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‘Delete It’: Elon Musk Slams Biden’s Build Back Better Bill – Full Interview – LewRockwell.com

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2021

New respect for Elon Musk

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/12/no_author/delete-it-elon-musk-slams-bidens-build-back-better-bill/

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Medicare Data Shows 48,465 Deaths Over 80 Within 14 Days Of Shots: Scrubbed As Non Vaccinated: Renz

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2021

https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/medicare-data-shows-48465-deaths

Celia Farber

This below was submitted as a comment by Edmond Paré. It is of critical importance, as a follow up to the Pfizer smoking gun documents, which Gate funded “fact checkers” are busy denying. [Their essential “Correction” is this: 1. People die, ok? 2. Anyone can file a VAERS report. (Displaying elite contempt for ordinary people.)

At 3:53 of the Thomas Renz video linked below, he reveals raw data from the Medicare servers, “CMS servers.” 18.1% of Americans are on Medicare, or 59.4 million people.

48,465 people over the age of 80 died within 14 days or their first or second dose. “This is raw data,” says Renz. “Raw. There’s no analysis.” He goes on the remind us of the insult-to-injury fact that the system rigged it such that if a person dies within 2 weeks of a a ‘vaccine,’ they are counted as unvaccinated.

Have you ever heard anything like this in your life?

More raw data: Of those patients given Remdesivir, 25.9 % died. More than a quarter. Of those, 46% died within 14 days of treatment. This is what Fauci considers a “life-saving treatment.”
Remdesivir causes kidney failure. This is true of most of the “vir” drugs that emerged from Fauci’s post-AZT, post David Ho “drugs-into bodies” HIV medication boom. More on this another time. Here’s Mr. Paré:

“With regard to these Pfizer documents, Dr Bryan Ardis of Texas uncovered a list of possible serious Covid-19 vaccine-induced adverse outcomes that the FDA has been withholding/hiding from the medical community, from authorized dispensers, and from all potential Covid-19 “vaccine” recipients. The FDA has had this CBER list since at least October 22, 2020, two months prior to the Covid-19 “vaccine” roll-out here in the U.S. At the same meeting, the CDC presented a similar list of possible adverse events they would be tracking. Interestingly, and not surprisingly, the Table 7 adverse events recorded by Pfizer are what were fully expected by the FDA and CDC to start being reported to them once the vaccinations started.

After watching/listening to several hospital healthcare personnel whistleblowers stating that it is primarily vaccinated individuals presenting to hospital, not with Covid-19 symptoms, but with what appear to be Covid-19 vaccine-induced injuries; and, then encountering vaccine-injury attorney Aaron Siri’s substack, I wrote the following article to assist in disseminating this info. At one point, GlobalResearch changed the URL, deleting all of the stats to that point, but that’s another story.

The FDA’s “Intentional Malfeasance”: Vaccine Injuries include “Deadly Strokes, Bizarre Rashes, Cardiac Arrest, Blood Clots, Neurological Symptoms

https://www.globalresearch.ca/do-you-truly-want-end-mandates-then-everyone-must-call-out-fda-withholding-serious-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-event-outcome-information-medical-community-authorized-dispensers-vaccine-recipients/5760435

The reason I’m posting this here is that, in addition to these FDA lists, the ten hospital whistleblower interviews and the eleven physician declarations of vaccine-injury to themselves and/or to their patients, I believe commenters here will be particularly interested in watching/listening to international trial attorney Reiner Fuellmich’s interview of Dr Bryan Ardis, where the first half of the interview explains how Ardis uncovered Herr Fauci’s genocidal dictate that all hospitals employ the deadly remdesivir as the primary drug in their Covid-19 treatment protocol; and the second half of the interview which “…deals with the CBER FDA C-19VAE list of possible serious adverse event outcomes (of Document 2 above); and briefly discusses the tens of thousands of apparently vaccine-related deaths reported to the VAERS and to the CMS (Medicare/Medicaid) reporting systems.”

