Thursday, September 03, 2020


The Lockdown Has Gone From a Mistake to a Crime

BY DENNIS PRAGER

Four months ago, I wrote a column titled “The Worldwide Lockdown May Be the Greatest Mistake in History.” I explained that “‘mistake’ and ‘evil’ are not synonyms. The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery, communism, fascism, etc., were evils. Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.”

Regarding the economic catastrophe in America and around the world — especially among the world’s poor who are dependent upon America and other first-world countries for their income through exports and tourism — I wrote, “It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus, that created this catastrophe.”

Unfortunately, I was right.

The world should have followed Sweden’s example. That country never locked down and has even kept children under 16 in school the entire time. As Reuters reported on July 15, the number of Swedish children between 1 and 19 years of age who have died of COVID-19 is zero. And the percentage of children who contracted the illness was the exact same in Sweden as it was in Finland, which locked down its schools.

As regards teachers, Sweden’s Public Health Agency reported that “a comparison of the incidence of COVID-19 in different professions suggested no increased risk for teachers.” Nevertheless, with few exceptions, teachers in Los Angeles and elsewhere refuse to enter a classroom that has students in it. Their disdain for their profession has been superseded only by that of the Los Angeles teachers union, which announced that teachers will not resume teaching until the police are defunded.

People who defend lockdowns and closing schools point out that Sweden has the eighth-highest death rate per million in the Western world. But, needless to say, this has no bearing at all on the issue of whether Sweden was right to keep schools open or whether our country was wrong to close them, let alone keep them closed now. The overwhelming majority of deaths from COVID-19 in Sweden were among people over 70 years of age, and most of those were people over 80 and with compromised immune systems.

Reuters reported that three separate studies, including one by UNICEF, “showed that Swedish children fared better than children in other countries during the pandemic, both in terms of education and mental health.”

For more than a month, Sweden has had almost no deaths from COVID-19 while the entire society remains open and almost no one wears masks. (In Holland, too, almost no one wears masks.) For all intents and purposes, the virus is over in Sweden.

I live in California, a state governed by that most dangerous of leaders: a fool with unlimited power. Despite the fact that California ranks 28th among the 50 states in deaths per million, Gov. Gavin Newsom has destroyed and continues to destroy tens of thousands of small businesses and untold numbers of livelihoods. His continuing to forbid — a half-year after the onset of the pandemic — indoor dining in restaurants is leading to a projected permanent closure of approximately 1 in every 3 restaurants in the state.

The same catastrophic destruction will likely affect retail businesses and services such as hair and nail salons. But all this human tragedy — not to mention increased depression and suicides among the young and increased abuse of children and partners — means nothing to Newsom, to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti or to the Los Angeles Times, whose editors and columnists continue to advocate for the lockdown while they receive their salaries.

Why can people eat with no mask in an airplane — inches, not six feet, from strangers — but cannot eat in a California restaurant, which is so much bigger than the inside of an airplane, while sitting six feet from others? Because Newsom ordered it, the Los Angeles Times supports it and, like sheep, Californians have accepted it.

According to the California Association of Museums, “Museums are losing over $22 million a day due to the statewide quarantine. As of August 1, 2020, California museums have lost more than $2.9 billion in revenue. Museums have a $6.55 billion financial impact on California’s economy, support 80,722 jobs, and generated $492 million in tax revenues for the State of California in 2017 and over $1 billion in federal taxes.”

And the American Alliance of Museums issued results from a survey on July 22, 2020, that warned 1 out of every 3 museums may shutter forever as funding sources and financial reserves run dry.

On Aug. 3, The Wall Street Journal wrote, “In March … There was broad public support for the prudent goals of preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed and buying scientists time to develop therapies.” But the left — the media and Democratic governors and mayors — immediately moved the goalposts to “bending the curve” and “saving one life,” enabling them to get away with destroying lives and livelihoods.

I conclude with the words of a Swedish medical doctor, Sebastian Rushworth:

“Covid is over in Sweden. People have gone back to their normal lives and barely anyone is getting infected any more. I am willing to bet that the countries that have shut down completely will see rates spike when they open up. If that is the case, then there won’t have been any point in shutting down in the first place … Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long.”

The lockdown is a crime. But even more upsetting is that it is supported by so many Americans. This country is unrecognizable to those of us who lived through the 1968-1970 pandemic, which killed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 100,000 Americans — the 2020 equivalent of 170,000 Americans. Nothing shut down. Not one mask was worn.

SOURCE





Canada: Protesters tear down statue of nation’s first prime minister, accused of racist policies

Canadian activists have pulled down a statue of the nation’s first prime minister, whose policies were linked with the deaths of many indigenous people, according to reports.

A video showed the moment that protesters were able to pull down the statue of Sir John A MacDonald, with his head bouncing off after the statue hit the ground. A protester than posed for a photo with the head, the BBC reported.

A leaflet distributed at the protest described MacDonald as "a white supremacist who orchestrated the genocide of Indigenous peoples with the creation of the brutal residential schools system," according to Canadian broadcaster CBC. No arrests have been made.

“Destroying parts of our history is not the solution,” Quebec’s Premier François Legault said, further condemning the action as "unacceptable."

