Rebane's Ruminations

‘The Soul of Black Conservatism’

George Rebane

Scholar and commentator Jason Riley of the Manhattan Institute has written a biography of economist Thomas Sowell, one of the country’s most celebrated conservative academics and intellectuals.  Progressives accuse Sowell’s perspectives on race in America as “going against the grain of fellow African-Americans.”  That on its face is wrong, as Riley points out in Sowell’s own words during a Charlie Rose interview - “I don’t know if we can say [that I go] ‘against the grain of fellow African-Americans,’ ” he told Mr. Rose. “You mean fellow African-American intellectuals. But I don’t think African-American intellectuals are any more typical of African-Americans than white intellectuals are of whites.” (more here)

A main thesis of Sowellian thought on race is that successful racial/ethnic groups in America have assumed their places in our pluralistic society by relying on their own resources and means, and not waiting for the dominant culture to provide them special dispensations to smooth the ‘E pluribus unum’ road to assimilated equality.  “If the history of American ethnic groups shows anything, it is how large a role has been played by attitudes of self-reliance”.

Sowell has also maintained that “government has a role to play in social mobility, albeit a limited one, and incentives matter”, but he remains worried about “handouts that ask little or nothing of the recipient, and thus risk creating dependency”.  Thanks to the Democrats’ imbued plantation mentality on the nation’s blacks, that kind of dependency has now been created and etched in stone as the foundational principle of modern black politics – white supremacists have taken the blacks’ share of the common weal, and through the practice of ‘systemic racism’ deny blacks the ability to garner their fair share of the nation’s riches.  Hence, America must be fundamentally transformed so that a more comprehensive and encompassing government can then use its gun to force an equitable redistribution.  The Left teaches that is the only way to achieve social justice in the land.

As a concluding thought, Rebane Doctrine holds that to the extent that systemic racism can be shown to exist in America, it is practiced and maintained by the country’s elitist Left (both black and white) with the unwitting support of their purposely under-educated legions of urban African-Americans.  Our main street whites have long been indifferent to the racial make-up of their neighbors, team mates, fellow workers, and even spouses.  Nowhere has this been more demonstrated than in our post-war military.  A litmus test for the end of such racism will be a time when we no longer require organizations, institutions, and agencies to have race-specific names, race-based memberships, and that provide race-based dispensations.

The Success of Socialist Schooling

George Rebane

In the recent 'Dark Days Diary' (here) I highlighted a short dissertation on the spread of communism by a former KGB agent.  As we have pointed out here and he confirms, the spread of that evil ideology is made possible by its acolytes initially gaining control of a target nation’s public educational system.  This is from the Marxist-Leninist playbook – ‘let me educate one generation of your youth to assure communism’s triumph.’  In the United States we are now educating the third generation with a curriculum that ranges between pure trash and collectivist propaganda.  And this is done in our public K-12 schools and also academe, which has for the most part eliminated all dissenting voices and thought on their campuses.

The onerous task is being carried out by teachers’ unions and faculty associations which have wholeheartedly embraced the goal of a socialist world order.  Their success can be measured by the fraction of our graduates who are profoundly ignorant of their American heritage and equally lacking skill sets which enable their entry into a productive workforce.  A disturbing share of them find work with government as the employer of last resort.  There they immediately fit in with the correctly thinking and compliant deep state extension of the Democratic Party, doing its work no matter who currently happens to control Congress or reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

For the Left, this fortuitous outcome is to a large extent the fault of our ‘go along to get along’ Republicans.  Over the years they as the conservators of our Constitution have shown little interest to understand and backbone to resist the nation’s ratcheting of anti-American public policies.  The Republicans appear to measure their political progress by how good they feel when grumbling and griping about the Left to their likeminded constituents in cloistered gatherings.  These pity-party nodding sessions motivate only a trickling of attendees, if that, to take an active stance to counter the encroach of socialism in their communities.  The rank and file Republican returns to his homestead to continue living a productive and non-contentious life minding his own business.

The only plausible road back (from beyond the tipping point to the Great Divide) is to regain local control of educating our children.  Rebane Doctrine has long taught that to do this is to change education policy so that in the public funding of education, the money follows the students, and parents determine where the students are schooled.  This calls for a restructuring of our education industry into a more open market, capitalistic format, and away from the rank socialist structure of today.  In the main, K-12 education should be available to parents in the same manner as is the choice of a college education.  This means that schools would become transparent for-profit institutions that make their performance (quality of their product) accessible to their clients.  Overall, given today’s cost of education, such a change would significantly reduce costs, and increase the relevance and quality of the delivered education.

Our leftwing knows that Sapir-Whorf’s theory of language enabling thought (q.v.) is correct as was made public by Orwell and put in practice on a national scale by Mao et al.  Today’s public educated true believers can neither conceive the existence of alternative ways to organize a beneficial society, nor understand where our nation’s present path is taking us (e.g. evidence of that abounds in these pages).

No one knows the truth of all this more than does our Democratic Party which has viewed their support of socialized education as required maintenance of their private manufactory of an ever increasing horde of compliant constituents and unquestioning voters.  The last thing our Left will tolerate is letting parents decide where their children will be schooled. 

Working the Unity Myth (updated 25mar21)

George Rebane

Today’s Left seeks to suppress and supplant the legacy, history, and practice of Western culture as an evil instantiation of racism and white supremacy.

One of Jo Ann’s recent Union articles (here) addressed the futile attempts in the Left’s ongoing calls for unity, supposedly addressed to people like her – conservative, Christian women who pay very close attention to national affairs and are active in their communities. (more here)  The piece garnered a record reader response in print, online, and snail-mailed letters.  One heartfelt, well-written and long letter from a liberal woman gave Jo Ann kudos and concluded with a strong appeal for all of us to come together.  It is the ongoing flood of appeals like that, appeals that imply coming together is something as simple as throwing an attitudinal switch, that motivates the present reflection.

Progressives Big Lie #7519 – Texas Power Debacle

George Rebane

The 24feb21 Union ran this cartoon on its op-ed pages.

From this the newspaper’s uninformed and progressive readers have the clear takeaway that the Texas electric grid is in disarray and dysfunctional, as the recent blizzard demonstrated, because the electricity market is too ‘free’ and unregulated.  The disaster that hit Texans, and from which they still suffer, was caused by too much capitalism.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The actual cause of the grid’s failure and its normal high cost to consumers is purely and solely a government manufactured travesty, brought to you by the scumbag politicians in Washington and Austin.  (Remember, if society has a problem, government is almost always the cause.)  To get a handle on this rather complex kerfuffle, we first have to understand that across the country there have come to be two kinds of energy suppliers – more or less deregulated ‘retail generators’ and the usual regulated public utilities.  The corporatist ‘free marketeers’ led by outfits like Enron, successfully lobbied for new fed and state laws that allowed the set up of the two-tier supply structure – the deregulated retail suppliers were supposed to compete and thereby lower consumer prices below those charged by the regulated utilities.

The corporatists anticipated their windfall by promising to set up a green power generating infrastructure that minimized reliance on coal and nuclear.  It was going to be all wind and solar with gas back-up.  The green power part was going to be heavily subsidized by the feds, and natural gas was a just-in-time fuel that could not be efficiently stored by the remaining back-up power stations.  And to transport the gas through pipelines required the operation of electrically powered compressors.  As dollar signs danced in their heads, and since the deregulation didn’t require it, the last thing in the minds of these new corporatist retail utilities was spending money to maintain and harden the electricity distribution infrastructure.   Are you beginning to get the picture? (more here)

Now step back about 30 years when people started analyzing the vulnerability of green electric grids not backed up by reliable coal and nuclear.  They started issuing warnings which were ignored by the politicians in charge of legislation and prudent regulation.  In fact, the eco and corporatist factions caused most of these longer term studies to be shut down lest their pesky findings would get too much publicity. To add insult to injury, many jurisdictions such as in Texas, consumers were not allowed to pipe gas into their homes for heating, and codes were put in place to prohibit the building of such houses – ‘clean electricity’ was going to be the solution to all energy consumption needs.

This insanity continued with governors (e.g. Cuomo) prohibiting the building/expansion of pipelines to bring back-up fossil fuels into their states and appropriately distribute it in the regions where subsidized green power was expanding.  The point here is, that contrary to the Big Lie cartoons like the one above, there has never been anything free about the energy markets when corporatists conspire with econuts and scumbag politicians to force consumers to choose between regulated utilities and ‘unregulated’ retail electricity generators who wind up with a captured clientele that can be charged sky-high market prices when primary (wind and solar) generators inevitably fail and back-up power turns out to be inadequate. (more here) 

So today politicians such as Cuomo and Warren inhibit the building of needed infrastructure ranging from pipelines to gas compressor facilities, and go on to ignore and shut down studies that produce results which don’t support their Agenda21 green narratives.

