RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://americanmind.org/salvo/american-maoism-2/

Rage meets self-pity as the permanently offended root out false thought.

Those of us who care about the survival of ordered liberty are daily faced with a conundrum: Do we painstakingly chronicle the constant assaults on the life of the mind and civilized norms and risk the charge of being one-note Johnnies? Or do we turn to other, more noble concerns and preoccupations, doing the right and the good? The latter path might seem more high-minded, rooted in a refusal to have our intellectual and political agendas determined by the rage of others. Why should our concerns be determined by the transparently false agendas of those who tear down and repudiate, and who offer nothing constructive in place of our civic and civilized inheritance? Let them pursue the thankless path of total critique, while we teach, build, construct, and sustain a civilized order worthy of human beings.

In truth, however, we must be attentive to both tasks, the positive work of high-minded thought and action that makes reasonable choice and civic comity possible, and the defense of the city without which nothing noble and choice-worthy can be sustained. And there is much to be learned by confronting the deep pathologies at the heart of the ideological deformation of reality. In any case, to stand aside while ideologues and fanatics seize the commanding heights of the academy and civil society entails nothing less moral and civil abdication, a choice for passivity over our non-negotiable duty to pass on the precious inheritance that is civilized liberty as a trust to our children and grandchildren. Surely Leo Strauss was right when he wrote in the 1940s that the greatest practical task of political philosophy is to defend “sound practice” against “bad theory.”

And bad theory abounds today. We daily witness displays of political rage informed by what David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith call in their indispensable 2022 book, The Strategy of Maoism in the West, “permanent offence taking.” Righteous indignation and the search for new and newer victims (and oppressors) are on constant display. DEI offices in colleges, universities, and corporations (and the news media, too) look to penalize, marginalize, and humiliate “oppressors” and “exploiters” as much as to “privilege” the oppressed, who must remain victims in perpetuity for the new system of ideological control to sustain itself. Merit, progress, opportunity, and civic reconciliation are all passé notions, deemed at once racist, offensive, and intolerable. What used to be called “Americanism,” equality under God and the law, must be castigated in a pathological display of collective self-loathing.

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/the-militarization-of-the-irs-the

Big Spend: Since 2006, 103 rank-and-file agencies outside of the Department of Defense (DOD) spent $3.7 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment (inflation adjusted to CPI). 27 of those agencies are traditional law enforcement under the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

However, 76 agencies are pencil-pushing, regulatory agencies, i.e. Environment Protection Agency (EPA), Social Security Administration (SSA), Veterans Affairs (VA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and many others.

Headcounts: There are now more federal agents with arrest and firearm authority (200,000) than U.S. Marines (186,000).

CASE STUDY: IRS
All numbers updated through March 31, 2023

Since 2006, the IRS spent $35.2 million on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment (CPI adjusted). The years 2020 and 2021 were peak years at the IRS for purchasing weaponry and gear. Just since the pandemic started, the IRS has purchased $10 million in weaponry and gear. (See chart below.)

Special agent head counts: nearly 2,100 special agents. Recently, the IRS chief testified that they are adding 600 new positions (20,000 new hires with 3% ratio of special agents this year). Based on headcount, the IRS ranks in the equivalent of the top 50 largest of 12,261 police departments across the country.

Uproar over the IRS Special Agent job posting: In August 2022, IRS posted a job description for Special Agent and a position requirement was the willingness to use “deadly force.” The description went viral on the internet and the “deadly force” language was edited out. However, today, that language is back in the online job posting.

https://dianebederman.com/gay-pride-is-no-longer-about-the-acceptance-of-a-different-sexual-lifestyle-you-want-to-get-our-children/

Since 1970, gay people, through the highly successful Gay Movement, have valiantly fought for and received their due. They have the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual people. No more attacking people for their adult sexual preference.

The Gay Community now has:

(1) the repeal of sodomy laws that criminalized homosexuality;

(2) the enactment of laws protecting the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in society and the workplace;

(3) the ability of LGBT personnel to serve openly in the military;

(4) marriage equality and civil unions in an ever growing number of countries;

(5) the facilitation of gay parents’ adoption rights;

(6) the easing of gay spouses’ rights of inheritance;

(7) an ever increasing number of religious denominations that would allow openly gay people to serve as clergy (Drescher, Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality Behavioral Sciences, 2015)

The time has long past for the Gay Movement to take the win and go quietly into that good night and take the LGBTQ2+2S/LGBTQI or LGBTQIA2-S  lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and Two-Spirit community with you, along with your rainbow flag.