Turgenev’s ‘Fathers and Sons’, a Novel for Today Anthony Daniels

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/04/turgenevs-fathers-and-sons-a-novel-for-today/

Even without the COVID-19 epidemic, the Western world has been going through turbulent times, economically, socially, politically and culturally. All times are turbulent, perhaps, and we just happen to be so constituted as always to think that our present turbulence is unprecedented and greater than that of any in the past. It is only in retrospect that some or other period of the past seems peaceful and placid to us, which it never did to those who lived through it; nevertheless, there seem to us to have been periods that we are pleased to call normal, that is to say times when most important questions seemed to be settled and all problems were either minor or susceptible of easy solution.

Past travails, however, illuminate present travails. Historical analogies are never exact—that, after all, is why there are analogies rather than repetitions—and the lessons of the past are always disputable; moreover, there is no human experience from which the wrong conclusions cannot be drawn. Perhaps one of the ironies of our present conjuncture is that, while multiculturalism is extolled and treated almost as an unimpeachable orthodoxy, so many people lack historical imagination and cannot enter mentally into a world in which people had a different scale of values from their own. The past for them is not another country where they do things differently; it is the same country where they were not as enlightened as we.

Karl Marx was quite right when he said that men make their own history but not just as they choose: from this well-expressed truism, however, he drew the false conclusion that there existed historical inevitability. In his view, men could have free will only if they were free of all constraining circumstances whatever, but this is not only to invoke an impossibility, but to mistake the nature of infinity. It does not follow from the fact that some choices are closed to me—I cannot, for example, be King of England—that the number of choices before me is not infinite. A grammar limits what can meaningfully be said, but it does not limit the infinitude of what can be said.

The great Russian writer Ivan Turgenev was an exact contemporary of Karl Marx. They were born and died in the same years, 1818 and 1883. These were not the only parallels in their lives. They both came under the influence of Hegelianism in Berlin, and they were in the same place when the revolutions of 1848 broke out.

Faucism in Theory and Practice Anthony Fauci is hailed as the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases. In reality, he’s the nation’s leading white coat supremacist and a “deep state fraud.” By Lloyd Billingsley

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/05/faucism-in-theory-and-practice/

“What is your opinion on how COVID became so well adapted to humans?” Margaret Brennan of CBS News asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, on March 28. 

“You know, Margaret, that’s an argument that goes back and forth,” said Fauci, who has headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. “A very plausible explanation for this is that this virus jumped from an animal host, a bat to maybe an intermediate host and then to a human.” The “other theory” is that it “accidentally escaped” from “a lab.”

“I think the most likely one is that in nature, in the wild, it adapted itself,” Fauci concluded. Brennan showed no interest in the science behind that astounding statement. 

“All right,” she said, “And as you’re acknowledging there, no evidence. We’re still looking at it. We’ll continue following it. Dr. Fauci, thank you for your opinion and your perspective.” Had Brennan done her homework, she might have found “evidence” that the virus was indeed the product of a lab. For example, she could have asked Fauci if “gain of function” research enabled COVID-19 to become well adapted to humans.  

Gain of function research as Nidhi Subbaraman explains in Nature, “involves making pathogens more deadly or more transmissible.” As the Office of Science Policy of the National Institutes of Health puts it, this research can “enhance the pathogenicity or transmissibility of potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs)” and that can raise “biosafety and biosecurity concerns.”

Fauci in 2012 cited the risks of such research, wondering “what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?” The NIH banned gain of function research in 2014 but revived it in 2017 with no objection from Fauci. Three years later, after a global pandemic, Fauci’s August 2020 “Emerging Pandemic Diseases: How We Got to COVID-19” paper is silent on any role this dangerous research might have played in the COVID-19 outbreak. If anybody comes away from that suspicious of a coverup, it would be hard to blame them. 

Are Americans Becoming Sovietized? If our wokists destroy people in the name of equity, then they believe their nihilism is justified. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/05/are-americans-becoming-sovietized/

What ultimately ended the nihilist Soviet system?

Was it not that Russians finally tired of the Kremlin’s lies and hypocrisies that permeated every facet of their falsified lives?

Here are 10 symptoms of Sovietism. Ask yourself whether we are headed down this same road to perdition.

1) There was no escape from ideological indoctrination—anywhere.

TV commercials, a job in the bureaucracy, or military assignment all hinged not so much on merit, expertise, or past achievement. What mattered was loud enthusiasm for the Soviet system.

Wokeness is becoming our new Soviet-like state religion. Careerists assert that America was always and still is a systemically racist country, without ever producing proof or a sustained argument.

2) The Soviets fused their press with the government. Pravda or “Truth” was the official megaphone of state-sanctioned lies. Journalists simply regurgitated the talking points of their Party partners.

In 2017, some university and independent media monitoring centers found that 93 percent of American network media coverage of the early Trump Administration was negative. The most inflammatory of the media’s political assertions—Trump-Russia collusion, Hunter Biden’s laptop was a product of “Russian disinformation,” and Capitol Officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by a Trump rioter inside the Capitol—were all false.

