Greetings
TFN - while the LMP site undergoes comprehensive renovations, all Libertas Media Project posts can be found here. Click by for continued unique reading.
Thx
Ed.
Tuesday, February 25
Friday, January 17
Two-Parter - Part Two
Hi XXXXXX
Re: VDH's piece
With all due respect to VDH, a man whom I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing on-air numerous times, in today's common parlance is just an "Old White Guy spouting the same So-Last-Century BS". That's not to say he doesn't speak from his deep well of great intelligence, experience, and perspective; obviously, he does. But only to the same choir of Old White Guys to which he belongs. Rest assured, Millennials, illegal aliens, and the government schools' Functional Illiterates don't read, listen, know or care. They are consumed with their Aggressive Ignorance, Contagious Apathy and addiction to Instant Gratification. As long as it's Free, hurts the Rich and screws the White Man, it's a good thing and they will support it.
Re: VDH's piece
With all due respect to VDH, a man whom I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing on-air numerous times, in today's common parlance is just an "Old White Guy spouting the same So-Last-Century BS". That's not to say he doesn't speak from his deep well of great intelligence, experience, and perspective; obviously, he does. But only to the same choir of Old White Guys to which he belongs. Rest assured, Millennials, illegal aliens, and the government schools' Functional Illiterates don't read, listen, know or care. They are consumed with their Aggressive Ignorance, Contagious Apathy and addiction to Instant Gratification. As long as it's Free, hurts the Rich and screws the White Man, it's a good thing and they will support it.
To read VDH's latest is to learn from his diagnosis: we (OWG) are outflanked, out-manned, and out-numbered. The Government-Media Complex controls the Narrative. The influx of illegal aliens, now in the multi-millions outnumber those of us willing to actually participate in anything potentially meaningful that would realistically "defend the Constitution, our last great hope to ensure American continuity and security." And that doesn't begin to include voter fraud and the growing practice of "tribal elections", e.g., "The Squad".
"We need to support colleges that continue to teach the principles and practices of liberty." An excellent but unfortunately worn-out platitude. How many of those colleges can you name besides Hillsdale and Grove City?
"We must support policies that recognize the distinction between citizens and non-citizens and that bolster the middle class.". Swell. How? Does your State or DC contingent effectively respond to your calls for such "support"? Or do you receive a self-serving boiler-plate letter cum AutoSig? Can you name 3 'policies' over the last decade you personally supported with letters, calls, meetings, that permanently changed the contrary intent of any elected official, successfully stifling a Freedom-killing law or regulation?
No one appreciates VDH's work more than I. But then, I can admire a wordsmith with excellent ideas even though Satan will don ice skates and perform a Flying Camel in the middle of his hockey game before "American continuity and security" will become reality again. Collectively, we waited too long, cared too little and did mostly nothing. The barbarians are at – no, within – the gates. And that is the reality we face.
"We must support policies that recognize the distinction between citizens and non-citizens and that bolster the middle class.". Swell. How? Does your State or DC contingent effectively respond to your calls for such "support"? Or do you receive a self-serving boiler-plate letter cum AutoSig? Can you name 3 'policies' over the last decade you personally supported with letters, calls, meetings, that permanently changed the contrary intent of any elected official, successfully stifling a Freedom-killing law or regulation?
No one appreciates VDH's work more than I. But then, I can admire a wordsmith with excellent ideas even though Satan will don ice skates and perform a Flying Camel in the middle of his hockey game before "American continuity and security" will become reality again. Collectively, we waited too long, cared too little and did mostly nothing. The barbarians are at – no, within – the gates. And that is the reality we face.
I suspect anyone reading this admires VDH's ideals. Sadly, his recommendations have passed their Expiration Date, just as his choir of Old White Guys is in the inexorable process of also doing so right now. While these observations usually rile considerable Cognizant Dissonance, it is factually irrefutable we of his generation will not be leaving "American continuity and security" in capable, caring hands bent on continuity, security or preservation.
I'd prefer to be more optimistic so fact-based, emotionally void contradictions are welcome.
Note: Remarkably, as of this date - a full week after sending to my friend and his 50 buds - not one has acknowledged or responded to the above in any fashion. I'm ruling out Stunned Silence in favor of Cognizant Dissonance. Sad - but telling.
BW
I'd prefer to be more optimistic so fact-based, emotionally void contradictions are welcome.
