Posts Tagged → right
Are you in a (political) cult?
Politically active Americans pride themselves on having knowledge and basic principles that drive their political views and commitments. This goes for both left and right and especially the non-devoted “independents.”
But given how extremely out of kilter America’s economic and political landscape is right now (five dollar gasoline and 8.6% inflation by design of the Biden Administration, and lawless FBI thugs illegally performing the old Nazi Gestapo’s political function by arresting innocent political opponents of the Democrat Party), we have to ask if Americans on both the left and the right are politically devoting themselves to a form of cult worship. As in blindly supporting a political party or a political figure, regardless of how far away this devotion takes them from the essential beliefs they once held.
Because I was long ago a Democrat, and I have since fleeing that political party nonetheless long co-mingled with Democrat Party members, I have a base line for comparison, and so I will start here.
I am incredulous at how tenaciously so many Democrat Party members cling to that brand, despite so many widely deviating policy positions pouring out of it. John F. Kennedy, vaunted Democrat Party icon even today, would have zero in common with the Democrat Party of today were he resurrected and inducted back into American politics. Rather, JFK would by today’s standards be a far-right Republican. This is because the Democrat Party has now abandoned every essential principle on which it stood, and has instead embraced and championed every anti-America, anti-child, anti-woman, anti-freedom, racist, Marxist, anti-America policy possible.
Given that the Democrat Party now stands for everything that is the opposite of what it used to stand for, it naturally follows that we ask if those Americans who are nonetheless still devoted to this organization are mentally in a cult. Like, they don’t realize it, and their blind devotion to something so profoundly destructive is an emotional response and not a reasoned response.
Look, if you so closely personally identify with a political organization that has repeatedly and radically changed its policies not just over your lifetime but over the past ten years, so strongly that you take it deeply personally when someone criticizes that organization, then yeah, you have a cult follower mindset. Because you have lost sight of the fact that all organizations are created to implement certain goals, and they are very rarely a personal reflection of you. This particular Democrat Party organization has shown zero fidelity to what it once represented…so how can you continue to so closely identify with it?
So I think the answer is Yes, especially a great many older Democrat Party members today are in fact in a cult mindset. They are emotionally loyal to an organization that is killing their grandkids’ future, and that personal attachment, that emotional way of thinking is why so many older Democrats then become absolutely enraged and incapable of maintaining a calm, logical discussion about policy and politics when their political party is criticized.
No debate is allowed, walls go up, friendships and even family relationships are ended. We all see it. It is tragic. It is unnecessarily destructive, and yet, this cult mindset persists.
Now, let’s look at the political right.
The American right is splintering along several philosophical paths, and it is amazing that the Republican Party has been able to provide a big enough “tent” to house all of these different views.
One path is religious, and not just Christian, but Sikh, Hindu, orthodox Jewish, and probably a few others. These are traditionalists who value family and community structures above all, and who ascribe religion with the capability of holding it all together. The crazier and more stridently anti-religion the Left gets (First Amendment be damned), the more these disparate people find themselves sharing the same fox hole. And based on my own personal experience, there are religious Christians who strongly oppose other religions, or liberal factions of other religions, but who nonetheless find themselves in league with them by necessity or by happenstance. Nothing wrong with that, as America is based on different people with the same shared values.
Another philosophical path on the right is the Small Government/ Big Citizen American. These are people not very religious, but devoted to running their small businesses, caring for their families, enjoying life, planning for their future. They see and reject the Left’s policies targeting everything they have worked for. They are especially at odds with Big Government + Big Tech taking control of their every thought, decision, communication, and bank account, and thereby reducing the citizen to a very small role in what is supposed to be a representative government tailor-made of, by, and FOR the citizen.
Finally, there are the nationalists, for whom a constitutional republic America represents the penultimate in human achievement. Some nationalists may be religious, of course, but there are a lot of proud Americans who rightly worship the American flag’s unique symbolism of freedom, liberty, opportunity.
