Kritocracy Then Chaos

To continue the metaphor, the virus has jumped the quarantine and now the entire system is showing signs of infection. For two years the Trump administration has been plagued with federal judges who just make up rulings out of thin air. In many cases they are ruling on behalf of plaintiffs who have no standing in the court. In other cases, they are simply making up legal theories so bizarre they would get a first year law student dismissed from school on mental health grounds. The Federal bench is in revolt against the rule of law.

In this particular case, the law is clear. It’s not just US law, but international law. There is a legal process for applying for asylum. No country is required to accept anyone who does not follow the procedures. US law is crystal clear on the issue, yet this judge is making up law that is direct conflict with black letter law. This is no less deranged than if the judge stood up, stripped off his clothes and declared he is an invisible chicken and that everyone in the court must cluck in worship to him. This judge is not mentally fit.

Source: Kritocracy Then Chaos

Ending Birthright Citizenship

During debate on the 14th Amendment, Sen. Jacob Merritt Howard of Michigan added jurisdiction language specifically to avoid accident of birth being the sole criteria for citizenship. And if citizenship was determined just by place of birth, why did it take an act of Congress in 1922 to give American Indians birthright citizenship, if they already had citizenship by birthright under the 14th Amendment?

Rep. John Bingham of Ohio, who is regarded as the father of the 14th Amendment, said it meant that “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your constitution itself, a natural born citizen…”

About time the Constitution was followed AS WRITTEN!

Source: Ending Birthright Citizenship

Our Revolution’s Logic – The American Mind

By dropping all pretense of ruling for the common good; by presuming that they embody the law (Laws-R-us); by instituting various kinds of boycotts (institutions-R-us); by using the strongest, most motivating language toward opponents; by inciting all manner of violence; by death-gripping their privileges; by using their positions’ powers in government and social institutions at or beyond their extreme edge; the people who occupy the government’s and society’s institutions continue to remove whatever deference the institutions (by the authority of which they rule) had inspired. They increasingly stand before their opponents, naked. By daring their opponents to capture these positions in any way possible, and to use them in the same way, they threw down a gantlet that is now being picked up.

In short, the “resistance” has begun to radicalize middle America. It redoubled millions of Americans’ sense of siege, their fear of unbridled rule by unaccountable powers, of being accused of “hate speech,” of normal life made impossible by Progressive socio-political demands. It confirmed the sense that Donald Trump and such as he, whatever their faults, are all that stands between themselves and having an alien way of life imposed upon them.

The voters who, over four election cycles, stripped the Democratic Party of the U.S. Presidency, left it in the minority in both Houses of Congress, without Governors in two-thirds of the States, and in the minority in two-thirds of the state legislatures did so not out of love for the Republican Party. They were being insulted and made to feel strangers in their own country, and wanted that to stop. But elections did not stop the ruling class’s assaults on their supposed inferiors. Instead, the “resistance” increased pressures on them. Political correctness is more virulent than ever, speech is more restricted than ever. Being on the wrong side of the right people is more dangerous than ever.

Buy precious metals, steel, brass, copper, and lead…

Source: Our Revolution’s Logic – The American Mind

Gramscian damage

In a previous post on Suicidalism, I identified some of the most important of the Soviet Union’s memetic weapons. Here is that list again:

  • There is no truth, only competing agendas.

  • All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.

  • There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

  • The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

  • Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

  • The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

  • For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

  • When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

This sounds like today’s Democrats.

Source: Gramscian damage

Cultural Marxism Is the Main Source of Modern Confusion—and It’s Spreading

The cultural Marxists believe that someday they will be the sole holders of power and be able to dictate to the masses how to live and what to think. Yet the neo-Marxist intellectuals are in for a surprise. When socialism should come, indeed, the “dictatorship of the intellectuals” will be anything but benign—and not much different from what happened after the Soviets took power. The intellectuals will be among the victims. This was, after all, the way it happened in the French Revolution, which was the first attempt at a revolution by intellectuals. Many of the victims of the guillotine were prominent intellectuals who had earlier supported the revolution—Robespierre among them.

Source: Cultural Marxism Is the Main Source of Modern Confusion—and It’s Spreading

The Democrats’ Constitution Problem

Now, when a judge the Left doesn’t like is, in Brett Kavanaugh, seated on the high bench, the complaining starts about how the senators who confirmed him didn’t represent a majority of the voters. “It’s not about Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged behavior. It’s about justices who do not represent the will of the majority,” says a column in the Times by no less a figure than Michael Tomasky.

That, of course, would be like complaining that the justices do not, say, take in home sewing. It’s not their job to take in home sewing. Their job is decide actual cases and controversies. Nor is it the job of the senators to represent the will of the majority. That is the job of the Representative House, the only house whose seats are apportioned by population. The job of the Senators is to represent the states.

That’s the Senate’s very purpose. The Left likes to suggest that the only reason for this was to protect slavery. Yet even the original Constitution anticipated an end to slavery. It still made the equal representation of the states in the Senate the only feature of the parchment that could never be amended absent the consent of the state being denied equal representation.

I blame the 17th Amendment. The Senate is no longer chosen by the State governments but by the people, same as the House. In effect we have two Houses of Representatives. The State governments are unrepresented.

Do you really think that a Senate that represented the States would vote unfunded mandates on their States?

Source: The Democrats’ Constitution Problem

Democrats: The Constitution Is Unconstitutional!

The left argument simply assumes that the “popular vote” in the aggregate nationally is, or at least ought to be, the standard by which the presidential election is judged to be legitimate; anything else is illegitimate and “unrepresentative”, and the Senate inherently so. But there was never any intention to have “one man, one vote” be the appropriate standard of legitimacy on the national level as it was at more local levels. The founders wanted to force a widespread consensus across a whole collection of local majorities to balance different interests. This prevents ten or a dozen urban aggregations (NY, LA, SF, Chicago…) from dominating without having to balance other interests. The “popular vote” in the aggregate nationally is just a journalistic construct that is entirely extra-constitutional.

Source: Democrats: The Constitution Is Unconstitutional!

The critical fraction

That means that in order to stop attempted gun confiscations dead on a purely force-on-force level, only one in 317 American gun owners needs to remember that our first American Revolution began as spontaneous popular resistance to a gun-confiscation order. Only one in 317 American gun owners need to remember their duty under the U.S. Constitution as members of the unorganized militia – “the body of the people in arms”. Only one in 317 American gun owners need to shoot back.

Is that a plausible fraction? Yes. Yes, I think it is. Count me as one of them.

Me too.

Source: The critical fraction