Note: Remarkably, as of this date - a full week after sending to my friend and his 50 buds - not one has acknowledged or responded to the above in any fashion. I'm ruling out Stunned Silence in favor of Cognizant Dissonance. Sad - but telling.
BW
Two-Parter - Part One
The email and accompanying article below came to me - and about 50 others - from a mutual friend, a well-known California wine executive. Reading his intro and the Vicor David Hanson article that follows sets up the comparison piece in Part Two.
BW
As usual , VDH” hits it out of the park” with his take on what is going on in our great nation ! Bottom line , may God help us if the left gets even more control of our courts and legislatures….Next November will indeed be a watershed year for the future of our country ! With the likes of Bernie Sanders and or Elizabeth Warren , even Joe “plugs” Biden nipping at POTUS Trumps heals; things could get really dicey if somehow any one of them manage to get the White House ! Ugh !!!!!
American citizenship is eroding
By Victor Davis Hanson
Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College
Courtesy of Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/
Today, many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.
The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.
American citizenship is eroding in three ways.
First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today—the largest absolute number we’ve ever had. There’s no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship—although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.
But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship—the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases—are being blurred.
Where I live, in California, if you’re here illegally, you can de facto go back and forth across the border as you wish. In San Francisco, you can vote in some school board elections (the same is under consideration in some places in New England). And as we see with the DACA program, illegal residents can de facto live in the U.S. indefinitely.
Some policies even discriminate against citizens. An illegal resident in California who is charged with a crime is not subject to federal immigration law to the full extent, whereas a citizen who flies into Los Angeles from overseas without a passport will be detained. If you are in California as an illegal resident, you can obtain a driver’s license as citizens have in the past; whereas for citizens, starting next year, there will be an extra burden: to travel by commercial air, they will have to provide at least three sources of proof of citizenship to obtain a valid ID—given the apparent devaluation of the driver’s license.
People who come to the U.S. illegally and in great numbers usually do not have the degree of investment citizens do in our constitutional documents and are often unacquainted with our national story. Candidates from south of the border today fly into California’s Central Valley to campaign. Illegal residents vote in their home countries’ elections—and yet are unacquainted with political issues and candidates here in the U.S.
To avoid a fragmentation of society based on racial and ethnic chauvinism takes an extra effort to keep the melting pot working. We’re no longer making that effort. Indeed, we’re doing the opposite, encouraging diversity rather than unity.
Second, we’re becoming a country of tribes. The idea of multi-racialism—the notion that we’re of different races but we share a common culture—is eroding.
At many colleges and universities today, you can choose in advance the racial background of your roommate. Campuses have “safe spaces” that are reserved for people of particular races. There are dorms where students segregate according to race. Ethnic studies departments thrive by emphasizing racial exceptionalism.
Do we wonder why Elizabeth Warren chose to be a Native American, which, according to her own logic—the power of white privilege and systemic racism—would put her at a disadvantage? The answer is that she sought a careerist advantage. And Harvard was happy to comply: the law school bragged that she was its first “woman of color” faculty member.
I went to a grammar school that was about 90 percent Mexican-American. Some people who I went to first grade with later changed their names from Juan to John and dropped the accent on their last names. Now in their 60s, they’re changing back to Juan and adding back the accents. Why? Because there is now a disadvantage in identifying as an un-hyphenated American, and an advantage to belonging to a tribe. And the danger is that this logic of tribalism leads to the kind of social breakup and civil discord that we saw in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Iraq.
Third, the middle class, which had been encouraged and celebrated since the time of the American Founding, is now under sustained attack.
A solid, property-owning middle class anchors the nation. Traditionally, its members show the sobriety and judgment to achieve autonomy. They don’t look to government for help. They stand as a barrier against both property redistribution and crony capitalism.
Today, America’s middle class is threatened. Homeownership is down to about 62 percent from 71 percent just over ten years ago. The percentage of a family budget that goes to housing has risen from 20-30 percent in the 1950s to 30-40 percent today, especially in coastal corridors. Middle class wages, until an annual increase of three percent under President Trump, had been frozen for ten years. And we have an aggregate $1.6 trillion in student debt.
If the middle class continues to erode, we will become a nation of peasants and oligarchs. In California, more than one out of five people live below the poverty line—despite the fact that California has one of the highest number of zip codes of America’s most affluent people and the highest number of billionaires. If you drive through Palo Alto, you’ll see people living in RVs because they can’t afford to buy or rent a home—and these are people working for Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Oracle, and Apple, with a total market capitalization of nearly $4 trillion.
