Rebane's Ruminations

Buying Votes and Voters

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 August 2016.]

Student debt and college costs are out of control.  Under the passionate paeans of progressives over the last decades, we have been taught that we’re equal enough so that everyone will benefit from a college education and therefore everyone deserves a college education.  A wider reading of this theology has also taught young people that everyone has a right to pursue their passion and then expect all practiced passions to command a more or less equal place in the compensated workforce.  Well, that ain’t necessarily so, but blindly pursuing such a value system has landed us in a world of hurt with more of it on the way.

College costs that include tuition have increased about 4% annually, far outpacing inflation.  To enable everyone to go to college, government has taken over the student loan business, and now lends equally to all students with no thought about their ability to repay the loans.  Students majoring in art history and therapeutic recreation can borrow on the same basis as students majoring in physics or any of the other STEM fields.  Subsequently the art history and therapeutic recreation majors can’t get jobs while the STEM graduates are in high demand.  Each year there are about 1.3M openings in STEM fields, and fewer than half that many graduates in science, technology, engineering, or math.

Such realworld inequalities in the marketplace have yielded a student debt exceeding $1.3T that continues to grow at almost 7% annually.  In ten years student debt will exceed $2.5T.  Today about 30M students attend college.  Of these, 22M students with outstanding loans are not making payments, with the inevitable result that at least half or over $600B of this debt will have to be written down and its repayment transferred to taxpayers. (more here)

And what did we buy for all these billions?   According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York almost half or our recent college graduates are un- and underemployed in jobs that do not require their earned degrees.  With this y’all come policy only 48% of entering full-time students graduate within six years.  Almost all of these dropouts and miseducated former students have borrowed from the government, and their repayment rates are close to zero simply because they are not working or cannot earn enough to pay down their debts.

More reasoned voices, such as finance academics S.P. Kothari of MIT and Korok Ray of Texas A&M, recommend incorporating credit risk into the student loan programs. (more here)  The short of it is that students with better job prospects who can pay off their debt would then more likely get bigger loans.  Listeners may recall that it was lenders ignoring credit risk that brought on the recent Great Recession from which we have yet to recover.  However, for some reason it is still deemed politically prudent to ignore credit risk when the government lends trillions to students with unemployable majors.

To top this, along comes the next wave of promised socialism to make college free for everyone to pursue their value-free passions along with a carte blanche invitation to join the government bloat when the private sector rejects their skills.  This ‘free’ program is estimated to cost somewhere between $100-200B annually.

As a conservetarian who has tracked institutions of higher learning and the evolution of the job markets, I don’t hold much hope for including credit risk to determine who should get to borrow how much.  This for the simple reason that the Left has too much to gain from the legions of graduates with lightweight majors from institutions, already hopelessly in bed with socialism in all its forms, that turn out young people totally beholden to the state for their upkeep.  These people daily demonstrate their fealty to the politicians and parties that promise to shield them from the uncertainties of the private sector through civil service jobs or rapacious regulation of their employers.  And some still wonder why democracies are so fragile.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

George Boardman nails it

George Rebane

Columnist and RR reader George Boardman wrote an excellent and timely critique of California’s STEM education available today in our secondary schools.  Not only did he present relevant stats on the status of courses offered across the state, he also gave a chilling summary of the new revisionist history and social studies subjects that are being emphasized.  Mr Boardman makes the point that California is no longer educating the technology workforce for industries for which we are still recognized.  It seems that now Silicon Valley imports its talent from other states and countries.

Under the state’s progressive tsunami, we are diving for the mud in more areas than can be tracked.  The collectivist mindset has become a plague across the land, and most virulent in the now cynically named Golden State.  The themes in Mr Boardman’s observations have been a constant in these pages for the life of RR, and I welcome its reprise in our community’s newspaper, no matter that it was relegated to the bottom half of his entire offering that opened with some local vanilla-flavored fare.

…

Oh what the hell, here’s the relevant part of the column filched from the 25jul16 Union.  I can hardly wait for the screams from the Left.  (Truth be told, I’m envious that I didn’t submit the very same article.)

Scattershots – 10jul16 (updated 14jul16)

George Rebane

Progressivism's Litmus Test is their introduction of public policies that eliminate dependence of social order on culture, and their replacement with prescriptions based solely on the state's threat of gratuitous and arbitrary application of overwhelming force.

National Lie #53(or whatever) – Illegal aliens are a net contribution to our GDP.  Really??

… according to a new report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML). The report noted that in 2014 unauthorized immigrants had a labor force participation rate of 70% compared to 62.9% for the overall population. (more here)

Get out an old envelope for a little arithmetic.  The politically correct population of illegals in the country is somewhere north of 11M – the actual is somewhere between 15M and 30M depending on how you count.  Never mind the actual number, say, it’s 15M, and assume all of them are workforce age.  So according to BAML 0.3*15M = 4.5M are not even in the workforce.  Now charitably assume that the remaining 70% or 10.5M in the workforce are unemployed at the nationally quoted level of about 5% which adds another 0.05*10.5M = 525,000 to the 4.5M already unemployed, giving a total of a bit more than 5M unemployed illegals in the country.  So approximately 5M illegal aliens in the country are living off of some kind of government programs that should at least be paid for by the 10M working and taxpaying (sales and maybe payroll taxes) illegals to net out zero impact on state and federal budgets.  In this we don't count the almost 2 of 5 people in jail who are illegals costing about $1.9B/yr to house.  You have to be beyond dense to believe that the taxes paid by two low paid illegals are enough to support one unemployed illegal alien as you swallow National Lie #53.  Now you can show the envelope to your friends.

Independence Day Weekend Thoughts (updated 3jul16)

George Rebane

This will be America’s 240^th birthday celebration observed by divers cohorts of “real live nephews of our Uncle Sam” not all of whom wish him a long life.  Our divisions today are at least as great as those which gave rise to the South’s War for Independence – aka the Civil War.  Americans grouped under the Left banner no longer share anything of significance in common with those who assemble themselves as various forms of the Right.  By this I am referring to a comprehensive intellectual, spiritual, and ideological break.  No common history, worldview, socio-political ideals, sense of Man, interpretation of foundational principles, application of logic and modes of critical thought are shared.  And recently even the scientific method has donned a distinct and politically correct mantle.

Brexit Ripples

George Rebane

The ripples from Brexit will travel far and wide, and in their turn give rise to more of what happened in the UK.  Brexit and its aftermath will once again confirm what we have here argued for years – people want to live where their culture is dominant and celebrate the self-determination to make it so.  That widespread sentiment, summarized as ‘local control’ or ‘local governance’, applies to jurisdictions that span continents to counties (e.g. the SoJ movement).   It is also a fundamental element of populism.

