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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Talking About Stoicism 132 Expecting Bad People to Not be Bad
Posted by M. C. on July 23, 2021
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Marcus Aurelius, stoicism | Leave a Comment »
Facebook Announces Sweeping New Speech Restrictions
Posted by M. C. on July 23, 2021
Anti-discrimination comes to mean enforced silence on behalf of protected groups, no matter how central the issue in question is to the nation’s political and social future.
The battle over permissible speech in American society was helpfully, and predictably, elaborated by Facebook last week in an update to its “hate speech” rules. The social media giant’s changes are a signal of the new limits being placed on political expression and the freedom of the mind. Other major American institutions are almost sure to follow its lead.
Until recently, most online platforms largely defined “hate speech” as speech that could lead to imminent physical harm. But Facebook now demands that its users “not post” speech critical of “concepts, institutions, ideas, practices, or beliefs associated with protected characteristics, which are likely to contribute to imminent physical harm, intimidation or discrimination against the people associated with that protected characteristic.”
“Protected characteristics,” according to Facebook, include “race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease.” On its face, this sounds neutral and universally applicable. Yet anyone following the matter knows that it is inconceivable, for instance, that Facebook would ban critiques of “cisgenderism,” a concept whose purpose is to attack heterosexuality and the legitimacy of the generative family. It is similarly unimaginable that protected groups would be blocked from criticizing American constitutionalism as a construct of “whiteness.” Oppressor groups, after all, do not possess “protected characteristics.”
Discrimination once meant denying housing, access to public accommodations, or employment to people based on immutable characteristics. This, of course, was corrected by civil rights laws. But discrimination now means speech that protected groups find insulting. In other words, the last place where discrimination exists is in the minds of oppressor groups.
This new view of discrimination conflicts with the basic requirements of political liberty. It means, for instance, that speech defending the traditional family harms the self-respect of LGBTQ people; that arguments in favor of secure borders harm the self-respect of illegal immigrants; and that analyses of the different rates of criminality among demographic groups harm the self-respect of some groups, while also lowering their stature in the eyes of the oppressor group. Anti-discrimination comes to mean enforced silence on behalf of protected groups, no matter how central the issue in question is to the nation’s political and social future.
Serious political deliberation in a nation devoted to constitutional self-government is circumscribed or even prohibited under such restrictions. Big Tech platforms are undeniably the major, if not the essential, forum for political debate today. Pew Research reports that 36 percent of Americans receive news from Facebook. YouTube, whose “hate speech” rules are similar to Facebook’s, accounts for 75 percent of the world’s video viewing.
Forbidding the discussion of “concepts, institutions, ideas, practices, or beliefs associated with protected characteristics” also hobbles the use of speech as a tool for discovering the truth about basic matters. Leading “hate speech” restriction advocates already demand the banning of factual claims, should they harm the self-respect of protected groups. Facebook’s guidelines could preclude the critical discussion of dogmas claiming that all oppressor-group members are unconsciously biased, or that only racism accounts for disparities among groups.
By this logic, the speech of protected groups becomes sacred, insofar as it cannot be subjected to rational inquiry, critique, or even calls for clarification. Liberal democracies separate church and state, but protected groups now form a new priestly class, not only with power over social life and death, but with the capacity to make unfalsifiable declarations.
Facebook’s reasons for these changes are murky. At their most hopeful, Facebook executives once seemed to believe that by connecting the entire world, their platform would help erase the causes of strife and war—like loyalties to nations and gods—without which, they hoped, human beings could live in harmony. “If people are asking the question, is the direction for humanity to come together more or not? I think that answer is clearly yes,” Mark Zuckerberg enthused several years ago.
More cynically, however, prohibiting “hate speech” coheres with Facebook’s business model: users with heightened, enraged tempers do not yield authentic user data that reflects their sellable tastes and preferences. As Facebook knows, “people use their voice and connect more freely when they don’t feel attacked on the basis of who they are.” So, too, is the Left’s pressure apparatus—which now includes the federal government—more effective at compelling corporate decision-makers to listen.
