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Lockdowns Kill, Exhibit Z – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2020

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/thomas-woods/lockdowns-kill-exhibit-z/

By

From the Tom Woods Letter:

The side effects of the lockdowns keep getting harder to ignore.

Dr. Brian Stauffer is head of cardiology at Denver Health. He and his colleagues wanted to figure out why the number of people arriving at the hospital suffering from cardiac arrest had plummeted in recent months.

Surely, dear reader, you know where this is going.

According to the Colorado Sun:

Looking at data on ambulance calls in Denver, they found that, while overall calls for service went down during the stay-at-home period, the number of people dying from cardiac arrests at home shot up.

Stauffer’s team found that cardiac arrests at home in Denver more than doubled in the two weeks after the statewide stay-at-home order was issued compared with historical averages. Even compared with more recent data, the weekly average of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests jumped to 46 during those two weeks, versus 26 or 27 in the three months prior.

Stauffer and his colleagues found that the number of people in Denver who died of cardiac arrests at home in the two weeks following the statewide stay-at-home order was greater than the total number of people who died of COVID-19 in the city during that time.

Oh, but “listen to the science,” everybody!

According to the “listen to the science” crowd, “science” demands lockdowns. Apart from the zero connection between lockdowns and health outcomes, the bigger issue is this: “science” doesn’t tell you how you should decide between pouring all resources into COVID-19 while leaving horrific wreckage — including massive loss of life — everywhere else.

It is rank superstition to think “the science” could possibly — or is even intended to — answer a question like this.

Science can inform our decision-making, naturally, but it obviously can’t tell us what we should value or how we should prioritize our various goals.

Not to mention: these days “the science” seems to be all about pretending there are no trade-offs, no competing goals.

Yesterday I wrote to you about the schools, and the day before that about the massive spike in suicidal ideation among the youth.

The wreckage keeps piling up, and our leaders obviously have no idea what the endgame is.

What else can we do after all this fact-free nonsense except live, and ignore these people as much as we can?

If that sounds good to you, join me in my community of normal people, for learning and camaraderie:

http://www.SupportingListeners.com

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How Government Roads Expand Police Power in America | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2020

However, if unarmed traffic patrollers lack other police powers, such as the ability to warrantlessly search a vehicle, seize assets they believe may have been used in the commission of a drug crime, or engage in pretext stops, such a reform has the potential to result in positive outcomes for those who consider liberty to be important. A big question, though, is whether governments would be willing to forgo what has been such a large source of revenue, as well as one of their primary means of drug interception.

https://mises.org/wire/how-government-roads-expand-police-power-america

Advocates of a free society so frequently field the objection “Who will build the roads?” or some variation thereof that it’s become a meme. Much effort has been put into answering this question, including books on the privatization of roads and highways. What has received relatively little attention is what effect road privatization would have on the role of government police, which is surprising given the existing relationship between roads, police, and drivers.

Indeed, most of what police do is related to the road. According to the US Department of Justice’s most recent report on contacts between the police and the public, over half are traffic stops, and an additional 14.6 percent are in relation to traffic accidents. When not otherwise engaged, officers spend around 74 percent of their time engaged in patrol, typically in a car. Over 9 percent of arrests recorded in the 2018 FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program data are for driving under the influence. Unfortunately, the UCR does not specify what percentage of the 1,147,050 drug possession arrests in 2018 were the result of searching vehicles, but there is little doubt that it was a significant portion. Making arrests based on pretext stops (the act of pulling someone over ostensibly for a minor traffic infraction in order to investigate some other crime, conduct a search, or to determine whether the vehicle’s occupants have any outstanding warrants) is considered good policing and is endorsed by the US Supreme Court. The long-running erosion of the right to be secure in one’s vehicle, as codified in the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, is well documented in Sarah Seo’s Policing the Open Road.