Now we see serious discussions of the Great Divides, yes plural, starting to form.  Scotland will no doubt take another swing at separating from Great Britain, and so will Northern Ireland whose citizens will now want to ‘stick to their own kind’ and join their kin on the remainder of their island.  We already saw the Great Divides in the Balkans and what was Czechoslovakia.   Catalonia and the Basques may also find additional motives to separate from Madrid, and the Italian boot may abbreviate into a more fashionable calf high model.

In the US the Democrats are scared silly that their progressive globalist message will finally be outed as nothing but the road to tyranny.  There is no denying that all countries are better off trading, but couching new trade agreements so that they only trade goods and services and not sovereignty will be a definite pushback for those one-worlders who recognize neither Islam nor the US Constitution.  A clutch of them were seen attempting to subvert House rules in order to continue their diversion from terrorism to gun control.

What is most amusing in all this is progressives attempting to discount Brexit as an aberration of the older voters (who still understand British culture), voters not long for this world after which the younger millennials will set things right and again bow to Brussels.  These innumerates never learn that the older demographic is constantly more than replenishing itself with new voters whose years have also come with the wisdom of a lifetime.  And that is a never ending process, the older generation is never going away, it will always be there with values few of the young have yet acquired.

MIM Summerfest 2016

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 June 2016 and posted early to get the word out.]

Dear listeners, today let’s take a break from politics and terror and capitalist greed, and talk about happier things.  This year our very own Music in the Mountains is celebrating its 35^th year as our greater community’s premier promoter and producer of classical music concerts that many of you have attended over the years.  Actually MIM’s offerings extend beyond classical music to include popular artists, jazz, country music, patriotic programs, and even ballet.  And all of that right here in Nevada County, contributing to our cultural scene and making it the most desirable place in the Sierra foothills to live, work, raise a family, and retire.

The 2016 Summerfest is expanded to 12 concerts – three indoors and nine outdoors - that start today and continue over the next two weeks.  The productions are programmed to please every musical palate – from the spectacular classical composers, through pops featuring Don McLean and Judy Collins, to pure Americana with Gershwin’s ‘American in Paris’ and the grand finale Independence Day celebration on July 3^rd.

This year Summerfest moves to Penn Valley’s Western Gateway Park with expanded facilities to handle large outdoor concerts.  Improvements include a newly constructed audience area under a shaded pavilion in front of a large covered stage that can comfortably contain MIM’s full symphony orchestra and chorus.  And right behind the audience area is the new parking lot.  No more schlepping your al fresco from a mile away.

Speaking of al fresco dining and drinking.  Did I mention that the concerts will be catered by vendors offering everything from a single glass of wine to a full dinner set up so you don’t have to bring anything but your wallet.  Such a deal.

So let me quickly list the performances to give you an idea of the musical feast that awaits your pleasure.  No need to take notes since you can get all the info you need by googling ‘MIM Summerfest brochure’.  OK, here’s the list –

Mendelsohn’s Violin Concerto and 4^th symphony; Beethoven’s Pastoral plus Holst’s ‘The Planets’, From Broadway to Hollywood show stoppers, All Mozart recital and selected works, Seductive Serenades pops, Don McLean singing his hits, Gershwin/Copeland/Grofe/Ellington and more, Judy Collins sings her classics, Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812’ and more, The Music of the Beach Boys, and last but not least the traditional Patriotic Pops on July the third.

Again, for everything you need to know about Summerfest, please google ‘MIM Summerfest brochure’ and download your very own PDF of the brochure that contains all the information about what, when, and where.  (Or simply click here.)

Remember, the outdoor concerts start this Friday evening so there’s plenty of time to get your lawn chairs, blankets, and picnic baskets packed with all kinds of nummies for your evenings with family and friends.  And the whole affair takes place both in the Amaral Center at the fairgrounds, and ten minutes down Hwy 20 in our very own Western Gateway Park in Penn Valley.

Jo Ann and I will be attending many of the concerts and look forward to meeting our KVMR listeners, some of whom will no doubt want to give me a piece of their well thought out minds.  We look forward to seeing you at the Music in the Mountains Summerfest, an enduring Nevada County classic.

My name is Rebane, and I invite you to visit Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted along with the link that lets you download the Summerfest brochure, and where you can give feedback on the concert series.  As always, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Ruminations – 23may16 (updated 27may16)

George Rebane

Yesterday we returned from a couple of weeks in Europe with friends visiting Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary.  Somewhere I picked up massive cold augmented by the Hungarian Hack that I brought home on a miserable return from Budapest to SFO in three draining hops.  Air travel (we traveled first and biz class) has lost all of its glory and glamour, and for some years now has been Greyhound with wings.  I’ll have more to say in upcoming posts what we saw in the capitals and country sides of those countries.

An example of the power of unions to put a business on its knees was evident in our last leg from O’Hare to SFO on AA.  It seems that the co-pilot spilled hot coffee all over his right hand seat and then refused to fly until they replaced the cushion with a dry one.  What happened over the next two hours is too painful to recount in detail.  The captain was helpless and kept feeding the fuming passengers pabulum for two hours while we were parked at the gate; he mainly asked that we wouldn’t take it out on the cabin crew.  Finally people who would miss their SFO connections started exiting the plane (leaving their luggage behind) as AA mechanics were desperately searching for a spare 737 cushion at one the world’s largest airports.  A painfully obese mechanic kept bringing cushions that for one reason or another weren’t exactly kosher, and had a hell of time fitting into the cockpit in his attempt to try them out in situ.  Long story short, we arrived in SFO 2.5 hours late, and then there was a mix-up in getting our bags to the terminal – don’t ask.  Finally, acknowledging the concerns of the sumbich who didn’t want to sit on a plastic bag, the first class seats in the plane were as old as the airframe and all sat out.  It felt like sitting in a chair whose front legs were two inches shorter than the back ones.  And there’s more …

NPR reported this morning that Sacramento will expand Medicaid coverage to illegal aliens in 35 more counties to that “more Californians can receive healthcare.”  It appears that butt stupid liberal thought has been picking up steam in our absence.  When was the last time that you could illegally enter Mexico and then be referred to as being Mexicans by the Mexican government?

Europeans are so frustrated with their governments that populism is now rampant – witness yesterday’s Austrian election.  The ‘Socialist dream’ of that continent has foundered by every measureable (more later) with their unemployable populations burgeoning while the producers are told that taxes and regulations will be increased to more evenly divide what’s left.  Young people, dismally ignorant and with no visible prospects, are wandering around the Schengen countries supposedly looking for work or bigger handouts.  Meanwhile our lamestream continues to promote the National Lie that everything there is hunky-dory and we need to be more like them.  What you see in the capitals is not what you see in the countryside.

Finally, apologies for letting the last sandbox continue for so long.  My cold, connectivity, and a demanding cruise schedule left the happy hour as the only slack in the day, and I didn’t think anyone would dun me for setting properly setting my priorities.