Facebook is one of the referees of our public square, a privilege that grants it the power to determine the thoughts, ideas, concepts, and even political direction of the nation. This immense power must not be permitted to warp the ability of citizens to exchange their thoughts freely and fearlessly.
Arthur Milikh is the executive director the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Facebook, hate speech, Protected characteristics, Speech Restrictions, Whiteness | Leave a Comment »
Retraction serves as the new academic censorship-Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
Posted by M. C. on July 23, 2021
We all joked on the day that a German study raising concerns about CO2 levels in children wearing masks was published in JAMA that the editors must have had the day off. Well, to our surprise, it did take 16 days for them to retract it, which means they really had trouble finding anything wrong with it.
Written by Daniel Horowitz Thursday July 22, 2021
It’s become a living parody. Every time there is a study or World Health Organization guidance that raises concerns or counters the narrative of COVID fascism, it is retracted and changed the minute it is cited by panic skeptics. We all joked on the day that a German study raising concerns about CO2 levels in children wearing masks was published in JAMA that the editors must have had the day off. Well, to our surprise, it did take 16 days for them to retract it, which means they really had trouble finding anything wrong with it.
The results of the German study could not be allowed to stand because rather than just attack the efficacy of masks, it raised questions about serious side effects. In a randomized controlled trial of 45 children wearing masks, the researchers found that CO2 levels increased to levels deemed unacceptable by the German Federal Environmental Office by a factor of 6 after just three minutes.
On July 16, the two editors of JAMA issued a retraction with a one-paragraph explanation. “Following publication, numerous scientific issues were raised regarding the study methodology, including concerns about the applicability of the device used for assessment of carbon dioxide levels in this study setting, and whether the measurements obtained accurately represented carbon dioxide content in inhaled air, as well as issues related to the validity of the study conclusions,” wrote editors Dimitri Christakis and Phil B. Fontanarosa.
They never divulge who raised those issues or extrapolated on the details of their concerns. They claim that in their response to the criticism, “the authors did not provide sufficiently convincing evidence to resolve these issues, as determined by editorial evaluation and additional scientific review.
Are we really to believe such vague concerns in an era when any criticism of masks and spike protein vaccines being censored? Notice they never offer any specific concerns about the study’s conclusion, which is pretty intuitive. As I cited in my write-up of this study three weeks ago, numerous other studies of health care workers wearing masks long before COVID-19 showed similar results. Yet, one can always find ways to quibble with methodology in a way that doesn’t refute the results.
But on whom should the burden of proof be? It’s not like anyone else is conducting a study using the “proper” methodology. Why is it that the other side can force our children into doing novel and dangerous things, such as experimental shots and covering their breathing orifices without their “experts” having to prove conclusively that these practices are safe? Hasn’t that always been the standard in science and medicine?
As Harald Walach, the lead author of the German study, said in response to the retraction, “The measurements, we contend, are valid and were conducted by individuals with high content expertise. … If someone doubts our results, the way to go is not to claim they are wrong without proof, but to produce better and different results.”
Fair use excerpt. Read the rest here.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: academic censorship, CO2 levels, JAMA, Retraction | Leave a Comment »
Beijing renews its call for Fort Detrick biolab probe as 4.7 million Chinese petition WHO to search in US for Covid origins — RT World News
Posted by M. C. on July 23, 2021
The foreign ministry spokesman said that the responsibility to investigate their own lab must lie with the US. He claimed that reports of an unknown respiratory disease that caused pneumonia in Virginia in summer 2019 and the decision to terminate some operations at the Maryland biolab was suspicious and worthy of a probe.
In 2019, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a “cease and desist order” to halt operations at the germ lab amid safety concerns. Zhao also cited a large-scale outbreak of e-cigarette disease in Wisconsin that same year.
https://www.rt.com/news/529811-china-covid19-us-biolab-who/
The Chinese foreign ministry has backed calls for an investigation into the Fort Detrick biolab as an origin of the Covid-19 pandemic after 4.7 million Chinese petitioned the WHO to send experts to the Maryland facility.
