Be Polite in the Left's Climate of Hate?

I think calls for politeness are a waste of time.  Calls for polite discourse are usually signs that liberals are losing the argument.  It’s an implied false equivalence that’s completely ridiculous.  Liberals, by whatever name they call themselves to conceal their designs, want to replace Constitutional democracy with a dictatorship of progressive government experts.  They want power to vest in an elected president and his regulatory agencies.  They want to rule by executive and regulatory decree, backed up by “living Constitution” judges who make the Constitution and the law say whatever is convenient at the moment, no matter what was originally ratified or passed in Congress.  There is no way to compromise with people driven to achieve these goals.

The problem is that the rules are not the same for everybody. Liberals are never polite when it comes to attacking their political enemies.  I think turnabout is more than just fair play. I think it’s required for the survival of our Constitutional Republic.  I've personally been called a Nazi in the last 24 hours for expressing support for finding actual evidence of Trump's collusion with Russians before hanging him. Given that my grandfather was Jewish, and my wife and 5 of my 6 grandchildren are Jewish, that's a pretty big insult. Not just Trump, but every major Republican figure has been called Hitler, including the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.  Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, daughter Ivanka and their two children are Orthodox Jews, but calling Trump Hitler is considered a normal polite thing to do. I think that at least 1,000 deaths should be required before anyone qualifies for the Hitler accusation. Based on my last name, some liberal lout suggested I was a drunken Indian and thus made no sense. My family is from Moffat, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. I can't count how many times I was called racist for opposing the policies of President Obama, aka Barry the Brilliant. The last time my sister-in-law was in town, she told me to order my beer by saying, "I like my beer, like my sister-in-law, black."  If we don’t answer leftist lies, they are assumed to be true.  Silence is assent under English common law.

Since the left paints the right with a very broad brush as not just misguided, but evil, the patience of people on the right has, understandably, worn rather thin. We are starting to apply the rules that the left applies to conservatives against the left. If the left paints us with a broad brush, we can do the same to them. If the left doesn’t like it, then they should stop dishing it out. If Hillary Clinton can take donations from actual Russians through the Clinton Foundation and then approve the sale of 20% of US uranium reserves to Russian interests as Secretary of State, then apply the same standard of no big deal to Trump staffers' meetings with Russians. Otherwise comrades, the Party is going to experience some rough language, because, speaking personally, I've run out of politeness when it comes to treason allegations with hearsay evidence from unnamed sources.

If the Gabby Giffords shooting was a result of a right wing "climate of hate," why isn't the recent shooting of Steve Scalise the result of a left wing climate of hate? From where I stand, the left’s climate of hate is a lot more intense than the opposition to Obama ever was. Left wing commentators speculate about using the 25th Amendment to declare Trump unfit for office. They call for a military coup to replace Trump. They call Trump a danger to all life on earth. Doesn't that make the left the creators of a "climate of hate" against Republicans by their own logic? Why aren't the Liberal Talking Heads calling for everyone on the left to stand down to prevent further violence? Because they want to promote further violence! Black Lives Matter was only the beginning. Unless we see calls on the left to stand down, the right is justified, by the left's own rulebook, to denounce them for their "climate of hate." The rules have to be the same for everybody. 

Unilateral verbal disarmament is surrender to these “progressive” people.  They want to replace representative government with dictatorship by progressive experts.  If you’re not OK with their program, they are going to get violent.  They will kill police and political figures that get in their way.  Like some college presidents did lately, progressives will order police to “stand down” while leftist mobs do their dirty work.  Politics ain’t bean bag.  These folks are playing for keeps and the entire Republic is at stake.  The time for civil discourse is over.  It’s time to stop pulling punches.