"Whatever one might think of John A. MacDonald, destroying a monument in this way is unacceptable," Legault wrote on Twitter. "We must fight racism, but destroying parts of our history is not the solution. Vandalism has no place in our democracy and the statue must be restored."

The recent shift in MacDonald's standing, particularly in response to the global protests following George Floyd's death, has led Scotland to "disowning him," according to the BBC. Mentions of the Glasgow-born politician have been removed from Scotland.org sites.

In a statement, the Scottish National Party-led government confirmed it had removed articles on Sir John A Macdonald from the websites "following the legitimate concerns raised by Canadian indigenous communities about his legacy."

MacDonald helped build the Canadian nation and create the residential school system. His nation-building policies included the forced removal of at least 150,000 indigenous children from their homes and inclusion in state-funded boarding schools.

The policy enforced assimilation, with students banned from speaking their own language or practicing more explicit elements of their culture. Many of those children were supposedly abused, with some dying.

MacDonald supposedly also allowed famine and disease to kill many indigenous people, with some tribes forced off their lands.

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How To Think About Conservatism Post-Trump

Trump has restored real conservatism

With this week's Republican National Convention and the formal coronation of Donald Trump as the party's 2020 presidential nominee, many have seized the moment to speculate about the political future of the Republican Party -- and, by extension, the intellectual and pragmatic future of American conservatism itself.

The 2016 romp of Trump, the reality TV star-turned-commander in chief, upended decades of outmoded GOP orthodoxies and ushered in a seismic shift in American politics. Throughout the Cold War, and even in the two-and-a-half decades between the fall of the Berlin Wall and Trump's infamous campaign-launching 2015 golden escalator descent, conservatism in America had assumed a credal, almost cultish tenor. What emerged as an instrumentality to retain a viable political coalition and counter the Soviet foe -- "fusionism," in the parlance of National Review, which morphed into Ronald Reagan's "three-legged stool" platform -- had, by at least the time of the lackluster 2012 Romney-Ryan presidential ticket, decayed into a hodgepodge of some claimed political truths with warmed-over policy nostrums befitting the idiosyncratic problems of three decades prior.

Worse, by 2012, it had become clear that the gap between what Republican voters in flyover country wanted and what bicoastal Republican elites in the political and donor classes deigned to offer their subjects was positively yawning. The median Republican voter wanted law and order secured, religion protected and promoted, immigration levels reduced, a more restrained (if, paradoxically, still forceful) foreign policy, and an unabashed defense of the greatness of the American regime and the American way of life.

The median Republican congressman or senator, by contrast, whispered, in a hushed voice, conservative pieties to incredulous voters while duping those very voters behind their backs with a neoliberal agenda, in thrall to Wall Street and Silicon Valley, that secured mass benefits for some at the expense of many.

The Trump phenomenon exposed this long-simmering dissension for the whole world to see. The old, washed-up hands of Conservatism Inc. expressed either bemusement or outright disdain. But the Trump revolt, especially viewed in tandem with its 2016 cousin, Brexit, is no passing phenomenon. The astonishing nightly ratings of Fox News host Tucker Carlson help demonstrate that, contra the old guard's wistful pining, there will be no putting this nationalist, populist genie back into the bottle.

Many on both the left and right speculate whether the "Trump effect" might be dismissed as a one-off electoral fluke attributable to the president's universal name-brand recognition and overwhelming personality. But decades of opinion polling belie this conceit.

The reality is that there are more voters concerned with the core tenets of cultural Americanism -- secure the border, limit immigration to promote assimilation, fight multiculturalism, support law and order, promote religion, and orient economic and foreign policy around a narrowly tailored conception of the American national interest -- than there are voters wedded to the lofty precepts of Lockean classical liberalism. Reagan himself may have once asserted that "the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism," but on this, the Gipper was wrong.

A conservatism that steadfastly refuses to grapple with changing circumstances, preferring instead to wax poetic from the stale hymnal of yore, is not conservatism at all. There is no epistemological humility -- the cornerstone of Burkean conservatism -- in consigning oneself to the ruinous confines of a performative perennial political minority. Humility comes instead from a willingness to reassess a moment in history and rethink the proper means to meet the timeless ends of politics -- justice, human flourishing, individual liberty and the good life. There is no virtue, nor any moral high ground, in stubbornly refusing to change one's ways.

Fortunately, though Trump was a crass wrecking ball to the old paradigm, many on the American right are now constructively engaged in helping to shape the future of our movement. That future will meet conservative voters as they are -- rather than as elites would prefer they be. It will be more avowedly nationalist and worker-friendly and less tied to laissez-faire absolutism, in matters of economics. It will vehemently resist the siren song of liberal internationalism, preferring instead a foreign policy rooted in disparate alliances that, assessed independently, redound to the national interest. Above all else, it will be ordered toward the elevation of the inherent dignity of the American citizen and the robust defense of the American way of life.

Whether Trump wins or loses this November, American conservatism faces a crossroads. But there is only one proper path: that which recognizes the stakes of our roiling cold civil war and is unafraid to wield the levers of state power to promote good political order and subdue the civilizational arsonists who would burn down our nation. The fight will only get uglier in coming months, but thankfully, the path forward is clear.