Speaking on Wednesday, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that the Chinese people had delivered a clear message in signing a petition, created by state-run news agency The Global Times, calling for a World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the Fort Detrick biolab.
“In less than five days, about five million people participated. The rising numbers represent the aspirations of the Chinese people and show their anger at some people in the US for political manipulation through the issue of traceability,” he stated.
The foreign ministry spokesman said that the responsibility to investigate their own lab must lie with the US. He claimed that reports of an unknown respiratory disease that caused pneumonia in Virginia in summer 2019 and the decision to terminate some operations at the Maryland biolab was suspicious and worthy of a probe.
In 2019, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a “cease and desist order” to halt operations at the germ lab amid safety concerns. Zhao also cited a large-scale outbreak of e-cigarette disease in Wisconsin that same year.
As of Wednesday morning, around 4.7 million Chinese citizens have signed the petition which calls on the WHO to investigate the US lab as a potential origin for the Covid-19 pandemic.
The petition was launched last week as WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus blasted Beijing for failing to provide the raw data from the early days of its spread in China. “We owe it to the millions who suffered and the millions who died to know what happened,” he said.
WHO experts spent around four weeks in China earlier this year. Their report suggested that cases identified in Wuhan in 2019 were believed to have been acquired from “a zoonotic source, as many reported visiting or working in the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market.”
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: biolab probe, Chinese petition, Fort Detrick, WHO | 1 Comment »
JFK — Accept Our Diverse World as It Is – LewRockwell
Posted by M. C. on July 23, 2021
“We must recognize that we cannot remake the world simply by our own command. … Every nation has its own traditions, its own values, its own aspirations. … We cannot remake them in our own image.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/07/patrick-j-buchanan/jfk-accept-our-diverse-world-as-it-is/
Seven months after the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy, at American University, laid out his view on how the East-West struggle should be conducted to avoid a catastrophic war that could destroy us both.
Kennedy’s message to Moscow and his fellow Americans:
“If (the United States and the Soviet Union) cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity.”
As George Beebe writes in his essay, “It’s a Big World: The Importance of Diversity in American Foreign Policy,” in the July National Interest, Kennedy later elaborated:
“We must recognize that we cannot remake the world simply by our own command. … Every nation has its own traditions, its own values, its own aspirations. … We cannot remake them in our own image.”
To Kennedy, a student of history, acceptance of the reality of a world of diverse political systems, many of them unfree, was a precondition of peace on earth and avoidance of a new world war.
Kennedy was asking us to recognize that the world consists not only of democrats but also of autocrats, dictatorships, military regimes, monarchs and politburos, and the goal of U.S. foreign policy was not to convert them into political replicas of the USA.
Kennedy was willing to put our political model on offer to the world, but not to impose it on anyone: “We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people — but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.”
The higher goal: “Preserving and protecting a world of diversity in which no one power or no one combination of powers can threaten the security of the United States.”
For JFK, national interests transcended democratist ideology.
He knew that throughout our history, we Americans had partnered with dictators, monarchs and autocrats when our interests required it.
The1778 alliance we forged with the French King Louis XVI was indispensable to the victory at Yorktown that ensured our independence.
Woodrow Wilson took us into World War I as an “associate power” of four great empires — the British, French, Russian and Japanese.
In World War II, we allied with Stalin’s Russia against Hitler’s Reich.
The South Korea we saved at a cost of 37,000 dead from 1950 to 1953 was ruled by the autocratic and dictatorial Syngman Rhee.
The thrust of Beebe’s article is that President Joe Biden, in defining the new post-Cold War era as featuring a new-world ideological struggle, between authoritarian and democracy, is misreading the conflict.
Said Biden, in his major foreign policy address during the campaign: “The triumph of democracy and liberalism over fascism and autocracy created the free world. But this contest does not just define our past. It will define our future.”
Biden’s Interim National Strategic Security Guidance fully embraces the same thesis of a new world ideological struggle:
“Authoritarianism is on the global march. … We must join with likeminded allies and partners to revitalize democracy the world over.”
Yet, neither of our great adversaries is preaching a global crusade to remake the world in its image.
