RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/20/america-is-paying-the-price-for-the-nyc-superspreader/

To bring some much-needed context to the nation’s coronavirus crisis, let’s remove the states of New York and New Jersey from the current totals for a moment. Here, for the sake of argument, are what the numbers would show:

Since early March, roughly 18,700 people have died from COVID-19. That’s about 2,700 deaths per week in the United States since testing began. Some of the most populous states—Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California—suffered between 1,000 to 2,500 fatalities over the seven-week period. Florida, which is home to a highly vulnerable population and was a destination for thousands of domestic and international travelers before the pandemic began, reports fewer than 1,000 deaths.

Nineteen states and Washington, D.C. each report fewer than 100 deaths.

Tests show about 434,000 Americans have contracted the disease so far. Only a few states indicate COVID-19 symptomatic activity; most of the country now is quiet.

Would those facts frighten you into government-ordered submission? If the United States had a population of 300 million and 48 states, would the fact that 18,000 people—sadly, mostly elderly and already sick patients—succumbed to the virus over a period of nearly two months warrant an ongoing lockdown that is destroying the economy, overwhelming unemployment rolls and food bank lines, shutting down schools and colleges for five months, and bankrupting small businesses?

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/21/the-disintegration-of-america-its-economy-and-its-constitution/

“Is it Donald Trump that the media, the Socialist Democrats and the Woke progressives hate? Or do they hate America itself and the millions of “deplorables” who voted for Trump and who are the last stalwart vestiges of American Exceptionalism?”

We – the people in geographic America – are now so diverse in character, culture and competence, so riven by racial, regional, religious, ethnic, gender, economic and social jealousies and dislikes and so afraid of one another that we may no longer be “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  

A 2011 book by journalist Colin Woodard asserts that geographic America never has been one nation, but rather has always been several separate ones. Compare, for example, the characteristics of a native of Woodard’s “Greater Appalachia” nation with those of a typical inhabitant of his “Yankeedom” nation or his “Left Coast” nation.  

F. H. Buckley, Professor at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law, powerfully asserts in his 2020 book, “American Secession,” that both geographic America and constitutional America are “divisible” and ripe for a breakup.

The old ties that held together the disparate parts and peoples of America are now frayed or broken.  Some have been viciously cut.  

Patriotism and rallying around the flag no longer unify.  The population of geographic America is now so diverse in its origins and cultural DNA that the person standing next to you may hate the American flag you are saluting.   

Christianity has been banned from schools and the public square, undermined in the popular culture by Hollywood and the media – and is no longer the unifying force that it once was.  Far from it.

Even the secular form of the Judeo-Christian tradition that Samuel Huntington called the American Creed is being “canceled” and replaced by Woke prescriptions that substitute hate for Christianity’s agape love and divide Americans into many warring identity-group tribes.  

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/21/the-economy-doesnt-need-government-help-to-reopen/

After weeks of lockdown, several states have begun to outline plans for returning to business as usual. The economies in these states don’t need political schemes. They simply need to be released from government chains.

Governments don’t create economies. It’s not only beyond their legitimate functions, it’s beyond their abilities. They need to stay out of the way and let the wisdom of markets steer us back to normal. But some officials see an opening through which they can drive their big government dreams.

For instance elected officials in California, which is likely to be the last state to fully open though it hasn’t seen the most suffering from the COVID-19 outbreak, view the crisis as a means to push the state harder and faster down the Blue State path. When asked by a reporter earlier this month if he saw “the potential, as many others in the party do, for a new progressive era and opportunity for additional progressive steps,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said yes, of course “there is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism.” 

“Absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern,” Newsom added.

A little more than two weeks later, Newsom announced the formation of his Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery. Behind the official sounding name, and a few non-Democrat token members, hides a plan to use the pandemic as a means for advancing Blue State economic interventions that include: greater redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, bankrupting the oil and gas industry, an “unhinged” green energy program, minimum wage that breaks the backs of small businesses, and more of California’s hostility toward business in general.

Expect Newsom’s task force to draw the blueprint for other progressive states to follow.

The task forces, committees, and other councils across the country that will be charged with reopening economies “didn’t build that,” if we might borrow a particularly repugnant phrase. In fact, there is a certainty the most active of these will take what others built and wring the life out of it.