RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://glennloury.substack.com/p/are-we-ready-to-abandon-racial-solidarity

Last month, a momentous event took place at the Manhattan Institute: a debate on “The Ethics of Black Identity” with me and Bob Woodson on one side, Shelby Steele and Kmele Foster on the other, and MI President Reihan Salam moderating. At issue was the question of whether the persistence of black identity remains necessary in solving the problems facing black communities today. Bob and I took the affirmative position while Kmele and Shelby took the negative. Reihan had quite a job on his hands, as all four of us debaters are, shall we say, opinionated.

The following excerpt from that debate engages one of the discussion’s through-lines. Collective action served black Americans well in the past. Without racial solidarity founded in institutions like black churches and black community organizations, it’s doubtful that the Civil Rights Movement could have achieved all that it did. Black people, even those who were relatively well-off, were willing to sacrifice money, time, and their very bodies to secure basic rights not only for themselves but for their people.

But has racial solidarity served its purpose? I’ve often argued on behalf of “transracial humanism,” the setting aside of identity categories like race in favor of species-level identification. We’re all human beings, and we should all have the opportunity to lay claim to the fruits of human achievement, whatever their origin. Tolstoy is mine as much as Charles Mingus is mine. Yet I cannot simply define away my blackness. It’s at the core of my self-understanding. To deny it would be to deny myself. And as Bob points out, there are strategic political advantages to calls for racial solidarity, especially when they’ve been nearly monopolized by the Left. (Let me say once more with feeling: My blackness is not in conflict with my conservatism.)

Shelby and Kmele are much more skeptical of the uses of black identity in the present. I believe, with them, that transracial humanism is the way of the future. The question is whether that future has yet arrived.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19151/liberty-worth-the-fight

Aside from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to create an official “Disinformation Governance Board” to “combat” free speech antithetical to the government’s point of view, reports show that DHS employees have regularly met with Facebook and Twitter to suppress and censor certain facts and opinions in online discussion of numerous issues dominating public debate — including such broad topics as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Covid-19, and “racial justice.”

To censor dissenting views on experimental, yet coerced, medical treatments, two-tiered economic shutdowns (during which “Big Box” stores are inexplicably “allowed” to operate while economically vulnerable neighborhood shops are not), is mass censorship in the name of public health, shielding from scrutiny monstrous tyranny draped in the false cloak of the “greater” or “common good.”

Many politicians cavalierly embrace totalitarianism once again. Citizens, once aware of the attendant dangers to peace when large corporations and national governments work hand in glove to push “politically correct” ideas upon society, are apparently so far removed from the twentieth century’s vivid lessons in fascist, communist, and Nazi propaganda that they fail to see the harm in bureaucrats and officeholders dictating to the public what it may believe.

Many Westerners have forgotten that freedom of speech and personal liberty — far from menacing “microaggressions” deserving of sanction — are the surest safety valves for mediating animosities inherent within any society before outright violence is unleashed in their stead.

Governments already acclimated to universal public surveillance and warrantless online tracking see central bank digital currencies, human tracking implants, and the imposition of social credit scores all on the horizon and believe the time for total control over citizens is near, so long as they are the ones doing the controlling.

Their concern is not our personal liberty but their power.

For human freedom to flourish, only the people are capable of keeping government power in check.

It is therefore imperative that Westerners not lose sight of the most important battle already raging — one pitting individual freedom against total state control.

“There comes a time,” Martin Luther King Jr. advised, “when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.” Moral imperative, in other words, outweighs personal security, political correctness, and the psychological comfort of identifying with the crowd. During troubling times of human violence and suffering, it is always the lonely few — either blessed with innate courage or made resolute through private, grinding struggle — who dare to take a stand against encroaching evils tacitly accepted by the many. Such is the power of individual free will when man chooses principle as his guide.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/23/fraudulent-illegal-unconstitutional-unconscionable-and-false-a-short-tour-of-government-in-action/

All governments are bad – always necessary, often useful, occasionally better than most, rarely genuinely helpful to all, but still bad.

From Athens to Zaire, from commune to kingdom, from democracy to dictatorship, when people come together to form a society there will always be those who take advantage, who prey, who scheme, who profit from their position.

Every government ever has violated its own laws, flouted its own rules, changed long-standing practices for immediate gain, side-stepped its foundational concepts and strictures, dismissed societal codes of conduct, and ignored the basic ethical standards of humanity.

Here in the United States – which actually has one of the best governmental systems and surely the best foundational governmental theory – we are not immune to these issues.