Into the ointment of these neat little conservative philosophical categories flies the presence of President Trump. Without question there is a well-earned cult of personality surrounding President Trump, to whom myriad supporters often ascribe superhuman powers of discernment and strategery. It is a fact that President Trump saved America from the uniparty in 2016, and probably created a great national revival and awakening by having his re-election stolen in 2020. And so he deserves our adoration and appreciation, even if he isn’t really magic.
However, if there is any cult-like mentality on the right, it is among Trump Faithful who follow his every political endorsement, no matter how poorly reasoned or considered. Trump has made a bunch of frankly bizarre political endorsements around America that has left many of his supporters scratching their heads, like Dr. Oz here in PA and RINO Minority Leader Congressman Kevin McCarthy in California. Quite lovely primary battles are unfolding in Arizona and Nevada, where a couple of Trump’s endorsed GOPe candidates are being strongly rejected by Trump Faithful voters. They say that Trump showed them the way to the promised land, and that he has now has gotten bogged down in politics, which was never his strong hand.
And that right there shows that even among the Trump personality cult following on the right, there is both careful reasoning for why he earns support, and how there is disagreement with him over politics. Americans are understandably drawn to the only truly pro-America and non-political political candidate in many decades, President Donald J. Trump. Even those who openly adore the man also openly disagree with him.
I don’t think there is a political cult on the right. There definitely is one on the left.
Will the US Supreme Court go rogue in the Corlett decision?
The US Supreme Court says it will hear arguments in a major Second Amendment (gun rights) case brought by the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (Corlett, docket number 20-843) against the State of New York.
These two opponents are now met in legal battle, and the US Supreme Court is the final battlefield upon which the outcome will be legally determined. Legal being a kind of tenuous word these days, as all kinds of government agencies have taxpayer-paid staff who now illegally behave any damned way they want, with no legal accountability. The illegal behavior of the “public servants” raises the question whether the official decisions the various government agencies are then issuing are actually legal, and whether or not citizens should give a fig about them.
The case facts (the policy question) of Corlett are right out of the Constitution’s Second Amendment: The right to keep and BEAR arms. New York State says no, citizens have no intrinsic or Constitutional right to carry concealed or unconcealed firearms outside of their homes, without the state’s approval. And thus has New York State made getting a concealed carry license very difficult, and the penalties for law-abiding citizens who do carry without a license extremely harsh.
As you might guess, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association believes the opposite. They contend the plain meaning of the Second Amendment means what it says: To bear arms is to carry them in public, while the keep arms part is about having guns in your home. No license or government approval beyond what the Second Amendment says is necessary to keep or bear firearms, nor is government interference in such an individual Constitutional right lawful.
Moreover, they point out that the public policy question is on their side, because concealed carry permit holders are overwhelmingly law-abiding and safe. It does stand to reason that the people who go through the government red tape rigmarole presently needed to get a carry license are people who innately believe in following the law, in contrast to gang members and other urban scourges who carry and use guns illegally as part and parcel of their daily living. Therefore, New York’s stated purpose of limiting carry licenses for public safety and crime reduction is not only meaningless, because the current policy fails on both counts, it is actually having the opposite result. States with liberal concealed carry laws have seen a greatly reduced amount of violent crime, because would-be criminals understand they may encounter deadly force in response to their criminal behavior.
Many gun owners are excited about this case, after so many years of the Court declining to hear appeals of lower court decisions that were completely contrary to the Heller and MacDonald holdings (which were both strongly in keeping with the plain language of the Second Amendment’s very broad guarantee of individual gun rights). Well, hold your horses, people. The US Supreme Court has declined all kinds of appeals of lower court infringements of not just 2A, but what are in essence complete overturns of Heller and MacDonald precedents. The Supreme Court majority has allowed these lawless lower court decisions to stand. When the Court declined to hear appeals of lower court decisions on gun rights that were contrary to established Supreme Court precedent, the Court was more or less agreeing with the lower courts. The result has been a slow chiseling away of Constitutional Second Amendment rights by political activists sitting on lower courts, a slow erosion of the Supreme Court’s standing among and relevance to the citizenry, and a very clear message to Constitutionalists from all the courts: Do not hold hope for the American court system to protect individual American civil rights.