Communist China does business with Japanese and American capitalists, with South and North Korea, with Arab monarchs and Israelis, with Europeans and Iranians, Africans, Latin Americans and Central Asians, without attempting to impose its system beyond its borders.
Consider Russia. President Vladimir Putin, it is said, is an autocrat.
But Putin’s interest in bringing home ethnic Russian kinfolk left behind when the USSR broke apart is a normal and natural expression of his people’s and his country’s national interest.
So, too, is Moscow’s effort at re-knitting relations with Ukraine and Belarus, the two nations with whom Russia’s ties are the oldest, closest and deepest, culturally and ethnically.
What Russia, a Black Sea power since the 18th century, is doing in Yalta and the Donbas is understandable from the standpoint of history, ethnicity and national interests.
The question is: What are we doing there?
When did Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia become our concerns?
Russia’s alarm at having the world’s largest military alliance, NATO, led by its former Cold War adversary, squatting on its front porch from the Arctic Ocean to the Baltic and Black Sea, is as understandable as is Putin’s impulse to push that alliance some distance away.
That is what any Russian nationalist ruler would do.
But when did relations between Belarus, Ukraine and Russia become the concern of the USA, 5,000 miles away?
Is Putin an autocrat? But so what?
When has Russia not been ruled by an autocrat?
From Peter the Great to Catherine the Great to Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II in 1917, Romanov czars ruled Russia. After 1917 came Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
During his speech at American University, Kennedy mentioned a crucial fact about the long history between Russia and America:
“Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other.”
Maintaining that 230-year tradition should be at the apex of our concerns, not how Vladimir Putin rules what is, after all, his country.
Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever See his website.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Cuban Missile Crisis, diversity, Foreign policy, JFK | Leave a Comment »
FBI’s Ridiculous “Capitol Siege Pipe Bomb” Video Is An All-Out Assault on Common Sense – Revolver
Posted by M. C. on July 23, 2021
Just this week, it leaked out from court filings that the FBI has now indicted one of their own Federal informants – a third one, apparently – who the FBI originally paid to infiltrate the group in the first place.
If we find out months from now that one or more of the violent “terror” plots associated with 1/6 were actually an Infiltration-Incitement-Indictment story like the Whitmer Plot, will history be rewritten to reflect the Big Reveal?
This week, the FBI released video footage of their key suspect in the vaunted “pipe bombs planted at DNC and GOP offices” plot from the MAGA Capitol protests of 1/6. Much is riding on this “pipe bomb” plot being legit, because the “armed insurrection” narrative is falling apart without it.
Just last week, the FBI confessed to Congress – and not without prodding from Senator Ron Johnson – that no guns had actually been recovered or confiscated on Capitol grounds. That admission corroborates the thorough review by AmGreatness’s Julie Kelly of more than 200 DOJ charging documents, and whose conclusion went completely unmentioned by either FBI Director Chris Wray or incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland in their fire-and-brimstone assessments of the deadly threat MAGA protesters posed that day. https://www.youtube.com/embed/AlxsZ-kQ5Ks?start=267&feature=oembed
With the “Guns at Capitol” meme down, only two serious, terroristic plots implicating MAGA on 1/6 remain. One is the “guns & bombs stashed in cars and outside the city” plots, principally related to the Oath Keepers, which has been the subject of an exhaustive forthcoming Revolver News investigation; the other is this eagerly-hyped “pipe bomb” plot.
So this “pipe bomb” plot better be real, and it better be the authentic act of a genuine Trump supporter, or basically all they have left is the strange case of the “Oath Keepers” – and we will tell you in advance that is not looking pretty for The Narrative or the FBI.
The Tale of The Tape
Let’s take a deeper look at this week’s FBI roadshow. More than two full months after the event in question, after circulating hundreds of high-resolution close-ups of MAGA Moms and teenage girls, the public finally gets two minutes of grainy, low-res source footage that the FBI surely had access to within days – or at most weeks – of 1/6:
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Capitol Siege Pipe Bomb, FBI Investigation | Leave a Comment »
Erie Times E-Edition Article-Help stop the spread of mystery bird illness
Posted by M. C. on July 23, 2021
Feeders are down and cleaned.
