Political Correctness Is the Real Chinese Virus

“Woke” thinking is the most dangerous part of the entire government response to the plague unleashed upon the world from Wuhan, China.

Political correctness usually just seems silly or at worst a little crazy, but in the case of the Chinese-originated virus, the worldwide virtue signaling has become worse than dangerous; it has become deadly.

Dario Nardella, the mayor of Florence, Italy, made a bold and disastrous stand for “inclusion” on February 1, immediately following President Trump’s decision to stop all inbound flights from China. According to the Global Times, Nardella “initiated ‘hug a Chinese’ on Twitter on Feb 1, opposing anger toward China amid the #nCoV2019 outbreak, and calling for ‘Unity in this common battle!.”

The results were beyond tragic as Italy became synonymous with the spread of the virus, with health facilities in northern cities rapidly becoming overwhelmed. The politically correct embrace of Chinese travelers doomed the region. As a result, many of the cases that showed up in the United States were from people infected in Italy due to virus virtue-signaling.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ran with the politically correct, pro-China line with his absurd attempt to identify the Chinese virus as a “European virus.” This is akin to claiming that gunpowder or noodles originated in Italy rather than recognizing that Marco Polo brought them from China in the late 13th century. In Cuomo’s politically correct world, however, blaming Italy is far better than agreeing with President Trump who isolated China early, while Europe opened its borders to viral visitors.

Cuomo’s blame-shifting followed the tainted governor’s obscene decision on March 20 to issue a mandate that New York state nursing homes had to accept virus-infected patients. Everyone in America knew that keeping the virus out of our nation’s senior care system was critical as this population was most likely to die if infected with the virus. We watched in horror in February as deaths mounted in just one Washington state nursing home, and in early March, Cuomo insisted he was taking action in order to protect seniors by heeding the president’s call.

Instead, in what can only be called political correctness run wild, Cuomo signed death warrants for thousands of elderly New Yorkers by injecting the virus directly into where they lived.

In case you think this is hyperbole, the Kaiser Family Foundation notes that of the 14 states it has studied, fully half of all the COVID-19 deaths have occurred in nursing homes. One-half, and the media darling Cuomo forced officials in his state to let the virus loose in virtually every nursing home there.

Any questions why New York accounts for one-third of all the deaths from the virus in the United States?

Even more incredible, this insane policy is contained in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s latest stimulus bill, where the House Democrats now want to incentivize senior care facilities to accept virus-infected patients.

Given the spread of the politically correct idea to infuse COVID-19 patients into senior health facilities so as to not treat them as lepers, as well as the push to negate China’s culpability for the virus itself, it is clear that political correctness is the most dangerous part of the entire government response to the plague unleashed upon the world from Wuhan, China.

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Some Thoughts About Being Safe

Dennis Prager

In a recent "Fireside Chat," my weekly talk show on the PragerU platform, I commented on society's increasing fixation on being "safe." The following is a condensed version of what I said:

We have a meme up at PragerU: "'Until it's safe' means 'never.'"

The pursuit of "safe" over virtually all other considerations is life-suppressing. This is true for your own individual life, and it is true for the life of a society.

I always give the following example: I have been taking visitors to Israel for decades, and for all those decades, people have called my radio show to say, "Dennis, I would so love to visit Israel, but I'm just going to wait until it's safe." And I've always told these people, "Then you'll never go." And sure enough, I've gone there over 20 times, and they never went.

I have never led my life on the basis of "until it's safe." I do not take ridiculous risks. I wear a seatbelt whenever I'm in a car because the chances are overwhelming that in a bad accident, a seatbelt can save my life. But I get into the car, which is not 100% safe.

You are not on earth to be safe. You are on earth to lead a full life. I don't want my epitaph to be, "He led a safe life." It's like another epitaph I don't want: "He experienced as little pain as possible."

The nature of this world is such that if you aim for 100 percent safety and no pain, you don't live. I have visited 130 countries, some of which were not particularly safe. Safe, as in "no risk," doesn't exist. Accepting there are degrees of safety and balancing risk with reward are part of the reason I've led a rich life.

I'll give a personal example. I started teaching myself to conduct an orchestra when I was in my teens. I have conducted orchestras periodically for much of my adult life. As a guest conductor, I raise funds for orchestras, as I did two years ago at the Disney Concert Hall, where I conducted a Haydn symphony with the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra.

Now, I rarely get nervous. But the first time I conducted, I was so nervous I was actually dripping sweat onto the score -- and it was only a rehearsal.