But more fundamentally, as taught by Rebane Doctrine, unfettered capitalism in any market will become rapacious as it inevitably coagulates into socially egregious, corporatist oligopolies on the road to monopoly.  (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Google, …)  Capitalism, as an economic order to generate and distribute wealth, is an 800 lbs gorilla that always needs some minimal regulation by the collective in a stable and liberal society.  Capitalism is God’s paramount gift to mankind’s pursuit of happiness, but it does not come free.  We recall that the good part of capitalism is that it always tries to game the system, and the bad part of capitalism is that it always tries to game the system.  And there’s the rub for enlightened governance.

Dark Days Diary – 13jan21 (updated 15jan21)

George Rebane

‘America was born of dissent. It shall perish when dissent is forbidden.’  I used this anonymous aphorism as a tagline for a recent post, and upon reflection, it rings more true with each passing day.  Today loud voices are heard mostly from the Left, but also some from the Right, exhorting us to set our beliefs aside and be compliantly silent.  The underlying principle that is being hoisted like a banner in the public square is ‘politics has no place for violence.’

That is also the title of a piece by Rep Steve Scalise (R-LA) in the 13jan21 WSJ (here).  Unfortunately, the congressman could not be more wrong, both historically and existentially.  Going back to the days of historian Thucydides of ancient Greece, violence has always been one of the extremes and frequently practiced bookends of politics.  The other extreme of political behavior is silent compliance, the rigidly enforced favorite of tyrants.  To get a deeper understanding of this, I recommend to you Graham Allison’s Destined for War: Can America and China escape Thucydides’s Trap (2017).  (Kissinger’s plaudit of the book included, “Thucydides’ Trap identifies the cardinal challenge to world order.”)

Allison and other historians have long made it clear that almost every military action, including partisan uprisings, were spawned for political reasons.  Nevertheless, most of us believe that a social order succumbing to either of these extremes represents a failure of practicing prudent politics.  An oft-accepted definition of politics is ‘the art of the possible’, which is still valid with its noted bookends withstanding.

In this light, I maintain that current arguments, exhortations, and platitudes from our national leaders do nothing to calm the angry sea that today defines social order.  None of these politicians can point to a common ground where we may meet to forge a mutually acceptable future.  What each offers in place of such a political meeting is simply another version of ‘my way or the highway’.  And the diagnosis is appropriate to those of us minor ideologues making our voices heard on the grassroots hustings.  For me as a conservetarian, the Left offers little to nothing that would give rise to a world in which I would want my progeny to live.  And collectivists feel equally strong about their ideals.

Political peace has been achieved in the past mostly by both (all) sides stumbling into a de facto compromise that is to no one’s complete liking, and one that motivates everyone to continue working for their political goals with plausible hope in their hearts.  And that is the important point.  The discovered compromise must be such that neither side loses hope of still being able to push the policy peanuts in their desired direction.  When that hope vanishes or is quashed, then one of the political bookends is all that remains, and the one chosen depends on the people’s means, culture, and their historical narrative.

Today President Trump was impeached again by the House, this time being accused of “encouraging a mob to storm Congress as part of an effort to overturn Joe Biden’s election win."  For millions of us across the land this most certainly was the most scurrilous political act we have witnessed during our lifetime.  There is no need to rehash all the ethical, constitutional, and simply principled criteria that were violated in performing probably the most vindictive act by Congress in its long history.  There was no opportunity, nor desire by the Democrats, to permit a reasoned defense by the opposition; it was simply a hastily assembled and railroaded political lynching.  What it underlined for all who pay attention is that this abortion on the floor of the House did nothing but cement in place an implacable division between polarized Americans that continues to grow in its scope and girth.

And we learned more about the stout political underpinnings of the ten so-called Republicans who decided to pile on to this judicial charade.  All the while more Republicans quake in their boots as the Dems and their lamestream continue to broadcast accusations of ‘acts of sedition’ and ‘insurrection’, none of which was intended or took place.  What did take place, as the record shows, is the President’s exhortation for his supporters to go to the Capitol and protest the scheduled proceedings to certify the electoral votes.  There is nothing illegal about a call for such action by citizens who do feel aggrieved that the November election was fraught with irregularities and fraud.  But today our liberties retreated another step as last Wednesday’s speech by the president was deemed both illegal and impeachable.  Besides cementing our breach, this second impeachment has now put a serious rip into the fabric of what once were the normative affairs of governance.

[15jan21 update] 'Assault on the Capitol Has Let Loose the Electronic Octopus' argues Victor Davis Hanson in a convincing piece apropos to these dark days.  And reader posts a link with a DoJ official declaring there is "no direct evidence" of plot to kill, kidnap lawmakers in Capitol assault (here).

Control of Corporatist Oligopolies

“America was born of dissent. It shall perish when dissent is forbidden.”  Anon.

George Rebane

Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, … arguably reside somewhere between monopoly and oligopoly in the capitalist spectrum.  It is very hard for a corporation that controls a dominating segment of a major market to become such a beast in a truly competitive environment, and then to maintain its standing without active help from the government gun in suppressing would-be competitors.  Such relationships between putatively private sector companies and the government is called corporatism.  And such participating corporatists are a malevolent disease of capitalism made possible by one of its systemic vulnerabilities.  The creation of corporatism is only possible with the abetting aid of a corrupt government, one that seeks large amounts of private funding to extend its political power over a citizenry having tendencies for non-compliance with the establishment’s diktats.

According to Rebane Doctrine and the basic tenets of conservetarianism, such corporatist oligopolies invite regulation to prevent them from becoming weaponized by one controlling political faction in a democracy.  (For more on this important happening, see LikeWar:The Weaponization of Social Media)  The threshold criterion here is the corporatist’s domination of a broadly embedded and established public function or service for which there exist no viable alternative providers in the marketplace.  When a corporatist achieves that status (call it a critical public good corporation, CPGC), then it’s time to put in place non-partisan regulations to either defang or dismember it.

At this point the lightly-read liberal will leap into this discussion with charges of ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘double standards’.  As I’ve recounted countless times, this response is borne of either purposive political snark, or more likely from the simplified worldview that most leftwingers are burdened with as they seek to make sense of complex societies – it must be either ‘this’ or ‘that’ with no perception of nuance or a middle-ground.

In the present case of gratuitous imposition of censorship and/or cutting off public communications completely, the corporatists are outing themselves as 1) the strong partisans they are, and 2) taking advantage of the current political environment to also quash competing companies, and all of it done as virtue signaling to support the public good.  The government’s sponsors of such corporatism and corporatists will, of course, support and sustain such private sector initiatives as the actions of good and caring corporate citizens.

The solution that would prohibit such preemptive partisan actions is to have in place a law that 1) prescribes criteria to identify such critical oligops or monopolists as CPGCs, and 2) restricts how CPGCs may conduct the critical public services and/or functions they provide.  In short, the profuse and protected profits they derive, when so designated, come at a price of regulatory controls that are supervised by an appropriate department – say, Commerce – of the federal government.  None of this violates the strong conservetarian principle of a minimalist government being among the social desiderata for a democratic republic that creates and distributes wealth within a capitalist context.

Under such a regulatory order it would be easy for a corporation to sufficiently divest or segment its operations to escape its CPGC designation.  The main objective of such an approach is to prevent what is happening today with private sector providers making political decisions as to who may or not continue using the communication services that the same corporatists have conduced people to accept, integrate, and make critical parts of their daily lives.

As a parting consideration, think about the disruption to your life were your phone company to gratuitously cut your ability to make and receive telephone calls.  That situation existed for decades when AT&T was the overwhelmingly dominant telephone service provider, and for that reason it was a strongly regulated oligopoly until advancing technology made possible a competitive environment that could best be served by a break up of Ma Bell into Baby Bells, and the entry of new service providers.  We all have benefitted from this paradigm, and now need to expand it into the world of CPGCs on the internet.

From my perch on 6 January 2021

George Rebane

A socialist imposes unequal opportunity, promises equal outcomes, and delivers uniform misery.  A capitalist imposes equal opportunity, enables individual initiative, and delivers unequal outcomes that provide the best possible prosperity to all.

Today President Trump’s talk sunk the walk of the thousands of conservative DC protesters.  This dreadful character defect of his has done incalculable damage to his work while in office, to his legacy after he leaves office, and his political future by how he transfers power to his successor.

The message to Congress and the American electorate on this day should be evidence centric and NOT election outcome centric.  Assembling thousands on the Mall and Capitol grounds to shout and wave signs reading ‘Biden stole the election’ and ‘Trump won by a landslide’ helps get the real message and purpose of the demonstration to no one.  And it amply feeds the waiting propaganda factories of the lamestream.  There was not a single sign I saw that demanded the examination and adjudication of the mountains of evidence that substantiate election irregularities and voter fraud.  That should have been the obvious and clearly displayed reason for the anger and frustration of those assembled, and their demands for redress of grievances.

Instead, on the day Congress was to actually certify the Electoral College vote count, the peaceful protest became a mob that stormed the Capitol to display their most base sentiments as they destroyed property and disgraced legislative chambers and legislators’ offices by posing for the cameras like a bunch of ignorant rock apes which indeed they were.  (I would still like to see the authorities confirm the conservative bona fides of the idiots who rampaged through the Capitol.)