3) The Soviet surveillance state enlisted apparatchiks and lackeys to ferret out ideological dissidents. Recently, we learned that the Department of Defense is reviewing its rosters to spot “insurrectionary” sentiments.

The Postal Service recently admitted it uses tracking programs to monitor the social media postings of Americans.

Major Swedish Hospital Bans Puberty Blocking for Gender Dysphoria By Wesley J. Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/major-swedish-hospital-bans-puberty-blocking-for-gender-dysphoria/

The actual science is beginning to overcome transgender ideology. First, the U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence — basically the NHS’s decision-maker for what to cover — determined that there was “very low” evidence of benefit to allow children with gender dysphoria to have their natural puberty blocked — which is an “off label” use of those drugs, by the way.

Now, Karolinska Hospital, a major health institution in Sweden, is stopping their use. First, there is little scientific to support such interventions. From the hospital’s official statement:

In December 2019, the SBU (Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services) published an overview of the knowledge base which showed a lack of evidence for both the long-term consequences of the treatments, and the reasons for the large influx of patients in recent years.

Even more importantly, the potential for harming the patient physically is very real:

These treatments are potentially fraught with extensive and irreversible adverse consequences such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis. This makes it challenging to assess the risk/benefit for the individual patient, and even more challenging for the minors and their guardians to be in a position of an informed stance regarding these treatments.

Yikes!

As a consequence the hospital wisely enacted the following policy:

In light of the above, and based on the precautionary principle, which should always be applied, it has been decided that hormonal treatments (i.e., puberty blocking and cross-sex hormones) will not be initiated in gender dysphoric patients under the age of 16.

Needed: A National Election Fraud Database By Jay Valentine

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/needed_a_national_election_fraud_database.html

United States voter fraud is a nationwide crime perpetrated locally, mostly by Democrats. Republicans either do not do it or when they do, they get caught. It is no coincidence that only Democrats fight voter ID laws, ballot audits in Maricopa County, and investigations in New Hampshire.

This month Matt Braynard, Trump’s data guy, issued a comprehensive report on Georgia voter fraud.  Read it?  If you did, you are the 11th person after friends and family. 

People, look, we cannot fight industrial, sovereign, large-scale election fraud with reports, press releases, and webinars. That stuff creates a false sense of progress to the committed while nothing changes for the masses.  The narrative remains “…but there was no provable voter fraud.” We need hip technology delivered on a phone showing electoral fraud in current data rolls — that drives citizen outrage. 

When one millennial looks across the sushi table at his bud and shows her 5,435 dead people registered in her county, via an iPhone, we are pretty much there.  Or scroll to the 643 people registered on a vacant lot.  Look, here’s a Google Maps’ pix of the open field!

Only outraged citizens can stop voter fraud before it happens, not chase it afterward.

Biden Says His Agenda Is Synonymous With The Will of The People Are we really all woke socialists? Don Feder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/biden-says-his-agenda-synonymous-will-people-don-feder/

In his address to a joint session of Congress last week, the most dangerous and delusional thing the president said was when he equated the policies of his administration with the will of the American people.

Biden: “Our Constitution opens with the words, ‘We the People.’ It’s time we remembered that we the people are the government.” In other words, the people are synonymous with the people in power.

At least he got the words (all three of them) right. During the 2020 campaign, he mangled the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, which came out: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created, by the, you know, you know the thing.” Dr. Jill might think about increasing his daily dose of Prevagen.

According to the Geezer-in-chief, We the People implicitly endorse his policies – that by voting for him, We voted for them. Not because of media distortions about COVID, white supremacy, police brutality, or Trump’s meanness, but because we wanted Woke socialism.

Old Joe is beginning to sound like Louis XIV – “The People, that’s Me!”

This is a monumental lie used to justify the misrule of one of the worst administrations in U.S. history.

Let’s test Joe’s thesis against reality.

A Blueprint for Tyranny A new administration leverages street-violence for political gain. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/blueprint-tyranny-bruce-thornton/

The vulnerability of political freedom and popular sovereignty to tyranny has been a constant theme in political philosophy for 2500 years. It profoundly influenced the creators of the Constitution, an important purpose of which is to forestall the tyranny that destroys political freedom and citizen rule. In the writings of Classical philosophers and historians the Founders could see the blueprint for such a tyranny––one we have seen unfolding in the last few decades, and accelerating in the policies of the current administration.

The Greek historian Polybius in the second century B.C. laid out how a democracy degenerates into tyranny:

So when [the rich] begin to hanker after office, and find that they cannot achieve it through their own efforts or on their merits, they begin to seduce and corrupt the people in every possible way, and thus ruin their estates. The result is that through their senseless craving for prominence they stimulate among the masses both an appetite for bribes and the habit of receiving them, and then the rule of democracy is transformed into government by violence and strong-arm methods. By this time the people have become accustomed to feed at the expense of others, and their prospects of winning a livelihood depend upon the property of their neighbors, and as soon as they find a leader who is sufficiently ambitious and daring . . . they introduce a regime based on violence.