In this regard, in the following recent bitchute video, attorney Thomas Renz of Renz-Law.com presents CMS (Medicare/Medicaid) data from New York State which undeniably proves that, contrary to statements by the FDA and CDC, the serious Covid-19 vaccine-induced adverse event outcomes from these lists, including “deaths” are occurring in large numbers of partially vaccinated and fully vaccinated individuals.

ATTORNEY THOMAS RENZ We Got Them! Fact Check This! ALL NEW WHISTLEBLOWER INFO

https://www.bitchute.com/video/2pmlxhO374X2

If you’re pressed for time, skip forward to time = 12:46; but, I would encourage you to listen to the entire presentation.

And, finally, to truly understand the seriousness of the issues at hand, watch, on bitchute, the following interview of Karen Kingston, who was introduced in the above Thomas Renz presentation as the ex-Pfizer employee whistleblower. Karen Kingston has a superb grasp of these deadly vaccines and will surprise you with the depth and extent of her knowledge.

Covid-19 “Vaccines” Are Poison: Greg Hunter Interviews Pharmaceutical Analyst Karen Kingston

And, get the word out on Plandemic III, coming soon (-:

Plandemic 3 Teaser”

—Edmond Paré, submitted as comment

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Writings present and past by Celia Farber

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The Individual in Society | Mises Institute

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2021

A man has freedom as far as he shapes his life according to his own plans. A man whose fate is determined by the plans of a superior authority, in which the exclusive power to plan is vested, is not free in the sense in which the term “free” was used and understood by all people until the semantic revolution of our day brought about a confusion of tongues.

https://mises.org/library/individual-society

Ludwig von Mises

The words freedom and liberty signified for the most eminent representatives of mankind one of the most precious and desirable goods. Today it is fashionable to sneer at them. They are, trumpets the modern sage, “slippery” notions and “bourgeois” prejudices.

Freedom and liberty are not to be found in nature. In nature there is no phenomenon to which these terms could be meaningfully applied. Whatever man does, he can never free himself from the restraints which nature imposes upon him. If he wants to succeed in acting, he must submit unconditionally to the laws of nature.

Freedom and liberty always refer to interhuman relations. A man is free as far as he can live and get on without being at the mercy of arbitrary decisions on the part of other people. In the frame of society everybody depends upon his fellow citizens. Social man cannot become independent without forsaking all the advantages of social cooperation.

The fundamental social phenomenon is the division of labor and its counterpart — human cooperation.

Experience teaches man that cooperative action is more efficient and productive than isolated action of self-sufficient individuals. The natural conditions determining man’s life and effort are such that the division of labor increases output per unit of labor expended. These natural facts are:

  1. the innate inequality of men with regard to their ability to perform various kinds of labor, and
  2. the unequal distribution of the nature-given, nonhuman opportunities of production on the surface of the earth. One may as well consider these two facts as one and the same fact, namely, the manifoldness of nature which makes the universe a complex of infinite varieties.

Innate Inequality

The division of labor is the outcome of man’s conscious reaction to the multiplicity of natural conditions. On the other hand, it is itself a factor bringing about differentiation. It assigns to the various geographic areas specific functions in the complex of the processes of production. It makes some areas urban, others rural; it locates the various branches of manufacturing, mining, and agriculture in different places. Still more important, however, is the fact that it intensifies the innate inequality of men. Exercise and practice of specific tasks adjust individuals better to the requirements of their performance; men develop some of their inborn faculties and stunt the development of others. Vocational types emerge, people become specialists.

The division of labor splits the various processes of production into minute tasks, many of which can be performed by mechanical devices. It is this fact that made the use of machinery possible and brought about the amazing improvements in technical methods of production. Mechanization is the fruit of the division of labor, its most beneficial achievement, not its motive and fountain spring. Power-driven specialized machinery could be employed only in a social environment under the division of labor. Every step forward on the road toward the use of more specialized, more refined, and more productive machines requires a further specialization of tasks.

Within Society

Seen from the point of view of the individual, society is the great means for the attainment of all his ends. The preservation of society is an essential condition of any plans an individual may want to realize by any action whatever. Even the refractory delinquent who fails to adjust his conduct to the requirements of life within the societal system of cooperation does not want to miss any of the advantages derived from the division of labor. He does not consciously aim at the destruction of society. He wants to lay his hands on a greater portion of the jointly produced wealth than the social order assigns to him. He would feel miserable if antisocial behavior were to become universal and its inevitable outcome, the return to primitive indigence, resulted.