The subsequent videos and tweets by the President did nothing to quiet the emotions of his loyal supporters.  If anything, these communicated a back-handed imprimatur to continue running amok.  IMHO, today’s presidential performance tremendously increased the likelihood that the Republicans will splinter, and that DJT’s hopes for a White House reprise are dashed.  It should not surprise anyone to see VP Mike Pence emerge from this imbroglio as the courageous Horatius at the bridge to lead what is left of the Republicans.  The comparative lassitude of the McCarthys, Cruzes, Cottons, and Jordans gives strong evidence that their best days are behind them.  And it will be interesting to see if the former majority leader McConnell will be allowed his last hurrah to marshal the Senate’s de facto minority in a rear guard action against the socialist onslaught of Pelosi and Schumer.

For those of us who continue to believe that society will best be served by a governance that promotes individual enterprise, open markets, capitalism, equal opportunity, and freedom, it definitely has not been a good day.

Contending and Correcting Elections

"Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord."  Isaiah 1:18

George Rebane

There’s an ‘open letter to the President’ going around the email circuit beseeching him to invoke the Insurrection Act, activate National Guard and the military to seize ballots and vote computers across the nation, publish all the secret evidence of alleged voting fraud, and essentially proceed toward a redo of the national election under newly prescribed and strict supervision.  The letter was written by two lawyers – Stewart Rhodes and Kellye SoRelle.

Regardless of what we think about the legitimacy of the November election, at this stage of the game I don’t think that carrying out the open letter’s prescriptions is a good idea.  If tried, it will not occur peacefully, and will most certainly give rise to massive civil disturbances that could lead to a civil war.  The problem is that the US has a 250-year history of elections – admittedly some more contended than others – that have in the end been accepted by our citizens with relatively minimal turbulence (e.g. ‘Battle of Athens’).  Because of this, our country has not put in place mechanisms to peacefully contend and correct both statewide and national elections.

Now I believe there’s an 80% chance that nationwide incidents of election fraud, ranging from petty to massive, occurred.  And I also believe that there’s a 50% chance that such fraud, as supported by presented and rejected evidence, would overturn significant election results (e.g. the presidency) if allowed its day in court and found to be true.  But today, we are where we are, and there remain only a few low probability opportunities to change the overwhelmingly accepted election outcomes using in-place processes and procedures.  The enduring problem we shoulder going forward is that, given the polls, there is a significant fraction of Americans who no longer have faith in the manner our elections are conducted (I am one of them.)  So, what to do?

My recommendation is that we join in a bipartisan effort to put in place a comprehensive and transparent set of processes and procedures under which future national (and perhaps also statewide) elections may be contended and corrected in an orderly and peaceful manner.  This would be launched and supervised by a congressional commission with a staffed working group of people with appropriate legal and information systems expertise to devise, develop, and test the resulting federal System for Contending and Correcting Elections (SCCE).

The bipartisan SCCE would prescribe the required legal underpinnings for its field operations, and recommend to Congress any additional supporting legislation needed.  Its working group would publish the how/when/who functions that define such things as SCCE election monitoring mechanisms, election scheduling, means of voting, vetting of franchised voters, accepting and processing reported irregularities, ballot chains of custody, isolating voting machines, standards of identifying and adjudicating fraud, procedures for holding re-elections, and so on.

In the latter case when a re-election is warranted, the SCCE's procedures for the uninterrupted continuance of government in the interval would already be laid out, specifying which elected and appointed officials remain with what duties and powers.  It is not yet clear whether all this can be accomplished through legislation, or will the Constitution need to be amended to handle such interregnum matters.

In any case, this approach of commissioning a SCCE during the relative political quietude between elections would serve our country much better than today’s calls for tanks in the intersections and attack helicopters flying overhead.  And in the worst case, the attempt to launch such an initiative would be very revealing of which organs of the Deep State, which private sector institutions, which corporatists, and which political parties rise to oppose such approaches to restore public confidence in the elections which sustain our democratic republic.

These are my preliminary thoughts on the matter, and I'm sure readers have their own ideas to offer on what, if any, preparations need be made to avoid the now existential travails we continue to suffer from the elections of 2016 and 2020.

Signs of Our Time – 9dec20 (updated 10dec20)

George Rebane

This will be a category of highly opinionated observations from an octogenarian who has been privileged to witness (often unwillingly) more of the human travail than that to which most have been subjected.

Innovator extraordinaire Elon Musk is moving his Tesla et al out of Silicon Valley and California to (wait for it) Texas.  That will not come as a surprise to those freedom-loving capitalists and conservetarians who have paid attention to the accelerating autocracy bound downward slide of the once golden state that was the envy of the world.  And to the Democrat-dimmed of our state (and nation), this ongoing exodus has been totally invisible or worse – it has been denied, thereby rejecting the need for any policy corrections.

On the road to progressivist autocracy, YouTube has announced new censorship rules.  The latest batch has them removing all content that gives any hint that the recent election contained any fraud.  To these supreme hubristicates, the dispensing of news that covers the massive amount of submitted evidence and legal battles affirming fraud are considered not suitable for processing by the nation’s main street minds.  YouTube will relieve us of the burden and just focus on delivering all the pravda we really need.  We anxiously await their next installment. (more here)

‘Stakeholder capitalism’ is the label for destroying the best approach to generating and allocating wealth.  All the world’s major corporatists, as they assembled at Davos, are on board with ‘The Big Reset’ which is “a vague and open-ended mandate for corporations to do good in the world. Yet beneath the lofty rhetoric, stakeholder capitalism is mostly a front for irresponsible corporatism. It is an attempt to siphon off cash flow from productive uses to advance the mission of ‘global governance’ and create corporate and government sinecures for cronies along the way. … Stakeholder capitalism is used as a way to obfuscate what counts as success in business. By focusing less on profits and more on vague social values, ‘enlightened’ executives will find it easier to avoid accountability even as they squander business resources. While trying to make business about ‘social justice’ is always concerning, the contemporary conjunction of stakeholder theory and woke capitalism makes for an especially dangerous and accountability-thwarting combination.” (more here)

Team Biden will take full credit for correctly dealing with the C19 pandemic.  Not adding anything to the Trump administration’s accomplishments, the Democrats will just subsume all of it, with their lamestream telling us repeatedly that it was really they who put together and now deliver what Trump had done.  High school history books will memorialize the accomplishments that followed after President Biden rescued the country from the tragedy of the Trump years.  In gratitude we will be made happy to pay more taxes, welcome new layers of socially just regulations, and take comfort in no longer having to exercise such a wide spectrum of risky liberties.  What’s not to like?

[10dec20 update]  The manufacture of America’s double dummies in its schools – public and private – has ascended to a new level of intensity.  The Woke Revolution is now descending into the nation’s middle and high schools with the widespread adoption of curricula based on ‘critical race theory’ (q.v.) and specific subjects like history adopting the anti-American propaganda version as publicized by Project 1619.   The “tip of the iceberg” of this new aspect of our socialist revolution is described in ‘The Woke Managerial Revolution Goes to School’.  The question is, as always, ‘where are the parents?’

‘I want Trump to die’ addended

George Rebane

[Apologies for the late posting of this promised follow-on commentary.]

Thoughtful comments from readers expanded the scope of my 4oct20 ‘I want Trump to die’ commentary to encompass social behaviors that may or not be acceptable and/or legal under our current form of governance.  And this includes a wide variety of people’s aspirations for regicide and its modern versions that include the leaders of more representative and therefore more liberal governments.  More specifically, comments from progressive readers such as Steven Frisch who strongly asserts, “I have stated here on many occasions that I do not believe that political violence is justified in American society. I have also stated on many occasions that I believe that some of the rhetoric used on this page, and the tacit acceptance of the threat of, or insinuation of, political violence is philosophically un-American and un-patriotic.”

As a conservetarian, I take great issue with such a belief while acknowledging that it is held by most, but not all, liberals and progressives in America.  The new neo-Marxist wing of the Democratic Party has no such inhibitions against political violence.  In fact, in the written manifestos on their websites, neo-Marxist organizations such as BLM, proudly declare their support of, and even the necessity for such violence to topple corrupt and unjust political orders.  They back this up with their actions in the streets and voluminous statements to the press justifying politically motivated riots.

In these pages over the years I have often argued that in a liberal and free country, the citizens’ right and ability to violently oppose their government should always be recognized, celebrated, maintained, and not be insidiously abridged by government.  Although and without contradiction, if such a purposely violent cohort does arise, the non-violent citizens opposing that cohort have every right to petition and support their government in opposing such violence with all the force provided it by established laws.  In short, a free people are free only to the extent that they retain their ability to successfully resist their government in order to be able to fundamentally transform it through reform or revolution.

We understand these truths from the historical fact that America was born through political violence, and that the subsequent exercise of political violence has served to preserve the Union many times since.  To now declare that political violence has suddenly become “un-American and un-patriotic” as a basic right of a free people, provided for in our Constitution, is both preposterous and ignorant of the fundamental principles and means of our country’s founding and maintenance.

