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Real Population Growth Means Strong, Faith-Filled Families

Posted by M. C. on November 27, 2024

“A nation is only as strong as the individual families therein. The fearmongering about population numbers obscures the fact that we should live the same when there is demographic decline as when there is population growth: we should serve our families well…”

A diverse coalition is concerned with our demographic decline, but we need to be careful not to choose solutions that create worse problems.

There is a surprising coalition dancing in the streets following the reelection of Donald Trump. We cannot say that the group of political actors involved with Trump’s victory are “conservative” generally. The Republican Party has come to include such a wide range of diverse worldviews, many of which bear no resemblance to a conservative social outlook and lack sound moral philosophy. If this is conservatism, it is a new brand.

A common thread developing between previously disparate political groups is concern with demographic decline. As of 2022, the birth rate in the United States is 1.66, well below the 2.1 needed for replacement. This is concerning for many reasons. One, which has brought together an interesting assortment of tech millionaires and economists, is that the basis for our economy is growth. As the population contracts, economic systems as we know them become untenable and international tensions will likely escalate as countries compete for immigration.

The concern is not only economic, however. A nation that is aging has a different character. The populace becomes more risk averse and less likely to produce technological advancement. As I heard from someone who visited South Korea—where the birth rate has dropped to .78 per woman—a place with few children can feel sterile; the streets are clean and quiet but lifeless.

You don’t have to fly to Korea for that experience; a trip to a “gray” parish in the United States, a parish where the median age at Sunday Mass hovers around 70, will show you what an aging population feels like. This observation is not meant as an ageist slight against people in such parishes but a recognition of the importance of children in a healthy society.

What is the response to this crisis from the new Right?

In the frenzy of the presidential campaign trail, both sides made extravagant promises for entitlements. Disturbingly, Trump promised to fund in vitro fertilization (IVF) through tax dollars. His casual support for this morally unacceptable medical technology reveals the likely opinion of the majority of Americans. The focus for many is on the psychological suffering of infertile couples, pain that is real and undeniable. As one mother confused about IVF told me, “How can it be wrong to bring new life into the world?”

Yet, a desire to alleviate a couple’s suffering cannot come at the expense of the moral order. Separating the conception of a child from his natural parents is an injustice to the child. This fact reveals the challenges in partnering with elites who share a concern about the immanent demographic collapse but lack moral formation to address it in a humane way.

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Congress Dithers While Vlad and Joe Play Nuclear Chicken

Posted by M. C. on November 27, 2024

Are your congresspeople doing the same as mine…nothing?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/11/congress_dithers_while_vlad_and_joe_play_nuclear_chicken.html

By Brian C. Joondeph

Is President Joe Biden out to start a war? Or are his shadow warmongers Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan responsible? War can potentially explode regardless of who pulled the pin on the grenade.

Several days ago, the pin was pulled. Reuters reported,

Russia fired a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday in response to the U.S. and UK’s allowing Kyiv to strike Russian territory with advanced Western weapons, in a further escalation of the 33-month-old war.

This was a shorter-range weapon, “U.S. officials and NATO echoed Putin’s description of the weapon as an intermediate-range ballistic missile, which has a shorter range of 3,000–5,500 km (1,860-3,415 miles).”

Moscow to New York is about 4,600 miles, meaning that this missile does not threaten the continental U.S., but the rest of Europe and NATO are at risk. This explains why Sweden and Finland are preparing for possible war.

Major EU capital cities could be minutes from obliteration by this Russian missile. With its hypersonic speed, the missile could reach Berlin in 15 minutes and London and Paris in 20 minutes.

Is Russian President Vladimir Putin the instigator, or did the U.S. and NATO poke the bear one too many times? Signs at the zoo warn visitors not to tease or provoke the animals. Those who disregard such advice often learn of their folly the hard way.

How many such missiles does Russia have? Our intel community may or may not know. Government intelligence is often used to create a narrative rather than reflect reality, so we may be in for a future surprise.