Liberty and freedom are the conditions of man within a contractual society. Social cooperation under a system of private ownership of the means of production means that within the range of the market the individual is not bound to obey and to serve an overlord. As far as he gives and serves other people, he does so of his own accord in order to be rewarded and served by the receivers. He exchanges goods and services, he does not do compulsory labor and does not pay tribute. He is certainly not independent. He depends on the other members of society. But this dependence is mutual. The buyer depends on the seller and the seller on the buyer.

Self-Interest

The main concern of many writers of the 19th and 20th centuries was to misrepresent and to distort this obvious state of affairs. The workers, they said, are at the mercy of their employers. Now, it is true that the employer has the right to fire the employee. But if he makes use of this right in order to indulge in his whims, he hurts his own interests. It is to his own disadvantage if he discharges a better man in order to hire a less efficient one. The market does not directly prevent anybody from arbitrarily inflicting harm on his fellow citizens; it only puts a penalty upon such conduct. The shopkeeper is free to be rude to his customers provided he is ready to bear the consequences. The consumers are free to boycott a purveyor provided they are ready to pay the costs.

What impels every man to the utmost exertion in the service of his fellow men and curbs innate tendencies toward arbitrariness and malice is, in the market, not compulsion and coercion on the part of gendarmes, hangmen, and penal courts; it is self-interest. The member of a contractual society is free because he serves others only in serving himself. What restrains him is only the inevitable natural phenomenon of scarcity. For the rest he is free in the range of the market.

In the market economy the individual is free to act within the orbit of private property and the market. His choices are final. For his fellow men his actions are data which they must take into account in their own acting. The coordination of the autonomous actions of all individuals is accomplished by the operation of the market. Society does not tell a man what to do and what not to do. There is no need to enforce cooperation by special orders or prohibitions. Non-cooperation penalizes itself. Adjustment to the requirements of society’s productive effort and the pursuit of the individual’s own concerns are not in conflict. Consequently no agency is required to settle such conflicts. The system can work and accomplish its tasks without the interference of an authority issuing special orders and prohibitions and punishing those who do not comply.

Compulsion and Coercion

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Climate Change as Our Most Recent Iteration of Religious Sacrifice

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2021

Climate change is big topic in America. But why does the public embrace it? Climate change is not a new idea; it is the modernization of an old one which humans have long believed.

https://thinkspot.com/discourse/kyugVZ/post/randaljuliiano/climate-change-as-our-most-recent-iteration-of-religious-sacrifice/RKteB0

randaljuliiano

In 2016, three-out-of-four Americans reported that they were particularly concerned about helping the environment as they go about their daily lives(1). In 2019, half said that human activity contributes “a great deal” to climate change (seen below). Indeed, Americans believe in climate change, and believe that they are responsible.

But where do these ideas come from?

As seen below, Americans think that climate science is ambiguous. Only 27% say that climate scientists agree about human activity. Half that (15%) say that almost no climate scientists point to human activity, and the rest think that the science is undecided.

It is particularly telling that of the ~50% who blame humans, a great deal say that the science doesn’t agree. Indeed, there is a major discrepancy between what Americans say about climate change and what they say science says about climate change:

Above, we see that ~50% of Americans believe humans contribute a great deal to climate change.

Below, we see that only 27% of Americans say that this is what almost all scientists say.

In order to compare the data, I am roughly setting equal the phrases “contributing a great deal” to climate change with “mostly responsible” for climate change.

That being said, what about the other 23%? Do they believe that we’re causing climate change without believing that science proves it?

Keep in mind that makes up nearly half of the group who blame humans.

So where do they get their conviction? And can we exclude whatever is convincing them from the conviction of others who say that science leads their belief?

The two charts I compared in the previous example are separated by three years. One might say that this gap could have shrunk during that time (even to zero). But data shows this is likely not the case: as seen below, in the three year period (2013 to 2016) before the period in question, Republican opinions on the same topic changed by 1% and Democratic opinions on the subject changed by 9%.