In addition, revenue from traffic citations can constitute an important source of municipal funding. One example (though definitely an outlier) is the town of Randolph, Missouri (pop. 47), which issued 3,132 traffic fines, collecting an estimated $148,000 of their $270,043 total revenue in 2009. Besides traffic citations, an additional source of revenue for police on the roads is civil asset forfeiture. The Texas town of Tenaha (pop. 1,100) had seized millions of dollars in forfeitures from traffic stops before being sued in 2009. Without the pretext of traffic stops, there would be many fewer opportunities for police to separate individuals from their cash and other possessions.

Based on these considerations, it would appear that the privatization of roads would be of interest for the purposes of police reform alone. In light of calls to “defund the police,” police activities on roads have received more attention. Economist Alex Tabarrok has suggested the “unbundling” of police from traffic enforcement:

The responsibility for handing out speeding tickets and citations should be handled by a[n] unarmed agency. Put the safety patrol in bright yellow cars and have them carry a bit of extra gasoline and jumper cables to help stranded motorists as part of their job – make road safety nice.

While such a reform certainly sounds like an improvement over the status quo, the question is to what degree it changes the practices above. On some margins, state agents fully dedicated to traffic enforcement may make things worse, particularly without changing the incentive governments have to milk drivers of funds. Pure traffic patrollers would be less expensive to train than sworn police officers, making it cheaper to put more of them on the road. They would not have to respond to the non-road-related calls that police officers are expected to handle, giving drivers less reprieve from their constant presence. Furthermore, there is little evidence that traffic enforcement significantly improves road safety anyway. But even if it did, there is still a tradeoff between road safety and other ends, such as arriving at one’s destination quickly. By getting in a vehicle, we demonstrate that we are not willing to sacrifice all other ends for that of safety.

However, if unarmed traffic patrollers lack other police powers, such as the ability to warrantlessly search a vehicle, seize assets they believe may have been used in the commission of a drug crime, or engage in pretext stops, such a reform has the potential to result in positive outcomes for those who consider liberty to be important. A big question, though, is whether governments would be willing to forgo what has been such a large source of revenue, as well as one of their primary means of drug interception.

Leaving the roads in the public domain, even if they are policed by nice traffic safety officers rather than the cops, still has a number of disadvantages related to traffic enforcement. The state still makes the rules, licenses the drivers, decides what insurance is required, and decides how rules are to be enforced. Because the roads are not privately owned and the payment and use of them are not voluntarily contracted, economic calculation is not possible. The government is in the dark in negotiating the aforementioned tradeoffs between safety and other ends. There is no competition between road providers that would prevent overzealous enforcement of traffic laws or the opposite. If roads (and other transportation infrastructure) were privatized, road entrepreneurs would seek the optimal tradeoff between safety and other ends, and consumers’ ability to choose different roads or means of transportation would enable this to occur.

Thus, even setting aside gains in efficiency or reductions in highway fatalities, the case for the privatization of roads has much to recommend it solely in terms of how it would affect the power of the police to detain us, search us, and seize our property.

Author:

Contact Tate Fegley

Tate Fegley is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh. 

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Carlisle car show goes on with ‘smaller,’ but ‘excited’ crowd, event spokesman says

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2020

This show’s attendance is normally 100K people. What is the deal the car show made with Wolf and Levine? Details elude my research. This stinks for the rest of PA. I smell a rat. Two rats.

https://www.pennlive.com/coronavirus/2020/06/carlisle-car-show-goes-on-with-smaller-but-excited-crowd-event-spokesman-says.html

The Spring Carlisle auto show and flea market wrapped up on Saturday following a tumultuous couple days during which Carlisle Events faced litigation from the Pennsylvania Department of Health attempting to shut down the show.

On Friday, the state Department of Health withdrew the case, allowing for the remainder of the day and Saturday to be held without any underlying drama.

Carlisle Events spokesman Mike Garland said going into the event, they expected the car show to have lower crowds as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and that there would be fewer vendors, but that the week still was a success…

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VAMANOS!