Is the Russian missile launch a gambit toward a negotiated peace with a future President Trump? Perhaps. Remember that chess is a national pastime in Russia. Moves and countermoves.

Chess, however, is played with wooden pieces on a small board, not with nuclear weapons capable of destroying civilization. In Dirty Harry fashion, Russia and the U.S. may ask each other, “Do you feel lucky today?”

Unfortunately, Trump cannot negotiate anything until January 20. All communications from Trump and his entire team are likely being monitored by the same agencies that spied on his 2016 transition, looking for any opportunity to invoke the Logan Act as an excuse not to certify his election. Remember that the president-elect is not simply “any citizen” corresponding with a foreign government.

Biden is considered a lame-duck president.

In politics, a lame duck or outgoing politician is an elected official whose successor has already been elected or will be soon.

A lame duck is free to make decisions that exercise the standard powers with little fear of consequence, such as issuing executive orders, pardons, or other controversial edicts

Does this include starting a war? Let’s look at the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 specifically lists as a power of Congress the power “to declare War,” which unquestionably gives the legislature the power to initiate hostilities. The extent to which this clause limits the President’s ability to use military force without Congress’s affirmative approval remains highly contested.

Most people agree, at minimum, that the Declare War Clause grants Congress exclusive power. Presidents cannot, on their own authority, declare war.

But that is just what Biden did, not by name but by deed. As the NY Times reported,

Ukraine’s military used American-made ballistic missiles on Tuesday to strike into Russia for the first time, according to senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials, just days after President Biden gave permission to do so in a major shift of American policy.

These are highly complex missiles. It’s not like handing Ukraine a handgun to shoot at Russia. These missiles require sophisticated guidance and launch procedures beyond the capability of the Ukrainian military.

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Inflation: Your Role as a Milk Cow

Posted by M. C. on November 26, 2024

The purpose of bank-created inflation is to extract wealth from the populace.

By regularly increasing the amount of currency in circulation, banks create an environment in which the concept of debt appears to be beneficial. As a result, virtually everyone in today’s society not only has debt; he actually believes that he couldn’t improve his life except through debt.

Inflation: Your Role as a Milk Cow

by Jeff Thomas

Traditionally, inflation has been defined as “an increase in the amount of currency in circulation.” Such an increase almost always causes an increase in the cost of goods and services, since, more plentiful currency units lowers their rarity, as compared to the supply of goods and services, which remains roughly the same. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising if a 20% increase in the amount of currency units translates into a 20% increase in the price of goods and services.

Unfortunately, in recent decades, even dictionaries have been offering a revised definition of inflation, as “an increase in the price of goods and services.” This is a pity, as it makes an already confusing subject even more difficult to understand.

This is especially true for the average guy who has a minimal understanding of economics, but does realise that, even if his wages increase (which he regards as a good thing), he never seems to get ahead. In the end, he always seems to be worse off.

Let’s say that you’re paid $4000 per month. You budget for housing, food, clothing, transportation, etc. Let’s say that that adds up to $3800 per month, and you’re hoping to put $200 per month into savings. Often that doesn’t happen, as unplanned expenses “pop up,” and must be paid for. So, in the end, you save little or nothing.

In the meantime, you’re daydreaming about buying a new car, but it can’t be bought, because you don’t have any money to allocate to it.

Then, your boss says that the recent prosperity has resulted in a big new contract for the company that allows him to give you a raise of $200 a month.

This is your big chance. You go to the car dealership, buy the car, and arrange for time payments of $200 per month to pay for it.

However, what’s rarely understood is that the theoretical “prosperity” is the result of governmentally induced inflation. What appears to be prosperity is merely a rise in costs and, along with it, a rise in your wages.

You appear to be “getting ahead,” but here’s what really happens…

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Will Donald Trump Eliminate the Department of Education?

Posted by M. C. on November 26, 2024

by Benjamin Seevers

“Fischel further argues that childless voters are less inclined to care about state-level school policy because “as long as they own homes that they can sell to someone with school-age children, childless voters are interested in the quality of schools and other local public goods…at the state level, this interest is nearly zero.”