Assuming an even split between the political parties, public opinion shifted about 5% in the previous three-year-period. Rounded, that would still leave the same gap that is represented by one-in-five Americans. It is important to note (in the text at the bottom of this graph) that the grouping of political parties is not exclusive to those at the extremes but also includes those leaning in either direction.

See the rest here

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American Cities Are Socialist Nightmares

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2021

 They want people to accept oppression and hopelessness as their lot in life, as Medieval lords of old rode roughshod over the peasants and ground them to dust

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/american-cities-are-socialist-nightmares/

by Scott McPherson

America’s cities are petri dishes of “progressive” governance. Anyone who cares to see the consequences of radical left-wing policies need look no further than our country’s urban centers. From the monstrous modernist architecture to decaying infrastructure, they look more like Soviet hell than the once-thriving metropolises that were the envy of the modern world.A genuine Renaissance in our cities is possible, if only today’s “progressives” would get out of the way.
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The English historian James Bryce called Medieval cities “centers of … intellect and freedom.” Peasants flocked to urban environments. Now the stream flows the other way. City denizens today labor under oppressive, insouciant regimes more akin in spirit to those suffered by the struggling, land-bound serfs of the past.

Students aren’t receiving anything remotely close to an adequate education in crumbling government-run schools dominated by unions more interested in feathering their nest than teaching. Any talk of change sends these tax-funded minions into the street, screaming about more tax funding and, of course, “the children”—despite the already astronomical costs associated with “public” education and its long-running record of failure. Kids don’t learn the basics, but they do learn to be treated like prisoners.

City governments penalize hardworking adults with large bureaucracies that micro-manage private businesses and require a license to engage in virtually every trade. Zoning laws prevent cottage industries. Rent control gives landlords an incentive to let their buildings fall apart. Income, sales, and property taxes take from the productive to fund a welfare system providing substandard housing in impoverished neighborhoods. Generations live in indigence.

The drug war keeps police officers chasing dealers and consumers instead of murderers, rapists, and robbers. City streets have been turned into war zones, where drug gangs kill each other over “their” territory and law-abiding citizens—the overwhelming majority—are caught in the crossfire. Continuous run-ins with police, especially in poor neighborhoods, leave residents feeling like they are under the heel of an occupying army. Even worse, gun control laws keep them disarmed and powerless.

Politicians are utterly clueless. Their campaign promises to fix roads, “fix our schools,” deal with rising crime, and “restore trust” in elected officials are quietly forgotten the day after every election, lost in the midst of all the cocktail parties. Wealthy elites, working hand-in-glove with local governments, boast of “proudly” paying their exorbitant taxes, congratulating themselves for caring so much despite the continued and growing hardships suffered by those (much) further down the socio-economic ladder. Few question the role played by government in keeping out competition and innovation.

These failures are not accidental. What you see is a natural consequence of intentional government meddling in virtually every part of people’s lives. Officious bureaucrats, prison-like schools, onerous taxes and regulations, and a heavy police presence are baked into the leftist mindset. They want people to accept oppression and hopelessness as their lot in life, as Medieval lords of old rode roughshod over the peasants and ground them to dust.

Predictions abound that the United States is on the decline, that we are entering a period of rising crime and continued social and economic deterioration. Many have completely given up on cities, abandoning them to criminal gangs and Democratic Party machines (often one and the same); in despair, they retreat to the suburbs or rural settings. One thing is certain: If we continue on the present course, our once-thriving, beautiful, safe, and exciting cities will collapse in ruins. However, this is not a foregone conclusion—if we instead embrace the principles of freedom and the free market.

Our broken education system can be fixed, if we separate school and state; parents, extended families, and even whole neighborhoods can unite to provide instruction in private homes or rented spaces. Free from the yoke of unions and politicians, kids can learn and thrive. The elimination of zoning laws would free people to open businesses close to home, or even to utilize areas of the city abandoned by the political class. Abolishing barriers to entry, like occupational licensing laws, would open up every industry to competition; consumers, not city employees (who often act to protect entrenched interests), would decide for themselves if a tradesman was honest, competent, and dependable. Police resources can be used to catch actual criminals; a private citizen engaged in peaceful commerce should never fear the gendarmes at his door. Finally, the dignity of all people should be acknowledged by repealing laws that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. The armed, free citizen is the surest way to take back city streets from the criminal class.