Additionally, we are seeing a formal assault on the Constitution by our elites.
Consider the nullification of federal law through the creation of sanctuary cities, in direct defiance of the immigration statutes. (Of course, such nullification seems to go only one way: otherwise, imagine how our elites would respond if the people of Provo, Utah, decided within their municipal jurisdiction to nullify federal handgun registration or the Endangered Species Act.)
Almost every single Democratic candidate for president is in favor of abolishing the Electoral College, which is in the Constitution to ensure equal representation to people living outside big cities, and to prevent the splintering of the electorate into several small parties.
There is also a growing academic attack on the mode of electing the U.S. Senate—“Why should North Dakota or Wyoming have the same number of U.S. Senators as New York?” progressives ask, in their eagerness to make U.S. Senators proportionally elected in the manner of House members.
This insidious assault on the Constitution results from the fact that popular elections haven’t been going the Left’s way, and the Left believes that its superior moral agenda justifies using any means necessary.
Ancient authors from Plato and Aristotle to Petronius and Tacitus have suggested that affluence combined with leisure paradoxically creates a laxity that leads to the kind of societal and institutional disintegration we are currently seeing. Another major ingredient of our current crisis is the failure of our education system to offer disinterested instruction, following from the post-1960s takeover by the Left of our colleges and universities.
In response, we need to support colleges that continue to teach the principles and practices of liberty. We must support policies that recognize the distinction between citizens and non-citizens and that bolster the middle class. And we need to defend the Constitution, our last great hope to ensure American continuity and security.
BW
As usual , VDH” hits it out of the park” with his take on what is going on in our great nation ! Bottom line , may God help us if the left gets even more control of our courts and legislatures….Next November will indeed be a watershed year for the future of our country ! With the likes of Bernie Sanders and or Elizabeth Warren , even Joe “plugs” Biden nipping at POTUS Trumps heals; things could get really dicey if somehow any one of them manage to get the White House ! Ugh !!!!!
American citizenship is eroding
By Victor Davis Hanson
Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College
Courtesy of Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/
Today, many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.
The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.
American citizenship is eroding in three ways.
First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today—the largest absolute number we’ve ever had. There’s no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship—although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.
But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship—the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases—are being blurred.
Where I live, in California, if you’re here illegally, you can de facto go back and forth across the border as you wish. In San Francisco, you can vote in some school board elections (the same is under consideration in some places in New England). And as we see with the DACA program, illegal residents can de facto live in the U.S. indefinitely.
Some policies even discriminate against citizens. An illegal resident in California who is charged with a crime is not subject to federal immigration law to the full extent, whereas a citizen who flies into Los Angeles from overseas without a passport will be detained. If you are in California as an illegal resident, you can obtain a driver’s license as citizens have in the past; whereas for citizens, starting next year, there will be an extra burden: to travel by commercial air, they will have to provide at least three sources of proof of citizenship to obtain a valid ID—given the apparent devaluation of the driver’s license.
People who come to the U.S. illegally and in great numbers usually do not have the degree of investment citizens do in our constitutional documents and are often unacquainted with our national story. Candidates from south of the border today fly into California’s Central Valley to campaign. Illegal residents vote in their home countries’ elections—and yet are unacquainted with political issues and candidates here in the U.S.
To avoid a fragmentation of society based on racial and ethnic chauvinism takes an extra effort to keep the melting pot working. We’re no longer making that effort. Indeed, we’re doing the opposite, encouraging diversity rather than unity.
Second, we’re becoming a country of tribes. The idea of multi-racialism—the notion that we’re of different races but we share a common culture—is eroding.
At many colleges and universities today, you can choose in advance the racial background of your roommate. Campuses have “safe spaces” that are reserved for people of particular races. There are dorms where students segregate according to race. Ethnic studies departments thrive by emphasizing racial exceptionalism.
Do we wonder why Elizabeth Warren chose to be a Native American, which, according to her own logic—the power of white privilege and systemic racism—would put her at a disadvantage? The answer is that she sought a careerist advantage. And Harvard was happy to comply: the law school bragged that she was its first “woman of color” faculty member.
I went to a grammar school that was about 90 percent Mexican-American. Some people who I went to first grade with later changed their names from Juan to John and dropped the accent on their last names. Now in their 60s, they’re changing back to Juan and adding back the accents. Why? Because there is now a disadvantage in identifying as an un-hyphenated American, and an advantage to belonging to a tribe. And the danger is that this logic of tribalism leads to the kind of social breakup and civil discord that we saw in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Iraq.