“But if the state governments do not serve the interests of homeowners, then whom do they serve?”

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/will-donald-trump-eliminate-the-department-of-education/

Hardly a minute has gone by without the media sounding off about President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations. However, one department has garnered more attention than others: the Department of Education).

Trump has stated that eliminating the Department of Education and devolving governance of education to the states would be one of the first actions of his second administration, and his choice for secretary, Linda McMahon, may or may not share Trump’s goal. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has also called for the elimination of the Department of Education

This alarms leaders of teacher advocacy organizations. The president of American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—the second largest teacher’s union in the country—stated, “Donald Trump and Republican elected officials have said they want to eliminate the Department of Education, which oversees programs that invest in low-income schools and help fund education for students with disabilities, but if they listen to what the voters have said, they will work to strengthen public schools, not dismantle them.”

Given Trump’s comments, the AFT has good reason to fear the incoming administration. If the Department of Education is eliminated, then the stranglehold teacher unions have on education policy would be greatly diminished. This reform promises significant benefits.

William Fischel, in his seminal paper entitled, “Homevoters, Municipal Corporate Governance, and the Benefit View of the Property Tax,” highlights the fact that centralization in public school funding has led to worse education outcomes. Why? Fischel states:

“Local funding provides a benefit-cost discipline on local voters who own homes in the district. Consider a local superintendent’s proposal to improve schools by adding more teachers. Under local property tax funding, this has a positive and a negative effect on voters. If the additional teachers raise the quality of education, home values will rise, which pleases most homeowners in the same way that capital gains please stockholders. But the additional need for funds will raise property taxes, and it is widely established that higher taxes will reduce home values. Thus local voters have an incentive to adopt cost-effective school measures, which makes their schools more efficient.”

This same effect is not felt at the state level. Fischel explains:

“State officials cannot rely on the housing market to guide them. Capitalization of the net benefits of school spending in home values, which guides (at least in part) local officials, does little to influence state officials. States are too large for the statewide housing market to give much systematic evidence about school quality compared to other states. Homeowners seldom search for homes among states like they do among the scores of local governments that characterize most metropolitan areas.”

Fischel further argues that childless voters are less inclined to care about state-level school policy because “as long as they own homes that they can sell to someone with school-age children, childless voters are interested in the quality of schools and other local public goods…at the state level, this interest is nearly zero.”

But if the state governments do not serve the interests of homeowners, then whom do they serve?

Fischel answers:

“Teachers’ unions displace homeowners as the most influential group at the state level. Unions may be effective in raising average spending per pupil, but at the same time they make that spending less efficient by insisting on work rules that they would not be able to obtain at the local level. Local boards have to deal with the union, too, but its influence is mitigated in most districts by the fact that local voters, who are mostly homeowners, monitor the board’s spending more closely. At the state level, homeowners are far less influential because state spending affects home values much less than local spending.”

Economist Ludwig von Mises made a similar argument with public enterprises in his treatise Human Action. Mises writes:

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Against the Tyranny of Urban Majorities

Posted by M. C. on November 26, 2024

by Joseph Solis-Mullen

The only real surprise in all this is that The Wall Street Journal would dare to broach such a topic as secession in a manner that was not explicitly condemnatory. Those interested in learning more should consult the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken and his great book on the subject of secession.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/against-the-tyranny-of-urban-majorities/

colorful usa map with states. vector illustration

In a recent and rather surprising piece, The Wall Street Journal highlighted growing frustrations among rural residents of states like Illinois, solidly Republican regions who feel disenfranchised by the political dominance of urban metropolises like Chicago and the wider Cook County. The article described sentiments among rural Illinoisans who increasingly view their state government as an unrepresentative body, one that governs in the interests of urban elites while neglecting or outright opposing the values, interests, and livelihoods of those living in less densely populated areas.