Original Article:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448643/divided-america-people-must-connect-america-survive

Jail the Clinton and Obama Underlings

I think we need two special prosecutors, one for the IRS harassment of Tea Party nonprofit groups and one for the Clinton email and Clinton Foundation pay to play scandal. However, I think the focus should be different from usual on both investigations. I think that the special prosecutors ought to offer Hill and Bill immunity in return for testimony against their underlings. I think we don't need to go any higher than IRS Department Head Lois Lerner and IRS Commissioner John Koskinen at the IRS. Anybody higher than that I think should be offerred immunity for testimony against Lerner and Koskinen. I think the targets in both investigations should be the underlings. The idea is to put as many as possible in jail. This has a lot of advantages. It doesn't look political at all. These people broke the law, so they get convicted and go to jail. We don't need to bag any high fliers here. What we want is the G-d awful truth. We also want to send a message to the next set of underlings. Your masters will go free. You will go to jail. They can't protect you. You can't protect yourself by testifying against them. It will tend to discourage underlings from following unlawful orders. The current orientation of taking out the hard targets at the top is bad strategy. It looks like a political vendetta, as the article says. However, doing nothing encourages a feeling of impunity, that being a Democrat means never having to say you're sorry. That doesn't work either. Plus, right now, the Democrats are winning every news cycle with their leaks of inuendo and fabrication, signifying nothing. A number of public trials and convictions will reballance the news cycles and remind people that the Obama Administration and the Clintons were outlaws.

Unlimited Government Makes Everything Political

Progressives have gotten pretty far along in getting the government to take care of everything. If government is taking care of everything, then everything is political. Politics becomes more and more personal, because the government decisions involve more and more personal decisions. The scope of government is the scope of politics. If we want less politics in our lives, we need the government to take care of less.

Today's malaise is a function of modern communication and transportation, which allows government to be more intrusive in more places than ever before. In 1917, a picture of the President, Queen or King might have been on the wall, but you didn't have to listen to them every day, explaining how great they were. In 1917, bureaucrats could not travel 3,000 miles in 4 or 5 hours and make sure their orders were being carried out to the letter. Officials couldn't coordinate new rules daily, even if they wanted to. The communications systems of 1917 didn't give officials the illusion that they knew everything. Governments have always aspired to total control, but now they think technology gives them a chance to achieve it. In times past, it wasn't realistic because of the physical limts imposed by transportation and communications technology.

Progressives believe that the world should be run by experts who will make better decisions because they are better informed about what the choices entail. The internet and other Information Technology has led progressives to believe experts have all the tools they need to run almost everything better than people can run it themselves.

Actual experience shows that governments are not good at taking care of everything. They gererally fail at it and go bankrupt. Venezuela used to be a prosperous member of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. In 1998, Hugo Chavez was elected President on a platform of taking care of everything, including helping the poor and free medical care for all. We'll call his program socialism for short. Chavez continued in office until his death in 2013. His hand picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, took over after Chavez died. Now, Venezuelans don't have enough to eat and are short of medical supplies like antibiotics and the poor have nothing to eat.

Government can't take care of everything, because the experts are a relatively small group making decisions when the government runs things. Being human, even super human as progressives believe they are, they can't beat an entire country of individuals evaluating all the information available and making their own decisions based on what they want for themselves and their families. Government experts, or bureaucrats as some people call them, have to oversimplify to set up government programs because otherwise they face information overload. So they set things up with a limited number of options. People have to fit themselves into the limited options. If they don't fit, they are forced to fit. If bureaucrats don't like certain groups, like traditional Catholics and Evangelical Protestants, then the options for them don't fit very well at all. With power comes the temptation to abuse it.

Voters Revolt as Governments Make Decisions For Them

The discontent in Western democracies is due to their becoming less and less democratic.  The problem is increasingly arbitrary decisions governments are making supposedly to take care of their people.  Progressives world-wide seem to believe that large segments of the population are too ignorant and stupid to make their own decisions.  This runs counter to John Locke’s basic principle that government requires the consent of the governed.
 
In the US, consent of the governed is the basic principle the country was built on.  John Locke first coined the phrase as part of his “Two Treatises on Government,” published in 1690 to justify replacing King James II of England with William and Mary in 1688.  So it’s important in Britain as well.  Consent of the governed is what allowed Parliament to legislate the Act of Settlement in 1701, which set the rule of Succession for the British Monarchy that’s still in force today.
 
