz Talks Viruses and Swine Flu).  Viruses can also begin their flushing cycle from electro-magnetic exposures. This social misperception about virus contagion is similar to that of Beri-Beri and Scurvy which were once thought to be infectious but were found to be nutritional deficiencies.  But viruses do not arise from nutritional deficiency and are beneficial self-cleansing agents.

Disregarding all of the above, media in Spain reports that Monkey Virus has been found to have spread from human contact in a sauna. No mention was made if the heat from the sauna may have excited viruses to start dumping toxins just as an Epsom salt bath releases toxins and heavy metals.  Or whether those in the sauna all took drugs that started a viral infection.

Pneumonia can be self-triggered when a person’s liver is infected with toxins and one overworks the liver by eating acidic food.  As Dr. Henry Beiler, MD, states: “When the liver is depleted of sodium in order to neutralize its acids, its function may be so severely inhibited that illness results…When there is too rapid drain of the liver’s available sodium, the liver cells die”.

Nonetheless, the US has ordered $119 million in Monkey Pox “voxxines” (intentionally misspelled). Reportedly, these Monkey Pox “voxxines” will actually be relabeled from an existing stockpile of smallpox “voxxines”.  Small Pox “voxxines” are the original Swine Flu “voxxine” that killed 284,000 people. According to Dr. Eleanor McBean, PhD, the lab-made Swine Flu was a hoax meant to panic people to take voxxines.  The only way to stop a so-called animal virus epidemic is to never get an injection from a doctor.

The symptoms of the pseudo-Monkey Pox are curiously similar with the common cold or flu: fever, headache, body ache and fatigue. The distinctive symptom of Monkey Pox is a rash that occurs all over the human body, sometimes including blisters.  This typically means the liver is so infected that the skin tries to discharge the toxins through its pores.

Coincidentally, Monkey Pox symptoms are consistent with the abuse of the drug amyl nitrate (allergic reaction like rash; hives itching; red, swollen, blistered, or peeling skin with or without fever).  Amyl Nitrate poppers are an aphrodisiac to enhance sexual sensations. Amyl Nitrate is a toxin that can trigger viruses to naturally begin the purging process that can cause infection in the liver when the liver is infected.  Amyl Nitrate is a molecule of the salt of amyl alcohol and nitric acid.  It increases the acidity of urine.

Resveratrol Reduces Perceived Replication of Monkey Virus

No less than the CDC reports resveratrol significantly reduces the replication of monkeypox virus. But there is no virus germ that replicates, as a virus is not alive, cannot reproduce and cellular solvents are not contagious.  Once a virus cascade starts in one set of human cells, however, a virus may signal other groups of cells in the body to start cleansing which appears as replication.

Resveratrol’s function is to protect plants from attacks of bacteria or fungi. But the most important benefit for treating Monkey Virus is that it counteracts poor pH balance (alkaline-acid) particularly when internal acidity is too high.  As stated above, acidosis can trigger virus detergents to start cleansing the cells.  Moreover, oxalosis can mutate the red blood cell into a yeast, a mold or a fungus.  Without the red blood cell to transport oxygen with hemoglobin into the lung one can get hypoxia, one of the prevalent symptoms of the bugaboo Coronavirus. Another health benefit of Resveratrol is it can reduce blood clots, specifically those associated with COVID-19. However, if one has a serious clotting problem more potent blood thinners will need to be administered.

Monkey Virus spreads by injection, not contagion.  Nonetheless, flu and viruses can be internally triggered, among many other factors, by seasonal or artificial building temperature change and susceptibility by toxic overload of the body and acidity.

This is entirely a non-medical opinion and not to be construed as medical advice.

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Bush is Biden is Bush

Posted by M. C. on May 23, 2022

George W. Bush returns to the news with a tad too much honesty, lifting a veil on Washington’s dirtiest open secret: the Biden Democrats have become the Bush Republicans

 Today’s Biden is Bush, a helpless, terrified passenger dragged on a political journey beyond his comprehension, signing his name whenever told to appalling policies, like a child emperor or King George in the porphyria years. It’s obvious, but no one will bring it up, for the usual reason, i.e. because Trump. 

Matt Taibbi

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/bush-is-biden-is-bush?s=r

George W. Bush returned to the news last week. The man who once said, “Our enemies… never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we,” coughed up a gem of accidental truth about Ukraine. In the midst of blasting Vladimir Putin for suppressing dissent, he said:

The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine.