America’s court system is just as politicized and dysfunctional as the rest of our federal government. This is due to the divergent natures of the two types of people inhabiting our courts: Leftist activists for whom the law means nothing but a randomly opportunistic pathway to implement socialism and tyranny, and moderates who cannot be troubled to make a stand on hardly anything at all. So the moderates get swept away by the anti-law socialists. The Supreme Court is subject to these same forces.
Think about how America is still in the aftermath of the Court declining to hear enormously important cases about how some state administrative agencies (Pennsylvania’s Department of State being one) had unilaterally and illegally changed their state election laws right before the 2020 election, bypassing their own state constitutions and laws. And yesterday the Court sided 6-3 with a criminal illegal alien who fought his deportation on the grounds that the US Government had failed to give him “sufficient notice.”
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
If you are a convicted criminal illegal alien, the US Government and the citizen taxpayers empowering it owe you nothing but a swift kick in the ass on your way out of America.
To be blunt: Because the Supreme Court allowed the 2020 election to be stolen, and would not even hear the monumental legal and policy issues raised during the steal, why would any of us believe they will stand in the way of the government trying to steal our guns?
If any particular official government entity or group of individuals is responsible for the destruction of America’s rule of law, it is the Supreme Court. No wonder fewer and fewer Americans have confidence in or loyalty to this failed government entity.
So, if you are one of the people salivating over the prospect of the Court hereby upholding the Second Amendment rights of the citizen serf in Corlett, you are DREAMING. Do not raise your own or anyone else’s expectations about the Supreme Court now swooping in to set things right on the Second Amendment. If anything, we should be prepared for this lawless body packed with leftist activists and cowards, with just a couple of loyal patriots (the two Constitutionalists Thomas and Alito), to throw the Second Amendment overboard. If anything, we should be raising people’s preparation levels for defending our 2A rights by all means necessary. The US Supreme Court has gone rogue and no American should look to the compromised traitors in it to provide any relief to USA citizens.
So come what may, regardless of what will be the Supreme Court’s latest decision on the Second Amendment, New York State citizens may yet determine on their own what they believe their individual rights to be, and also what the limits are on government interference in the private lives and rights of citizens. After all, both government and these various courts were established to resolve differences in favor of citizen rights that are already very clearly spelled out in our founding documents, including in New York’s own constitution. All of America’s founding documents were written and established to limit government and to elevate the citizen over government, a situation now being reversed in a nationwide atmosphere of autocratic government totalitarianism. New York State being an Exhibit A. Which the Supreme Court may well reinforce in its Corlett decision.
New York citizens may choose to protect themselves as they see fit, perhaps with a concealed handgun minus the license part. Obviously this is presently at some risk to a person’s liberty, due to New York’s anti-Constitution state administration.
And this raises the bigger question here: Will enough Americans rise up and re-assert our collective ownership of this thing called government, which has gone totally rogue and turned against us, the citizen taxpayers? Unfortunately, blood is probably going to flow in answering this question. We freedom loving citizens are being attacked and damaged by anti-freedom people who want full control of everyone and every decision we make. Human history demonstrates that only brute force can determine who prevails in these kinds of contests.
UPDATE: Reading the Washington Post assessment of this case provides insight into the minds of tyrants. The Washington Post wonders aloud what will happen if the Court is “too broad” in its reading of what can only be plainly read as a very broad individual right to keep and bear firearms. As a mouthpiece for the radical Left, the Washington Post sends public messages from elected officials to everyone else, and so they wonder if a “too broad” interpretation of the Second Amendment will result in the Court being “overhauled” by the Democrat Party with an increase in the number of leftist activist justices sitting on the bench. You can’t make this stuff up, and they are proudly stating up front that if the Left does not get what it wants, which is official tyranny via the Supreme Court, then they will artificially install a new Supreme Court that will give them the policy outcome they want, democracy be damned. When people use democratic processes to achieve non-democratic results, you are dealing with pure evil. Well, what am I saying…these people stole the 2020 election in broad daylight, so what else should be expected? My advice: Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves!