SOURCE





Get Those Evil... Dentists?! Portland Antifa Rioters Burn Dentist's Office With Apartments Above

On Monday night, the ninety-fifth consecutive night of violent riots in Portland, antifa activists again harassed the condo building where Mayor Ted Wheeler (D-Portland) lives, this time to “celebrate” his birthday. They lit a bonfire in the street in front of the building and set off commercial-grade fireworks right outside condo windows. Then they invaded a nearby dentist’s office and set it on fire, heedless of the fact that people live in the apartments above it. After the police held themselves back in order to “deescalate” the situation, to no avail — surprise, surprise — the cops finally broke up the dangerous riot.

Antifa rioters mobbed Wheeler’s condo building for the second time in three days. When rioters harassed this building on Saturday evening, Michael Forest Rienoehl, the self-described antifa man who allegedly shot and killed Trump supporter Aaron Danielson, took part in the harassment.

Rioters unfurled a large banner reading “Resign” and set a picnic table on fire in the middle of the street.

Antifa rioters also set off fireworks which exploded in front of the condo building windows, harassing any unfortunate soul whose only crime was to live in the same building as Mayor Ted Wheeler.

Rioters also vandalized the area, spray-painting the message, “How much does it take to show you we are serious?” This message echoed Reinoehl’s notorious Instagram post in which he warned that “antifa truly stands for” a devastating upheaval that cannot happen without “a war and like all wars there will be casualties.”

Antifa rioters spilled out from the area of Wheeler’s condo, vandalizing “random” businesses. One group vandalized a dentist’s office and then broke inside and started a fire.

“This is the message of the unheard,” one spray-painted message reads. “Cops = KKK,” another graffiti message screams. “Cops & Klan go hand in hand,” a third declares. Vandals also spray-painted the message, “ACAB,” the abbreviation for “All Cops Are Bastards.”

It appears some rioters may actually believe this extreme hyperbole, even though there is no evidence that the Ku Klux Klan — a rightly vilified and largely defunct organization — has any ties to the Portland Police Bureau. Even so, City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who has demanded that Wheeler put her in charge of the city’s police, attributed the shooting of Aaron Danielson to the “perception” of an “alliance” between PPB and “white supremacists.”

The attack on the dentist’s office proved to be a turning point in the riots Monday night. Police had been monitoring the violence up until that point.

The police report notes that cops observed the fireworks, the breaking of windows, and the graffiti, but “in an attempt to deescalate, officers stayed out of sight and monitored the situation from a distance. However, the vandalism and burning continued. People were seen burglarizing a business, taking furniture out, and throwing it on the fires in the street.”

At 11:05 p.m., the police declared the riot an unlawful assembly. At that point, the rioters set the fire in the dentist’s office, which the police report describes as “a ground-level business in a large, occupied apartment building. Out of concern that the fire could spread, causing an extreme life safety concern, the incident was declared a riot.”

Police arrested 16 adults and one 17-year-old minor. Some of the rioters had knives when the cops arrested them.

Wheeler appears not to have addressed the harassment of his condo building directly. However, he did address the Danielson shooting on Sunday. In doing so, he strained to blame President Donald Trump for the shooting that killed a Trump supporter.

“Yesterday’s events began with hundreds of cars filled with supporters of the president, rallying in Clackamas County and then driving through downtown Portland,” Wheeler said. “They were supported and energized by the president himself. President Trump, for four years, we have had to live with you and your racist attacks on black people. We learned early about your sexist attitudes towards women. We’ve had to endure clips of you mocking a disabled man. We’ve had to listen to your anti-democratic attacks on journalists. We’ve read your tweets slamming private citizens to the point of receiving death threats, and we’ve listened to your attacks on immigrants.”

As PJ Media’s Jeff Reynolds noted, Wheeler’s laundry list of Trump’s misdeeds kept going, and the mayor worked in the debunked claim that President Trump had praised white supremacists. “It’s you who have created the hate and the division,” Wheeler charged.

It appears the antifa rioters took little encouragement from Wheeler’s decision to carry water for them. Instead, they harassed his condo building on his birthday. Or perhaps those fireworks were meant as a celebration — how thoughtful!

All sarcasm aside, the graffiti saying, “U R Next, Teddy,” is rather ominous. Is that a reference to Aaron Danielson? Is this graffiti really a death threat?

While Wheeler did vocally condemn the violent riots after antifa trapped police inside of a precinct and tried to burn the building down, he has mostly defended the antifa agitators wreaking havoc on his city. He faces a challenge from an even more radical candidate who vocally supports antifa and refused to condemn even the attempted murder of police officers.

Any mayor should be furious at the kind of harassment and violent attack leveled against his condo building. The rioters harassed and may have endangered everyone in the building, not just Wheeler. It would not be petty for the mayor to condemn such an attack, although it seems he has not yet done so.

Americans should have the civility not to disturb and harass politicians in their own homes, but that is especially true in cases like this, where any harassment targeted at Wheeler ends up making life worse for everyone in his condo building.

SOURCE

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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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