A genuine Renaissance in our cities is possible, if only today’s “progressives” would get out of the way.

This post was written by: Scott McPherson

Scott McPherson is a policy adviser at the Future of Freedom Foundation, and author of Freedom and Security: The Second Amendment and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. An advocate of the Free State Project, he lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

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Watch “Weekly Update — Biden’s ‘Democracy Summit’ is a Joke” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2021

https://youtu.be/GkDjLNQFDJc

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Assad, Syria and China’s New Silk Road – by Matthew Ehret

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2021

https://matthewehret.substack.com/p/assad-syria-and-chinas-new-silk-road

Matthew Ehret

Ever since Russia and China began challenging the Anglo-American scorched Earth doctrine in 2011 with their first vetoes against US intervention into Syria, the Gordian knots that have tied up the Arab world in chaos, division and ignorance for decades have finally begun to unravel.

Where just one decade ago the unipolar vision of the ‘new American century’ reigned unchallenged, by 2013 the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) had sprung into life, and the largest purges of China’s deep state on record were launched under Xi Jinping’s watch. This latter crackdown even earned the ire of the American intelligence community, with war hawk John Bolton complaining that Xi’s authoritarianism has made the CIA job of maintaining its spies inside China nearly impossible.

This new operating system, tied closely to Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union, has grown in leaps and bounds. Today, a new multipolar future has emerged; one which plans to actually deliver long-term development for all those who choose to play by its rules.

One of these adherents will be Syria, which is re-emerging onto the world’s stage after having miraculously defended itself from a ten-year military onslaught launched by the old unipolar players.

Of course, the pain and destruction of the war is still deeply felt; illegal US sanctions continue to plague the hungry masses, prevent the reconstruction of basic infrastructure and access to potable water, and cripple schools, hospitals, businesses, and livelihoods.

The BRI and Syria’s new future

On 5 November, China’s President Xi Jinping spoke with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, saying “we welcome the Syrian side’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative and Global Development Initiative” and calling for reconstruction, development, and the defense of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The discussion came in the wake of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s whirlwind tour across West Asia and North Africa in July 2021, during which he met the Arab League’s chief to discuss Syria return to the fold.

By the end of this tour – which coincided with Assad’s re-election – China had signed a four-point proposal for solving Syria’s multifaceted crisis with a focus on large scale reconstruction, ending illegal sanctions and respecting Syria’s sovereignty.

Syria, in turn, re-affirmed its support for China’s territorial integrity in the face of western-sponsored separatist movements in Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

China’s interest in West Asian development was first made known in 2017 when Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang stated:

“Too many people in the Middle East are suffering at the brutal hands of terrorists. We support regional countries in forming synergy, consolidating the momentum of anti-terrorism and striving to restore regional stability and order. We support countries in the region in exploring a development path suited to their national conditions and are ready to share governance experience and jointly build the Belt and Road and promote peace and stability through common development.”

In 2018, China offered $28 billion in development aid to Syria while simultaneously coordinating the integration of Iraq into the BRI, made official in September 2019 when then-Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi unveiled the China-Iraq oil-for-reconstruction program and Iraq’s broader integration into the BRI framework.

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Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr.’s Heroic Resistance to the CIA’s Continuing Covid Coup D’état – Edward Curtin

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2021

By stupid he did not mean that such people lacked intellectual ability, for they were often very smart, but that they had fallen under the spell of public power and lost all independence of mind. Thus he adds, “He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.”

http://edwardcurtin.com/robert-francis-kennedy-jr-s-heroic-resistance-to-the-cias-continuing-covid-coup-detat/

ejcurtin

A Meditation

With his extraordinary new book, The Real Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, RFK, Jr. has made it very clear that he will not allow Orwell’s 1984 totalitarian boot to stamp on his face.  His is a very rare moral courage, and he is asking us to join him, before it is too late and we enter into a new dark age, in recognizing and resisting the evil forces intent on stamping out democracy around the world.  He is not pulling his punches with language as he accuses the political-intelligence-media-money-medical-corporate-pharmaceutical conspirators of executing “the controlled demolition of American constitutional democracy.”  For a brilliant and highly accomplished lawyer and excellent writer and speaker, the choice of those words “controlled demolition” is clearly intentional.