Third, the middle class, which had been encouraged and celebrated since the time of the American Founding, is now under sustained attack.
A solid, property-owning middle class anchors the nation. Traditionally, its members show the sobriety and judgment to achieve autonomy. They don’t look to government for help. They stand as a barrier against both property redistribution and crony capitalism.
Today, America’s middle class is threatened. Homeownership is down to about 62 percent from 71 percent just over ten years ago. The percentage of a family budget that goes to housing has risen from 20-30 percent in the 1950s to 30-40 percent today, especially in coastal corridors. Middle class wages, until an annual increase of three percent under President Trump, had been frozen for ten years. And we have an aggregate $1.6 trillion in student debt.
If the middle class continues to erode, we will become a nation of peasants and oligarchs. In California, more than one out of five people live below the poverty line—despite the fact that California has one of the highest number of zip codes of America’s most affluent people and the highest number of billionaires. If you drive through Palo Alto, you’ll see people living in RVs because they can’t afford to buy or rent a home—and these are people working for Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Oracle, and Apple, with a total market capitalization of nearly $4 trillion.
Additionally, we are seeing a formal assault on the Constitution by our elites.
Consider the nullification of federal law through the creation of sanctuary cities, in direct defiance of the immigration statutes. (Of course, such nullification seems to go only one way: otherwise, imagine how our elites would respond if the people of Provo, Utah, decided within their municipal jurisdiction to nullify federal handgun registration or the Endangered Species Act.)
Almost every single Democratic candidate for president is in favor of abolishing the Electoral College, which is in the Constitution to ensure equal representation to people living outside big cities, and to prevent the splintering of the electorate into several small parties.
There is also a growing academic attack on the mode of electing the U.S. Senate—“Why should North Dakota or Wyoming have the same number of U.S. Senators as New York?” progressives ask, in their eagerness to make U.S. Senators proportionally elected in the manner of House members.
This insidious assault on the Constitution results from the fact that popular elections haven’t been going the Left’s way, and the Left believes that its superior moral agenda justifies using any means necessary.
Ancient authors from Plato and Aristotle to Petronius and Tacitus have suggested that affluence combined with leisure paradoxically creates a laxity that leads to the kind of societal and institutional disintegration we are currently seeing. Another major ingredient of our current crisis is the failure of our education system to offer disinterested instruction, following from the post-1960s takeover by the Left of our colleges and universities.
In response, we need to support colleges that continue to teach the principles and practices of liberty. We must support policies that recognize the distinction between citizens and non-citizens and that bolster the middle class. And we need to defend the Constitution, our last great hope to ensure American continuity and security.
Tuesday, December 3
From The Next President
To any aspiring Democratic politician:
If you'd like to be President one day. Maybe soon. Put the following in a full page ad in the WaPo, get yourself booked on some talk shows and read this:
An Open Letter from a Democratic Politician to all Democratic Politicians
My fellow Democrats – Let's face it; we blew it. Lead by Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff and Chairman Nadler, these past 3 years we have conducted ourselves in a way that has severely divided America. Continuing with this impeachment hoax – and it is a hoax and we all know it - will only destroy the Democratic Party and impugn all the great principles we once stood for. Our Leadership – and our so-called 'friends' in the media – have strongly encouraged, even threatened us, if did not 'toe the line'. As a result, regardless of where you're from or how long you've been in office, very few of us will be returning after the coming elections.
We have only one choice to save America and the Party: Tell your constituents and the rest of America we were wrong. We're sorry. We DO love America and all who live here. We have differences, of course. But we also have orderly, legal and traditional methods to resolve them. If this level of political vindictiveness and personal incivility continues, it will tear the fabric of our great society to shreds. What will happen next is unthinkable.
Starting today, at every opportunity, tell our fellow Americans you are sorry for the conduct of the Democratic Party these last 3 years; as a Party, we have been better than this and will be again. Our country has problems, always has, always will. But it has always taken a united effort for the United States to be the United States.
To Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff and Chairman Nadler, if you truly love America and all our citizens, I am calling for your resignations. Your 'leadership' has become a toxic fixation that has damaged America, American principles, American institutions, our Democratic Party, and harmed the lives of countless Americans. I call on my fellow Democrats to join me in demanding your resignations be effective immediately.