A necessarily brief – the internet is just not big enough to hold every damning detail – review of even our government practices shows this to be true.

The litany of the unconstitutional manipulation and/or imprisonment of the citizenry runs depressingly long, from the Alien and Sedition Acts to the abuses of the Patriot Act, from the Palmer Raids post World War I to the actions of HUAC in the 1950s.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/23/voters-show-deep-political-split-over-how-govt-handled-covid-ii-tipp-poll/

America these days has many powerful political disagreements, even for things that, at least superficially, don’t seem to be overtly political. One of them is the government response to the COVID-19 virus outbreak. It has divided the country politically as few other issues in recent years, new I&I/TIPP data show.

Those responding to the latest poll were asked whether the economic lockdowns, public school closures, masking requirements and social restrictions were “necessary or unnecessary to address the COVID virus.”

The majority believe the government’s actions were needed. By 57% to 30%, Americans answered that the COVID restrictions, however draconian and painful, were “necessary” rather than “unnecessary.” Another 13% said they were not sure.

These results emerged from a national online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,359 adults, taken from Nov. 2-4. The poll’s margin of error is +/-2.8 percentage points.

When you look at the breakdown by political affiliation, the COVID schism clearly comes into view.

Among Democrats, an overwhelming 79% said the COVID lockdown restrictions were necessary, versus just 35% of Republicans. Among independents, 50% said they were needed.

But just 12% of Democrats said they were “unnecessary,” compared to 52% of Republicans and 32% of independents. Only 9% of Democrats were unsure; 13% of Republicans and a sizeable 18% of independents weren’t certain.

So approval of the COVID restrictions appears to have been mostly a Democratic phenomenon.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/ctrlaltdelete_the_totalitarian_state.html

There are three government narratives pushed today that are not real: (1) fraud-free elections, (2) a looming climate apocalypse, and (3) a COVID health emergency requiring total government control.  If you see through only one, then you’re not looking hard enough.  Or as Bill Engvall might say, “If you now believe COVID is mostly a hoax but are still terrified of global warming, here’s your sign.”  Conversely, if you do see through them, you’re likely being censored for expressing those points of view.  

Here’s our impasse: when governments claim to have a monopoly on truth, then citizens are expected to accept preposterous fantasies, no matter how much opposing evidence they might see.  The narrative is absolute.  Dissent is forbidden.  Total obedience is the objective.  Last century, free Westerners understood these features as telltale signs of totalitarianism.  Today, much less free Westerners have been taught to embrace — without scrutiny or wisdom — the government’s fairy tales as part of our required, if not sacred, deference to the bureaucratic State’s cult of expertise.  Whether citizens grasp this shift in individual freedom or not, the general rule handed down from governments is stark yet succinct: ask us no questions, and we will tell you no lies!

Westerners desperately need to reboot their systems of government before those systems of government delete the public’s power to make changes ever again.  It is not possible for political leaders to claim that their countries support personal freedom when they snatch that freedom away at the first sneeze, cow fart, or unapproved tweet.  It is not logical for governments to claim that they protect “democracy” when armies of unelected permanent bureaucrats run the modern State.  It is not reasonable for Western nations to claim that they cherish “free thinking” and “free expression” when their technocratic surveillance arms actively censor speech and promote State-approved points of view over all others.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/21/jen-psaki-investigations-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

It’s beyond ironic that the mouthpiece for a regime proceeding with yet another punitive and vengeful investigation into Donald Trump wants to be shielded from an inquiry into her own misdeeds.

Former White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, much like her old boss, is a big fan of investigations.

From her perch at the podium in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Psaki routinely endorsed criminal, civil, and congressional inquiries into the events of January 6 and warned the individuals targeted—including Donald Trump and his former aides—that they must comply with the legal process. 

A reporter asked Psaki during her first briefing whether Joe Biden believed Trump should “be held accountable for the Capitol insurrection” on January 6. Calling the four-hour disturbance that afternoon an “horrific event,” Psaki said Joe Biden had spoken with lawmakers about how to proceed. “He is going to leave it to members of Congress to carry out their constitutional duty and determine what the path forward is,” Psaki announced on January 21, 2021.

Psaki later announced that Biden would not extend executive privilege to his predecessor related to the January 6 select committee’s inquisition, giving investigators carte blanche access to all of Trump’s records for most of 2020—most of which had nothing to do with January 6. “We are, we have been working closely with congressional committees and others as they work to get to the bottom of what happened on January 6th, an incredibly dark day in our democracy,” Psaki said in September 2021.