Category Archives: Favorites – Politics

Declaring The Causes That Impel Us, 2025 Edition

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The below is an update of a piece I first wrote almost five years ago. It was at that moment about the time when people – smart people, anyway – were starting to realize that Covid wasn’t the new Bubonic Plague, that the sky was not falling, and that whatever “model” Governor Klink was reading that was predicting 70,000 deaths in Minnesota alone by mid-July of 2020, and 20,000 dead as a best case if they shut the state down completely, was perhaps…wrong.

I was looking at the gutting of civil and religious freedom that Minnesotans had countenanced – perhaps more or less voluntarily in March,

Next week, Big Left will go through what’s become an annual orgy of celebrating what’s become their secular holiday, January 6.

Governor Klink took a break from his regimen of selfies of him being fed donuts by Co-Governor Flanagan to have his social media intern blurt this out:

The DFL, likewise:

So – a 2.5. years after Governor Klink reluctantly gave up his “emergency powers”, and two months after his risible run for Vice President, and after four years of Joe Biden serving as the doddering mouthpiece for Barack Obama’s third term as the greatest stealth authoritarian since Woodrow Wilson, let’s take stock of the state of “democracy”, in Minnesota and nationwide.

One of the obligations of a free people – and especially of a free people that wants to stay that way – is to push back when government overreaches. Not just in emergencies (although that was the initial subject of the original post), but always, on every facet of liberty. Conservatism holds that order and liberty exist in a constant state of tension; without order (or health) prosperity is impossible; without health, freedom is academic (subsistence farmers don’t have time to petition for redress of grievances); without freedom, order is onerous and, let’s be honest, prosperity is most likely concentrated among those keeping the order.

Three years ago, I said that Government power is like a handgun – sometimes, a necessary tool in extreme circumstances, under terms that are as strictly circumscribed as any rule on justifiable use of lethal force. And like any necessary tool, free people need to make sure that the newbie isn’t sweeping people at the firing range with her hand on the trigger, and that government isn’t getting drunk and profligate with its use, or abuse of power.

Of course, four years later, it’s clear that the Biden and Walz regimes great government power less like a handgun on the nightstand, and more like a Reaper drone, orbiting loudly above everything, ready to strike arbitrarily and without a whole lot of reason or respect for the niceties of constitutional law.

Just as Governor Piglet’s administration used Covid as a pretext for seizing unprecedented arbitrary power, Democrats nationwide are waving “January 6” around like a bloody shirt, to try to justify their ravaging of the spirit and letter of AMerican democracy.

So lets list the outrages. Let me know what I’ve missed; I intend for this list to live on as long as needed:

Life and Liberty

  • The emergence of the crypto-Maoist “Democratic Socialists of America” as the most powerful bloc in the Democrat party nationwide, and even moreso of the DFL – as both parties arrogate more power, wealth (transferred from taxpayers)
  • The multi-pronged bringing to heel of the education system, from pre-school through the post-doctoral level, is “the long game” in attacking not just liberty, but the entire underpinning of Western Civilization. Creating a generation of ignorant droogs who think “freedom” is just material satiety is both a key goal of those who’d gut the American experiment and, seemingly, a long way toward being accomplished.

The Pursuit of Prosperity

Here, the DFL’s disdain for business and private property rears its head, above and beyond any actual response to the epidemic.

  • The DFL “Trifecta” burned through nearly $18 Billion worth of “surplus”, every dime of which came from a taxpayer of some kind or another. That’s nearly $3,000 for every man, woman and child in Minnesota – nearly $12,000 for a typical family of four. In one year. And they raised taxes enough to cover that and a whole lot more. And given that the state is inevitably falling into deficit while the Democrats control the Legislature, it’s going to get much worse. That money would, in fact, be better employed by the people.
  • As Governor Klink established during Covid, the right to transact business is clearly subject to arbitrary, and in some cases seemingly capricious, interference. Small businesses are shut down (as big ones, and business with more, better lobbyists remain open), in many cases without regard to the business’ actual susceptibility to the virus (lawn services? nd smoke shops aren’t. It’s best that your vices not be politically unfashionable.
  • Looking a back at the concept of “Essential” and “Non-Essential” workers – designations determined almost entirely via the political expediency of the designations, and their importance to the lifestyle of the “Laptop class” workers who make up the political class – feels like staring into the soul of Orwell’s universe, even three years later.
  • The government started by barring all evictions and foreclosures, and halting student loan payments. The Twin Cities governments have moved on to rent control – furthering the road to gutting the affordable rental market, and completely foreclosing the existence of the small landlords that used to provide most of the metro’s “affordable housing” – while the Biden regime tried to unilaterally wipe out personal obligations to private student loan lenders.