[24may16 update]  Heard on NPR this morning that TSA security administrator Kelly Hogan was “removed” from his job due to long security lines across the nation and especially at O’Hare where we witnessed them last Saturday.  The interview with SecHSA Jah Johnson this morning was the usual mealy mouthed cover up of gross incompetence.  The firing was doubly embarrassing because Hogan had received over $90K of bonuses for outstanding performance over the last year when in fact none was in evidence.  This again confirms that there is literally NOTHING that government does well, and most certainly not better than what private (non-corporatist) industry can do.  Of course none of this makes no never mind to our big government liberal readers.  (more here)

[25may16 update]  Socialist thugs rioted at a Trump rally last night in Albuquerque in the attempt to stop the candidate from speaking.  Waving banners like “We’ve heard enough”, throwing stones and burning objects at police, the leftwing crowd put on what has become a typical response across the nation to speakers they oppose either on or off campuses.  As reported by Associated Press (here) their biggest burr was Trump’s initiatives to stop the illegal entry across our borders and succor illegal aliens in our midst.  Evaluating her walk vs talk, even New Mexico’s Republican (sic) governor Susana Martinez supports easy access to our land and largesse by illegals.  Now we will again hear that the Left really does support free speech.

And regarding that great socialist idea of a high minimum wage, a correspondent sends this corporate decision from MacDonald's as a response to hiring humans at such butt stupid wages.  The question stands - are the socialist elites evil or just stupid like their constituents?

[26may16 update] Mexicans protesting at Trump rally in California.  This photograph from the 26may16 WSJ puts into sharp focus the real agenda of those who oppose the construction and maintenance of secure borders for America.

[27may16 update]  For joy, in education today’s “most important news is that voucher students show ‘statistically significant’ improvement in math and reading test scores.”  The lying Left will continue to tell its low-info constituents that no such thing is possible - government-designated, union-operated schools are just as good or better than any alternatives, and can be improved even more by pouring in more money. (more here)

 

A burning election year question for Americans (updated)

George Rebane

In this year of 2016AD, is not the disjunction of our communal knowledge remarkable when it informs a goodly portion of us that capitalism and free enterprise are evil and the prime causes of misery and suffering wherever they are practiced; when in reality these are and continue to be the ONLY social institutions that have liberated humans from millennia of brutish and mind-numbing serfdom that promised each successive generation no relief whatsoever?

[update]  And where did this 'goodly portion', especially of the millennials, get such ideas.  Well, from their first rate educational experience of course.  Today we have thousands of college students who are sensitive and politically correct beyond belief, they demand safe spaces, revisionist history, restricted and censored speech, etc, etc.  In Great Britain such unpleasant or 'scrotty' students at Oxford, along with some Rhodes scholars, are demanding the removal of the Cecil Rhodes statue.  The university's chancellor, Lord Patten, has responded to them on the British media and more comprehensively by letter which you can download here.   Download LordPattenLetter_Feb2016

The Candidates on Abortion

George Rebane

Chris Matthews interviewed Donald Trump and asked how the pregnant woman should be treated if she sought an abortion in a jurisdiction wherein it was illegal. His off-the-cuff answer was that the woman should be held responsible in some manner.  Everyone on and off the campaign trail went ballistic.

Offline and at his leisure, Ted Cruz responded, “Of course we shouldn’t be talking about punishing the woman; we should affirm their dignity and the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world.”

Offline and after some consideration Donald Trump went on record, “If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal, and the federal courts upheld this legislation or a state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing the illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this as is the life in her womb.”

Both got it wrong. Cruz was pandering to the hip level response of the mob, and The Donald backpedaled his initial honest response with pabulum in the attempt at damage control.

About Cruz leaping on Trump’s throat – there is nothing “incredible” or a “gift” to society (or mankind) about one more unwanted child that is almost certain to become a resource grabbing disaster for society.  And there is no “dignity” for the man or woman in screwing their brains out with no thought to the impact of their lusty liaison.  Cruz was pandering to the light thinkers and the plain stupid.

And Trump reversing himself to blame just the abortion artist is equally reprehensible. Yes, the woman and her unborn baby become the victims of an abortion, but it is a preventable victimhood to which the woman (save in rape) is a willing party.  So the question becomes ‘how should society differentiate between this type of willing victimhood versus other kinds of willing victimhoods such as drug and alcohol addiction where we already hold the ‘victim’ addict accountable.  But more fundamentally, why should society – i.e. the rest of us – create an environment in which lust or any other corrosive behavior can be exercised with the gay abandonment of responsibility for the impact it has on society, and the quality of life of its members?  Should society have any other recourse save punishing itself for cleaning up after the aberrants?

‘The Great American Disconnect’

George Rebane

Government is an intrinsically evil collective, cynically organized, incompetently operated, and staffed by people not all of whom are evil.  For this reason alone, citizens must keep their governments small and always on a short leash.

World history is powered by the strong urge of like-minded people seeking and protecting land on which to band together and live lives that celebrate their unique traditions and gods.  Simply put, that reasonable urge underpins reliable mechanisms that assure you and people like you a greater chance of survival to raise families full of kids that grow up to vindicate your own life’s travails and perpetuate all that you and yours value.

All of this starts with families that band with similar families to form communities (tribes), and join with similar communities to form provinces/principalities, and then provinces to join and form kingdoms and, today, sovereign nation-states.  At each higher level of the hierarchy the requirements for similitude get relaxed a bit as diversity creeps in.  But the increasing diversity at each level is acknowledged and even welcomed with a ‘Look, they believe and do things like we do, except that they do this differently.  Let’s see how that works out for them?’

This type of bottom-up societies has been a significant burr under the collectivists' blanket at least since the French Revolution.  And it was acknowledged as the prime bane of society and human progress when collectivists first began to formulate plans for reorganizing what man should believe and how he should live with fellow men.  Individualism in all its forms had to be ferreted out of society, along with its lower structures (i.e. traditional families) supporting independent enterprise that gave rise to and perpetuated different abilities to generate and husband wealth.

The obvious solution from the gitgo, as Lenin advised, was to marshal and redirect the education of the young.  And to do that most efficiently required institutionalizing how and what children learn.  Uniformity of beliefs, thoughts, and deeds was the paramount objective of the state.  Once a uniform ‘product’ began to issue from the institutionalized education system, it was an easy political matter, as we have seen, to redirect it toward the ultimate teachings of the –ism that the collective elites have chosen to put on their banner.

Thanks to our institutionalized (and unionized) public education system, our rank and file progressives are now so blind to this redirection that they understand none of what has happened, nor what is happening every day at the hyper-liberalized colleges across the land whose militant students resemble Mao’s Red Guards of China’s Cultural Revolution that killed over 100 million of its own citizens.  The reaction to such leftiwing radicalization has already begun in what I would characterize as the first stages of the coming Great Divide.