Here I once more expand on the rationale for these beliefs in ‘Versions of Fundamental Transformations’ which you can download here -  Download VersFundTransforms.  Long time readers are aware of the bases for these beliefs from the collected tenets of my credo and related commentaries over the years – see also the Bastiat Triangle, a Conservetarian Credo, and the Rebane Doctrine category of this blog.

The Durham Disgrace

George Rebane

According to our DoJ, in the spring of 2019 attorney John Durham was tasked with “exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,”  His mandate included determination of whether “intelligence collection activities by the U.S. government related to the Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign were lawful and appropriate.”

He has been at the task for over 18 months, and has produced little (one insignificant guilty plea) and reported diddly-squat on his progress.  Bottom line, no one outside his boss AG Bill Barr knows what progress he has made, or what Durham is currently pursuing.  The only reports about the investigation we hear are admonishments that there is “concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done.” (more here)

Well, hell yes!  The prime purpose of the investigation is to maximally inform the American electorate BEFORE the election about which low-lifes did what to whom with all the visibly criminal things that went on in Obama’s DoJ, FBI, et al to foment the ongoing attacks on Trump’s campaign and presidency.  There are smoking guns all over the place, and Durham was supposed see if there was enough to tie a bow of criminality on the whole affair.  For that he has had the widest latitude in how and where he can poke his nose.

And now we hear that he will not issue a report before the election, why?  Because it might affect the election.  Again – well, hell yes! If there is evidence there that would impact the election in the minds of reasonable voters, then we should be made aware of it in a timely manner.  There is NO dictum from anyone, including Barr, that Durham’s probe has to be all done with a nice stack of bound final reports coming from the printer before we know what he found out or didn’t find.  He can always publish an interim report, and let us know what he has discovered to date, AND then continue with his investigation as long a AG Barr lets him.

And as I’ve recommended before, if he has stuff that’s culpatory and that can’t be released, he should just say that, and then escrow his time-stamped evidence and investigative intents with an appropriate court or the DoJ.  But leaving the country in the dark as we head for the most impactive election of our lifetime, an election that already stinks to high heaven, should not be accepted by anyone in Congress or the administration concerned about the timely discovery of truth.  Holding in secret today evidence that would inform and advise the electorate is an historical crock of crap, and we all appear to have been made docile enough to accept it without a peep.

‘Crimes Against Humanity’ (updated 11oct20)

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”, Richard Feynman

George Rebane

Almost everything you’ve heard about Covid-19 (here also C19) from politicians, the media, and publicized scientists and clinicians is wrong.  Here at RR, early on I started looking at the pandemic with a gimlet eye.  I did this as a science professional and a longtime student of how politics and scientification have been illicitly cohabiting for decades, to the point that today it’s difficult to tell which is the john and which is whore.  The C19 pandemic has brought it all together, and now invites serious review of the disease, its hysterical public response policies, and the real prophylaxis and collateral damage that has resulted from the variously implemented policies.

For the better part of this year we have been subjected to pronouncements delivered from on high about C19's sacrosanct ‘science’, and the irrevocable wisdom of ‘following the science’.  All this as if science was a singular, unitary, and all-illuminating oracle speaking to us from Olympus in a clear and unambiguous voice.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and over the months more and more serious and credible people are beginning to find their voice and speak out against such specious beliefs.  For openers, I suggest that readers begin with ‘What the pandemic has taught us about science’ by Matt Ridley, MP in the House of Lords, that appears in the 9oct20 WSJ.

The levels of clinical, scientific, and political fraud launched at global populations is of historical proportions.  It may be argued that never before have so many billions of humans been so thoroughly bamboozled by their political leaders, abetted by a willing media citing grant-sucking scientists, go-along healthcare professionals, and profit-motivated pharma.  This has reached levels which have invited a German-based investigative committee headed by Dr Reiner Fuellmich to launch a multi-national class action suit, making the case that such cynically enforced policies have caused enough death and destruction worldwide to amount to a ‘crime against humanity’, a charge last litigated in Nuremberg in 1946. (H/T to reader)

Fuellmich gives an extensive presentation of cited data and information about the advent of C19, its history, and reactions to this corona virus.  In it he presents data and information (prepared for the lawsuit) about the characteristics and progress of the disease that I venture few of us know.  The video of the presentation takes a better part of an hour, but the educational takeaway is well worth it for those concerned about our governments’ reactions, and the continuing diktats of its truly insane response policies.

One of the strong points Fuellmich brings out is the testing scam based on the widely used PCR-based diagnostic test that produces essentially worthless results as it is applied here and abroad.  For a broader look at how our FDA views the C19 tests and testing landscape, you can visit their website here.

Finally, of the hundreds of clinicians, scientists, and public health professionals who have looked askance at the governments’ dealings with the C19 pandemic, three internationally prominent scientists in the field gathered last weekend in Great Barrington, Massachusetts to draft a declaration and give interviews (here) on the planet’s misguided responses to the virus.  Drs Martin Kuldorff, Sumetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya, professors respectively at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford Universities, came together to put their appeal to sanity out in the public with their ‘Great Barrington Declaration’ which I reproduce in its entirety below.

Growth v Tax Rate v Revenues (Addended)

The more you tax something, the less of it you get. – Fundamental tenet of economics rejected by the Left.

George Rebane

To the above we can add another truth rejected by all leftwingers – ‘Tax rates don’t impact economic behavior’.  Understanding how the Democrats ignore these fundamental aspects of economics, goes a long way to explain most, if not ALL, of the progressives’ public policies that have now reached their penultimate in the Green New Deal as reflected in the Democrats’ 2020 platform.

Taxes and regulations raise the cost of starting a business and then operating it for an acceptable profit.  First, let’s cut the crap that the overarching purpose of a business is NOT to make a profit for its owners who have put their own time, talent, and/or treasure at risk into the enterprise.  A for-profit enterprise can neither serve nor succor the needs of a broader klatch of so-called “stakeholders” if it is not able to do Job1 – make a profit that can be reinvested in the business and distributed to its shareholders.

There are millions of progressives, leftwingers, communists, socialists, liberals, … who neither understand nor believe the above fundamental truth about private enterprise.  In this short essay I will provide a very accessible quantitative argument that explains with numbers how ever higher taxes and more restrictive regulations cripple and kill businesses.  Trigger warning – if you are a member of one of the above groups who fundamentally believe that taxes don’t affect economic behavior, then this is the time to stop reading.

In this dissertation I illustrate quantitatively how higher tax rates not only stifle growth, but also markedly reduce government revenues.  Those with a smidgen of numeracy should be able to follow the arguments that relate to the revelatory numbers.  I invite you to examine the toy economic model shown in the graphic below.

Labor Day 2020 Laments

George Rebane

This Labor Day we again awakened to all lamestream media channels awash in various forms of anti-Trump vituperation and propaganda.  There is no talk or discussion of what the president has accomplished or of his second term plans, only endless repetition of the latest resurrected faux pas he uttered years ago.  Neither are the public apprised of Biden’s plans, for he has none of his own, and his handlers are at the horns of a dilemma – how not to reveal their devastating political desiderata that would surely lose them the election.  So the default is to spew diversions and lies more frequently and louder than ever.  And with Democrats’ total control of the Fourth Estate (even Fox News is timidly easing itself leftward), the Republicans flounder helplessly.

If our electorate has any understanding of the growing Marxist revolution, they are keeping it to themselves, perhaps to reveal their wisdom in November.  In the meanwhile, the observables don’t look good.

Here in California we are neck and neck with the other socialist dominated states in the race to the bottom.  One of RR’s astute longtime readers, ‘scenes’ (formerly ‘Scenes from the Apocalypse’ when he arrived on these pages), provided an excellent summation in a recent comment stream which is worth rereading –

… the Blue State Boogie continues.  "Far-left protesters march to the @PortlandPolice north precinct, start a street fire & begin dancing. They’re playing their new “F— Ted Wheeler” rap song."  At least the power is still on for a bit. I always assumed that California would morph into Latin America given unchecked immigration, but we seem to have managed it on our own. A China virus no one knows what to do with, problematic electricity, overpopulation and poor forest management keeping insufficient fire suppression busy, home insurance slowly but surely going away, Communist Anarchists (a thing I've never wrapped my head around) marching in the streets as part of an election, grumblings from the patriots, drug money running a great deal of the local economy. Welcome to South America.

Prominent conservative scholar, commentator, and film-maker, Dinesh D’Souza, is among the latest politically-savvy intellectuals who see the rising likelihood of a Great Divide.  He also joins those of us who have seen this future coming for some years now.  In an interview D’Souza tells FN’s Laura Ingraham that “recent riots and political unrest could lead to a rise of citizen militias around the country” while stating that “I’m not advocating this, I’m predicting it.  It is a natural and inevitable response to the militarization of one side.”  He goes on to point out that the rioting street thugs learned their hatred of America from today’s universities, which actually are no longer universities in the sense that they have eliminated the free discussion of ideas which has been the fundamental raison d’etre of universities upon which everything else that they may offer is built. (more here)  D’Souza’s latest documentary film ‘Trump Card’ is set for digital release on 9 October 2020.