Government Transparency

  • The DFL created a “Hate Speech Registry”. What’s in it? What’s it for? How do we see what, and who, is in it? For what purposes will it be used? The registry’s supporters couldn’t and wouldn’t answer questions. They just jammed it down.
  • The Governor’s “Covid Snitch Line” showed us not only the DFL’s ability for setting up a Stasi-like network of informants, but how much they genuinely enjoy it.
  • School boards around the state are gradually, and sometimes not so gradually, being turned into rubber-stamps for district administrators and the state department of Education.
  • For years, people complained, legitimately, that most of the legislature’s big decisions were made by the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, operating behind closed doors. That was intolerable and stupid when there were opposing parties involved in those negotiations. Now that they’re all with the same party? While elections have consequences, this is pure authoritarianism.
  • Covid-era restrictions on meetings have morphed, post-pandemic, into a glib disregard for state open meeting laws, which serve more as suggestions these days.

First Amendment

  • The collaboration of Big Government, Big Tech, Big Media and the Big Left’s non-profit/industrial complex completely gutted free speech in time for the 2020 election. The vituperation of their response to Elon Musk buying Twitter tips the hand; the Axis of Authority really, really wants “free speech” to be more about crappy art than actually holding government accountable.
  • And as Big Left endlessly drones on about the “Threat” of “endemic white supremacist terrorism” that we’ve been told for 15 years is everywhere, honest, one of these days now – the threat of being swatted, of crowds of professional protesters and rioters making your free exercise of too much inconvenient speech potentially dangerous is always there. The March 4, 2017 “Anti”-Fa attack on a Republican gathering at the MN Capitol rotunda (and the fact that Ramsey County’s “criminal justice” system did everything but take the “protesters” out for dinner to apologize for the inconvenience of being arrested) was a warning; shut up, or you just might get cut up. Democrats and the DFL are very aware of this, because that malevolent mass of wannabe thugs are their children, nephews, classmates.

Second Amendment

  • While the Second Amendment community remains strong, and with the departure of Wayne LaPierre may get some of its teeth re-sharpened at the national level, the attacks on the law-abiding gun owner in Blue jurisdictions are increasing, unconscionable, and not consistent with “protecting democracy”. More below.

Fourth Amendment

  • The surveillance state has gotten steadily worse.
  • The presence of anonymous “snitch lines” – and especially “hate crime” lines, may not have led to any Fourth Amendment perversions of probable cause yet – but don’t bet against it.
  • “Red Flag” laws have largely trashed the Fourth Amendment (more below).

Fifth Amendment

  • With the courts pretty much closed your right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury is pretty much toast for the duration.
  • Let’s not forget how the state gutted the justice system – including the rights of defendants to speedy drials, to face their accusers, and of their attorneys to effectively prepare cases – under the pretext of “public emergency restrictions”.

Privacy

  • Among the many other depredations of Minnesota’s “red flag” law – “Mental Health” professionals are in fact now deputized to participate in the abuse of those laws. I’d say “consider the unintended consequences”, but I don’t think there’s anything “unintended” about them.
  • Government used your cell data to track the effectiveness of social distancing. Think that genie’s going back in the bottle?

When Democrats refer to Republicans as “fascists”, it’s a Berg’s Seventh Law case. .

Declaring The Causes That Impel Us, 2024 Edition

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The below is an update of a piece I first wrote almost four years ago. It was at that moment about the time when people – smart people, anyway – were starting to realize that Covid wasn’t the new Bubonic Plague, that the sky was not falling, and that whatever “model” Governor Klink was reading that was predicting 70,000 deaths in Minnesota alone by mid-July of 2020, and 20,000 dead as a best case if they shut the state down completely, was perhaps…wrong.

I was looking at the gutting of civil and religious freedom that Minnesotans had countenanced – perhaps more or less voluntarily in March,

Over this past weekend, Big Left went through what’s become an annual orgy of celebrating what’s become their secular holiday, January 6.

Governor Klink took a break from his regimen of selfies of him being fed donuts by Co-Governor Flanagan to have his social media intern blurt this out:

The DFL, likewise:

So – a year and a half after Governor Klink reluctantly gave up his “emergency powers”, and after three years of Joe Biden serving as the doddering mouthpiece for Barack Obama’s third term as the greatest stealth authoritarian since Woodrow Wilson, let’s take stock of the state of “democracy”, in Minnesota and nationwide.

One of the obligations of a free people – and especially of a free people that wants to stay that way – is to push back when government overreaches. Not just in emergencies (although that was the initial subject of the original post), but always, on every facet of liberty. Conservatism holds that order and liberty exist in a constant state of tension; without order (or health) prosperity is impossible; without health, freedom is academic (subsistence farmers don’t have time to petition for redress of grievances); without freedom, order is onerous and, let’s be honest, prosperity is most likely concentrated among those keeping the order.

Three years ago, I said that Government power is like a handgun – sometimes, a necessary tool in extreme circumstances, under terms that are as strictly circumscribed as any rule on justifiable use of lethal force. And like any necessary tool, free people need to make sure that the newbie isn’t sweeping people at the firing range with her hand on the trigger, and that government isn’t getting drunk and profligate with its use, or abuse of power.