Again the progressives, most certainly our local cadres of the collectivist chorus, are ignorant of this and accuse people like me of going off the deep end with our radical hatred of the fomenting ‘kumbayah’ state that is directing us to all to join ranks in order to achieve the goals and implement the objectives of Agenda21 – the global socialist union.  But the reality in America, and now perhaps also in Europe, is quite different.  People are moving, as they have been planning to do, joined in their various, yes, culturally cohesive cohorts for some time now.  Kyle Peterson of the WSJ describes some of the recent migrations and their subsequent political happenings in his 18mar16 ‘The Great American Disconnect’ from which the nearby graphic is filched.

[The attentive reader will note the Alinsky Answer, if any, that progressives will provide to the above in which they totally ignore the national dimension and focus their ire on the messenger (moi) who will be accused of being a disloyal solitary loon.]

 

Ruminations - 14mar16 (updated 20mar16)

George Rebane

We’ve reported what outfits like Pew Research have discovered about the mental acumen of millennials.  Today we hear from online news services targeting millennial audiences some characteristics of their aggregate behaviors that explain away why this generation is not our nation’s swiftest (Bernie call your office).  The Independent Journal Review is perhaps the leading such online news service, and they report that they must limit their news items to 30 seconds being the absolute max since web tracking shows that after that interval their viewership plunges if they attempt to deliver more content about an item.  In short, they confirm that the millennials have been raised to absorb a bite-sized world, and have the attention span slightly longer than that of a sparrow.

Most of America knows that the Democratic Party has moved markedly to the left, especially during the Obama years.  Among those who don’t are the informationally deprived local lefties all over the country for reasons that we have outlined here for some time – RR’s comment streams may serve as Exhibit A.  Today left-of-center Associated Press freely admits that this has been the case, and contributes to the polarization of our country.  Our gruberized progressives continue to believe that only the ideological migration of the Right is guilty of the divisive polarization of America.  This is another illustration that we conservetarians share literally nothing with the central planning and control chorus – no common history, no common world view, no common economics, …, in short, no common facts.

Has anyone noticed that the leading centers of decay and dissolution – be they cities, counties, or states - in our country are those which ‘enjoy’ dominant leftwing political leadership, and moreover, have been so blessed for the longest time.

Does Trump's Advocacy of Torture Disqualify Him From the Presidency?

[This is an invited post by my longtime friend and colleague Dr Wayne Hullett that expands on his comment under the 16feb16 Sandbox.  gjr]

Wayne Hullett

"Civilization is hideously fragile... there’s not much between us and the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish." - C.P. Snow

"Civilization: a thin veneer over barbarianism." - John M. Shanahan, The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less)

Modern humans have been on the earth for around 200,000 years, yet it is only within the last 0.1% of that time (200 years or so) that western civilization, at least, has mostly eliminated torture, thus demonstrating that a civilized society can exist without this barbaric practice. With us as an example, and with the rest of the world gradually becoming modernized, there is reasonable hope that it will eventually follow suit.

Donald Trump's statement advocating torture puts him in favor of erasing this hard won gain on the long climb to civilization by legitimizing torture as a matter of national policy. He would admit (and in fact he has already publicly admitted) to the world that he believes that the most powerful nation on earth cannot exist without the use of torture.

I do not expect western civilization's forbearance of this practice to significantly influence the immediate actions of our enemies whose barbarism is the very reason that they are enemies, except that if we use torture, our enemies will use that fact to justify their use of that terrible practice and will likely redouble their efforts. If the US legitimizes torture, I think that a "torture arms race" will ensue - with countries researching ways to inflict the maximum pain possible on their hapless victims, and with accompanying medical research on how to keep them alive in order to feel the pain for as long as possible. Captured Americans will be subject to hideous tortures. Squads will be sent out to try to capture servicemen and women for the express purpose of torturing them, possibly even shown on TV. Would you want your son or grandson to be in that situation? Or your daughter or granddaughter, as more females go into combat roles?

I can even envision civilian citizens (working on highly classified projects, for example) being kidnapped off the streets and out of their homes and spirited out of the country for torture to extract classified information. What if one of these targets had a name similar to yours, and a van pulls up in front of your house at 3:00 AM and you and your loved ones are taken by mistake? How far down the slippery slope is torturing children in front of their parents in order to extract information from the parents. And what if you did not have the information sought?

While I do not deny that torture still happens, it is deplorable, it is illegal, and it is wrong. Trump's approach is a giant step backward for a species that is still striving to become civilized. Even if he changes his mind, the damage is already done. The world already sees him as a torturer. The only way for us as citizens to override that perception, redeem ourselves in the eyes of the world and avoid backsliding into barbarism is to soundly defeat his bid for the presidency. For my part, I would rather have another four years of gridlock than see our country go down his terrible path.

Scattershots – 20feb16 (updated 22feb16)

George Rebane

Consider that it is the progressive college administrators who back public policies that let them raise tuition costs to levels out of reach of the same poor whom they cynically claim to champion.

Pope Francis’ latest foray into politics on his Mexican visit includes his now familiar socialist screed of demanding “justice for undocumented migrants”.  Delivering this message 90 yards from the US border to thousands of Mexicans (and “hundreds” of Latinos on the American side) castigates the United States and other western countries for seeking to stem the tide of thousands of illegal aliens seeking to live in more hospitable and economically fruitful lands.  At the same time it exhorts the desperate from dysfunctional cultures to violate the borders of the more successful sovereign nation-states.  Never mind that such open border policies have to date been a disaster for countries that today have firmly established enclaves of Muslim colonists unwilling to assimilate into the cultures of their host countries.  The Pope’s political missive does nothing but strengthens America’s support for a Southern Wall.  It may also serve as a litmus test to identify those who among us are for a fundamental transformation of what we still call America.

5D data storage – major breakthrough.  Most readers know that digital data is eventually frangible.  Storage devices degrade and data formats change over time.  Now a UK university announces that it has developed a method to put data in 5-dimensional formats (x, y, z, color, size) onto/into “nanostructured” tiny glass discs that each hold 360TB of data.  The glass is supposed to be stable for billions of years.  I look forward to such drives being commercialized soon (more here). [H/T to Russ Steele for reminding me that my fingers added a sixth dimension which I automatically do when I type 'x, y, z, t'.  I have corrected the error.  And 'color' is the label often given to the polarization attribute.]

More evidence pours in weekly that a very plausible case can be made to support the proposition that Obama is the world’s most egregious practitioner of taqiyya.

FBI vs Apple on getting data from the San Berdoo raghead’s iPhone.  FBI wants Apple to provide a ‘backdoor’ in their iOS so that law enforcement can scrape that phone as a one-off exercise.  Apple and no one else on the planet believes that such an approach will be ‘one-off’ – the new backdoor will soon be known to all.  Don’t know why the FBI doesn’t just give the phone to Apple to scrape its data, put it on a thumb drive, then return it and the iPhone to the FBI.