Locke thought that government exists to preserve the life, liberty and property of each person it governs.  This phrase, edited to make it more user friendly, was used in the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  The chief purpose of government in Western democracies today is to regulate life, constrict liberty and redistribute property, usually without the consent of the governed.
 
Current US government practice is that almost all new laws that pass Congress are passed as shells, which are filled in later by regulatory agencies, executive orders and court rulings.  The problem with regulations, executive orders and court decisions is that none of the processes used to make these things is designed to get the consent of the governed.  Conversely, the voters can’t hold the regulatory agencies, executive departments and judges responsible for their actions.  In the US, regulatory boards are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, to fixed terms of office.  Judges are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate for life terms.
 
While I’m not quite as clear about how things work in Europe, it appears to me that the European Union does business the same way.  Most of their important policies seem to be the result of regulatory agencies or court decisions.  Voters don’t get to hold the decision makers accountable.
 
Bypassing legislatures makes the flow of new regulations arbitrary and largely unpredictable.  What are, in effect, laws come out of murky processes in back rooms at regulatory agencies or government executive departments.  Then they are subject to review in the courts where the decisions are also hard to predict.  The process is like a ping pong match, and the ball bounces around with almost no attempt to gain the consent of the people who will bear the burden of the new rules.  The chaotic nature of regulatory processes inhibits long term private sector investment.  You’re not going to invest in something which takes 5 or 10 years to pay off if it could be regulated out of existence in 3 to 6 months.
 
In the US, we have an especially virulent form of this chaos called the “Living Constitution.”  Most people probably think that the Constitution is like a contract.  The meaning of a contract is fixed when the contract is signed.  So logically, the meaning of the Constitution or a Constitutional Amendment should be fixed at the time it’s ratified.  The “Living Constitution” doctrine says that the meaning of the Constitution changes over time, based on changing modern conditions.  This works out as an excuse to alter the Constitution in the Supreme Court by finding new meaning in the Constitution to suit progressive fashion.  In the past, Justices had to decide based on what the law or the Constitution said, whether they like it or not.  Now Justices can decide cases based on what they would like the law to be.
 
The president wields almost all of the power of the modern regulatory state in the US.  He or she issues executive orders, in effect controls all regulatory agencies and appoints all judges, including Supreme Court Justices.  The appointment of “Living Constitution” Justices was extremely important to the left.  Because of Antonin Scalia’s death and the age and ill health of 2 or 3 other Justices, whoever won 2016 was going to be decisive in deciding whether the “Living Constitution” doctrine prevailed or not.  The normal ways to change the Constitution require 3/4ths of the States to ratify an amendment.  Since Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states, that isn’t going to happen for progressives.  Their only shot at big changes was cheating with a “Living Constitution” in the Supreme Court.  That’s why Trump published a list of 21 judges he would consider appointing to the Supreme Court.  All of them were original meaning judges, not “Living Constitution” judges.  This list gave conservative Republicans, like me, the confidence to vote for Trump no matter how bad his manners were.  Voting for Hillary would have erased the Constitution by allowing it to be completely redefined.
 
President Obama was especially energetic in concentrating as much power as possible into the Oval Office.  Obama used his pen and phone without restraint in his second term to avoid having to deal with Republicans in Congress.  He created precedents that were safe only if Hillary Clinton succeeded him.  The Democrats went all in, betting that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016 and secure Obama’s legacy.
 
What happened was a Trump victory.  All of the pen and phone power Obama concentrated in the Oval Office will be used to undo the entire hope and change of the last 8 years.  Trump will make at least two Supreme Court appointments.  The Justices Trump appoints will be deciding cases for about 20 years.
 
This sudden disastrous outcome has completely unhinged the American left, and even some of the Republican establishment.  Instead of permanently remaking the country, the left lost everything to a loud mouthed reality TV star with a lower class accent and abrasive manners, who insults the press constantly with tweets at 3 AM.  The Us mainstream media dreams of ways to bring down Trump because they have no other way to fundamentally remake America the way they planned.  They have even gotten as far as speculating about a CIA mutiny or a military coup in the US.  The Pravda Press is in complete denial, looking for any way to roll the dice again for even a small chance to undo the damage..  The left's desperation measures the magnitude of their reversal.