D’Souza agrees with the longstanding Rebane Doctrine assessment, "I think that the Democratic plan is [to swap out] Biden after the election. They don't want Biden to keel over before the election.  The reason they picked him is they think they needed a white male to camouflage the racial radicalness of their party. It's not like some chaotic process produced these horrible candidates. They chose him."

And regarding the Great Divide, D’Souza maintains that the real reason the Democratic Party relies on force is that, “ultimately, they can only win if they can force us to live their way. Now, I don't think we're going to. We are no more going to submit to them and change our ways than perhaps they are going to submit to us. This raises the deeper question of how do we find a way going forward... We don't want the America they want and they don't want the America we want. The real question is, how do we coexist with each other. That's the real question of the future." (Emphasis mine)

What today’s rioting BLM and Antifa thugs have no clue about is that, come the real revolution, their undisciplined lifestyles and supporting values will be instantly abolished and replaced with organized, mandated, and disciplined somber marches under approved banners interspersed with enforced cheering.  There will be no more burning and looting; most of their visible leaders will be summarily shot.  An Orwellian peace will descend upon the land in which all public expressions will be pre-authorized, and private expressions duly noted for later adjudication.

From my perch, were there no Great Divide in our future, the road to tyranny then may well proceed according to the events of 1917 Russia.  History students recall that Russia’s Menshevik (‘minority’) socialists, under Kerensky, overthrew the czar in March to establish what turned out to be a weak and naïve anti-capitalist, pro-labor socialist regime that still played lip-service to a form of democracy.  Lenin’s Bolsheviks (‘majority’) never trusted the people and advocated a strong ‘dictatorship of the masses’ under an unabashed and ruthless central control.  In October the Bolsheviks ousted the Mensheviks and established communism as the state’s secular religion and template for organizing society.  This regime became the USSR and lasted for 80 years, until collapsing internally from massive corruption, inbred thuggery, and widespread incompetence.  For all those years, the people’s modus operandi was ‘They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.’  And this has been replicated under all subsequent communist regimes.  Such a merit-free/optional economic order is today proposed by the Democratic Party and its violent street cadres.

Happy Labor Day.

Civil Authority Unbridled

[Rev Dan Prout is a Nevada County Christian minister of the evangelical persuasion, and a friend.  He sent this thoughtful piece to a circle of his friends and congregants.  It addresses an important viewpoint shared by many concerned Christians in the land, myself included, and a call to stand for what we believe.  I post it as received.  gjr]

Rev. Dan Prout

One of Jesus’ most famous statements is, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.” The verse has been often referenced when talking about separation of Church and State. Jesus was applying a very subtle but important concept regarding societal authority. It is a concept and distinction largely lost in America today.

It is in our day, today, that we again see civil authority competing for power over everyday life and living. Jesus demonstrated in one sentence that there are two realms of authority simultaneously governing community life. In one statement, he affirmed the legitimate role of civil government while maintaining the religious, moral authority of God and godliness. These twin authorities are to govern in concert, their proper exercise providing a safe and blessed life experience, “that our lives may be quiet and peaceful” as the Apostle Paul put it.

All political issues are based in social issues. All social issues are based in values. All values come from religious precepts. It is, therefore, impossible to separate political matters from faith matters. The laws of a society are based inescapably in moral law. The first written law of the Bible, the Ten Commandments, demonstrates this point. Every one of the Ten – from Worship No Other Gods to Do Not Covet Your Neighbors Goods – establishes boundaries for one’s personal relationships both with God and with one’s neighbors. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and goodness represent the biblical law for our behavior, all standards for our relationships. These qualities are so universally accepted that Paul says there is no law against such things. (Galatians 5:12)

The purpose of Law, as Frederic Bastiat, the French philosopher, points out is not to guarantee justice but rather to prevent injustice. Understanding this reality, the Founders, in developing the U.S. Constitution, worked to bind the reach of government misbehavior by decentralizing powers. They leaned heavily upon the principles of the Bible which call individuals to personally restrain themselves from wrong doing and they expected the generations to follow to do the same. The strength of a nation’s social fabric is directly dependent on the level of individual liberty. Individual liberty is directly dependent on virtuous morality. A nation with liberty unbridled from strong virtue will fail. Daniel Webster wrote in 1823,“If the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of this land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.” His words spoken nearly 200 years ago have an inescapably prophetic accuracy for our present social and spiritual condition, and, as predicted, we have a government gone astray.

Civil authority must be informed and restrained by moral authority. It is the role of the Church to be bold enough to advise and even correct civil authority when it goes astray. Dr. Martin Luther King rightly observed, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state. It must be the guide and critic of the state and never its tool.”

The problem today is not that government and its leaders have lost their way; that is to be expected in the absence of vigorous moral argument. Rather, it is the Church, its leaders and its people, which has become complacent and ineffective in providing clear moral guidance in the society. To its great discredit, the Church has expected that civil authority can well function without the tangible presence of moral virtue. To its discredit, the Church has failed to bring preserving, moral salt to society, relegating the nation’s inhabitants to a hopeless life amidst moral and cultural decay.

Let us heed the admonition of Russian historian and philosopher Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spoken at Harvard University, “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.” It is time to stand.

The Blessings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

George Rebane

Three-quarters of a century ago today, the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (6aug45), followed three days later by another one on Nagasaki (9aug45).  At that time WW2 had raged for six years having killed almost 85 million people.  The planned invasion of Japan’s home islands in November 1945 would have extended the war for another two years with the Japanese – who, including women and children, were exhorted to fight to the death – to suffer another 5-10 million dead, and another 1.7-4 million allied casualties including 400,000-800,000 American dead.  Instead, the two atom bombings took somewhere between 130,000 and 225,000 Japanese killed, and ended the war less than a week later.  Nuclear physicist and former Los Alamos National Laboratory exec John Hopkins gives a more detailed accounting here.

Not enough credit has been given to President Truman for authorizing the bombings.  Truman had just learned of the Manhattan Project in June 1945, a couple of months after FDR’s death in April.  Given the bevy of pro/con arguments he had to consider in the midst of war and early days as President (after being kept in the dark and on the sidelines since being sworn in as VP), his decision to drop the bombs was heroic, for no one knew how the country and history would respond to such a justified slaughter of civilians.

Americans and the people of the world have been of two minds about the morality and ethics of that particular act that launched the Atomic Age.  The ‘America as an evil imperialist country’ contingent has argued from the start that dropping the bombs was a terminally immoral act and confirmed that the United States at its core is an evil nation.  This narrative has been delivered by the Left, here and abroad, in various forms and amplified into curricula taught to young Americans for over three generations.  The anti-American argument always starts with and remains focused on the human toll from the viewpoint of the victims (example here).  Once that emotional hook is set in the uneducated and lightly read, the expansion of the apologetic into the international socio-political landscape follows naturally, and another tranche of young leftwingers go into the world with an almost indelible rejection of anything that derives from what may be gathered under the ideology of the Right.

Those of us who have experienced war first hand, and subsequently expanded our horizons of critical thought are able to see the enormously greater good that Hiroshima and Nagasaki delivered to humankind.  Not only did these holocausts result in the immediate saving of millions of lives, but the unbelievable power of the bombs and resulting devastation in one act have stopped global conflicts between major powers that would have claimed more untold millions of lives.  And in that process we came to call the Cold War, one of the world’s two threatening communist tyrannies quietly collapsed, as the world continued to enjoy the peace of the bomb’s ‘mutually assured destruction’.

I harbor no expectation that any of these humanitarian accountings will change liberal minds, and let them see these highly localized tragedies of long ago as the greater blessing they have been to the world’s billions.  The resulting global Pax Americana, interrupted by the inevitable ‘brushfire wars’, may also, and perhaps more accurately, be called the Pax Atomica.  And if we do a rigorous examination of the underlying morality of such a global mercy killing, I believe that most of us will find these war-ending events of long ago to have satisfied the most rigorous demands that define ethical behavior.  The dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not die in vain.

E Pluribus Unum – Still? Really? (updated 2aug20)

George Rebane

‘There are more things that unite Americans than drive them apart.’  This shibboleth, or one in a similar vein, is often heard when conversation-lite turns to the polarization now visible everywhere in our land.  Unfortunately, these conversations don’t go much deeper than the participants sagely nodding their heads before abandoning the topic and hurriedly shifting to more comfortable topics.  Such tactics have always been eschewed in these pages, so let’s take an inventory of the things that unite and separate us.  Readers, as always, are invited to augment my inventory with edits and additions of their own.

The things that unite us –

1. We’re all Homo sapiens;
2. We co-habit within the same borders;
3. We drive mostly same kind of cars;
4. We eat mostly same foods;
5. We breathe the same air;
6. We dress similarly;
7. We enjoy same sports (mostly);
8. We vote in the same elections;
9. We use the same currency.