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2020

Three from South of the Border
Astrid Gilberto
Astrud Gilberto - The Girl From Ipanema by Astrud Gilberto ...
RETRO KIMMER'S BLOG: THE LOOK OF LOVE... DUSTY SPRINGFIELD ...
Susana Baca - Maria Lando - Encuentro en el Estudio [HD]
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The Case For Lockdowns, Masks, School Closures, ‘Distancing’ Has Just Collapsed

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2020

The whole narrative is falling apart. New studies every day are proving beyond a doubt that the measures taken worldwide – with a few exceptions – to “fight” what they claimed was a “new” coronavirus have not only failed to slow or stop the disease, they have been counterproductive. It turns out that people develop lasting T-cell immunities, that patients have been successfully treated with T-cells from asymptomatic test-positive cases, and that the virus rarely spreads outside the family setting. What are the authoritarians going to do when it is no longer possible to keep this information hidden? How will they keep people shut down. Plus today: Utah shows a way out of corona-tyranny, big party in Wuhan, they are still cooking the books, and…enemy of the week!

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Talking About Stoicism 85 Those Who Had the Same Experience Before

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2020

You CAN make it through.

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The anti-war wing of both parties is dead

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2020

Each candidate has duly recited his lines about ending endless wars and can truthfully point to his opponent’s failure to do likewise. And whoever takes office in January can continue exactly that failure, probably without much political consequence. He can deplore his bombs and drop them too. Americans will remain preoccupied with more immediate domestic concerns; Washington will stay stuck in its interventionist consensus; and those endless wars will live up to their name.

https://news.yahoo.com/anti-war-wing-both-parties-195532097.html

Bonnie Kristian

Elect Joe Biden, former (Republican) Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his Democratic National Convention appearance Tuesday night, and he’ll “restore America’s leadership in the world.”

Powell’s comments were followed by a video touting Biden’s friendship with the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), another heavyweight GOP hawk. Meanwhile, there’s a pro-Biden super PAC of George W. Bush administration alumni, and Biden has racked up support from a who’s who of neoconservatives (Bill Kristol, Max Boot, David Frum, Jennifer Rubin), as commentators left and right have observed.

These alignments highlight an increasingly undeniable fact of American politics in 2020: The anti-war wing of both major parties is dead. Your presidential choice is between war and war. There’s no faction of Republicans or Democrats which combines real power with a durable, principled interest in turning American foreign policy away from global empire.

That’s not to say no one in major-party politics diverges from Washington’s standard-issue military interventionism. There’s Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) challenging Trump administration officials in Senate hearings and seeking to counter Trump’s more hawkish influences on the links. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has pushed for the U.S. to exit Yemen’s civil war and has slammed the administration’s January dalliance with executive warfare against Iran. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) tries every year to rein in abuses of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq, and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) has spent decades in lonely opposition to military adventurism. As a Democratic presidential candidate this past year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was more interested in peace than the party establishment which has now twice rejected him as their standard-bearer.

I don’t mean to discount the good work of these and other comparatively anti-war legislators. It is not without effect. There’s some evidence, for example, that Paul steered Trump toward decreasing the U.S. military footprint in Syria. But neither should their ability to retain office confuse us into thinking they have more control over American foreign policy than they do.

The reality is these officials and anyone who agrees with them have little meaningful power on this issue — occasional influence, perhaps, but certainly not power than can be reliably wielded. Paul’s golf course chats with Trump may eke a win from time to time, but this is a lucky backchannel that can be dammed at any moment. It has no formal, institutional authority. This week’s handwringing at Foreign Policy about the supposed ascendancy of “isolationism” on left and right alike is absurd, the foreign policy version of Tucker Carlson’s bizarre claim of libertarian dominance of Washington. The main voices advocating greater restraint in American foreign affairs are not isolationist, and though they kick up quite a ruckus, they have little to no say over actual policy direction. How can anyone look at half a dozen wars and think we have an isolationism problem?

The Trump vs. Biden race only underlines this state of affairs. Neither will give us a foreign policy that can even plausibly be caricatured as isolationism, Trump’s inane protectionism notwithstanding.