This frustration is not unique to Illinois; it resonates in states like California, Oregon, and New York, where rural and small-town residents feel marginalized by overwhelmingly urban legislatures and policies crafted by political majorities in the cities. It raises an important question: why should sparsely populated regions be bound indefinitely to the political dominance of a few, highly concentrated urban areas?

The idea that rural regions might seek autonomy from urban majorities has an intuitive appeal, especially when considering the arbitrary nature of state boundaries in the United States. Unlike France, England, or other nations rooted in medieval kingdoms and centuries-old cultural identities, states like Illinois and California are constructs of relatively recent history, products of political compromises and expedient geographic delineations. Many boundaries of these states reflect no natural or inherent connection among their inhabitants. This arbitrariness invites comparisons to the imperial cartography of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where colonial powers carved up Africa and the Middle East into artificial nations that still grapple with the consequences of their incoherent borders. Why, then, should we expect places as disparate as Chicago and rural Illinois, or San Francisco and the farmlands of California’s Central Valley, to share common governance without conflict or resentment?

The argument for rural secession from urban-dominated states rests on several principles. First, it is fundamentally undemocratic to force people into perpetual political subjugation because they happen to live within arbitrarily drawn borders. Unlike democracy, properly republican government depends not just on majority rule but on the protection of minority rights, including the right to self-governance. When rural communities are systematically outvoted and overruled by urban majorities, they are effectively disenfranchised within their own states.

Take California, for example. The state’s Democratic supermajority is overwhelmingly driven by votes from urban centers like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. Policies on taxation, land use, energy, and firearms, among others, reflect urban priorities that often clash with the values and economic needs of rural Californians. Yet rural residents have no realistic avenue to influence these policies.

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Lucid Summations of Fundamental Issues

Posted by M. C. on November 25, 2024

• The U.S. wars against Russia, China, and the Palestinians have been waged for more than a century. Like the slaughtered native peoples, American black slaves, the Vietnamese, Iraqis, and so many others around the world, these people have been considered less than human and in need of elimination.

Lucid Summations of Fundamental Issues

Edward J. Curtin, Jr.

In his 1959 classic book, The Sociological Imagination, the American sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote that ordinary people are often reduced to moral stasis and feel trapped and overwhelmed by the glut of information that is available to them. They have great difficulty in an age of fact to make sense of the connections between their personal lives and society, to see the links between biography and history, self and world. They can’t assimilate all the information and need a “new” way of thinking that he called “the sociological imagination” that would allow them to connect history and biography, to see the connections between society and its structures. He wrote:

What they need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summation of what is going on in the world and what may be happening within themselves.

That was long ago and is obviously much truer today when the Internet and digital media, not the slow reading of books and even paper newspapers and magazines, are the norm, with words scurrying past glazed eyes on cell phones and computers like constantly changing marquees announcing that the clowns have arrived.

In an era of soundbites and paragraphs that have been reduced to one sentence in a long campaign of dumbing down the public, it may seem counterintuitive to heed Mills’ advice and offer summations. However, as one who has written long articles on many issues, I think it is a good practice to do so once in a while, not just to distill conclusions one has arrived at for oneself, but also to provoke readers into thinking about conclusions that they may question but may feel compelled to reconsider for themselves. For I have reached them assiduously, not lightly, honestly, not guilefully.

With that in mind, what follows are some summations.

• With the musical chair exchanges between Democratic and Republican administrations, now from Biden to Trump and previously the reverse, we are simply seeing an exchange of methods of elite control from repressive tolerance (tolerant in the cultural realm with “wokeness” under the Democrats) to tolerant (“promotion” of free speech, no censorship) repression under the Republicans. Under conditions of advanced technological global capitalism and oligarchy, only the methods of control change, not the reality of repression. Free elections of masters.

• The exertion of power and control always revolves around methods of manipulating people’s fear of death, whether that is through authority, propaganda, or coercion. It takes many forms – war, weapons, money, police, disease (Covid-19), etc. Threats explicit and implicit.

• Contrary to much reporting that Israel is the tail wagging the U.S. dog, it is the U.S. dog that wags Israel as its client state, doing what is best for both – control of the Middle East. Control of the Middle East’s oil supplies and travel routes has been key to American foreign policy for a very long time.