What I did was not play it safe. Playing it safe would have meant I wouldn't have accepted the invitation to conduct.

All of life confronts you with this question: Are you going to take risks or play it safe? If you play it safe, you don't get married. If you play it safe, you don't have kids. There are real risks in getting married; there are real risks in having children.

Take the issue of the word "safe" on campuses. "Safe" is used to suppress freedom of thought: "If we have a conservative speaker on campus, we need a 'safe space' where we can avoid feeling discomfort from exposure to ideas we don't like." A conservative speaker comes to campus and some students go to a "safe space" where they're given Play-Doh, hot chocolate and stuffed animals. I'm not joking. That's what they do at some colleges -- for people who are 18 and older.

That's why Adam Carolla and I named our movie about free speech "No Safe Spaces" (which you can and should watch at NoSafeSpaces.com).

"Safe" has become a dirty word. I rarely use it in the context of living life. It's one of the reasons I'm a happy person and have led a full life. I'm thinking of a trivial example, but life is filled with trivial examples. Most of life is not major moments. If I am at a restaurant and my fork or knife falls, I pick it up and use it. They rush over to give me a new one, like I am flirting with death if I take the fork from the floor. My view is there's no reason to come over. The fork fell on the floor. What did it pick up -- diphtheria? Am I going to get pancreatic cancer from a fork that fell? I'm not troubled by these things.

"Safe" is going to suppress your joy of life.

When I was 21 years old, I was sent to the Soviet Union to smuggle in religious items for Soviet Jews and to smuggle out names of Jews who wanted to escape the Soviet Union.

It wasn't safe. I was in a totalitarian state, smuggling things in and out. But it was one of the most important things I've done in my life. Not to mention a life-transforming experience.

Before I went, I told my father about my plans. We both knew it wasn't safe. I'll never forget what my father said: "Dennis, I spent two and a half years on a Navy ship in World War II, fighting in the Pacific. So, you can take risks for a month."

Yes, he was worried. But this was a man who, despite having a wife and child, enlisted in the U.S. Navy to fight in World War II. He was an officer on a troop transport ship, a prime target of the Japanese. He wasn't safe. The World War II generation has been dubbed "the greatest generation." Part of what made them great was the last thing they would ever ask was, "Is it safe?"

If you want to lead a good and full life, you cannot keep asking, "Is it safe?" Those at college promoting "safe spaces" are afraid of life, and they want to make you afraid of life.

We're going crazy on the safe issue. It is making police states. That's my worry: In the name of safety, many Americans are dropping all other considerations.

"Is it safe?" shouldn't be the overarching element in your life. Pick the fork up. Wipe it off. And use it.

Postscript: Some left-wing media cited the remarks about picking up a fork (transcribed above word-for-word) in order to smear me and the message. The Daily Beast led with this mendacious headline: "Dennis Prager Licks Dirty Forks To Show COVID Who's Boss." And the Daily Mail offered its attack with this headline: "Right-Wing Radio Host Dennis Prager Boasts About Using Dirty Forks From Restaurant Floors in His Latest Rambling Message Downplaying Dangers of Coronavirus That Has Now Killed 88,000 Americans." As is obvious, my talk was about "being safe," not the coronavirus. Please read my last column about truth and the left.

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Policing For Profit: How Civil Asset Forfeiture Has Perverted American Law Enforcement

Picture this: You’re driving home from the casino and you’ve absolutely cleaned up – to the tune of $50,000. You see a police car pull up behind you, but you can’t figure out why. Not only have you not broken any laws; you’re not even speeding. But the police officer doesn’t appear to be interested in charging you with a crime. Instead, he takes your gambling winnings, warns you not to say anything to anyone unless you want to be charged as a drug kingpin, then drives off into the sunset.

This actually happened to Tan Nguyen, and his story is far from unique. It’s called civil asset forfeiture and it’s a multi-billion dollar piggybank for state, local and federal police departments to fund all sorts of pet projects.

With its origins in the British fight against piracy on the open seas, civil asset forfeiture is nothing new. During Prohibition, police officers often seized goods, cash and equipment from bootleggers in a similar manner as today. However, contemporary civil asset forfeiture begins right where you’d think that it would: The War on Drugs.

In 1986, as First Lady Nancy Reagan encouraged America’s youth to “Just Say No,” the Justice Department started the Asset Forfeiture Fund. This sparked a boom in civil asset forfeiture that’s now become self-reinforcing, as the criminalization of American life and asset forfeiture have continued to feed each other.