I am wondering why the cause is so difficult to determine. Why the mystery?
https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=148f22016_1345e47
Birding social media channels crackle with concern and dismay.
Most people seem to have heard by now, but for those who somehow missed the sad news: A mystery songbird illness first spotted in April in Washington, D.C., now afflicts thousands of birds in the Southeast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic region, including virtually all of Pennsylvania.
Witnesses report finding birds lifeless or displaying distressing symptoms — swollen, crusted eyes, lethargy and the inability to fly or walk.
It has been seen in a wide array of birds, including Northern cardinals, Eastern bluebirds, Carolina wrens and chickadees, house finches and sparrows, and red-bellied woodpeckers, but the Pennsylvania Game Commission said the malady appears to be targeting fledgling blue jays, common grackles, European starlings and American robins.
Suspected cases had been reported in all but four of the Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, according to the Game Commission’s July 8 update. Most had been reported in the southeastern corner of the state, the fewest in the northcentral region.
Testing is underway at federal and state agencies. Researchers don’t yet know the cause, but have ruled out a number of bird ailments including salmonella, chlamydia, avian influenza virus and West Nile virus. It also is not the conjunctivitis that has infected house finches in the past.
Some wonder whether a deadly fungus killing Brood X cicadas crossed into the bird population or whether pesticides absorbed by cicadas during their years-long underground stay are poisoning birds who eat the cicadas. We just don’t know yet and so must take whatever action we can to mitigate the harm.
The most common question songbird lovers ask is what they can do to help. That answer at least is clear: If you have not already, take down any feeders and birdbaths, the Game Commission and experts advise. Songbirds congregate at the feeders and water sources we provide. If a disease is causing their deaths, removing the feeders could help slow its spread from bird to bird. This strategy in the past helped reduce the incidents of the house finch eye disease, for example.
Experts also recommend Pennsylvanians scrub their idled bird feeder tubes, hoppers, trays and more with a 10% bleach solution before storing them away to ensure that if there is a contagion on them, it will be eliminated.
Since we don’t know what the illness is yet, it is best not to let pets come into contact with a dead or infected bird. And if you find a diseased bird or carcass, handle it with gloves. The Game Commission asks that suspected cases be reported online to the Wildlife Futures Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine at https://bit.ly/36QalYb.
This situation is a cruel blow to the birds, which already contend with habitat loss, pollution and predation, especially by feral and outdoor house cats. And it is tough on the many people who delight in the company of birds: their songs, their antics, their plumage and the epic, extraordinary migrations that bring them to roost in our backyards. What is not to like?
But in this relationship, especially in summer, it is important to remember we need them more than they need us. There is ample food this time of year to sustain them beyond our stocks of black oil sunflower, safflower and nyjer seeds, mealworms and nutty suet cakes.
We credit the Game Commission and researchers for their swift response to this alarming outbreak and hope answers are forthcoming soon.
In the meantime, rather than mourn, bird fans might eye this as an opportunity for positive action. Cultivate more native plants for birds to dine on or keep birding organizations and wildlife rescue operations top of mind for support. They are instrumental in this fight, too.
And remember, we always have the option to view birds on their own terms – not from our windows or back decks, but in their environs. Download an app or grab a guidebook, sling a pair of binoculars around your neck and take a stroll. You might be encouraged and delighted by what you find.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: conjunctivitus, mystery bird illness | Leave a Comment »
Getting to Galt’s Gulch: Everyday Secession | Mises Wire
Posted by M. C. on July 23, 2021
The political pendulum brings hope or disappointment for those loyal to a particular party. Instead, journal the grievances against Uncle Sam and hypothetically block him from dominating your life.
Secession is needed daily, especially in education and healthcare. The immense suffering of individuals in 2020 caused by government bureaucracy and politics illustrates the importance of personal independence.
https://mises.org/wire/getting-galts-gulch-everyday-secession
This month, the United States once again celebrated her independence on the Fourth of July. After a year of lockdowns, masks, and now even mandatory vaccinations in workplaces and universities, the idea that the USA is a beacon of freedom to the rest of the globe seems far-fetched. This attitude was reiterated in the new Toby Keith song “Happy Birthday America.” Keith’s downtrodden lyrics reflect on his observed disappearance of the American patriotism which had been present not long ago.