Iraq too. Anyway. (laughs)

Although Bush in recent years has been regularly tongue-bathed by blue-party acolytes for speaking against Trump, with Katie Hill once going so far as to admit to tears as she pondered “how much better we’d all feel if Bush were president today,” press priests from CNN to NBC to The Guardian last week tossed him back overboard over his Ukraine miss. Stephen Colbert even “waxed nostalgic,” remembering the time before his current apple-polishing period, when he was an actual satirist under Bush: “I made so much fun of him, and he gave me so many reasons to do that.”

Propaganda demands Bush take a dive now. Not only did his recent honesty malfunction complicate messaging about the unique iniquity of Russian aggression, he’s a living reminder of the uncomfortable truth that he and Joe Biden have essentially merged to become the same president.

Biden is just a less likable, more deranged version of Dubya, a political potted plant behind which authoritarians rule by witch hunt and moral mania, with Joe floating on a somehow even fatter cloud of media protection than Bush enjoyed after 9/11. Today’s Biden is Bush, a helpless, terrified passenger dragged on a political journey beyond his comprehension, signing his name whenever told to appalling policies, like a child emperor or King George in the porphyria years. It’s obvious, but no one will bring it up, for the usual reason, i.e. because Trump. The major difference is that while

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On Bush’s Freudian Confession

Posted by M. C. on May 23, 2022

Caitlin Johnstone

And Bush’s audience laughed. They thought it was great. A president who launched an illegal invasion that killed upwards of a million people (probably way upwards) openly confessing to doing what every news outlet in the western world has spent the last three months shrieking its lungs out about Putin doing was hilarious to them.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/on-bushs-freudian-confession?s=r

Oh my God. It happened. I can’t believe it really happened.

During a speech in Dallas at Southern Methodist University’s George W Bush Presidential Center on Wednesday, the man himself, George W Bush, did the best thing ever. I am pretty sure it is the single best thing that has ever happened. I do not believe I am exaggerating when I say that.

While criticizing Russia for having rigged elections and shutting out political opposition (which would already be hilarious coming from any American in general and Bush in particular), the 43rd president made the following comment:

“The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine.”

Sahil Kapur @sahilkapurFormer President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.”

May 19th 202266,604 Retweets228,587 Likes

And then it got even better. After correcting himself with a nervous chuckle, Bush broke the tension in the empire-loyal crowd with the words, “Iraq too. Anyway.” He then quipped that he is 75 years old, leaning harder on his “Aw shucks gee willikers I’m such a goofball” persona than he ever has in his entire life.

And Bush’s audience laughed. They thought it was great. A president who launched an illegal invasion that killed upwards of a million people (probably way upwards) openly confessing to doing what every news outlet in the western world has spent the last three months shrieking its lungs out about Putin doing was hilarious to them.

There are not enough shoes in the universe to respond to this correctly. 

As comedian John Fugelsang put it, “George W. Bush didn’t do a Freudian slip. He did a Freudian Confession.”

One of the many, many interesting things about this occurrence is the likelihood that Bush’s words tumbled out in the way they did because he’s either heard a lot of criticisms of his invasion or has been thinking a lot about them; a familiar neural pathway would explain why his brain chose the exact worst word he could possibly swap out for “Ukraine” in that moment. This would be a small light in the darkness for we ordinary folk who oppose war and love peace, because it suggests that even the worst empire managers cannot fully insulate themselves from our criticisms.

Michael Tracey @mtraceySpeaking of George W. Bush and Iraq, the current president was also instrumental in bringing about that war — not just by voting for it, but by using his pulpit as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to advocate for it. But today he’s got Ukraine all figured outMay 19th 2022315 Retweets1,472 Likes

The bullshit doesn’t get any more brightly illuminated than this, folks. All that spin and narrative management they’ve been pouring into the US proxy war in Ukraine, and Bush undoes it all with the Bushism to end all Bushisms.

While the western political/media class constantly rends its garments over “disinformation” about the Ukraine war even as US officials openly admit they’ve been using the media to circulate disinformation about that same war, and even as the Biden administration imprisons and persecutes a journalist for exposing US war crimes, we get a square admission that the US is no better than Russia and that the only thing obscuring this is the fact that we are all swimming in a sea of disinformation and propaganda provided by that same political/media class. 