The things that divide us –

1. Language
2. History
3. Organization of society/economy (capitalist, collectivist, elitist, …)
4. Governance (role of nation-state, democracy, …)
5. Rights and Privileges (the armed citizen, Bastiat triangle of rights, voting, …)
6. Free speech
7. State of the nation (racist, imperialist, shining city on a hill, …)
8. Role of government (guarantor of freedoms, national security, economic security, …)
9. Role of education (trained/competitive workforce, common history and traditions, social contract, …)
10. Role of media (news, sports, entertainment, maintain common culture and currency, …)
11. America’s future (sovereignty, globalism)
12. Nature of Man (sexual diversity, gender identification, …)
13. Values (family, parenting, traditions, risk tolerance, …)
14. Ethics (racism, discrimination, equality, prejudice, …)
15. Individual Responsibility
16. National Sovereignty
17. Religion
18. Understanding of science
19. Awareness of current events
20. Patriotism (role of sacrosanct national totems, willing to defend, …)
21. Foreign Policy (world hegemon)
22. Logical thinking
23. National security (military, borders)
24. Private property (ownership, disposition, heritance, housing, …)
25. Wealth and Income (taxes, merit, enforced equality, …)

The only way that I can see healing such a devastating ideological breach is through education.  That requires the replacement of legions of incompetent socialist union shills with qualified teachers.  Even then it would take at least two generations to repair the damage.  And that is not going to happen.  So, given the Democrats’ most recent Great Leap Leftward, there is no palpable or plausible means that this polarization will cease, and we again become a more cohesive and unified people who can peacefully and productively live in one land.

Ergo, common ground between the two sides has long disappeared in the rearview mirror, and only two possible futures remain for Americans to determine their own path forward – the Left wins and forcefully subjugates the remaining Right (for we will not go quietly into that dark night), or the Right is able to convince the Left that we need to negotiate a Great Divide on the North American continent.  What then remains to be seen is how/whether the people of Canada and/or Mexico want to figure into the new North American order.

[I expand on each of the points which divide us in a downloadable pdf - Download E Pluribus Unum]

[2aug20 update]  This 8-minute video - 'The Deadliest Virus in the World' - explains in more graphic detail the historical crossroads at which we again find ourselves.

Cultural cohesion, it’s a’comin’

George Rebane

The country is well along its increasingly insane path to the long sought and much promised fundamental transformation.  As our recent commentaries and many excellent reader contributions in the related comment streams attest, the well-funded madness is growing by the day.  The latest expansions involve initiatives to completely erase and remake America’s history, moving from tearing down our national totems to closing museums which house the artifacts and tell the soon to be forbidden stories of our ‘evil past’.  Our public K-12 schools and academe have long prepared for these events, and produced the millions of mindless moilers now making mayhem in our cities and towns.

What I want to point out here is that in their expanding rage they are co-opting a Rebane Doctrine tenet, namely, society is best organized when people exercise their natural right to live among others who share their values, mores, customs, traditions, language, worldview, …, in short, abide with those who share a common culture.  Expressing the desire to do so is not evil per se, as the Left has been telling us all along.

On this road to revolution the Left is visibly reversing itself, and now not only approves of society living within a cohesive culture, but will define such a command culture for all to accept, with no exceptions.  The specifics of such command cultures have been most evident under communist regimes which force their morally imperative diktats onto the masses under the banners of ‘common good’.  In our major governmental and private institutions, including our post-capitalist corporations, these cultural strictures are already solidly ensconced and perfidiously policed to identify, shun and/or oust the non-conformists and historically tainted.

Today a wrong word or an ideological imperfection discovered in your record, no matter its vintage, is more than enough to get you fired, career ruined, or even qualify to be investigated for some bespoke civil or criminal infraction.  In the early days of the revolution, no provision for appealing the verdicts of the righteous mob is made.  Only later, as the revolution matures into the instruments of power will our new masters establish the traditional institutions to isolate and redeem those wearing the indelible mark of the identified deplorables.  We have seen that happen with the Soviet Gulag, the Cambodian and Vietnamese re-education camps, and the wholesale forced labor incarcerations of hundreds of millions carried out by the Chinese communists during their cultural revolutions, and who currently house their culturally incorrigible Uighurs in massive prison complexes. (more here)

My point is that finally the Left has also accepted and declared its mandate for a culturally cohesive society that will be conformed for the common good.  America’s Right has always promoted the existence of divers culturally cohesive communities living in harmony – e.g. the Quakers, Amish, Mormons, … .  The methods we have historically used to separate such communities have not always been civil, and some have had definite racist motivations – e.g. against African-Americans and the Irish.  Nevertheless, the criterion has been maintenance of cultural conformity and not the genocide of the expelled culture.  In the last century we also learned that anyone of any genetic make-up can and has been accepted into any given culture.  In sum, ‘race’, however it’s defined, is no longer a relevant factor for cultural membership.

(In my native land, Estonians were for centuries considered genetically inferior and culturally corrupt in turn by their German, Swedish, and Russian conquerors.  We were treated as slaves and then serfs by our masters who even imposed ‘first night’s rights’ on newly married brides in order to ‘improve the breed’.  It was not until the mid-19^th century that Estonian culture came to be recognized, and was then able to work its way into peerage among established European cultures.)

So where are we on the adoption of culturally coherent communities?  Well, both sides have now declared their in-principle preference for them.  The big difference is that the Right wants Americans to have the ability to establish such communities according to their own desires and in places where similarly minded people can move to join together in various locales/regions across this land.  The Left wants to impose its new one-size-fits-all politically correct culture on everybody in America.  It wants to organize our transformed society on the historically failed models of its collectivist forebears, with the claim that this time we’ll do it right, embodying all the inclusiveness, social justice, and equality that were the watchwords used to sell the great unwashed on previous versions of socialism cum communism cum tyranny.  So once again it has started with ‘we’ll take from the greedy and racist rich and give to those who can’t or won’t’, all that’s required is unquestioning conformity.

And it has already started with Job One – the utter destruction of America as we have known it – now going on in a neighborhood near you.

Journalists' Opinions

George Rebane

City Editor of The Union, Alan Riquelmy, writes that ‘What matters is your opinion’ in the 20may20 edition of the newspaper.  His op-ed piece is about the Tara Reade imbroglio, and his involvement interviewing the lady and her contacts.  But that’s not what drew my interest in his remarks.  Let me begin with the admission that I don’t know Mr Riquelmy personally, have perhaps howdied with him at some local affair we both attended, and have exchanged cordial emails about some Other Voices pieces I have submitted for publication.  But from what I do know of him, everything confirms that he’s a fine gentleman and a diligent journalist doing a commendable job during difficult times at The Union.  Full disclosure:  As a member of the Union’s editorial board, Jo Ann has known and worked with Mr Riquelmy during the years she has been on the board, and she speaks highly of him.

What really piqued my interest in Riquelmy’s op-ed, and actually gave me concern, was his attitude about opinions that people, including him, hold.  Since Ms Reade has local roots, Riquelmy did some interviews with her about her allegations and published them in the newspaper.  The word got out that Riquelmy might have some new perspectives about Reade that would be of interest to wider national audiences.  Therefore, some media reporters wanted to interview Riquelmy, but he “declined all of them”, stating that “the reason is because my opinion on Reade and her allegations doesn’t matter.”

I would take exception to that sentiment/belief.  There’s more here than just his opinion on Reade and her allegations.  What may be of greater importance is how he, as an experienced professional journalist, came to the opinions he formed from his interviews and research.  Most certainly that is my greater interest, and I submit is also the interest of other media professionals.  Today, opinions about Reade et al are a dime a dozen, but Riquelmy had a unique opportunity to form his opinions, and that is of interest.

If we take a step back, we see that ‘matter’ is itself a subjective opinion.  What and how something matters is in the eye of the matterer.  Since none of us can claim to be paragons of objectivity, how someone of note and interest forms opinions and views of the world matters much, in this case to Mr Riquelmy’s readers of whom I am one.  We who regularly read the words that he puts through his ‘matter filter’ would benefit knowing about the contours, tenets, and operation of that filter.  Because such a matter filter is an embodiment of one's belief system, knowing of it we will know from where someone's ideas and assertions are coming.

Without such knowledge, the reader is left to solve two intertwined puzzles – first, understanding the chosen words and how they were assembled, and second, from what foundation did such choices and assembly arise.  Today, journalism is one of the few professions that has long been consigned to the bilges of public opinion, and for very good reasons.  One of them is the journalists’ assumed hubristic mantle of objectivity, which almost all of them wear poorly.  A journalist who reveals certain relevant tenets of his belief system to readers would be a breath of fresh air to the profession.  And who knows, it may even become a welcome new standard to lift the media industry from its dismal depths.

Coda.  As RR readers know, I am an explicitly professed ideologue, commentator, and definitely NOT a journalist (more here).  However, I pride myself in having the confidence to make my own credo (belief system) fully known to my readers, along with a glossary of terms which I use that may have a more specific or different definition than found in dictionaries, or worse, incorrectly assumed by the reader. (see upper right panel)  My credo is not poured in concrete or recorded on stone tablets.  Instead, it is open to critical examination by one and all, and since I am a Bayesian, it is malleable in the Keynesian sense.  As Fisher and Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project taught us long ago (more here), the subject matter discussed in these pages demands nothing less.  The only downside I’ve encountered is that readers, either innumerate and/or burdened with calcified ideologies, have not always found my ideas easy to understand.  Nevertheless, I soldier on. 