Hospice bills are helping bring Medicare to its knees with the expenses related to caring for slowly dying demented patients (more here).  We in the west don’t have a culture that permits humane euthanizing an individual when all hope is lost and only expense and suffering remains for everyone concerned.  How many of us have seen loved ones languish insentiently or in pain until the long delayed end finally brings resolution?  I wonder if we could accept a legal process that would allow loved ones to make such a decision to end it sooner than later.

[22feb16 update]  Well, about time.  This morning on NPR there was an interview with a former counterintelligence officer who put in years with the CIA and NSA.  To solve the current impasse between Apple and the FBI, he too suggested what I advocate above about just giving the phone to Apple and let them dig out the data and give that and the phone back to the FBI.

Bush2 painted by yellow journalism on CBS's 14feb16 '60 Minutes'.  During their interview with CIA Director Brennan the show's producers displayed a photo of George W and Connie Rice in the Oval Office as Brennan described the intelligence and decision failures that occurred "a year to eighteen months before 9/11".  Showing the photo had no place in the interview since Bush2 had been in office for less than nine months when Al Qaeda attacked.  Yet that photo was broadcast the entire time that Brennan was talking about what occurred during the Clinton administration. 

Clashing Cultures Count

George Rebane

We read George Boardman’s 'Nevada County's supervisors cede leadership to sheriff on medical marijuana' in today’s (18jan16) Union on last Tuesday’s BoS MJ prezo by Sheriff Keith Royal et al. Generally it was a good piece, we had some inevitable nits because the changing face of MJ production and consumption in CA is a complicated affair, especially when we translate it down to our county level.  And Nevada County being a nationally known source of prime MJ doesn’t help sorting out how we should conduct business in the coming new world of pot.

Readers know that years ago RR came off the fence on drugs and has supported selective and prudent legalization. Since then the debate has grown on how, when, and under what conditions should the county permit medical marijuana (MMJ) and recreational marijuana (RMJ) production and consumption.  These considerations have been made even more complicated by the existence of conflicting federal and dynamic state laws re MJ in its various forms.  And when we start picking apart all the components of legalizing the growth and consumption of the weed, we wind up as we have, in the weeds.  The recent BoS hearing and vote by supervisors on a revised ‘emergency ordnance’ and the upcoming vote on an MJ initiative have not helped resolve anything in the minds of the two major factions – one facilitating its production and use, and the other essentially opposing all parts of the MJ scene in Nevada County.

What I’d like to discuss here is recognizing the real conflict that is hidden underneath the layers of details of MJ grow parameters, neighborhood nuisance factors, and specifics of RMJ and MMJ distribution and consumption. The anti-MJ folks voice legitimate concerns about neighborhood nuisances, crime, underage consumption, etc.  And these same people are essentially following the tactics of the anti-gun people in wanting to banish MJ from the county – i.e. make the attendant parts of a facile MJ economy so cumbersome and difficult that it will wind up being ‘constructively banned’.

So let’s be clear, all these details and specifics aren’t the real issue – they comprise the fog that hides what really is on the minds of the anti-MJ people who are mostly right-leaning conservatives, and also what is apparent to the more strategically minded left-leaning progressives. The real issue is the ongoing battle for Nevada County between two very different cultures.

Harbingers of Our Demise (updated 7jan16)

George Rebane

Reports of Muslim men assaulting western women in Europe over the recent holidays have been minimized and dismissed by the lamestream media and leftwing pundits. Their meager reporting has even been characterized as being racist since the evidence all points to Islam in the growing episodes of culture clashes in European countries, and that the liberal mind considers discriminatory.  Well, of course it is since such reporting by its very nature points out what is this and is not that.  (See also Peter Hammond's piece reported in 'Ruminations - 3jan16'.)

Giving due credit I must mention this morning’s front page article in the 6jan16 WSJ, ‘In Germany Assaults Test Migrant Policy’, but then the WSJ is not your typical lamestream outlet. To really plumb the depths of some shallow minds, the paper quotes a German leftwinger responding to the outrage being expressed by many Germans by announcing that “rightwingers will use (such expressions) for their cause”.  What the midget mind misses is that opposing the Islamic takeover of Europe, where women will be treated as chattel, IS the rightwingers cause.

Taqiya on Steroids? (updated 4dec15)

George Rebane

The San Bernardino massacre investigation continues.  Given the evidence to date, the authorities still cannot decide whether it was just ‘workplace violence’ or the latest attack by Islamic terrorists.  What is reported by the news services – Associated Press, WSJ, … - is pretty compelling (more here).  We do know that –

1. The two shooters were Muslims – Syed Farook, a native born American citizen, and Tashfeen Malik, the immigrant wife of Farook and the mother of their 6-month old child.
2. Farook had travelled to Saudi Arabia last year from where he returned with Malik.
3. Upon his return he grew a beard as do many newly devout Muslim men.
4. He worked for San Berdoo county as a restaurant inspector, was a model citizen, and had no criminal record.
5. Before their 2dec15 attack at a county facility where a holiday party was in progress, the couple had made extensive preparations for acts of terror at their home which included pipe bombs, IEDs, radio controlled vehicles besides obtaining the full combat gear which they wore during their killing spree.  Earlier that day they gave their baby into the care of relatives.
6. Authorities on the scene stated that Farook and Malik were definitely executing a “planned mission”.  Given the preparations, there was no evidence of spontaneity in their attack.

There will undoubtedly be more and the story is still developing.  But what I want to cover here is that again we have an atrocious act of terror carried out by formerly normal people who worked, were raising a family, blended in admirably, and gave no evidence of anything aberrant before they acted.  In hindsight, the only attribute that connected them to such previous attacks is that the couple were practicing Muslims.

A Bayesian would take a look at the evidence and rationally conclude that yes, given the recent history of radical Islam and jihad, and the tenets of their faith, this couple would have a higher probability of being terrorists in waiting as they finally demonstrated to the world.  (For those who disagree, the Bayesian would be compelled to change his mind given evidence that religious belief was not a supportive/determinant factor.)

From the worldview which apparently guided Farook and Malik and so many Muslims today, is that these terrorists were courageous, self-sacrificing soldiers acting for and with the blessings of Allah.  They were prepared to die and die they did in the service of their faith.  In that worldview they were not cowards or miscreants but model mujahedeen serving as exemplars to their fellow believers in the spread of Islam. 

And to execute their plan they practiced taqiya to perfection.  Students of Islam and readers of these pages know that taqiyya or taqiya (q.v.) is the scripturally sanctioned practice of dissimulation and other forms of perfidy including the denial of one’s faith that is allowed Muslims if such practice may serve to promote the greater goals of Islam.  All such surprise attacks by Muslims living among us here and overseas are launched subsequent to successful preludes of taqiya.  Where in other belief systems such practice of ambush and shattering of the social contract would be considered abhorrent, in the world of radical Islam it is a much admired and condoned facet of selfless martyrdom.