The president pays occasional lip service to ending “endless wars” and prioritizing diplomacy (“the greatest deals,” in his parlance), but his better impulses are constantly overcome by his selfishness, short attention span, stupid militarism, and choice of counsel like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump has brought us closer to open conflict with China, squandered his chance for productive negotiations with North Korea, exacerbated tensions with Iran, and repeatedly recommitted to enabling Saudi war crimes. What few good foreign policy ideas he hits upon are almost always happenstance byproducts of service to his own political fortunes. He has yet to end a single war.

Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, are more conventional liberal interventionists than Trump, but the crucial assumption of intervention is same. There are a few points for war critics to like here, including Biden’s vehement opposition to the Obama-era surge in Afghanistan, Harris’s objection to U.S. involvement in Yemen, and their plan to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal. Biden pledges he’ll “end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East,” but, like Trump, lacks a specific plan to do so. Biden has no apparent interest in Pentagon cuts, has hired some markedly hawkish advisers (are all those neocons going to stick around, too?), and is trying to out-hawk Trump on China. Certainly with Biden we can expect more multilateral diplomacy and fewer reckless tweets, but there’s little reason to think he’ll break the broader foreign policy patterns of the past 20 years.

From a purely political perspective, what’s curious about all this is the mutual foregoing of potential electoral gain. Restraint rhetoric is consistently popular — our last three presidents all campaigned on it to some degree — and public opinion is on a years-long trend toward wanting a smaller U.S. military role abroad, one more tailored to defending U.S. interests, narrowly conceived. You’d think one party or the other would espy an opportunity here.

Or perhaps both already have. Each candidate has duly recited his lines about ending endless wars and can truthfully point to his opponent’s failure to do likewise. And whoever takes office in January can continue exactly that failure, probably without much political consequence. He can deplore his bombs and drop them too. Americans will remain preoccupied with more immediate domestic concerns; Washington will stay stuck in its interventionist consensus; and those endless wars will live up to their name.

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The Jared Kushner Achievement Award Goes To … Kamala! – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2020

We analyzed your selected phrase from: [KAMALA HARRIS] using our proprietary SayWhat software, and it translated as:

“OK look, I am one-trillion percent an empty suit, surviving entirely on identity politics and media complicity. So when I burp anything whatsoever out my cackling pie-hole, it’s vital you not only pretend I’m making sense but making history.”

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

We’re supposed to treat this privileged woman living the life of Riley like she’s the reincarnation of James Meredith. Yes, the daughter of a professor and surgeon rose through the Berkeley, California, school system in the 1970s, then moved with her cancer researcher mother to Montreal.

That’s not exactly Selma, 1962.

Congratulations to Harris, but please stop gaslighting us with claims that she has achieved something amazing, stupendous, historic.

https://www.takimag.com/article/the-jared-kushner-achievement-award-goes-to-kamala/print

As has been duly noted, The New York Times‘ front page celebrating Biden’s announcement of Kamala Harris as his running mate rivaled its moon landing coverage. A gigantic photo of a saintlike Harris took up half of the space above the fold, under a 2-inch headline: “HARRIS JOINS BIDEN TICKET, ACHIEVING A FIRST.”

Specifically, the “first” was: “Woman of color in No. 2 slot of major party.”

History was being made! “It was historic most of all, and especially sweet for many Black women” … Harris “is the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party” … “It’s a stand-alone milestone, irrespective of who the opponent is.”

(That last quote was from Vanita Gupta, who was head of the civil rights division in Obama’s Justice Department. As I keep telling you, Black America, immigrants are getting all the good diversity jobs.)

No offense, but Harris was picked because she’s a woman of color. So it’s not really that amazing that she’s a woman of color. She didn’t swim the English Channel. She didn’t even win a primary. She’s not Margaret Thatcher.

She’s Jared Kushner. (Including the Jewish spouse!)

Hey, New York Times! How about devoting three-fourths of your front page with a 2-inch headline to Trump’s picking a young real estate investor as his chief White House adviser?

At 34, Jared Kushner Is Youngest Top White House Aide in History

Jared Kushner, Shatterer of Ceilings

For Jared Kushner, The Impossible Just Takes a Little Longer

(Me screaming in the corner: “He’s the son-in-law of the person who picked him!!!”)