Liberty’s Twilight - 13may20

George Rebane

Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in her Louisville, KY home when the police erroneously broke through her front door in the middle of the night seeking a narcotics suspect who was already in police custody.  Not knowing the invaders during the break-in, Ms Taylor’s boyfriend sought to defend themselves by shooting one of the assailants in the leg.  In the following melee the other police officers returned fire, pumping eight rounds into Ms Taylor and killing her.  Her boyfriend was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of a police officer.  The family is now suing the police department (more here).

Over the years we have lost count of this kind of mistaken killings of innocents by incompetent law enforcement agencies.  But that is not the real point here.  What’s germane is that our homes are no longer our castles.  We have no right to defend ourselves within the confines of our own four walls when LE executes one of its surprise assaults into our living quarters, our most inner sanctums.  These unnecessary attacks mimic criminal home invasions which now, according to the ever-growing leviathan, put the onus on the home owner to ascertain the identity of those breaking through his front door BEFORE he is allowed to start defending himself.  The assailant now has the de jure right to take the first shots at the victim.  And only after the assailant’s identity has been confirmed by the victim, can his defense begin.  Moreover, in some states it’s not even legal to ‘stand your ground’ in your own house if it is later determined that you could have retreated out of the back door or an open window.  The law has been stood on its head, and we sheeple must comply.

In a practical sense, there is never a need for LE to ambush someone with deadly force in a known residence.  The state always has the resources to surround the habitat and then make their presence known.  LE officers breaking and entering in the middle of the night is now an established tactic of state thuggery.  According to our Constitution and Rebane Doctrine, an American has every right to initiate the use of deadly force against any unidentified assailant who forcefully enters his home.  And an innocent man being accused of attempted murder of a police officer after such an incident is the beyond-cynical elimination of the last vestiges of justice that should be brought to bear after such a tragic incident.  Our quiet acceptance of these proceedings, just because it happened in distant Louisville, is testimony to how inured we all have become to the growth of our autocratic governments in these United States.

C19 - a rose by any other name would …

‘For yourself, never seek justice, only mercy.’ Coach Dick Beedy

George Rebane

The pathogen causing today’s worldwide pandemic is referred to by many labels – novel coronavirus, Covid-19, 2019-nCoV, SARS-CoV-2, Wuhan virus, CCP virus, China virus, … .  The politically correct don’t want to attach a “stigmatizing” name to anything that may gore the reputation of one of their champions in today’s ongoing ideological narrative that propagandizes and defends their vision of a brave new world, so the WHO selected Covid-19 as its official name to the virus.

My own penchant for labels favors those that have the fewest readily-available characters, eschewing all unnecessary delimiters (which are also characters), and that unambiguously identify that which is labeled.  As a bleeding edge techie all my life, I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of giving new names to countless things just discovered, invented, developed, … that never had a name, let alone a short spiffy name or a distinguishing TLA (three letter acronym).

After reviewing the plethora of labels for our current dastardly ‘bug’, I said what the hell, and referred to it simply as C19 in these pages – writing or speaking elsewhere, I pick a more communicative label from the above list.  Nevertheless, I have been taken to task here by one of our more tightly-wound, assiduous intellects, and longtime readers with a technical background.  His point is not so much that RR readers would misunderstand, as it is that C19 doesn’t accurately and repeatedly focus blame on the country, ideology, and political party to blame for loosing this dreadful disease on the world, nor is it the technically correct label for the virus.

He has a point worth considering on the ‘blame’ component of his criticism – screw the technically correct part.  Since I am a dedicated anti-communist, anti-collectivist ideologue of established repute (I suspect it’s in my double-helix), I should take every opportunity to dun the dastardly sumbiches of the CCP when writing about C19.  After all, the CCP lays uncontested claim to operating history’s biggest murder machine on mankind, having killed hundreds of millions of people, and making life a misery for more hundreds of millions.

But then again, I’m also a somewhat lazy sumbich, especially when in the white heat of laying down some thoughts on the keyboard.  So for the time being at least, I will go on using C19 in these pages, and, without prejudice, continue suffering the subsequent slings and arrows that may still come my way.

Scattershots – 28jan20 (updated 2feb20)

George Rebane

Mizzou is tracking student class attendance in hopes of increasing academic standards.  This to me is mind boggling.  What kind of majors are today’s students pursuing that allows them to pass and graduate with spotty or no class attendance??  Don’t answer that.  This report on FN is no doubt unique; can’t see any lamestream outlet admitting to this kind of woke academics for whatever generation is now going through the progressive halls of ivy.  Another confirming factor as to why they come out dumb and compliant.  In my course of study, and I’m a lifetime student, I could not conceive of cutting class without getting detailed notes of the lecture and still expect to do well in the course.  None of the stuff that any of us studied in the bygone era could you skate to a decent grade by just cramming for the mid-term and final from some course text.  Every course had something unique (usually new research results) contributed by the professor that went beyond the text, and you could bet the ranch that one or more exam questions would require mastery of that special approach or technique.  The University of Missouri is now desperately tracking the whereabouts of students during their class hours in order to encourage regular class attendance.  What kind of majors are these pinheads pursuing?!

[29jan20 update] Trump’s Israeli/Palestine peace plan calls for a two-state solution.  The Palestinians are rejecting it on the basis of their not getting an authentic sovereign nation-state out of the deal.  Israel will not permit the new Palestine to have a military and the plan calls for the disarming of Hamas and Hezbollah.  Also Israel will have oversight of Palestine’s foreign policy and maintain control of a narrow band of territory immediately contiguous to its borders.  Given past history, the plan looks reasonable including its provision for a transportation tunnel connecting Gaza to the West Bank.  To me the sticking point in all these attempts has been the lack of an economic incentive for Palestinian Arabs to trade complete autonomy for riches.  For years I have argued that any proposed solution include making Gaza into a freeport.  Freeports come in various legal and operational configurations, but their main function is to cut red tape and taxes/fees so as to enable facile and free movement of goods between nations.  Gaza is conveniently located near the Mediterranean end of the Suez Canal, at one of the world’s trade crossroads.  Rebane Doctrine for world peace and prosperity calls for building a large harbor at Gaza (there are gazillions of tons of dirt, rocks, and sand nearby), and making that strip of land a cash cow for the Palestinian people.

Wanna see the turd in the pipe to progress in California?  The California Environmental Quality Act is one of the most egregious pieces of legislation that has proscribed property rights, free enterprise, liberty and progress in general in California.  All of it brought to you by the progressive socialists already successful in reducing California as one of the least desirable states in which working people, entrepreneurs, and job creators would want to put down roots.  Each successive study shows more self-reliant people leaving the state while the gimmes are pouring in.  Here's one of the more significant hurtles you have to clear if you want to build anything in California.

[30jan20 update]  ‘Civilization is History at Yale’ convincingly argues art critic and commentator Roger Kimball.  The university is drastically and dramatically changing its decades-long curriculum on western civilization that now has focused on the arts.  The claim of the progressive professors is that “great art is too white, straight, European and male”, so it’ll have to give way to the latest socialist cum communist agitprop.  Instead, as reported in the Yale Daily News, art history will now be taught from a wider perspective that emphasizes “Globalism, gender, class, race, capitalism, (and art’s) relationship with climate change will be a key theme.”  Given the mind-bending Orwellian tack already firmly ensconced in our public school curricula, it’s not a big leap to consider that our universities are now graduating people who embrace values and purposes that we used to connect with the Manchurian Candidate of yore.  And they are emerging by the thousands to begin careers in public institutions, politics, news media, education, and the entertainment industry.  'Lux et veritas' indeed.

[2feb20 update] ‘The Democrats May Have Lost – But They’re Still Smarter than You’ is a report on some analyses on the matter by Clarice Feldman in 2feb20 American Thinker.  Longtime readers know that our liberal commenters have touted their intellectual acumen viz us knuckle-dragging conservetarians et al.  Well, this article presents the opposite view, which “should not be too surprising. On the 22 General Surveys using the verbal ability scale since 1974, for every single one, conservative Republicans score significantly higher than the rest of the public combined. As for Republicans overall, they score significantly higher in verbal ability than democrats in all five decades, including the 2010’s combined. … In 1996, the GSS employed another module lifted from a standard 1Q test, one testing analogical reasoning. Again Republicans and conservative Republicans in 1996 performed significantly better on analogical reasoning than the rest of the public and significantly better than Democrats.”

On Western Civilization

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 January 2020.]

Across the globe western civilization is under an historic and relentless assault.  Today most countries – developed and developing – have adopted and practice many fortuitous aspects of western civilization with attributes and social norms developed in the west.  Nevertheless, the world’s leftwing institutions, in their work toward universal collectivization, see the stubborn survival of western culture, along with its mores and values, as the main impediment to achieving one-world governance of a homogenized global population.

Today the unifying objectives for this globalization effort are summarized in the United Nation’s Agenda 2030 (formerly known as Agenda 21).  This coherent effort is strongly denied, and identified as a fake news conspiracy by the progressive press.  You can make up your own mind on this by reading the UN’s globalization objectives, and comparing them to the public policies adopted and proposed by the Left’s political parties in the West.