Many of these preconditions already exist in our country. Since Roosevelt’s New Deal, ambitious politicians of both parties have “stimulate[d] among the masses both an appetite for bribes and the habit of receiving them.” We call them “entitlements” rather than “bribes,” funded not by violently seizing the property of the rich, but by annually redistributing $1.6 trillion of the wealth of the upper middle class and the rich through the federal income tax. Indeed, the top one percent of all earners pays 40% of income taxes. The modern update of ancient “bribes” also comprises massive borrowing and electronically printing money. These practices have created nearly $27 trillion in government debt, five trillion more than GDP. The tyrants of Polybius’ day redistributed the wealth of the rich; today we redistribute the future wealth of the young and unborn who will be stuck with the bill.

And this largess will increase dramatically if the current administration successfully passes into law several new mechanisms for redistributing wealth:

$1.9 trillion America Rescue Plan
$2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan
$1.8 trillion American Families Plan
$1 trillion Green New Deal for Cities
$180 billion Green New Deal for Public Housing
$15 trillion over 15 years Thrive Act

America’s Border: Cui Bono? – Who Benefits? by Chris Farrell and Shea Garrison *****

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17344/america-border-benefits

The Biden administration has made a deliberate decision to abandon the application and enforcement of federal law. Why?

How will the Biden administration fulfill its sworn official duty to uphold and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States by willfully ignoring and failing to carry out legal obligations?

The only rational explanation for the Biden administration’s policy position is a crassly political one. Border policy decisions are all tied to the immigration question and the apparent desire to affect long-term voting demographics, skewing it in favor of the Democrat Party. This is a “long term investment strategy” at the expense of the American tax-paying citizen, for the political benefit of the current party in power.

Border communities bear the frontline brunt of Biden’s policies, but the total fabric of America’s healthcare, education, housing and social services are being shredded to pay for Biden’s new voters.

[T]he Biden border crisis will rise to the number one position when Americans go to the polls in November 2022. Its overt criminality and reckless disregard for the law will be remembered.

The administration’s sponsorship of outlaw behavior and endorsement of criminality cannot be talked away or excused. Too many communities… are already experiencing… the impact of Biden’s abandonment of the enforcement of the law.

It is essential for American citizens to deprive the Biden administration of its hoped-for “benefit”. An administration cannot politically distort law enforcement and compromise national security to pad their voter rolls. Justice demands equal enforcement under the law, not playing favorites and granting extraordinary benefits to non-citizens that ordinary Americans do not enjoy….

Each of us is called to demand attention and accountability on all matters pertaining to border security. This includes legal immigration enforcement, aggressive drug enforcement, and counterterrorism efforts to ensure U.S. national security.

President Biden has now moved the Mexican border to each American’s hometown.

The Latin expression “cui bono?” has been used by law enforcement officials and prosecutors for centuries to examine and evaluate criminal conduct in order to identify the most likely suspects and determine questions of motive.

Sunshine State Is A Shining Example In The Fight Against Big Tech Censorship by Chris Talgo

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/06/sunshine-state-is-shining-example-in-the-fight-against-big-tech-censorship/

Because the federal government appears unwilling to do anything about the ever-growing problem of big tech censorship, it is left to the states to fight this long-overdue battle.

Fortunately, the Sunshine State is stepping up to the plate, becoming the first state in the country to put a big tech censorship bill on the governor’s desk. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a strong proponent of the bill, is expected to sign it into law soon.

So, how would the Florida bill (SB 7072) actually rein in big tech censorship?

First and foremost, SB 7072 would make it “a violation for social media deplatforming of a political candidate and requires a social medial platform to meet certain requirements when they restrict speech by users.”

More specifically, “The bill prohibits social media platforms from deplatforming candidates for political office and allows the Florida Elections Commission to fine a social media platform $100,000 per day for deplatforming statewide candidates and $10,000 per day for deplatforming all other candidates.”

The Party of Fear. Runaway Emotions and Myth-The Superstitious Democrats

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/06/those-superstitious-democrats/

Even when they’re vaccinated against the coronavirus, Democrats insist on wearing masks and social distancing. Think of the absurd scene in the House chamber when President Joe Biden addressed Congress last week, or when Biden wore a mask on a Zoom call. The Democrats say theirs is the party of science but in reality it’s the party of fear, runaway emotions, and myth.

Not a shred of science has established that mandatory mask wearing and stay-at-home orders have been effective prophylactics against the Chinese virus. Yet the Democrats, which includes nearly the entirety of the press, have embraced both with a zeal much like that of the Salemites who hunted witches in the 17th century.

While the Democrats nagged and threw wet blankets on facts, pleasure, and optimism, John Tierney, an authentic journalist not a member of the Democratic Party’s disinformation team, dug into some research. And what did he find?

“There’s still no convincing evidence that strict lockdowns reduced the death toll from Covid-19,” he wrote in March. “But one effect is clear: more deaths from other causes, especially among the young and middle-aged, minorities, and the less affluent.”

A National Bureau of Economic Research report published last month showed what many of us knew intuitively: Lockdown policies failed. It determined that “evidence suggests that ‘households show the highest transmission rates’ and that ‘households are high-risk settings for the transmission of’” the virus.