The real problem that taqiya presents to America and the west is in how should we deport ourselves with our Muslim neighbors.  To continue normal social life in our land we must presume that the large fraction of Muslims among us would never practice taqiya and lay in wait for an opportunity to kill us and ours (polls to the contrary notwithstanding).  Yet every time one of their co-religionists perpetrates such an abhorrent act, it gives all non-Muslims pause as they review their relations with their Muslim friends and neighbors.  And that exactly is the aim of the jihadists.  They want to disrupt our social order, and they want to cast suspicion on their brethren living with us so as to compel them to opt for ‘their own kind’ as they drive the wedge they have created ever deeper between Islam and the world of the Kafir (q.v.).

I don’t see any ready solution to this growing schism between our civilizations save prompt, unfailing, strenuous, loud, and large scale demonstrations by moderate Muslims during which they denounce such acts of terror.  They cannot remain silent in the face of such killings, and they cannot shelter those of their own who preach violence against the west.  In sum, they cannot ask us to trust them more than they trust us, for that we have already done.  Contrary to the pabulum spewed by progressives, taqiya is an enduring problem which yields to no simple solution.

'Tis the Season for Some Folly

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 December 2015.]

Jo Ann and I hope that everyone had a meaningful and enjoyable Thanksgiving, and have properly girded themselves for the busiest, most stressful month of the year.  Rather than delve into another globe shaking issue or national catastrophe in the making, I’ll instead try to rattle some cages on a more general collection of our new shibboleths and ingrained verities.   Many of you know that I host a controversial blog that is inevitably on the wrong side of every politically correct thought held dear by 21st century progressives.  This evening I want to cover some details of these thoughts.  And in line with today’s progressive protocols, perhaps this is the place to issue a trigger warning to some of our more sensitive listeners.

The other day on my blog it was noted that five illegal aliens are suing Oregon for not granting them driver’s licenses.  I then had the temerity to post the following, somewhat edited, question – “Does anyone know where these illegal aliens and their coddling collectivists get the harebrained idea that they are owed anything in this country save a free trip back to the border?  How did all this get started?”

The point of the question was summarily ignored, and I was taken to task by two prominent liberals of our community about my presumably callous attitude toward these people, seeing as how I too was born in a foreign land and, at the invitation of the US Congress, immigrated here after WW2.  The left-leaning debaters made no difference between legal immigration and a felonious entry into our land.  The implicit conclusion was that as long as you’re both here, you both should have equal rights.  However, the last time I looked, immigration to America was still subject to a two-party agreement between our government and the applicant for immigration.

I will not bore you with the heated discussion which followed, with many readers weighing in on the issue.  One of the threads that developed, at least in my mind, was the matter of culture.  What may be called America’s mainstream culture has always been in flux since Europeans first set foot on these shores.  But the progress of cultural change was very measured, and in the public square centered on an amalgam of European Christian values and traditions.  This accepted cultural target for assimilation started to unravel in the 1950s, slowly at first as we became Judeo-Christian, but then picking up steam as the Great Society programs kicked into gear, after which an uncounted number of new and old cultures and their traditions were elevated and celebrated, while symbols and observances of the old were diminished or completely removed.

Today we are in a cultural turmoil where the once dominant American culture is now daily maligned along with those who dare recall it in discussions of who then are we and where are we going.  Have we abandoned the adoption of a new American culture which can again be accepted by all as our common ground?  Don’t get me wrong, we cannot go back, nor am I promoting a return to yesteryear.  But will our future hold a culture that again can be called American, and about whose traditions and tenets our young will be educated?  Or will we continue as a multi-cultural polyglot with no shared center?

Over the life of our Republic immigrants have come to enjoy our liberties and opportunities for a better life, and in the process they have contributed lavishly to what made America the envy of the world.  These immigrants came and stashed their native cultures behind their private lives as they visibly celebrated American culture and assimilated with astonishing speed.  But today there is little reason to abandon exhibiting the culture into which you were born.  Why?  Because there is nothing of apparent value, form, and function which you can adopt in its stead.  So all over the world immigrants and migrants are facing the same cultural challenge, and given a choice, they would overwhelmingly opt to return to or retain their native culture.  This is especially true in the Mideast where, instead of emigrating, almost all refugees in the camps simply want to return to the life and culture they had.  The important question then becomes, what culture will they cling to as they arrive in a strange country that neither claims nor offers a dominant culture of its own?

And from our own perch here in the western hemisphere, what kind of country are we evolving toward as we indiscriminately pile every new culture upon our already large stack of recently arrived and recognized cultures?  It’s worth a thought when we consider the function that culture serves in organizing a cohesive and stable society.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  Coincidentally the 2dec15 WSJ contained a piece by News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch from a recent speech he gave at the Hudson Institute.  The essay ‘America the Indispensible’ summarizes much of my conservetarian sentiment that is recorded in these pages, and it is germane to my radio commentary since Murdoch is also an immigrant and naturalized American citizen.  The essay is about world order and America’s role in maintaining it since WW2.  In it the author expresses a sentiment I experienced as a sixteen-year-old ‘Indiana teenager’ when I finally received my citizenship papers after being country for seven years – “Like so many naturalized citizens, I felt that I was an American before I formally became one.”

 

 

The Good Kind of Blacklist

George Rebane

Well, our little union educated, progressive darlins have once more confirmed the longheld Rebane Doctrine tenet that the Left proscribes free speech wherever it can establish a beachhead of power.  You can feel visible hatred from these mobs of ‘university students’ against those who disagree with them, and more importantly, also those who don’t support their views with sufficient vigor.  They have no idea about the First Amendment simply because it and its place in American society has never been taught to them.

On college campuses in the 1960s, was it not their grandparents who relied on the First Amendment to support and protect their open protests against the government and university administrations?  It used to be that a university was anything but a safe place for any idea – there ideas were treated to rigorous intellectual enquiry and analysis, and discarded unmercifully when found wanting.

Now the little darlins even banish journalists from covering their rage against a society they deem insensitive to their own needs and demands.  In their public appearances they demonstrate both their ignorance and emotional fragility.  This is the generation that needs ‘trigger warnings’ on all things academic and otherwise that might fracture their brittle countenances.  They now need to set aside ‘safe spaces’ where politically incorrect speech and other communications are barred. 

They abhor violence to such a degree that they do not hesitate to use it against others in order to diminish it in society.  And, of course, they are against all forms of discrimination, stereotyping, and bias, as long as it all conforms to their own peculiar notions of goodness and light.  They rail against McCarthyism blacklisting communists during early cold war years, but today they have no problem blacklisting distinguished Americans from speaking or even setting foot on their campuses.  These young narcissists already know it all to an extent that they stand ready to remake their schools by vetting their own administrations and professors.