In sum, asset forfeiture creates a motivation to draft more laws by the legislature, while more laws create greater opportunities for seizure by law enforcement. This perverse incentive structure is having devastating consequences: In 2014 alone, law enforcement took more stuff from American citizens than burglars did.

The current state of civil asset forfeiture in the United States is one of almost naked tyranny. Don’t believe us? Read on.

The Origins of Civil Asset Forfeiture

Civil asset forfeiture has a deep history in maritime law. In many cases, it just wasn’t practical to bring owners of vessels carrying contraband in front of an American court. So customs enforcement would simply seize the contraband. But in practice, seizure of assets was rare and generally required a felony conviction in court. Often times these convictions were obtained in absentia, but the point is that there was a criminal proceeding and due process.

During the Civil War, as part of sweeping attacks on liberty that included Lincoln suspending habeas corpus and obtaining an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, supporters of the Confederacy had their property confiscated without due process. Civil asset forfeiture was used during the Prohibition Era to seize assets from bootleggers and suspected bootleggers. Even innocent owners had no defense during Prohibition if their property was used in violation of the Volstead Act.

In 1984, civil asset forfeiture entered a new phase. The Comprehensive Crime Control Act, championed by then-President Ronald Reagan, allowed for police agencies to keep the assets they seized. This highly incentivized the seizure of assets for the purpose of funding police departments rather than pursuing criminal charges. However, the game changed completely in 1996 – the year of the landmark Supreme Court decision Bennis v. Michigan (516 U.S. 442). This ruling held that the innocent owner defense was not sufficient to recover assets seized during civil asset forfeiture.

The plaintiff, Tina Bennis, was the joint owner of a vehicle with her husband John. The latter was arrested by Detroit police when caught with a prostitute on a street in Detroit, and the car was seized as a public nuisance. The court found that despite having no knowledge of the crime, there was no violation of either her property rights or her right to due process. Michigan’s law was specifically designed to deter people from using their assets in criminal activity, which the Supreme Court found to be Constitutional in a 5-4 decision. The Supreme Court likewise found that there was no right to compensation for Bennis.

Criminal Asset Forfeiture vs. Civil Asset Forfeiture

Before going any further, it’s important to delineate the differences between criminal asset forfeiture and civil asset forfeiture. The primary difference is that criminal asset forfeiture requires a conviction while civil asset forfeiture does not. However, there are other differences worth mentioning.

Civil asset forfeiture is a lawsuit against the seized object in question rather than a person. This leads to rather strange lawsuits like “Texas vs. One Gold Crucifix.” The legal burden of proof varies from one state to another, but the most common is preponderance of evidence, not reasonable doubt. What this means is juries decide if the state’s case is more likely to be true than not – not beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil asset forfeiture trial, courts can weigh the use of the Fifth Amendment. This is not true in criminal trials.

The ‘burden of proof’ question becomes crucial when it comes to retrieving property. In criminal cases, assets are returned if the prosecution fails to prove the guilt of the accused. In a civil asset forfeiture trial, the accused effectively has to prove their innocence to get their property back. Thus, civil asset forfeiture is a highly attractive option for police departments looking to scare up extra scratch in tight budgetary times. What’s more, the accused is not entitled to legal counsel. This is why, in most cases, it’s not economically advantageous to try and get one’s property back. The lawyer fees will quickly eclipse whatever value the seized assets have.

A 2015 study from FreedomWorks graded the states on their civil asset forfeiture laws. Only New Mexico received an “A,” after the state passed sweeping reforms with regard to its civil asset forfeiture processes. Over half the states received a “D” or less.

Sound paranoid? Keep reading.

Civil Asset Forfeiture: Big Business For Police

To say that police departments are funding themselves with civil asset forfeiture is more true than you might think. Civil asset forfeiture has exploded since 1986 when total seizures were at $93.7 million. By 2005, this had passed the $1 billion mark. That was double the 2004 amount, $567 million. By 2010, this figure jumped to $2.5 billion with more than 15,000 forfeiture cases – 11,000 of which were civil, not criminal.

By 2014, this figure climbed to $4.5 billion, with $29 billion seized between 2001 and 2014. Between 1985 and 1991, federal forfeitures increased by 1,500 percent, an increase of over 26 times. The Justice Department’s forfeiture fund (that does not include customs forfeitures) ballooned from $27 million in 1985 to $644 million in 1991. By 1996, this fund grew to over $1 billion for the first time. By 2008, it had tripled again to $3.1 billion.