The problem with the version of national pride of the singer of “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” is that it equates love for his country with approval of imperialist tendencies. When invading foreign countries and toppling their governments is the source of pride in one’s country, then diminishing military power and a disrespected flag at the Olympics feels crushing.
For the libertarian with a foundation in property rights, personal responsibility, and financial literacy, the way forward is not joining in left-right political boxing matches, but secession. When the rule of law fails Derek Chauvin and common sense regarding gender-based separation in sensitive spaces disappears, libertarians need not wallow in their pillows and chocolate like after a devastating breakup. The political pendulum brings hope or disappointment for those loyal to a particular party. Instead, journal the grievances against Uncle Sam and hypothetically block him from dominating your life.
Secession is needed daily, especially in education and healthcare. The immense suffering of individuals in 2020 caused by government bureaucracy and politics illustrates the importance of personal independence.
Education
The character of the public education system revealed its true colors. Many teachers protested over returning to in-person teaching in the classroom despite the unsubstantiated fears that children are superspreaders. Where schools resumed formally, administrations and states masked children without evaluating secondary consequences such as extended exposure to bacterial growth on masks.
The outcomes of virtual schooling were worse. Accusations of virtual truancy prompted Child Protective Services visits, especially where internet access was problematic. The “learning loss” disparity was largest in low-income communities, hurting academic outcomes for black and Hispanic students.
Unfortunately, the priority is not the health outcomes of children even now, a year later. With covid vaccination being required for school attendance, there is concern that for children, the vaccines are statistically more deadly than the illness. In Washington, DC, minors may be coerced by school administrators into vaccination without a parent’s consent or knowledge.
The public education system is failing children and, thankfully, school secession provides a silver lining. Homeschooling rates approximately tripled during the pandemic, when public education options were unsatisfactory. In 2021, a plethora of options for home education are present, ranging from self-paced curriculums to more community-based plans. Support for this lifestyle can be obtained through formal online communities, co-ops, and homeschool groups.
“Unschooling” for the elementary grades supports flexible education styles where children are free to discover and obtain skill proficiency based upon their interests. This early learning supports specialization and entrepreneurial tendencies from youth, benefitting children far into adulthood.
If the purpose of education is to enrich the whole child, public schooling clearly falls miserably short of this goal. Secession enables primary caregivers to raise their children with their values, over those of government overlords, and keep them safe physically from bullying, emotionally, and socially from teachers and students with misplaced priorities alike.
Healthcare
Similar to public education, American healthcare already had preexisting conditions of inadequacy. The pandemic clearly demonstrated the problems that plague the US medical care system, directly covid related or otherwise. Mothers suffered poor birth outcomes resulting from the policies of hospitals and government bureaucrats. Inexpensive, unpatented drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were either made unavailable altogether or certainly more difficult to obtain despite having positive success at treating the manifested illness.
In the current healthcare system, doctors, even those with good intentions, are restricted by hospital procedures and follow the recommendations given by larger authorities, both public and private. The reality is that the American medical system is not free market in any sense of the word, no matter how often the claim is countered.
Doctors in mainstream medical care do not have the autonomy to make specialized decisions for their patients. For example, insurance companies require that a certain percentage of children be fully vaccinated according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommended vaccine schedule, otherwise the pediatrician may not meet the threshold for quality of care bonuses. Unyielding support for these one-size-fits-all recommendations comes not only from the governing agency and the health insurance company, but also from the major professional organization for pediatricians, the American Academy of Pediatrics. Swimming counter to the stream is neither financially nor reputationally wise for physicians, even if specific patients have a higher risk of adverse reactions.