Our campuses have long been recognized as havens of collectivist thought.  But now we seem to be entering into a new era of what may at best be described as the lunatics running the asylum.  The progressive administrators and professors have a conundrum on their hands.  Their half-baked and mini-minded spawn are actually putting into practice the proletarian putsches they have been carefully taught.  Since they have been abandoned by their elders, the salvation of the American university now lies in the hands of the remaining serious cohort of students who are there for an education from institutions that can again be made to invite, nurture, and honor all ideas that illuminate and advance the human condition.  No more blacklists about who can and cannot speak about what on campus.

Here is what The Atlantic had to say about ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’.

Catalonia yearns for independence

George Rebane

So contrary to the progressives’ push for a global leviathan are the yearnings of uncounted peoples each of whom share a common language, faith, heritage, traditions, and history.  The collectivist mind does not understand that such people above all want self-determination and independence, and a corner of the world in which they can be with their own kind.  It isn’t that each of these cohorts thinks that they are better than the others or that they harbor hatred for people who are different, but it is that they want to live their daily lives among neighbors they know, neighbors whose social behavior they can reliably predict, neighbors with whom they can celebrate their history and with whose children they can educate and raise their own in a manner that upholds and values their origins and the legacy of their ancestors.

Catalonia forms the eastern part of Spain with Barcelona as its capital.  Its 7.5 million Catalans have a long history of being autonomous, semi-autonomous, and a forcibly integrated part of other empires.  Through it all the Catalans have retained and practiced their own culture and today see themselves as distinct and wish to separate from the central government of Spain.  In spite of strong opposition by Madrid, several political initiatives are again being set in motion to move Catalonia toward complete independence.  (more here, here, and here)

The Catalans are joined by numerous other ethnic peoples on all continents who seek their roots and their own place in the sun.  In Europe alone there are activist movements in 25 countries to separate and declare their autonomy (more here).   Here in the United States we have outlined a number of movements of various people who no longer believe that the current political map of the country serves in the best interest of the several ethnic, cultural, and political groupings of Americans.  To all these yearnings our leftwing central planners and their gruberized constituency are totally blind.  Their fantasy is the opposite of the existential global yearnings.  They seek instead to pursue the objectives of UN’s Agenda 21 and work for a unified and homogenized world order under one central government that shares all the important aspects of Marxist-Leninist thought for how humanity should organize itself.

It is a sad commentary that here in the land of the free and home of the brave, every day fewer Americans are able to perceive these massive and longstanding tensions as our elites trumpet the benefits of an Orwellian future through their eagerly compliant lamestream outlets.  Those of us who still care to preserve some of that which the Founders left us advocate for separations like the formation of Northern California (nee State of Jefferson).  So let us wish the Catalans success in their ongoing efforts to retrieve and live in their own sovereign nation-state.

Scattershots – 22oct15

George Rebane

Hillary told the House Benghazi hearing that 1) Chris Stevens should have known better than to expect the security he requested, and also that being a diplomat was a dangerous profession; 2) she never saw the Stevens’ urgent security requests – “they didn’t rise to my level”; and 3) as SecState, if she wasn’t aware of it, she was not responsible for what State did or not.  So there.

Teacher and author Helaine Smith teaches ‘High-School English Without the Politics’ – what a concept!  She teaches critical thinking through the classics with the objective that “what my students are learning is a lesson that is not political but is essential for politics: that one must support assertions with proofs, that one must consider counterarguments, that it’s necessary to listen to what others say and that doing so may allow you to strengthen, or force you to alter, what you think.”  In sum, she tells us that “I am reassured that I send forth young adults who, whatever political positions they adopt, will question before they conclude, and will respect others’ rights to question and to conclude otherwise.”  I’m not reassured that most of our country’s English teachers have either the intellectual horsepower or motivation to equally grace their students.  (more here)

Why not more black scientists? asks professor of law and civil rights commissioner Ms Gail Herlot.  She might want to sit in on Ms Smith’s class to improve her own ability to puzzle out such issues.  In her 22oct15 WSJ piece she claims that it all has to do with “the perverse impact of university racial preferences” wherein first rate universities fill their racial quotas with Sec 8 blacks who are not ready to compete with their white and Asian counterparts.  Even though blacks enter such schools more interested in STEM subjects, they quickly drop out or “transfer to softer majors” when hit with the reality of the competition they encounter in top schools.

She assures us that “this is not because they don’t have the right stuff”, because “many do” and cites that black students entering second rate schools have a much higher graduation rate in STEM subjects when encountering weaker competition.  As proof she astounds us with the tautology that half the graduates of ‘historically black colleges and universities’ have “entering credentials in the top half of the class” when they go for advanced degrees.  Now I don’t really know how to communicate this to the good professor, but how in hell could half such black students from all black schools NOT graduate in the top half of their class?  (more here)

The globalists operate a subtle program of population control in third world countries.  While not explicitly making the case, internationally known environmentalist Bjorn Lomberg (director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center) gives ample data that the billions of dollars spent and promised to these backward countries for “climate-related aid” is a big mistake.  These countries don’t need additional solar panels, but they do “need help with tuberculosis, malaria, and malnutrition.”  Solar and other renewable power generators will not provide the amount of reliable electricity needed in those nations to make a difference in the countries’ economies or delivered healthcare.  “Green energy sources may be good to keep on a single light or to charge a cellphone.  But they are largely useless for tackling the main power challenges for the world’s poor.”

This, of course, makes no never mind to the world’s progressive elites again meeting in Paris later this year.  Putting some of that very corruptible money into mosquito nets alone would save about 300,000 lives a year.  And for the gruberized first world masses, that good feeling from fighting 'climate change' is worth every dark skinned life that must be sacrificed – good feelings are not cheap. (more here)

The exodus to red states continues.  Our innumerable and innumerate Left denies any such migration, especially if the tally is taken by the likes of the Heritage Foundation (here).  But both the Dept of Commerce and the IRS have the numbers which under this administration will not be ushered into the light of day.  In California the paradigm is ‘government dependent illegals in, wealth generating middle class workers out’.  And I’ll be a sumbich if the population doesn’t keep on increasing.

Scattershots – 12oct15

George Rebane

The government is corrupt.  It’s always a tickle to note the protestations of liberals on these pages who howl when we conservetarians point out that our government is too big, inept beyond belief, costs too much, overreaches into our lives, and is hopelessly corrupt in literally all that it does.  The local leftwing lackeys dutifully decry our citations of such violations of public trust as the whine of an ignorant, negligible and soon-to-disappear miniscule minority.  Yet the national data keeps coming in to show how out of touch are our neighbors of the Left.  Gallup again returns to us polling results that confirm 3 out of 4 Americans believe that our government is indeed corrupt, and the national Right/Left split falls evenly at 48% favoring each.  What is it about the definition of 'small minority' that these innumerates don’t understand?

