RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/31/follow-the-science-toward-tyranny/

Modern science as a discipline carries within itself the seeds of tyrannical rule, for the scientific method requires controlled experiments. But human beings want to be free and reject rules they did not create. Applied directly to society, the methods of natural science would destroy the ways of a free nation.

Of course free men and women use science to uncover knowledge and apply it to improve the human condition. Today the crucial distinction between following science and using it is lost on people and politicians. Without observing that difference, Americans might readily confuse their need for science with a dangerous embrace of the tyranny it demands when imprudently applied to human behavior.

Now comes the U.S. Supreme Court espying tyranny in a bureaucratic Center for Disease Control (CDC) regulation preposterously claiming to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Perhaps the court caught some anti-tyranny virus, for just 48 hours before, it denied the bureaucracy the ability to preserve and enhance the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program—which allows “Dreamers” to remain in the United States illegally and indefinitely. Whatever the epidemiology of its jurisprudence, the court’s unsigned per curiam opinion in Alabama Association of Realtors v. HHS has exposed the tyranny of the administrative state. Both the CDC and the DACA examples illustrate the extent to which the federal government is governed not by an elected congress or president, or even the unelected courts but by the administrative state, the nexus of bureaucracy, academia, and media that effectively rules America on behalf of increasingly leftist policies. 

The allegedly anti-COVID regulation is quicker to analyze and ridicule and better illustrates the vices of the administrative state.

First, the CDC justification for regulation of any activity that might contribute to the spread of disease rests on one assertion: because COVID. But government agencies must justify their powers on the basis of a law. In this instance, the court declared, “It strains credulity to believe that this [1944] statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.”  Specifically, the CDC “has imposed a nationwide moratorium on [housing] evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination.”  

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/tech_tyrants_elevate_biden_to_dear_leader_status_with_criticism_forbidden.html

Shana Chappell, whose son U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui was murdered in Afghanistan thanks to the Biden administration’s fecklessness, took to social media to say exactly what she thought of Biden, including questioning the legitimacy of his presidency. It was classic free speech of the type the First Amendment protects…so Instagram (which Facebook owns) suspended her. It later reinstated her, assuring that it was all a mistake when we all know that the only mistake was that Facebook/Instagram got caught. The mere fact that Facebook/Instagram took this step — and thought it could get away with it — is a perfect example of the fact that the Tech Tyrants are functioning in the same way as North Korean censors, banning any speech critical of the “Dear Leader” and his policies.

Kareem Nikoui was a young man who wanted to serve his country and his family was proud of him for that. Had he died in battle at Bagram Air Force Base defending American interests, they would have wept for his loss but consoled themselves with the thought that he died for the greater good.

Thanks to the Biden administration’s criminally bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, though, Kareem Nikoui did not die serving his country. Instead, he was murdered because the Biden administration, having deliberately handed Kabul over to the Taliban, made the Taliban—America’s enemy—responsible for security around the Kabul airport:

In a hastily arranged in-person meeting, senior U.S. military leaders in Doha—including McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command—spoke with Abdul Ghani Baradar. “We have a problem,” Baradar said, according to the U.S. official. “We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.”

Throughout the day, Biden had remained resolute in his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan. The collapse of the Afghan government hadn’t changed his mind. McKenzie, aware of those orders, told Baradar that the U.S. mission was only to evacuate American citizens, Afghan allies and others at risk. The United States, he told Baradar, needed the airport to do that.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/afghanistan-southern-us-border-show-biden-kevin-roberts/

The debacle in Afghanistan is still unfolding, but it is already one of the signal disasters of American history. It’s usually premature to assess contemporary events in history’s light, so it’s a sign of just how bad things are in Kabul that I — a historian — am ready to put it alongside the Bay of Pigs, the Fall of Saigon, the Black Hawk Down incident, and 9/11 itself in the list of era-defining American humiliations. It’s bad enough that it’s happening – what’s worse is that we chose it.

And it’s not an aberration for our unmoored American federal government regardless of who occupies the White House or controls Congress. Confronted with a whole summer of insurrectionary violence in American cities, it can’t seem to bring itself to guarantee public order. Confronted with angry citizens overrunning the very seat of its rule on Capitol Hill, it can’t seem to defend itself. Confronted with a metastasizing narco-state threat in Mexico, and a historic crisis of human trafficking overwhelming national borders, it can’t seem to do much but watch.

Yet when confronted with states organizing in blocs to execute tasks reserved to itself — the so-called “Western States Pact” comes to mind, as do the various states sending forces to the U.S.-Mexico border — the federal government seems strangely passive and inert. Perhaps that’s to the good.