UPDATE May 2nd, 2021: The Supreme Court discredits itself yet again. The Court has declined to hear one of the most salient lawsuits of our time, that brought by Laura Loomer, whose weighty complaint to the Court was that the Big Tech digital media are illegal monopolies who illegally discriminate against Americans, and thereby violate citizens’ First Amendment free speech rights. Loomer being the Exhibit A of the moment. And we all know an awful lot of “cancel culture” discrimination by Big Tech has been going on the past twelve months, affecting at least a third of the American citizenry, and you would think a reasonable Supreme Court would want to weigh in on this problem. But no, the Supreme Court continues to behave disgracefully and kick away the sniveling little wretches who keep showing up at the carriage door begging for some relief from their oppression.
This Court is daily diminishing its own usefulness and relevance to the American People, and the only answer why this is, is that the Court’s majority no longer sees themselves as part of the American republic or as guardians of the Constitution that holds the republic together.
If not us, We, The People, then who the hell is the Supreme Court working for? I think the Corlett case is going to demonstrate exactly who the Supreme Court is protecting and promoting these days: Tyrannical Big Government. I hope I am wrong, but looking at all these decisions the Court is making, including Loomer’s case, it is clear the US Supreme Court is AWOL.
Don’t you go and feel all alone if the Court’s anti-Constitution behavior leaves you thinking their decisions no longer have a binding effect on you. The Court is clearly now made of tyrants, and tyranny has no role or place on American soil, and they have no claim on the allegiance of the American citizen, much less our obedience.
“Red Flag” ERPOs are violent, dangerous, un-American
In the 2002 movie “Minority Report,” police identify and swiftly SWAT-team-style arrest potential criminals before they have committed a crime, even if they are not in the act of committing the crime. That lack of due process, the discarding of the American core value of the presumption of innocence, and the mis-use of quacky, uncertain technology to concretely deprive citizens of their liberties for crimes they did not yet commit, and possibly only imagined, is at the movie’s heart.
Like the 1949 book 1984, in Minority Report an an all-seeing, all-controlling government squashes individuality, individual rights, and free thought by criminalizing “thought crimes,” even thoughts that have not actually been implemented in the physical world. The gist of both the 1949 book and the 2002 movie being that coercive government power can be easily mis-used and that it is at the core of illegitimate governance that justifies civilian resistance and disobedience.
So, welcome to Minority Report and 1984 in your life, right now, in the form of “Red Flag,” “Extreme Risk Prevention Order” and the politically named “Gun Violence Restraining Order” (there is no such thing as ‘gun violence’). These risky programs are being slowly enacted and implemented in states across America in the name of safety.
Theoretically, both ERPOs and GRVOs are designed to get out ahead of a gun owner and send in the SWAT team before that gun owner possibly commits a crime with a gun. Like the ill-fated “No Fly List” bar to gun ownership, both ERPOs and GRVOs are designed to empower police to quickly bypass the natural due process safeguards our federal Constitution explicitly grants to each citizen, behind a screen of secrecy and unaccountable government employees, in the name of immediate if poorly defined security.
The problem with these programs is that they are failing everywhere for reasons that anyone with a shred of common sense had been and would normally employ when assessing the possible risk-benefit value of laws encouraging police to go all cowboy on people who have not actually committed a violent crime. In every place where ERPOs and GRVOs have been implemented, police have aggressively gunned down in cold blood totally innocent citizens, often in their own homes, and always in circumstances where the citizen was either not armed or was only armed because the police had acted like violent, illegal home invaders that an armed citizen would normally resist.
Their results have been exactly the opposite of stopping violence, as ERPOs and GRVOs actually encourage violence; but it’s by the government against the citizen, which ERPO proponents want.