• There is no deep state unless one understands that the U.S. government, which is an obvious and open warfare state, is the “deep” state in all its shallowness and serves the interests of those who own the country.

• The CIA’s public assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, sixty-one years ago to the day as I write, is the paradigmatic example of how the power elite uses its ultimate weapon of coercion. Death in the public square for everybody to see together with the spreading of fear with all its real and symbolic repercussions.

• The mass acceptance and use of the cell phone by the public has exponentially facilitated the national security state’s surveillance and mind control. People now carry unfreedom in their pockets as “the land of the free” has become a portable cage with solitude and privacy banished. What evil lurks in the hearts of men? the 1930s popular radio show’s “Shadow” once asked – now the phone knows and it is shadowing those who carry it.

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The CDC Made Plans to Put Americans in ‘Quarantine’ Camps During COVID Pandemic

Posted by M. C. on November 25, 2024

The agency used our money to develop a blueprint for segregating Americans in camps during the pandemic indefinitely.

Good thing or bad? Remember this is government “that is here to help”…

“Moreover, the CDC’s own document acknowledged that introducing the virus into these shielded zones could result in rapid transmission among the most vulnerable—a tragic irony for a proposal intended to protect them.”

The CDC Made Plans to Put Americans in ‘Quarantine’ Camps During COVID Pandemic

Remember during the COVID-19 pandemic when the conspiracy theorists among us said the United States government had plans to put people in quarantine camps? It turns out they were right.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) went beyond just advocating for masks, lockdowns, and mandatory COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. The agency quietly released a plan in July 2020 that sounds like it belongs in some sort of dystopian novel: a blueprint for segregating Americans in camps using taxpayer money.

The “shielding approach” targeted specific populations—especially the elderly and those with underlying health conditions—for relocation to designated “green zones” or camps, with no defined end date.

Titled Interim Operational Considerations for Implementing the Shielding Approach to Prevent COVID-19 Infections in Humanitarian Settings, this controversial proposal went far beyond a typical public health advisory. It outlined specific plans to physically segregate “high-risk” individuals from the general population—a move that’s hard to justify in any free society.

Segregation Camps and Green Zones

According to the document, high-risk individuals would be relocated and forcibly segregated from other Americans in “green zones” established at the household, neighborhood, camp/sector, or community level, depending on the context and setting. These individuals would have minimal contact with family members and other low-risk residents.

Household-Level Isolation: At the smallest scale, high-risk individuals would be isolated in a designated room within their own homes, and low-risk family members would be barred from entering unless absolutely necessary. Family interaction, once taken for granted, would be replaced by protocols, distance, and strict hygiene measures.
Neighborhood-Level Isolation: For groups of high-risk individuals from up to 10 households, the CDC recommended creating shared shelters within a neighborhood. This “neighborhood zone” would act as a bubble, limiting contact with the outside world.
Camp or Sector-Level Isolation: This was the most disturbing tier, suggesting entire camps or zones be set up in schools or other community facilities, where up to 50 high-risk individuals could be moved and isolated for months on end. Family visits? Restricted. Interaction with friends and loved ones? Only if they complied with strict guidelines.

Each zone would be a self-contained world where high-risk individuals were “safeguarded” by keeping them completely separate from the rest of the population. Once inside these zones, they would be effectively cut off from normal social interaction and freedom of movement, locked into a world dictated by government protocols.

But wait, it gets better. The CDC made suggestions for what each zone should contain. For example, the agency suggested that each green zone have a dedicated “latrine/bathing” facility for high-risk individuals.

No need to wonder where these federal employees got their inspiration for dedicated latrines and showers. Prisoners in German concentration camps during the Holocaust were also segregated and required to use certain latrines and showers in the name of preventing disease.

The CDC also said monitoring protocols would need to be developed and “dedicated staff” would need to monitor each green zone. This is no different than what you would see in a high-security prison.

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