Cash seizures in Tennessee have gotten so widespread that the state legislature has begun investigating it. Traffic stops have turned into shakedown operations. Interstate 40 was described as “a major profit center” by Phil Williams, a reporter for Channel 5 in Nashville. Much like extra-legal gangs, police gangs in Tennessee have started engaging in turf warfare over the spoils of civil asset forfeiture. The Dixon Interdiction Enforcement (DICE) and the 23rd Judicial District Drug Taskforce were caught on video trying to cut one another off in their vehicles to stop civilians and search for cash. Indeed, officers were in danger of losing their jobs if they didn’t seize enough cash. The head of DICE admitted that it was funded entirely by civil asset forfeiture cash.

Civil Asset Forfeiture Drives Bad Policing

Civil asset forfeiture isn’t just effectively a legalized form of theft. It also drives (and indeed, incentivizes) bad policing. There is ample evidence to suggest local smokies use civil asset forfeiture to pad their budgets. For example, a 1994 study found that police delay drug busts to increase the value of a forfeiture. A 2001 study of 1,400 police departments published in the Journal of Criminal Justice found that half of the departments surveyed agreed that civil asset forfeiture was “necessary as a budget supplement.” Far more disturbing is the 2004 report showing that police departments keep wish lists for items they wish to obtain via civil asset forfeiture.

To provide some context, in 2014, the total amount of civil asset forfeiture seizures in the United States was $4.5 billion. The total value of property stolen in burglaries was $3.9 billion. This means that police agencies in the United States are taking more from the American public than burglars. More to the point, all the time police agencies use seizing assets from citizens who are in no way a danger to their neighbors is time they don’t spend tracking down actual criminals. In some cases, it might be more “profitable” for a police department to harass a law-abiding citizen while entirely ignoring dangerous criminals.

Case in point: In Tennessee, officers set up a post to bust drug traffickers on a known highway used for muling drugs from Mexico into the United States. However, their post was not set up to stop the flow of drugs into the United States, which one would think would ostensibly be the goal of the “War on Drugs” – to protect American citizens from the inflow of drugs. Instead, the post was set up to bust cars bound for Mexico that might be carrying cash, a far more valuable commodity for the police departments.

Civil Asset Forfeiture Targets Regular People

Let’s assume that you’re against the War on Drugs and against civil asset forfeiture on principle. So what? Who cares about big-time drug kingpins getting their assets seized by the government? Well, as it turns out, the police aren’t generally taking things from drug lords operating in what are effectively domestic war zones. They’re taking them from average Americans.

First, it’s important to remember what the “civil” in “civil asset forfeiture” means. It means that no one has actually been convicted of a crime. Once property has been seized, it’s not only difficult to regain it, but it can also be dangerous for the person who has had their items effectively stolen by the police.

Additionally, it’s worth looking at the scope creep associated with civil asset forfeiture, for which there are currently over 400 federal statutes on the books. This amount has doubled since the 1990s. People who are victims of civil asset forfeiture are many times not even suspected of drug crimes or money laundering. Civil asset forfeiture is applied to crimes like DWI or violating the National Halibut Fishing Act. In 85 percent of all cases, no one is ever charged with a crime, though many people are pressured into signing away their right to a defense in exchange for a guarantee against criminal prosecution. In the case of seized vehicles, between 50 and 80 percent were being driven by someone other than the owner when seized.

In one particularly egregious example, a Philadelphia family had their home seized because their son did a $40 drug sale on the porch. In New York City, police seize money from people with as little as $100 in their pocket. A whopping 94 percent of California seizures in 2013 were for $5,000 or less, but the average DEA seizure in 1998 was $25,000 – precisely the cap on what attorneys advise against trying to reclaim due to legal fees and court costs. Indeed, 88 percent of Department of Justice seizures are “administrative,” meaning they were never challenged in court, likely due to the high cost and risk associated with challenging a seizure.

In addition to the legal fees being prohibitively high for most people, anything you say in the course of recovering your property can be used against you in criminal proceedings. This includes the nebulous charge of “lying to investigators” that is so often invoked against people once it has been determined that they committed no other crime.

It’s a rare moment when the American Civil Liberties Union and the Heritage Foundation come together, but when they do, it’s worth noting. Both oppose civil asset forfeiture.