These programs are the anti-gun activist’s dream come true, as the true purpose of ERPOs and GVROs is to generally stigmatize all gun ownership and all individual gun owners by creating an automatic suspect class. Almost all of these programs enable pretty much anyone to call the police and “SWAT” some gun owner the person doesn’t like, doesn’t agree with politically, has a property line dispute with, wants to make an example of etc. “SWATTING” is where someone calls in a bogus threat to a local police department, identifying someone who is actually innocent and unsuspecting that in mere minutes his door is about to come crashing in with a heavily armed SWAT team who thinks he is holding a hostage with a gun to the head.
- ERPOs and GRVOs are the legalization and encouraging of SWATTING.
- ERPOs and GRVOs are dangerous; they promote violence, especially against innocent people.
- ERPOs and purposefully anti-gun-named GVROs are a direct threat to all American citizens, because due process is thrown out the door from the very beginning.
- These are back door channels to criminalizing gun ownership, mass intimidation and big government control over peaceful, law abiding gun owners.
- They are purposefully vague, potentially random, and are more than anything a NAZI Gestapo tactic to bully law abiding gun owners into relinquishing their guns out of fear of being dimed out for some imagined, fake crime.
Why are ERPOs and GRVOs happening? They are becoming popular because due process has gone out the window since Obama was elected in 2008. Obama ran an increasingly abusive government without a shred of respect for the rule of law or due process, and his big government admirers everywhere followed in his step. The result has been that any part of any government anywhere, at any level, that is controlled by Democrats has 360 degree unfettered reach and scope. And on the flip side, any part of government run by Republicans is automatically suspect and subject to endless questioning and investigation and blocking by over-reaching federal judges and bureaucrats.
It is how the Mueller investigation has worked, with its vague accusations of “obstruction” against people who had not and could not have committed any crime in the first place. Without a crime, there can be no obstruction. Roger Stone has been bankrupted for the ‘crime’ of being a political supporter of a president Mueller hates.
This is how the communists took control of Hungary and probably other European nations. They used unproven accusations, which became procedural abuses, to ensnare political opponents, who were then railroaded in the criminal justice system. Just as Mueller has done to his victims.
Democrats today are employing the same exact tactics as the European communists to gain political power the voters would never grant them at the ballot box. These tactics should be illegal and punishable by existing law, but the opposition party, the GOP, is spineless and weak, filled with self-dealing careerists. The culture change following in the wake of Obama’s anti-individual rights big government power grab has shifted in favor of anti-freedom control freaks. They like ERPOs and GVROs, because they suit their tactics, and the Republicans either enable them, empower them, or sit out the fight because there is no money to be made in it.
Do not allow ERPOs, GRVOs, or their derivations into your community or state, because these are undemocratic breaches of the public trust in a government that is supposed to serve its free people.
As a post script, the other big problem is what happens with someone’s legally owned guns when they are confiscated by police. Quite often they are stored under terrible conditions that either badly damage or destroy the firearms. And often the police refuse to honor the law and return the firearms to the citizen after he has been cleared. Moreover, the police often steal or sell confiscated guns, and there is little or no recourse for the citizen to be justly compensated for what has been essentially an unconstitutional taking of private property by government.
America should be going in the direction opposite of ERPOs, GRVOs, and their secret courts where accused people have no right to defend themselves and are presumed guilty. Our founding principles of limited government power, government transparency, and government accountability demand it.
Galileo before the Inquisition’s Secret Court. Is American due process really going backwards to the Dark Ages?
Hallelujah, fur is back in style
A wonderful evening stroll down Fifth Avenue reveals that among the world’s top fashion professionals, natural fur has made a 100% comeback.
Clothing that even I recognize and admire as stunningly beautiful is covered, trimmed, made of, and surrounded by natural furs from many species of animals.
Recall that animal fur was denigrated as cruelly gotten, and bored activists would scream at people wearing fur, sometimes throwing red dye on them. The shallow activists never addressed how their leather shoes and belts and purses and car seats squared up with their public opposition to people wearing other sorts of animal skins.
If hypocrisy is a hallmark of screechy activists, fur was the best example.