When we examine the contributions of western civilization to humanity, we are overwhelmed by how the adoption of its tenets and practices dramatically increased standards of living, survival rates, and the quality of life across the globe.  It was western culture that was key to the ending of slavery worldwide, increasing literacy rates and access to education, emancipating women, and eradicating starvation along with many of our dreaded diseases. (more here)

Harvard historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Niall Ferguson, identifies key contributions of western civilization that include the notion of competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern science-based medicine, consumer societies, and the win-win rewards of the work ethic.  These are sometimes referred to as western civilization’s “killer apps”. (more here and here)

Ferguson points out that these apps “are all interrelated to developments that occurred concurrently in the West. Property rights and the work ethic of the West rise directly from Christianity. They stem from a respect for the person and their property, a rejection of corruption (theft via bribes to those in power), and respect for the laborer. Christianity isn't as pro-business as Judaism, but the Christian West thrived after it gained respect for business and allowed reasonable interest on debt. That led to consumer society, reinforced by the work ethic.

The scientific revolution wasn't possible before Christianity reformed to become less fundamentalist, though the belief that God was rational and study was morally acceptable, was only possible in the Christian world. In the Islamic world, to question Allah is to risk being murdered for blasphemy, (which explains) why science stalled in the Muslim world once the religion became a majority faith in any area. In Chinese society, the belief that everything is part of a complex, inseparable whole prevented development of math-based scientific laws. Only Christian society, that both permitted science beyond mere observation and belief you COULD develop such rules without risking your safety, explains why the West alone had a scientific revolution. And that led directly to modern medicine.”

The value and success of these so-called killer apps became apparent wherever their European and American practitioners showed how they worked.  As a result, over the last century they were quickly adopted by people of all cultures who understood them.  And as Ferguson points out, “The rapid rise of Singapore, Japan and South Korea after adopting these "killer apps" of prosperity show you don't have to be Christian or of a Christian derived culture to benefit from them.”  But today, Ferguson points out, Western predominance is waning since the world ‘downloaded’ and now uses these killer apps, “while the West has literally lost faith in itself.”

As a struggling Christian, I remain undeniably a child, student, and defender of Western Civilization.  Long time listeners to these commentaries know I am also a conservetarian, and view the world through the lenses of one who has survived both the catastrophic events of Stalin’s communism and Hitler’s Nazism. (more here) To me, these collectivist ideologies and their practice are not merely intellectual theories about how to organize society.  To millions of us they were existential, we experienced them in their unmediated raw form.  These experiences shaped me, and today in these commentaries, they shape my words in defense of the West.

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.

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid!

George Rebane

While Messrs Smith, Bastiat, Mises, Hayek, and Freedman explained it all, Mr Henry Hazlitt succinctly summarized the whole thing in his classic, Economics in One Lesson (1946).  This book has become such a fundamental text, that you don’t even have to buy a copy of it any more.  It is now online in its entirety - many of us did buy it, having read it long before the internet, and now displaying it on the bookshelf for dinner guests.  The Foundation for Economic Education features it here.  For readers wishing to free themselves from the stifling Marxist economics that our progressives use to mismanage both our national and state economies, I strongly recommend checking out FEE’s ample and informative offerings on economics and society.  See also the Mercatus Center.

America is such a blessed country that illustrates the economic principles taught by the above giants.  An example of this is the graphic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shown nearby.  It shows how Obama’s leftwing economic policies held back the nation’s recovery for eight straight years, and what happened during the first three years of President Trump’s administration when the straps on free markets were loosened a bit (they still need to loosen much more).

This information appeared in the 11jan20 WSJ under a piece titled ‘The Economy’s Inequality Dividend’.  When posting such compelling data that exposes and illuminates another Big Lie of the Left, it is always interesting, revealing, and entertaining to read the countering apologetics from the chorus of collectivists who dare to venture into this arena of ideas so foreign to all they have been taught.  Albeit, there are not too many of them, for here as elsewhere, discretion is still the better part of valor, especially of the misguided kind.

Coincidentally, today the 11jan20 Union published an excellent supporting column by Mr Jim Driver (here), who offered ‘Twelve Real Economic Facts’ first published by FEE.   Here we present them as published.

1. In any freely chosen economic exchange, both parties will, at least in their own minds, benefit from the exchange. This is called “Gains from Trade.”
2. The value of any good or service can only be determined by the individual human mind. This is called “Subjective Value.”
3. Nothing is free. The cost of anything that you want is what you are willing to give up, to get what you want. This is called “Opportunity Cost.”
4. Economic wealth, in a free society, does not come from “a top down planned economy created by so called experts” but from individuals’ actions that result in unplanned outcomes for the whole society. This is called “Spontaneous Order.”
5. Individuals act to maximize their own reward. This is called “Incentives.”
6. Cooperation between individuals creates value when a seller can produce a given item or service at a lower cost than the buyer would spend to produce it himself. This is called “Comparative Advantage.”
7. No one person or group knows enough to plan (and force) social outcomes, because information necessary for social order is distributed among its members and revealed only in human action. This is a “Knowledge Problem.”
8. In addition to the tangible and quantifiable effects, there are quite often invisible costs and unmet opportunities to any action or policy. These are often called “Unintended Consequences.”
9. Institutions influence the decisions that individuals make. For example, property rights by definition can only exist when ownership is vested in the individual and not in the commons. This means that “Rules Matter.”
10. Each person makes choices with the intention of improving his or her condition. This means that “As Individuals, the Actions we make are Purposeful.”
11. Voluntary association permits people of all backgrounds to interact peaceably, create value, cultivate personal character and build mutual trust. This helps create “A Civil Society.”
12. Wealth is generated whenever someone, by acting on an opportunity to gather under-used, or misused, or undiscovered resources or ideas, creates value for others. This is called “Entrepreneurship.”

RR's longtime assiduous readers will recognize that the above flies in tight formation with my credo, and the part of Rebane Doctrine published in these pages over the years.  My duty, as I see it ;-)

A Larger Context for Trump’s Next Mid-East Move

George Rebane

Thanks to President Trump, we are again at a crossroads which gives us an opportunity to define America’s stand in the Mid-East, and a related strategy for a new crisp and clear global foreign policy, one understood by all to achieve and maintain a power balance that promotes peace and prosperity to a satisficing level.  In the following I once more outline such a policy, this time in a structured format for easy reference in subsequent examinations.

1. Overarching fact and fundamental axiom – America has been the world’s White Hat Hegemon (WHH) since the end of WW2, and has almost single-handedly created and maintained a world order that has enormously benefited all levels of humanity across the globe.
2. Driving premise – Nevertheless, America has fulfilled its WHH role in a hesitatingly reactionary manner, never sure that its latest overseas foray is something that it should undertake or of which Americans understand and approve.
3. Consequently, we should openly accept and declare that America sees itself as the world’s WHH who will use our wealth and power to consistently serve the national interests of the US and its allies. This declared role has no stipulated end date; it will continue indefinitely until the world order changes into some yet unforeseen and more benign format.
4. America seeks a balance of local power in the Mid-East in which there is to be no single regional hegemon, a position now contested for by Turkey and Iran. We will most vehemently oppose the establishment of any kind of fundamental pan-Islamist political union among the region’s nation-states.  The first plank of such a policy is that we and our allies will not condone any radical Islamist body to acquire nuclear weapons.
5. We recognize that the maintenance of such a distributed world order of general peace and prosperity will require engaging in intermittent, relatively cheap (assuming we maintain primacy in combat technologies and force levels), and brief brushfire police actions (call them wars if you must). This will necessarily require the regular sacrifices by our military that will number a small fraction of the annual casualties we willingly suffer driving cars, imbibing addictive substances, and calmly accepting the annual toll of preventable medical mistakes. Nothing comes free, most certainly not life under a global government.
6. In the current mid-east situation, we will get into a tit-for-tat (TFT) exchange with Iran – we will react forcefully to every Iranian attack on American life and limb in the region and elsewhere in the world. And we will also react with mutual benefit when Iran so acts.
7. As the WHH we will consistently practice TFT when and wherever American lives are at stake.
8. TFT has been shown – both historically and game theoretically (cf. iterated prisoners’ dilemma) - to be the most effective strategy for driving and maintaining cooperation between two contentious parties. The three characteristics of TFT are 1) never defect first, 2) when the other defects, immediately counter with at least as much force as displayed by the defector, 3) forgive immediately when the other party ceases and desists.
9. When the lives of an ally’s nationals are involved, we will openly offer them ‘WHH services’ in that we will arm, transport, and surveil for them (i.e. provide logistical, sensor, communications, command & control, etc systems). However, the afflicted/attacked ally must commit to put its own ‘boots on the ground’ and in harm’s way – America will not risk its blood and treasure for an ally not willing to first risk its own blood and treasure in its national interests.  Message to allies - as long as you’re willing to lead and bleed, then, and in concert with our own national interests, we will support your fight and have your back.

For the above outlined policy I humbly solicit contributions and criticisms before incorporating a refined version into the body of Rebane Doctrine.