“We’re supposed to treat this privileged woman living the life of Riley like she’s the reincarnation of James Meredith.”

If Democrats wanted us to treat Kamala’s selection as an historic achievement, the process needed to be color-blind. All the gushing about THE FIRST WOMAN OF COLOR AS VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE is like the articles every year gushing about the Nigerian who got into ALL EIGHT IVY LEAGUES!

Ever heard of affirmative action? In the same year, a thousand white and Asian kids with the exact same credentials didn’t get into any Ivy League schools.

Biden made perfectly clear — as did his supporters and sponsors — that he would be considering only women of color. Oh my gosh! A woman of color has somehow climbed to the top of the greasy pole!

Kamala’s big achievement is that she was better than the other women of color with visible positions in the Democratic Party. Of which there were five — maybe seven, as long we’re counting Jamaican Indian Americans as “African American”: a mayor, some representatives and a member of Obama’s administration who’d never run for office.

Whatever Harris’ selection represents, it’s not a triumph. Harris didn’t swim fastest, climb highest, run farthest. (She didn’t even pass the bar exam on her first try, a failure she shares with the other most-admired liberal women, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama.)

The fix was in. Biden announced an extremely limited set of qualifications that only Harris had.

But liberals are standing in their kitchens sobbing about Kamala’s “historic” achievement. The dream, so long deferred, has finally been attained!

This would be like Jared’s father bragging about his boy getting into Harvard. We all know Jared was a middling high school student and had mediocre SATs, but his dad greased the skids for him. Maybe don’t bring up his getting into Harvard. Let the conversation drift to something else.

Not liberals!

ABC’s “Good Morning America”: “It is an historic morning. Kamala Harris joining Joe Biden on the Democratic Party ticket. … History will be made again today when Kamala Harris joins Joe Biden … Kamala Harris will be speaking out, now, as the first black woman, the first Asian American tapped to be vice president.”

NBC’s the “Today” show: “… the first black woman and first Indian American to be picked as a vice presidential candidate. … As Joe Biden’s newly minted running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris has already made history.”

Trying to force the facts to fit the frenzy, Harris’ every utterance is treated as incandescent brilliance. The New York Times was still swooning over this incomprehensible remark Harris made to the paper last summer:

“Policy has to be relevant. That’s my guiding principle: Is it relevant? Not, ‘Is it a beautiful sonnet?’”

Confused, I submitted that quote to WokeTranslate.com and got this response:

We analyzed your selected phrase from: [KAMALA HARRIS] using our proprietary SayWhat software, and it translated as:

“OK look, I am one-trillion percent an empty suit, surviving entirely on identity politics and media complicity. So when I burp anything whatsoever out my cackling pie-hole, it’s vital you not only pretend I’m making sense but making history.”

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

We’re supposed to treat this privileged woman living the life of Riley like she’s the reincarnation of James Meredith. Yes, the daughter of a professor and surgeon rose through the Berkeley, California, school system in the 1970s, then moved with her cancer researcher mother to Montreal.

That’s not exactly Selma, 1962.

Congratulations to Harris, but please stop gaslighting us with claims that she has achieved something amazing, stupendous, historic.

We’re not gushing about Jared, either.

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The “Try-Hard” Club: Limp-Wristed Marxists Need Not Apply

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2020

I think the Marxist ideal is leading these kids down a path of brutal delusion, because they are never going to achieve the Utopian society that they seek. The world will never be “fair”, and the idea that you can force such conditions upon a culture without serious consequences is childish and mentally unstable.

Leftists in particular have always had a problem with competition and it stems from the Marxist roots of their philosophy. There is this notion among lefties that the world is supposed to be “equal”. Now, there are different types of equality, and I think the majority of Americans agree with the idea of equal opportunity.

http://www.alt-market.com/index.php/articles/4310-the-try-hard-club-limp-wristed-marxists-need-not-apply

Brandon Smith

Memes are a dominant force in popular culture today, and there is good reason for this; they allow people to inject an argument into discussion without having to actually compose that argument. In other words, by sharing a meme, everyone already knows what you are saying without an explanation. We all do this from time to time.