In the specific treatment of covid, procedure dictated that hospitalized patients be placed on ventilators (with a death rate for covid patients on ventilators being approximately 58.8 percent). Oxygen supplementation, a noninvasive treatment, should have been provided initially for low oxygen levels but there were financial incentives to diagnose for covid-19 and ventilate. Thanks to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bureaucracy, doctors were limited in their ability to prescribe drugs with high success rates to patients earlier in the pandemic. How many lives were needlessly lost due to red tape?
With the release of Dr. Tony Fauci’s emails, the public may now observe that the CDC pandemic recommendations were not based on “science” or concern for the public’s health. Fauci understood masking was inefficacious at halting viral spread, kept successful treatments from becoming widely practiced, and knew that the covid death rate was similar to that of a severe influenza season. Shutting down the economy was never warranted.
Under a system bogged down with the conflicting interests of regulating agencies, medical practice procedures, and health insurance companies, patients may have a simple solution: fire the doctor. Demand more midwives and home births because of better health and birth outcomes. Visit alternative care providers who prescribe highly successful vitamin C and zinc treatments. Take business to noninvasive practitioners like chiropractors and naturopaths, who desire to treat the underlying conditions rather than purely symptoms.
Fear is sadly associated with taking this leap. But the overlooked reality is that preventable medical error persists as the third leading cause of death in the US. Secession from health insurance networks may not only provide better overall health outcomes but may be more affordable as practitioners resort to refusing health insurance payments to gain greater autonomy.
Getting to Galt’s Gulch
The success of libertarianism is independence from the state’s influence. Increasing one’s reliance on free markets, where personal responsibility and decision-making prevail over complacency, makes for an effective patriotism. Stopping the Randian motor of the world so that libertarians may thrive in the hypothetical Galt’s Gulch beyond government’s grasp (i.e., in external markets) requires exit. Leave a school or healthcare system which does not deliver desired ends.
Finally, be brave. Courage is not restricted to standing in the public square at Tiananmen. The defense of liberty is often more mundane: removing your children from the influence of tyrants in schools or exiting a job where an employer requires injections, which violate your moral principles. While these actions seem daunting, and they indeed are, those who love liberty are the ones who will be the impenetrable bulwark against evil. In the words of Mises’s favorite motto by Virgil, “Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.” (Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.) Author:
Felicia Aileen Jones works as the registrar and student services coordinator at the Mises Institute. She is a former summer fellow and a Troy University graduate, earning her MA in economics in 2020 and her BBA in economics in 2017.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Education, Galt's Gulch, healthcare, secession | Leave a Comment »
Inspiring: US Women’s Soccer Team To Boycott Scoring Goals Until Racism Is Defeated
Posted by M. C. on July 22, 2021
TOKYO—People were stunned after the U.S. women’s soccer team lost to Sweden in the Olympics this week by a score of 3-0—until the team revealed they are boycotting scoring any goals until racism is defeated.
“Yeah, we didn’t score any goals against Sweden last night, but that was totally on purpose,” said star player and beloved activist Megan Rapinoe. “This isn’t the time to score goals—when America is still racist. We totally could have beaten Sweden but we decided as a team that no goals will be scored until complete equality has been achieved in America. Also, we demand a hefty raise.”
Onlookers were stunned during the second half of the game when Rapinoe dribbled the ball all the way to Sweden’s unprotected goal and whispered “This is for you, people of color,” before kicking the ball straight into the air and running headfirst into the goalpost.
“This may be one of the most powerful performances in the history of sports,” said Teen Vogue‘s sportswriter who has never watched sports.
The U.S. Women’s team is demanding to remain in the Olympic tournament and promises to continue its streak of zero goals. Inspiring!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: racism, US Women, Women's Soccer | Leave a Comment »
Hypocrisy: Maskless Texas Democrat Demands Universal Masking!
Posted by M. C. on July 22, 2021
A group of maskless Texas Democrat state reps flying up to DC in attempt to derail an election security vote back home have become a prime exhibit of the hypocrisy of the elites: “masks for thee, but not for me!” It turns out, one of the maskless Reps wants forced universal masking! Also today, Biden deals in disinfo? Will he be cancelled?
Eric Clapton – Hero
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: maskless, Texas Democrat, Universal Masking | 1 Comment »
