(12-25-2020, 01:41 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 25-Dec-2020 World View: Installing Stalinist Communism
(12-22-2020, 07:33 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: > At any rate, the drift toward Stalinist Communism will be stopped
> at that point, and the country will unite to face the existential
> threat.
(12-23-2020, 03:38 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: > You seem very confident that the Stalinist Communism won't itself
> be the threat?
This is an interesting question because it's a question about American
culture.
The freedoms guaranteed by the first and second Amendments to the Bill
of Rights -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to own a
firearm -- are all repugnant to the Democrats. This is manifest in
their hatred of Tea Partiers and Trump supporters, as when Obama
contemptuously referred to them as "clinging to their Bibles and
guns."
Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom to own and operate a business, freedom from abusive law enforcement, and due process of the law are essential to liberal democracy. No freedom is quite absolute, so one does not get the right to leak classified information, perform a human sacrifice, do odometer fraud, resist a lawful arrest, or expect generous treatment in a court of law if one acts up like Mumia abu-Jamal.
As for gun rights, those are far from uniform in liberal democracies. There are practically no "gun rights" in the UK, and even the arch-conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did nothing to reinstate those in Britain. As I have said elsewhere, a dog is a powerful deterrent to burglars, robbers, and rapists... and the word "powerful" is literal when it comes to an animal often built like a bear or Big Cat. Dogs can go from extreme docility to extreme ferocity in seconds. Dogs have keener senses than we do except for color vision... but their night vision is very good, and they rouse faster. It is telling that the Nazis prohibited Jews from keeping dogs almost as quickly as they prohibited Jews from owning guns. There's not much worth a severe mauling even by a small dog. Small dogs have big teeth and big claws.
"Gun rights" can be extensive in extreme dictatorships; Nazi Germany was awash in privately-held firearms. Every Nazi in good standing was expected to keep and bear arms. If one was in good standing with the Communist party in the USSR under Brezhnev one could own a gun. Sport hunting was completely legal in the USSR.
Quote:The problem for the Democrats is that these freedoms are deeply
embedded in the American culture. They're implied by the Declaration
of Independence, and incorporated into the Constitution. The
Democrats right now are at the peak of their power in Stalinist
censorship. However, even Democrats are opposed to curtailing the
basic rights. In this forum, Brower recently complained that covid-19
news isn't being reported. That's because Covid-19 news is being
censored in all the Democrat-controlled media sources that he watches.
Strictly speaking, the only legal consequence of the Declaration of Independence is the separation from the British Crown, and if I had to choose between being a subject of a fascist dictatorship in America or returning my state to the British Crown then I would choose to return to the nominal rule of the reigning monarch of Great Britain. (The King of Spain or the Emperor of Japan would also suffice...) The Constitution ratifies basic human rights including gun rights where law enforcement is weak and ineffective, as on the frontier.
I'm not in the media except as a hobbyist (in a way I am a journalist)... and I have my unusual means of expressing the horror that is COVID-19. America has crossed the threshold of one-third of a million deaths, which according to one saying attributed to the damnable Josef Stalin, is 'one third of a statistic. You know that line:
"One death is a tragedy, and a million deaths is a statistic".
The manner of death from people dying of COVID-19 is not so readily available through the media. Then again, neither are the grisly details about death from cirrhosis. Yes, the survival rate is above 98%, which is probably in line with bites by venomous snakes. For good reason I do not handle rattlesnakes. I also do my best to heed all of the rules of the road so that I can keep my risk of death by a vehicle collision down. Indeed I have reported a drunk driver to the local police and told the Michigan State Police about a highway with an inordinate number of speeders.
Quote:You may recall that I've frequently mocked Obama because all of his
original campaign promises were failures, especially rolling back the
tides. Even the simplest one, his promise to close Guantánamo prison
on day one, was a failure, as Guantánamo prison is still open today,
12 years later.
I don't fault a politician who has a long wish list that can't be achieved. The legislature might say no and make it stick. The faults come when the promises come with involve an overt contradiction or imply a violation of the Constitution. The last presidential nominee who made few promises (the elder Bush in 1992) lost -- big. He had no idea of what to do in a Second Act... excuse me, second term.
Quote:So it's interesting that the same thing is happening with Biden. He
promised to reverse all of Trump's immigration policies within the
first 100 days, a promise that was so ridiculous it obviously had to
fail.
President-elect Joe Biden assumed that his election would come with Democratic nominees for the US Senate winning a raft of Senate seats from incumbent Republican Senators. Democrats get a working majority in the Senate only if two Democrats flip two Senate seats in Georgia from incumbents. Most poker players know that if a straight is a potential winning hand against most other hands (let us say 4-5-6-7-8) betting on an outside straight (you have 4-5-6-7 and either a 3 or 8 wins), betting on an inside straight is not a particularly good gamble (you need a "6" to complete a straight beginning a 4 and ending in 8). Betting to win on a double-inside straight (if I had 2-2 and 4-5-8 I would dr0op the 4-5-8 and seek to strengthen the pair) is really risky because one would need two cards going right.
But now in the last week, Biden has had to renege on that promise.
Quote:Quelle surprise!! And he hasn't even taken office!! Now he says that
he's going to appoint a committee, and it will take at least six
months. Lol!
The point is that whatever attempt the Democrats make to install
Stalinist Communism, rejecting the deeply cultural freedoms specified
by the Bill of Rights, is doomed to failure from the start.
---- Source:
-- Biden: Reversing Trump Border Policies Will Take Months
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/art...ake-months
(AP, 22-Dec-2020)
Trust Joe Biden to seek what is right especially if such contrasts to what Trump did wrong.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