When I refer to a woman screaming at a man on the sidewalk for not wearing a mask as a “Karen”, most people immediately understand why this woman is a problem. She fits an archetypal mold, she has made herself into a walking, talking stereotype. The meme describes a thing everyone has experienced and is tired of dealing with. Memes make debate easier – They take on a life of their own.

That said, problems arise when dishonest people try to hijack a meme for their own agenda. For example, how many times have you seen crazed leftists call a conservative a “snowflake” because he/she is criticizing crazy leftist behavior? The meme refers to people who let their emotions get in the way of reason and they have “meltdowns” when faced with facts that disagree with their feelings. It also refers to people who fear competition and discomfort so much that they are trying to reshape the world so that it is “more fair” and less threatening to their self esteem. It does not apply to people who are logically debunking terrible behavior and terrible arguments.

To be fair, the term “snowflake” can be abused as a way to dismiss a younger person out of hand when they are expressing discontent with problems in the world. Memes can be misused by both sides of the political spectrum.

By the same token, a “Karen” is grown adult (not always a woman) who is aggressively uppity and unreasonable and who throws temper tantrums when they don’t get their way. It’s a person who acts like a spoiled toddler, and they do this because it has worked many times in the past in our “customer is always right” retail world. No one has ever smacked them upside the head and taught them a lesson in humility.

A “Karen” is NOT someone who is simply complaining or criticizing over a legitimate problem in a logical way. Yet, I have seen this meme misused as well to attack and shut down people who are doing exactly that.

And what about the “Okay Boomer” meme? The idea being that older people are disconnected from the “changing times” and that they have nothing to contribute anymore to the discussion because the planet has left them behind. This is one of the few purely leftist memes I’ve seen in the past few years.  It’s a futurist meme which comforts children in their common false notion that they have the world all figured out and advice from “old people” is useless. It’s a way for people with zero life experience and zero success to dismiss people with decades of life experience along and an array of successes and failures to draw knowledge from.

Being told you are a “newbie” is not always fun, but it’s sometimes necessary.  The Boomer meme is a tool for young people to feel better about themselves and their lack of wisdom or education.  These days, anyone who is over 30 years of age and disagrees with leftist politics or aspects of Zennial culture is called a “boomer” by default.

Memes can be entertaining, but the fact that they are so easy to exploit also leaves them open to abuse by narcissists and sociopaths. Leftists in particular are guilty of hijacking memes and twisting them for their own ends. They see memes as part of a culture war they are desperate to win. For them, controlling the meaning of words is paramount.

The newest meme trend I’m seeing these days is called the “try-hard” meme, i.e. “Stop acting like such a try-hard…” Now, this is another case where a phrase is being co-opted to fit a false narrative. Originally, a “try hard” was someone who takes recreational things much too seriously and turns fun into war. For example, a guy who plays a game of volleyball with his family and starts pummeling spikes down into their faces like he’s in a professional match. In other words, people who beat their chests and act overtly competitive in situations that don’t call for it.

These days, I’m seeing the meme used to describe ANYONE who excels at anything. That’s right, if you push yourself to be the best, if you are competitive and win often, if you are focused on self improvement as an individual, then there’s something “wrong” with you.

Leftists in particular have always had a problem with competition and it stems from the Marxist roots of their philosophy. There is this notion among lefties that the world is supposed to be “equal”. Now, there are different types of equality, and I think the majority of Americans agree with the idea of equal opportunity. Meaning, (at least in the West) we think every person regardless of their circumstances should be given the CHANCE to PROVE they can work hard and succeed. People should not be stopped from pursuing that chance merely because of who they are.

However, leftists and Marxists think that equality of opportunity is not enough. They think that there should also be equality of outcome.

This one delusion sits at the core of all Marxist thinking. Equality of outcome is impossible because not all people are born equal. Some people are, frankly, born superior to others. Some people are born smarter. Some people are born stronger, taller and faster. Some people are born with innate musical or artistic talent. Some people are born with innate mathematical understanding. Some people are born extroverted and are good at making friends. Some people are born introverted and are better at self reflection and awareness. Some people are born to be basketball players and some are born to be engineers.