For anyone who doubts that the Covid-19 crisis is an intelligence-run operation controlled by spooks working with medical technocrats like Anthony Fauci, billionaires such as Bill Gates, the military, media, Big Pharma, the World Economic Forum, etc., a close reading of this book – with its 2,194 references – will disabuse one of that illusion.

The CIA has long been deeply involved with vaccines, viruses, drugs, weaponizing cancer, biological weapons, and of course massive mind-control operations – deadly propaganda in plain English – for use in controlling U.S. Americans and foreigners alike.  As Kennedy writes in an ironically understated way, “The pervasive CIA involvement in the global vaccine putsch should give us pause.”  Yes, a long pause.  He continues:

There is nothing in the CIA’s history, in its charter, in its composition, or in its institutional culture that betrays an interest in promoting either public health or democracy. The CIA’s historical preoccupations have been power and control. The CIA has been involved in at least seventy-two attempted and successful coup d’état between 1947 and 1989, involving about a third of the world’s governments. Many of these were functioningd democracies. The CIA does not do public health. It does not do democracy. The CIA does coups d’état. [my emphasis]

Just as it does Kennedy assassinations.

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Doug Casey on How Economic Witch Doctors Convince Everyone They’re Neurosurgeons

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2021

Where to start? In my opinion, the best-done single book that you can read about economics is Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. It’s only about 150 pages, and it’s a gem. Everybody should read it.

https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-how-economic-witch-doctors-convince-everyone-theyre-neurosurgeons/

by Doug Casey

International Man: The average person doesn’t care about economics. But to the extent that he does, he only reads mainstream publications like The Economist and editorials in The New York Times.

In these publications, the average person will find so-called economists advocating upside-down and destructive concepts like negative interest rates, banning cash, debt-fueled consumption, government spending, and rampant money printing as the cures to economic ailments.

And if those methods don’t work—or inflict damage—the establishment economists’ response is to simply call for more money printing, more debt, and even lower interest rates.

What’s your take on conventional economic thinking and methods?

Doug Casey: Frankly, most “economists” today are only political apologists masquerading as economists.

An economist is somebody that describes the way the world works—how people go about producing, consuming, buying, selling, and living their lives. That’s not, however, what most of today’s PhD economists do. Instead, they prescribe the way they would like the world to work and tailor theories to help politicians demonstrate the virtue and necessity of their quest for more power.

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Rural Voters, Guns, and Decentralization Sank the Democrats in Virginia | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 11, 2021

But there’s a forgotten man behind Youngkin’s electoral success: the rural voter. This vote was strong not only in terms of the percentages but also in terms of turnout, which was able to take Youngkin across the finish line.

https://mises.org/wire/rural-voters-guns-and-decentralization-sank-democrats-virginia

José Niño

America’s growing rural divide is not going away any time soon. Recent gubernatorial elections in Virginia have rekindled talk about an inevitable Republican resurgence during the 2022 midterms. History has repeatedly shown the party outside of the White House making gains during the midterms elections, one of the most predictable trends of election cycles in American history.

However, what’s more intriguing is some of the new trends that are gradually crystallizing as fixtures of twenty-first-century politics, namely, soft secession. Although Virginia’s 2021 elections had the trappings of an off-year election, what took place below the surface was simply too enticing to ignore.

There was much talk about the suburban vote in Virginia, and justifiably so. Running under the Republican banner, Glenn Youngkin improved Republican margins with voters in major suburbs across the state by hammering away at the latest iteration of leftist curricula engulfing public schools in the Old Dominion.

But there’s a forgotten man behind Youngkin’s electoral success: the rural voter. This vote was strong not only in terms of the percentages but also in terms of turnout, which was able to take Youngkin across the finish line. For example, Donald Trump only beat Joe Biden 52–46 percent among rural voters during the 2020 elections. Youngkin dramatically expanded upon the victory margin, winning the rural vote by a decisive 63–36 percent margin, according to an exit poll by Edison Research.