Fur is, after all, natural, biodegradable, renewable, and under modern wildlife laws, sustainable. Those are all rare qualities in a world filled with cheap plastic junk manufactured in an enormous prison camp called China.
The luxurious furs I looked at represented incredible skill. From the trappers who artfully snared the critters without damaging the pelt, to the tanners who carefully turned them into soft leather capable of being worked, to the cutters and seamstresses who took the supple leather (with the hair on, like a cow hide) and turned them into gorgeous clothes, throws, and warm accoutrements, the entire process is a long chain of long-enduring skills and appreciation of natural beauty and utility.
If fur was long politically incorrect, but now it is acceptable among the PC elites who run the fashion industry, what does this say about the philosophical leanings of the individuals behind this surge? One cannot help but think that the many gay men in the fashion industry, once emancipated in general society, would eventually hew to a more pragmatic view of life and politics.
After all, once you own a home and work for people willing to spend thousands of dollars on a single garment, you really do have a stake in the capitalist enterprise.
Perhaps the fur on display at Bergdorf Goodman, Saks, and other stores I looked at is a social statement by a bunch of quiet pragmatists, who have also had it with the faux anger and the overwrought hostility and the ubiquitous unhappiness that characterize Leftist politics.
Well done, chums.
And as a pretty bad but committed trapper myself, thank you.
Charlton Heston – still my president
Watching the Ten Commandments, I’m reminded why Charlton Heston is still my president.
While NRA president, Heston set standards for inspirational leadership. While an actor playing Moses and Ben Hur, he set standards for inspirational acting and portrayal. Heston was a man of faith, inspired by the Master of the Universe, the giver of law and the inspirer of America’s founding fathers.
Because Heston believed in God, he led an exemplary life. He was dedicated to liberty above all else, as he proved by marching with Martin Luther King Jr for black voting rights, and also safeguarding our First Amendment and Second Amendment rights.
Leaders are hard to come by. In this age of empty Obama messianism, people like Heston become reminders of what we should expect, what we deserve.
America’s tradition of gun ownership runs deep
Visiting the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, over the weekend, it was tough not to wonder how anti-gun activists get their ideas.
Displays at the museum about the 1750s French and Indian War, and the 1775-1783 American War of Independence, have an awful lot of individually owned, military-grade firearms on display.
On April 19, 1775, after the American militia faced off against the professional British soldiers in Lexington, Massachusetts, and after they fired on the long British retreat back to Boston, a British commander wrote “Whoever looks upon them [the American militia] as an irregular mob will find himself much mistaken, as they have men amongst them who know very well what they are about.”
Meaning, the American militia men were darned good shots, brave, and thoughtful about tactics. Those privately owned rifles created the personal freedoms and liberty that American citizens now take for granted and which are the goal of would-be immigrants the world over.
Today, the American tradition of personally owning firearms that the government has neither approved nor knows about lives on among about 100 million citizens. It is the ultimate liberty, and we will not give it up. Nor will we allow government bureaucrats to watch us, monitor us, and decide for us if we should or should not own guns. The Second Amendment means what it says: “Shall not be infringed.”
Which is why I wonder why one political party has made gun control such a singular goal. It is an increasingly loser political issue, with little to no return on investment. If that one political party would give up on this one issue, they would be a lot more successful. I should know, because the spirit of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill lives on among so many Americans. How others are missing that spirit makes you wonder if they really understand what America is all about.
Endless natural resources? Don’t blame us
For decades, the left has done a better job at advocating for natural resource protection. They often go overboard, demanding practices that are unsustainable for a growing nation. But it’s true the the right has been at best tone deaf on environmental protection. How odd, then, that the left now demands the immediate addition of ten million new citizens to public rolls, public schools, welfare rolls, public water sources, public parks and other public lands, etc. Is this environmentally sustainable?
Hell no, it’s not.
But the lust for power and control and dominance has never stopped the left from violating its own avowed principles. Those ten million new voters are the key to electoral dominance, which trumps all else.
As Stalin taught them, the ends justify the means.
As an American, I reject everything Stalin. If you live here in America, you should reject it, too.