The psychological reality of mankind is that we are not born as blank slates; we are born with inherent qualities and the seeds of unique individual talents.  Marxists suffer from a complete mental disconnect with this concept.  If they were to admit that people are born with individual qualities and advantages and are not blank slates, then the foundation of their philosophy falls apart.  They rationalize their social engineering agenda under the premise that all people need to be “molded” into equal units.  They think people must be reeducated to reject bad beliefs and bad habits they were taught as blank slate children and learn to accept that everyone starts life out exactly the same.  Therefore, the majority of people who succeed are those that were given an unfair advantage, and success should be treated with disdain and suspicion.

But if people have inherent psychological characteristics and inherent advantages, then their personalities and qualities cannot be reformed.  Those “bad beliefs and habits” might actually be completely natural and necessary.  You might be able to hold them back through force or fear, but you can’t change the core of who they are.  If our biological and genetic imperatives prevail, Marxists become obsolete and useless.

The secret is to discover what your innate strengths are in life and take advantage of them to succeed. If you do not have innate talent, then you must at least have an innate ability to work hard. If you don’t have the ability and drive to work hard to become good at a thing, then you don’t deserve to get recognition for that thing.  You are not entitled to feel like a winner merely because you exist.  It’s really as simple as that.

The try-hard meme is basically the equivalent of excellence-shaming; you are supposed to feel ashamed of being better than others at a certain task or talent. I’m not sure where this hatred for competition comes from, but I suspect it has something to do with leftists and their early childhoods. Many of them are “late bloomers” who did not have many experiences winning, or they were never pushed by their parents to mature and excel. They grew to despise the idea that winning and success are so elevated in our society, while at the same time they still crave that feeling of being the best at something.

So, they adopt the Marxist creed, which tells them that yes, they are losers, but it’s not because they are lazy and they suck; no, they are losers because they are victims of a society that is holding them back from their true potential. Marxism tells them that the people who succeed were actually given special treatment because of their class or the color of their skin. The winners are actually very bad people who don’t deserve success. If only the system was forced to be more fair, then THEY would be the winners.  Thus, in order for losers to “win”, they must join a mob of other losers and gain power through collective control.  The successful people must be given an extreme handicap by the mob to “level the playing field”.

I think the Marxist ideal is leading these kids down a path of brutal delusion, because they are never going to achieve the Utopian society that they seek. The world will never be “fair”, and the idea that you can force such conditions upon a culture without serious consequences is childish and mentally unstable. Make no mistake, we are entering an era in which the facade propping up limp-wristed and weak people is falling away. When it comes to economic strife, crisis and survival, there is no appeal to equality.  You’re in the jungle, baby, and if you have no merit, you’re gonna die.

The people willing to work hard and the people who seek to self improve are going to do well. The people that want a trophy just for participating are not going to make it.

By extension, trying to socially engineer our country to cater to the lowest common denominator would grind all progress to a standstill and make the crisis even worse. If “trying hard” becomes something to be ashamed of, or something that is punished, then there is no more incentive to improve or innovate or go beyond that which has already been accomplished. Our evolution ceases, and humanity stagnates.

While human competition has its ugly moments in history, at the very least it must be encouraged among individuals. It must continue to be rewarded. For if we start rewarding mediocrity it will be the exact opposite of the biological drives that keep us alive. It will lead to self destruction of the entire species.

You can contact Brandon Smith at:

brandon@alt-market.com

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The Simple Things | Abbeville Institute

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2020

But, cheesy as it may seem, life is truly about the simple things. You family, your community, the ability to have independence, even if it’s a small scale (producing your own food), it’s still a good start. Traditions that I worked to preserve I have, but this is one that was never taught to me, and I nearly lost it. Keep that in mind with your children and your family; these things will die if not passed on.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-simple-things/

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I was raised in one of the poorest counties in North West Arkansas, where my ancestors settled in the 1850s and scratched a living out of poor, rocky hillsides. They raised their families, fought in the war, battled famine and drought and came out ahead, leaving their children small, improved farms. They taught them the joy of being independent, finding solace and comfort in hard work and a job well done, and the importance of passing these things to their children. They were proud, hard working toilers who expecting nothing from anyone save like treatment and despised government intervention into their affairs, much like most of the Southern mountaineers and settlers. The NW corner of Arkansas was poor in money, but rich in character and natural resources. Here they would make their stand.