It’s tempting to look at unforced errors like this in isolation, just one episode among many. We shouldn’t. The truth is that Afghanistan is part of a larger pattern. Pull the camera back a bit, and the picture becomes more disturbing than even the grim images from Kabul’s beleaguered airport. The incompetence on display in that country is just the latest episode of blundering from a federal government that increasingly cannot do anything it should.

The national government as envisioned and established by the American Founders has just one purpose, succinctly set forth in the Declaration of Independence: “to secure these rights.” Since then, Americans have come to expect federal governance in Washington, D.C., to fulfill an array of roles. For most of American history, it did a credible job of meeting those expectations. Americans of my parents’ generation, for example, reasonably expected the federal government to successfully defend them from enemies abroad and secure law and order at home. They expected it to meet the challenge of public health crises, and run an efficient immigration system. They expected it to assert a monopoly on national authority, and to promote and defend a common American civic narrative.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/fort-hood-kabul-lloyd-billingsley/

In his delayed response to the terrorist bombing that killed 13 Americans, Joe Biden mumbled something about his late son Beau but mentioned not a single American victim by name. That recalls the Delaware Democrat’s response to another deadly terrorist attack, on U.S. soil, that also claimed 13 American lives.

In 2009, U.S. Army major Nidal Hasan, a self-described “soldier of Allah,” was communicating with al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki about killing Americans. As congressional hearings made clear, the FBI was on to Hasan but bureau bosses dropped the surveillance. On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, Hasan murdered 13 American soldiers and wounded more than 40 others.

For the composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, it was only “workplace violence,” not even gun violence. Vice president Joe Biden said, “Jill and I join the President and Michelle in expressing our sympathies to the families of the brave soldiers who fell today.  We are all praying for those who were wounded and hoping for their full and speedy recovery.  Our thoughts and prayers are also with the entire Fort Hood community as they deal with this senseless tragedy.”

These unarmed soldiers were gunned down by Nidal Hasan in a terrorist attack, but for Biden they only “fell,” as though it was some sort of accident. For the vice president, the mass murder was only a “senseless tragedy,” not a deliberate mass murder, carefully planned. As vice president, Biden would have access to the best information, but he mentioned not a single American victim by name. As it happened, those soldiers were shipping out to Afghanistan, and Joe Biden’s mentor has a history there.

A Biden loyalist since his first presidential run, Tom Donilon was an assistant secretary of state under Bill Clinton. Donilon’s troubles as a Fannie Mae lobbyist, and lack of experience in foreign affairs, did not prevent his rise to national security advisor, a choice that troubled even Robert Scheer of The Nation.

In Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of State at War, Robert Gates wrote that Donilon characterized the United States military as “in revolt” and “insubordinate.” Donilon, who had never been in the military, “bridled” when Gen. McChrystal announced a “counterinsurgency” strategy in Afghanistan. “Obama’s Gray Man,” as Donilon was known, did not want American troops to be seen defeating their enemies. The composite character president took that to another level.

In exchange for one American deserter, Bowe Bergdahl, Obama sprung five hard-core Taliban commanders from Guantanamo Bay. It was like trading Private Slovik for the German high command. Released with the others in 2014, Khairullah Khairkhwa proceeded to reunite the Taliban and help them capture power in Afghanistan.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/joe-biden-victory-lap-around-afghan-defeat/

President Biden walked to the White House podium on Tuesday and proclaimed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan an ‘extraordinary success’. He relied on the unanimous advice of military leaders and strategic advisers for these wise decisions. If there were any failures, they were due to Donald Trump. Never in history, he said, had there been such a successful airlift. Of the Americans who wanted to leave, we got out an amazing 90 percent. Surely that’s a success all around, despite the collapse of the Afghan army, which nobody expected. Of course, as a far-sighted leader, Biden said he had ordered plans for that, too. Best of all, he said, we accomplished our goal in Afghanistan, which was to prevent al-Qaeda from setting up a base there to strike the US or its allies. After that resounding success, we no longer needed to keep troops in the country to protect America. If any terrorists reassemble, we have great ‘over-the-horizon’ capabilities to discover them and take them out.

Every one of those claims is false.

Calling the evacuation mission an ‘extraordinary success’ is worse than false. It is shameful. Biden is taking credit for a humiliating defeat that leaves thousands of innocents behind. He should be shouldering the blame, as Gen. Dwight Eisenhower did when he drafted a statement to be read if the D-Day landings failed. Fortunately, Ike never had to read that statement. Joe Biden took the opposite approach. When the evacuation mission in Afghanistan ended in chaos, he simply decided to read the ‘victory statement’. Americans are likely to see it for what it is.