The new movie ‘Truth’ is a hopelessly blatant whitewash of the CBS/Dan Rather scandal of forged documents used to create out of whole cloth a smear of President George W. Bush.  It is truly desperation time for Democrats to put out such a movie that will highlight the perennial mischief the Left propagates through its lamestream media.  But in this case even CBS is distancing itself from this revisionist propaganda piece about Rathergate.  Here is what CBS said to Variety about the film portraying their yellow journalists –

It’s astounding how little truth there is in “Truth.” There are, in fact, too many distortions, evasions and baseless conspiracy theories to enumerate them all. The film tries to turn gross errors of journalism and judgment into acts of heroism and martyrdom. That’s a disservice not just to the public but to journalists across the world who go out every day and do everything within their power, sometimes at great risk to themselves, to get the story right.

Can the combined auras of Robert Redford as Dan Rather and Cate Blanchet as the wicked producer Mary Mapes really convince 2015 Americans that they were the moral equivalents of the heroic Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame?

Muslims in Government (updated 25sep15)

Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them. Know that God is with the righteous. Quran 9:123

George Rebane

Republican candidate Dr Ben Carson set off the most recent political dust-devil predictable with his response to whether he would support a Muslim becoming President of the United States.  However, the question of devout Muslims serving in governments is an important issue today when radical Islam and Islam colonizing the west have become the world’s most destabilizing socio-political forces against which secular humanism and collectivist ideologies are not only helpless but actually abetting.

To examine this issue we must first look at man’s belief systems regarding his cosmology and ideology.  By cosmology we mean the entirety of his picture of existence ranging from the structure of the universe(s) to the humongous Planck scale ocean of quantum events in which we all swim and derive our being.  Cosmology also subsumes or is subsumed by a person’s religion.

By ideology we mean a person’s set of structured tenets that describe his vision or preference of a particular socio-political order that guides, controls, and informs human activity on earth.  Here we divide such ideologies into loose categories of collectivism – e.g. communism and socialism of the international or national kind – and classical liberalism as bequeathed by our Founders and clarified by, say, Frederic Bastiat’s The Law.

Over the years RR has been fortunate to be a forum for the arguments from heartfelt adherents of a wide range of ideologies and cosmologies/religions embraced by its readers and commenters.  And as such, these debates again underline that a devout person’s religion trumps his ideology – God’s plan and druthers supersede that of Man.  In all nations with a religious citizenry allegiance is paid to ‘God and country’ in that order.

The Great Cultural Divides of 2016 (updated 7sep15)

'What happens in the Middle East doesn’t stay in the Middle East.'  WSJ

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary aired on 2 September 2015.]

Here’s a 50,000 foot view of the great cultural divides that will focus our attention in America and also in the European Union.  The EU’s promise of a unified Europe free of wars is under great strain both economically and culturally.  It turns out that Angela Merkel’s conclusion that “Multi-kulti does not work” is true, not only in Germany, but all over the continent.  And nothing has caused the Europeans to raise their ire more than the increasing flood of Muslims into their cities and countries.

The diaspora from the failed Islamic states that ring Europe on its south is turning into a life altering invasion of people who share few values with the Europeans beyond the desire to escape death and destruction.  These illegal aliens who are daily scampering onto the shores of southern Europe are called ‘migrants’ which is their word for our politically correct ‘undocumented immigrants’.  The European countries of entry don’t want the Muslims to stay, so the ‘immigrant’ word is out.  But they do want them to migrate north to the richer regions of the continent, so ‘migrant’ is an accepted politically neutral label for the desperate aliens who are quickly ushered northward by countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain.

Muslims have been emigrating to Europe for decades, and have made themselves conspicuous to the indigenous Europeans by their refusal to assimilate and their understandable desire to live in their own culturally cohesive communities.  In many countries these enclaves are now functionally sovereign in that they follow their own laws, maintain their own traditions, and forcefully reject any encroachment by the institutions of their targeted host nations.

We in America were once taught to abide all cultures which in our public forums subsumed themselves into the overarching ‘American culture’ – practice your own cultures when you are among yourselves, but become an obvious American when you gather in the town square with fellow Americans.  This is no longer taught to our young.  Today our schools celebrate America’s constituent cultures to the point where a common American culture has been banished and replaced by reference to a yet nebulous global culture.

Another Collectivist Cancer (updated 2sep15)

George Rebane

A correspondent sent me this clipping that recently appeared in the Miller County Liberal of Colquitt, Georgia.  It is another example of progressivism run amok in America that affects much more than our national debt.  Such people are the stalwarts and core constituents of liberal politicians across our land.  Hard to garner their vote if your message is that you should become a legitimate couple and earn your own way instead of taking it from your neighbors.

[2sep15 update]  Yet one more collectivist cancer is now rampant in the land.  The clearly fraudulent ‘Black Lives Matter’ agitation (movement?) abetted by the lamestream, has now cost hundreds of additional lives across the country this year as crime rates have soared.  Why?  Because crime has now been elevated by the administration and various leftwing municipal jurisdictions to have become politically motivated, thereby giving lawlessness an implicit level of justification that invite more scumbags – especially the black-on-black kind – to wantonly kill.

Our police across the land are justifiably convinced that civilized society, led by progressive politicians, no longer has their backs.  They have quietly started pulling back from their normal law enforcement practices as they are being regularly hauled into vindictive politically motivated judicial proceedings, or simply murdered in the streets.  To put meat on these observations, just consider a sampling of American cities in which the murder rate has sky-rocketed during the last year – Austin +90.9%, Denver +75%, Milwaukee +73.6%, St Louis +57.7%, Baltimore +55.8%.

 

A Common History Was Our Common Ground (Addended)

Goerge Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 19 August 2015.]

US History is again being revised in our high schools.  The new 2014 Advanced Placement US History ‘framework’ is now replacing the old 2010 AP framework, and its adoption will take students one giant step to the Left.  Last month at Hillsdale College noted historian Wilfred McClay, now Blankenship Professor in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma, gave a compendious speech on the state of history in America and its readily observed impact on our collective society and thought.  The much published historian did not paint a hopeful future for our nation.

McClay states that the new 2014 version of our history “represents a lurch in the direction of more centralized control, as well as an expression of a distinct agenda—an agenda that downplays comprehensive content knowledge in favor of interpretive finesse, and that seeks to deemphasize American citizenship and American world leadership in favor of a more global and transnational perspective. The new framework is organized around such opaque and abstract concepts as “identity,” “peopling,” and “human geography.” It gives only the most cursory attention to traditional subjects, such as the sources, meaning, and development of America’s fundamental political institutions, notably the Constitution, and the narrative accounting of political events, such as elections, wars, and diplomacy.”