And this admission comes not from any low-level empire lackey, but from the man himself. The guy. The man whose name alone serves as a one-word debunk of every claim made about how uniquely nefarious Vladimir Putin is on the world stage and how uniquely depraved is his invasion of Ukraine. 

If you really look at what just happened, really truly ingest it, this one incident just by itself is enough to show you that we are swimming in a sea of lies designed to give us an upside-down and ass-backwards perspective of what’s going on in the world. If Bush himself can’t always tell the difference between the invasion of Iraq and the invasion of Ukraine, then this means our news media and our politicians are lying to us constantly. They lied to us through 2002 and 2003, and they never stopped lying, and they are lying now in the year 2022.

The entire mainstream worldview is a perceptual distortion filter which obscures the public understanding of world events so severely that Bush has been not just forgiven for his crimes but actively rehabilitated in the public eye, while the enemies of the United States are continuously compared to Adolf Hitler and condemned throughout the US-dominated world.

In reality the US is the single most tyrannical and destructive government on this planet, and it is only because the public is fed a nonstop deluge of propaganda that this isn’t universally obvious. Even the worst empire managers know deep down that this is true, and, in their less guarded moments, sometimes the truth slips out.

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TGIF: True Liberals Are Not Conservatives

Posted by M. C. on May 23, 2022

by Sheldon Richman

As he closed his essay Hayek confessed that since the word liberal had been corrupted, thanks to the French Revolution and other forces, by “overrationalis[m], nationalis[m]” and socialis[m],” it had ceased to a good label for his political outlook, which he shared with Tocqueville and Acton: “What I should want is a word which describes the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution. But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to find a descriptive term which commends itself.” 

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-true-liberals-not-conservatives/

The relevance of F. A. Hayek’s essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative,” the postscript to his important 1960 book, The Constitution of Liberty, is demonstrated at once by the opening quote from Lord Acton:

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition. [Emphasis added.]

Who among true liberal advocates of individual liberty and free social evolution — aka libertarians — would deny the truth of that observation?

Hayek had European conservatism in mind when he wrote his essay, and for years, American conservatives, who still had affection for true liberalism, hastened to point this out. As Hayek wrote:

Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change. It has, since the French Revolution, for a century and a half played an important role in European politics. Until the rise of socialism its opposite was liberalism. There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of the United States, because what in Europe was called “liberalism” was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense.

Later in his essay, he elaborated that “in the United States it is still possible to defend individual liberty by defending long-established institutions. To the liberal they are valuable not mainly because they are long established or because they are American but because they correspond to the ideals which he cherishes.”

But he noted that “This already existing confusion [over labels] was made worse by the recent attempt to transplant to America the European type of conservatism, which, being alien to the American tradition, has acquired a somewhat odd character.” The confusion was compounded, Hayek wrote, when socialists began to call themselves liberals.

Many still suffer from this confusion today. But change has been afoot because the illiberals of the left and right increasingly want no part of true liberalism or the label — and in a way, that’s good. Those on the left who call themselves progressives or socialists don’t like the label liberal (or neo-liberal) because they associate it with the current permanent bipartisan prowar regime beholden to special corporate interests (so we liberals still have work to do), and virtually all conservatives eschew the label because they don’t want to be mistaken for libertarians. That’s also good.

So Hayek’s essay has new relevance for America. Would Hayek have been surprised? He would have distinguished national conservatism from neoconservatism because of the latter’s cosmopolitanism. But how could he embrace as bonafide allies people who view imperialist war as a way to create “national greatness” and social solidarity, as the neocons do? Hayek would have agreed with Abraham Bishop who said in 1800 that “a nation which makes greatness its polestar can never be free; beneath national greatness sink individual greatness, honor, wealth and freedom.”

Let’s look at Hayek’s problem with conservatism. For him, the “decisive objection” is that “by its nature,” conservatism can do no more than slow down the change that progressives have initiated. That’s not good enough: “What the liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move.” He acknowledged that although the liberal’s differences with the “collectivist radical” are greater than his differences with the conservative, the latter “generally holds merely a mild and moderate version of the prejudices of his time.” Thus “the liberal today must more positively oppose some of the basic conceptions which most conservatives share with the socialists.”

See the rest here

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