Political onlookers were enthralled by Youngkin’s strong rural performance. Some pundits at the milquetoast conservative outlet The Bulwark even described Youngkin’s victory margins in rural areas as “Assad-like.” The culturally radical path the Virginia Democratic Party has taken since it achieved a trifecta in 2019 offers a glimpse of what caused such an electoral backlash. Specifically, gun policy stands out as an underrated factor behind the strong rural reaction against Virginia Democrats.

Much of this vote likely came on the heels of the budding Second Amendment sanctuary movement kicking off in 2019. This was the year the Democrat-controlled General Assembly passed red flag gun confiscation orders, universal background checks, and monthly limits on the number of handguns a law-abiding individual can purchase.

Subsequently, Virginian gun owners marched straight to their county supervisors’ meetings where they pushed for the implementation of Second Amendment resolutions. By getting active in their respective localities, gun owners quickly built a sizable bloc of angry voters who were ready to lash out against any Virginia Democrat running for statewide office.

Presently, there are well over two hundred municipalities in Virginia that have passed sanctuary resolutions of some sort. The rural counties Youngkin dominated in were among the most prominent in the sanctuary movement. Areas such as Carroll County, the first county to pass a sanctuary resolution in 2019, went to Youngkin handedly, by a vote of 83 percent to 16 percent. This was a marked improvement on Republicans’ victory margin in the 2017 gubernatorial election (77 percent to 22 percent).

The vote breakdown of Virginia elections illustrates the heightened degree of polarization of US politics, where rural areas are not only moving in the opposite direction with regard to their voting behavior but are also trying to break away from urban cores imposing their self-styled “progressive” values on them. We shouldn’t forget that rural Virginia has entertained the idea of seceding from Virginia and potentially joining West Virginia.

The 2021 gubernatorial election could be widely seen as a victory for frustrated Virginians who used the elections as an outlet to constructively lash out against the state’s ruling class. Before the elections, the Democratic trifecta thought its gun control power grab would not be met with pushback. They were operating under the arrogant assumption that Virginia was on the fast track to California or New York status. However, they vastly underestimated the level of furor boiling over in the Virginian hinterlands.

For many Virginians living in Second Amendment sanctuary counties, the right to bear arms is an integral part of their identity. In fact, it would not be a stretch to assume that a sizable portion of rural Virginians can trace their lineage back to the initial settlement of Virginia or share Scots-Irish ancestry—a group that has stubbornly resisted centralized political power since the eighteenth century. Any form of gun control, or iconoclastic attempts to erase their heritage, will activate rural Virginian voters.

Electoral jubilee notwithstanding, governing a state is a whole different kettle of fish. As I mentioned in a previous post on this website, Youngkin appears to be a typical Republican who will not rock the boat. That means lukewarm tax cuts and platitudes about limited government are in short order.

From a historical standpoint, Republican gatekeepers have repeatedly co-opted the contrarian energy of disaffected groups and reoriented it into regime-friendly projects that don’t accomplish much of substance. The biggest fear coming in the wake of Virginia’s elections is the possibility of many individuals going back home now that a Republican is in office, thereby doing nothing to fix Virginia’s current laws or discontinue the decentralist project that the sanctuary movement jump-started.

Indeed, there are valid criticisms of the present set of Second Amendment sanctuary projects, so there’s a significant amount of work to be done. The worst thing that could happen is for people to pack up and stay on the sidelines, thinking everything will be fine and dandy with Republicans back in office. As always, vigilance and dissatisfaction should be the principal mindsets that guide people’s political actions.

All told, the ship has sailed for “normal” politics in America. If anything, the Virginia case shows the need to make nullification projects the new normal. Why bother trying to preserve the very same political order that brought us to our current state of political malaise?

The American system needs a major shake-up. The ever-growing nullification rebellion might just do the trick. Author:

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José Niño is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. Sign up for his mailing list here. Contact him via Facebook or Twitter. Get his premium newsletter here.

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