Of course, my experience was different. By the time I came along in the late 80s, my Great Grandparents were aging, but they kept up the old ritual of gardening and canning until they were physically unable to do so anymore. To this day the cellar at their home (which they built with their own hands and completed in 1956) is stocked with canned goods. Growing up I was intrigued by what they did, but didn’t get involved outside of maybe walking the rows of corn behind my great Grandmother (my Great Grandfather died when I was 10). My Grandparents raised a little garden, but mainly subsided on what they bought or got from their Grandparents. Ditto my parents. We had a token garden, living in the country, but didn’t place great importance on it, though it was oft discussed how important it was. But words and actions are two different things.

Fast forward some years and I marry into a family in the county North of us (even closer to MO), and we begin having children and starting a home of our own. My lifetime of knowing gardening and like things were important is still with me, and becomes more clear to me as I lose the older generations about me. My Great Grandfather passed, and then my Grandfather and his brothers. Soon my link to the past is all but gone from me. Though I long ago accepted I was the family historian, being blessed in growing up literally across the creek where my 4th Great Grandfather homesteaded (and survived an assassination attempt during the war, but that’s a story for another time) and collected pictures, interviews and documents, the practical side of traditions was sadly lost upon me. However, my wife had a very different approach.

Her family were farmers, and dedicated to what today is referred to as ‘homesteading’ and she practiced it with a dedication bordering (admittedly, at times) psychotic (don’t you EVER tell her I said that). She soon had me helping in the garden and I began to enjoy the weed pulling, harvesting, and planting that went along with the declining grocery bill (not to mention the healthfulness of eating what you grow over what you buy in the local supermarket). But it wasn’t until we got into strawberries that it really hit me.

We planted two rows of ever-bear Strawberries to try to do something different. We also got into fruit trees at the same time, but that’s an in the future project. When they started producing (and Lord, did the produce), we began picking nearly daily. We started involving the children in the harvesting, since it was a lighter task, and we both agreed it was immensely important that they begin to learn such things for use in their lives. One evening after we harvested a bucket of strawberries, (and MAN those things are amazing; I always said I didn’t care for strawberries because all I’d ever had were store bought ones) we settled down on the patio in the shade to relax and have supper. It was right about then that it hit me; I have spent so much of my young life chasing material things, and still am guilty of that, but I had never truly picked up on the physical, here and now concepts of what is truly important. I am giving my children what my ancestors taught their children; the concepts of planting, harvesting, and the joy and reward of a hard day’s work. My wife excels in canning and processing food, and we always have a stocked pantry of food for a ‘rainy day.’ My Grandmother tells me that my Great Grandmother would’ve absolutely loved my wife, had she lived long enough to meet her, because their outlook is so similar.

But, cheesy as it may seem, life is truly about the simple things. You family, your community, the ability to have independence, even if it’s a small scale (producing your own food), it’s still a good start. Traditions that I worked to preserve I have, but this is one that was never taught to me, and I nearly lost it. Keep that in mind with your children and your family; these things will die if not passed on. Sitting there, In the cool of our patio, watching my children enjoy their strawberries, I could close my eyes and see my Great Grandparents do the same as they watched the children who became my Grandparents enjoy the fruits of their labor and the land. Blood and soil is a real concept, and it is still there for the taking. God bless you and yours, and may Dixie’s eternal light, and the light of our strong Southern families, perpetually shine.

Lose not faith; but when you become down, or get frustrated on something you can’t change, work on something you CAN change. Start small, and you will work forward to larger things. Keep your faith, your family, and your hope!

Travis Holt is an independent farmer and historian in Arkansas. More from Travis Holt

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