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Child Social Workers Arrested in NC on Charges of Removing Children From Families Without Judicial Oversight

Three Cherokee County Department of Social Services social workers, including the DSS director, were indicted with more than three dozen felony and misdemeanor charges in North Carolina on Monday. Among the arrested are Cindy Palmer, DSS director and wife of County Sheriff Derrick Palmer, David Hughes, a supervisor at DSS, and Scott Lindsay, former DSS attorney. The three were booked and released on bond.


The charges included multiple felonies and misdemeanors related to a yearslong Cherokee County DSS practice that removed children from parents without judicial input. The Carolina Public Press has the story.

The indictments come after more than two years of investigations by state and potentially federal authorities. They also do not cover all of the allegations of misconduct, meaning more charges could surface in the future.

But they stand to shake up Cherokee County because of who was indicted and why, as well as who had backed them despite ongoing criminal investigations.

The indictments may also have important implications for the accountability of social services agencies across North Carolina, as well as the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, which intervened in Cherokee County while the investigation was underway.

A judge had ruled in 2018 that the agreements were a violation of law but the indictment says Palmer and others continued to use them anyway. And parents who have had experience with child services all over the country knows what kind of power they wield. There is no one to go to when social workers violate your rights. One of the parents involved in the case, Tienda Rose Phillips told CPP, “But when you have someone who you think is over you and is threatening foster care, who you know can take your kid, you kind of do what they say. You kind of feel you have no choice.”

Social workers from Cherokee County DSS told parents and other caregivers that unless they signed the document, their children would be placed in a foster home far away, according to a federal lawsuit.

In fact, the documents were an illegal violation of parents’ constitutional rights, and “the product of both actual and constructive fraud on behalf of the Cherokee County Department of Social Services, its agents and employees and Attorney Scott Lindsay and Director Cindy Palmer,” District Court Judge Sellers ruled in 2018.

Social workers told malicious lies and defrauded parents
Palmer’s offenses include using child-custody agreements that circumvented judicial oversight.

The use of these agreements effectively avoided judicial oversight into the activities of Cherokee County DSS and subverted the statutory process for determining abuse and neglect of children, and determining custody and parental rights,” the indictment says.

“This offense was done in secrecy and with malice; with deceit and intent to defraud; was infamous; and was done in violation of the common law, and against the peace and dignity of the state.”

The government agencies charged with caring for neglected and abused children have historically been at the center of much controversy for removing children wrongly, abusing their authority, violating Constitutional rights, and ignoring abuse that led to the deaths of children nationwide. They have been caught conspiring to take newborns away from parents for disagreeing with medical decisions and have lost huge lawsuits against them for seizing children unlawfully without warrants or due process.

Social workers lied to a judge to take children away from parents

The indictment accuses Palmer of lying to a judge about when and how the agreements came to be used. Palmer claimed the first time she heard about the agreements was in December of 2017 which the indictment says is a lie and that she claimed it “knowing the statement, which is material, to be false.”

…the indictment holds Palmer responsible for CVAs as far back as the beginning of 2016. Palmer became interim director for Cherokee DSS in August 2015, a position that became permanent the following year.

In her defense, her attorney at Cheshire Parker Schneider in Raleigh said the agreements happened years before she became the director.

“Cindy relied on the department’s longtime lawyer, whom she believed was following the law with regard to these agreements,” wrote attorney Hart Miles, with the firm.

“She adamantly denies ever acting with any sort of criminal intent. And she is confident that those in the community that know her understand that she is a dedicated public servant who has been wrongfully targeted in this investigation.”

But the attorney representing the families, David Moore says that Palmer and others had no excuse not to know proper procedure because they were all trained in 2016.

David Moore told the board during that closed session “that training in 2016 had covered the appropriate department procedures that should have been followed regarding custody removals,” according to closed-session minutes. “The 2016 training was clear and direct and taught procedures and rules regarding maintaining parental rights.”

Asked by CPP last year whether this meant Palmer should have known better, David Moore said, “Everybody should have known better.”

Did social workers shred evidence?

In a very disturbing twist, it is reported that after the investigation into the wrongdoing was made public in 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services took over the child welfare offices and knew that Palmer was under investigation for crimes. Despite this, they allowed her to stay on in a position of authority. The Carolina Public Press investigated in 2019 and found evidence that a “massive number of documents at DSS were shredded at precisely the time she [Palmer] took on the new position. If material relevant to the State Bureau of Investigation probe of Palmer and others were destroyed, it could constitute a separate case of obstruction of justice.”

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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