Let's end this year with the end of rancor that has done so much harm, squandered so much time and taxpayer dollars. Let's start the new year with a bi-partisan spirit to get the things done that America needs done. Working together, we can make 2020 a very happy year for everyone.
If you'd like to be President one day. Maybe soon. Put the following in a full page ad in the WaPo, get yourself booked on some talk shows and read this:
An Open Letter from a Democratic Politician to all Democratic Politicians
My fellow Democrats – Let's face it; we blew it. Lead by Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff and Chairman Nadler, these past 3 years we have conducted ourselves in a way that has severely divided America. Continuing with this impeachment hoax – and it is a hoax and we all know it - will only destroy the Democratic Party and impugn all the great principles we once stood for. Our Leadership – and our so-called 'friends' in the media – have strongly encouraged, even threatened us, if did not 'toe the line'. As a result, regardless of where you're from or how long you've been in office, very few of us will be returning after the coming elections.
We have only one choice to save America and the Party: Tell your constituents and the rest of America we were wrong. We're sorry. We DO love America and all who live here. We have differences, of course. But we also have orderly, legal and traditional methods to resolve them. If this level of political vindictiveness and personal incivility continues, it will tear the fabric of our great society to shreds. What will happen next is unthinkable.
Starting today, at every opportunity, tell our fellow Americans you are sorry for the conduct of the Democratic Party these last 3 years; as a Party, we have been better than this and will be again. Our country has problems, always has, always will. But it has always taken a united effort for the United States to be the United States.
To Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff and Chairman Nadler, if you truly love America and all our citizens, I am calling for your resignations. Your 'leadership' has become a toxic fixation that has damaged America, American principles, American institutions, our Democratic Party, and harmed the lives of countless Americans. I call on my fellow Democrats to join me in demanding your resignations be effective immediately.
Let's end this year with the end of rancor that has done so much harm, squandered so much time and taxpayer dollars. Let's start the new year with a bi-partisan spirit to get the things done that America needs done. Working together, we can make 2020 a very happy year for everyone.
Some Democrat With Guts, Esq.
Thursday, November 21
The Elite Controllers
The following article, written by my friend, Gary Barnett, first appeared at LewRockwell.com
BW
This once great country of America has gone through many changes, and these changes, while implemented by the design of its true rulers, are not understood by the huddled masses that have been taught to accept mediocrity as desired normalcy. The ruling class fully understands that the only way to control people, and to finally control the world, is to stifle individual excellence by creating a society that refuses to think. This has been accomplished through planned conflict, the instilling of fear, the total control of education by the puppet state, by building dependence through public welfare, and by dominating most all positions of power in a myriad of state, corporate, and important intellectual appointments.
Sunday, November 17
Simple Question; Simple Answer
There is a profound difference between natural Stupidity and aggressive Ignorance. One can't be helped or blamed on the victim; the other, a willful, spiteful, self-destructive choice freely made.
With that distinction in mind, consider:
Sunday, on FOX's Journal Editorial Report, host Paul Gigot, and 3 other like-minded comrades blustered, bloviated and pontificated about President Trump's now nearly-famous Tweet concerning ex-ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, tweeted while she was "testifying" before the so-called 'Impeachment Hearing' at the time.
With that distinction in mind, consider:
Sunday, on FOX's Journal Editorial Report, host Paul Gigot, and 3 other like-minded comrades blustered, bloviated and pontificated about President Trump's now nearly-famous Tweet concerning ex-ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, tweeted while she was "testifying" before the so-called 'Impeachment Hearing' at the time.
Tuesday, November 12
The Sheep, The Wolf and Dr. Paul
How many times, how many headlines, how many articles have been written – maybe even read - about the monstrous disaster waiting to befall Americans when the Mother of All (Financial) Bubbles bursts? To say such pieces speak as "warnings" is the Mommy of all Understatements. True as they are, these facts are barely reported is just as true, likely because the Average Reader is near totally ignorant, dis-interested and bored by anything that smacks of serious economic analysis of the Federal Reserve, Quantitative Easing, GDP, Negative Interest Rates, Unfunded Entitlements and other terms common to Money Talk. Readership and ratings are too important risk. The time and effort it would take readers to scale the Learning Curve of Economics is too steep. This is football season! There is holiday shopping!
Here's a good example of the serious issue of our current economic status and instability which isn't taken too seriously by serious Americans unknowingly facing the consequences.
Here's a good example of the serious issue of our current economic status and instability which isn't taken too seriously by serious Americans unknowingly facing the consequences.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)