Of course, three years later, it’s clear that the Biden and Walz regimes great government power less like a handgun on the nightstand, and more like a Reaper drone, orbiting loudly above everything, ready to strike arbitrarily and without a whole lot of reason or respect for the niceties of constitutional law.

Just as Governor Piglet’s administration used Covid as a pretext for seizing unprecedented arbitrary power, Democrats nationwide are waving “January 6” around like a bloody shirt, to try to justify their ravaging of the spirit and letter of AMerican democracy.

So lets list the outrages. Let me know what I’ve missed; I intend for this list to live on as long as needed:

Life and Liberty

  • The emergence of the crypto-Maoist “Democratic Socialists of America” as the most powerful bloc in the Democrat party nationwide, and even moreso of the DFL – as both parties arrogate more power, wealth (transferred from taxpayers)
  • The multi-pronged bringing to heel of the education system, from pre-school through the post-doctoral level, is “the long game” in attacking not just liberty, but the entire underpinning of Western Civilization. Creating a generation of ignorant droogs who think “freedom” is just material satiety is both a key goal of those who’d gut the American experiment and, seemingly, a long way toward being accomplished.

The Pursuit of Prosperity

Here, the DFL’s disdain for business and private property rears its head, above and beyond any actual response to the epidemic.

  • The DFL “Trifecta” burned through nearly $18 Billion worth of “surprlus”, every dime of which came from a taxpayer of some kind or another. That’s nearly $3,000 for every man, woman and child in Minnesota – nearly $12,000 for a typical family of four. In one year. And they raised taxes enough to cover that and a whole lot more. And given that the state is inevitably falling into deficit while the Democrats control the Legislature, it’s going to get much worse. That money would, in fact, be better employed by the people.
  • As Governor Klink established during Covid, the right to transact business is clearly subject to arbitrary, and in some cases seemingly capricious, interference. Small businesses are shut down (as big ones, and business with more, better lobbyists remain open), in many cases without regard to the business’ actual susceptibility to the virus (lawn services? nd smoke shops aren’t. It’s best that your vices not be politically unfashionable.
  • Looking a back at the concept of “Essential” and “Non-Essential” workers – designations determined almost entirely via the political expediency of the designations, and their importance to the lifestyle of the “Laptop class” workers who make up the political class – feels like staring into the soul of Orwell’s universe, even three years later.
  • The government started by barring all evictions and foreclosures, and halting student loan payments. The Twin Cities governments have moved on to rent control – furthering the road to gutting the affordable rental market, and completely foreclosing the existence of the small landlords that used to provide most of the metro’s “affordable housing” – while the Biden regime tried to unilaterally wipe out personal obligations to private student loan lenders.

Government Transparency

  • The DFL created a “Hate Speech Registry”. What’s in it? What’s it for? How do we see what, and who, is in it? For what purposes will it be used? The registry’s supporters couldn’t and wouldn’t answer questions. They just jammed it down.
  • The Governor’s “Covid Snitch Line” showed us not only the DFL’s ability for setting up a Stasi-like network of informants, but how much they genuinely enjoy it.
  • School boards around the state are gradually, and sometimes not so gradually, being turned into rubber-stamps for district administrators and the state department of Education.
  • For years, people complained, legitimately, that most of the legislature’s big decisions were made by the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, operating behind closed doors. That was intolerable and stupid when there were opposing parties involved in those negotiations. Now that they’re all with the same party? While elections have consequences, this is pure authoritarianism.
  • Covid-era restrictions on meetings have morphed, post-pandemic, into a glib disregard for state open meeting laws, which serve more as suggestions these days.

First Amendment

  • The collaboration of Big Government, Big Tech, Big Media and the Big Left’s non-profit/industrial complex completely gutted free speech in time for the 2020 election. The vituperation of their response to Elon Musk buying Twitter tips the hand; the Axis of Authority really, really wants “free speech” to be more about crappy art than actually holding government accountable.
  • And as Big Left endlessly drones on about the “Threat” of “endemic white supremacist terrorism” that we’ve been told for 15 years is everywhere, honest, one of these days now – the threat of being swatted, of crowds of professional protesters and rioters making your free exercise of too much inconvenient speech potentially dangerous is always there. The March 4, 2017 “Anti”-Fa attack on a Republican gathering at the MN Capitol rotunda (and the fact that Ramsey County’s “criminal justice” system did everything but take the “protesters” out for dinner to apologize for the inconvenience of being arrested) was a warning; shut up, or you just might get cut up. Democrats and the DFL are very aware of this, because that malevolent mass of wannabe thugs are their children, nephews, classmates.

Second Amendment

  • While the Second Amendment community remains strong, and with the departure of Wayne LaPierre may get some of its teeth re-sharpened at the national level, the attacks on the law-abiding gun owner in Blue jurisdictions are increasing, unconscionable, and not consistent with “protecting democracy”. More below.

Fourth Amendment

  • The surveillance state has gotten steadily worse.
  • The presence of anonymous “snitch lines” – and especially “hate crime” lines, may not have led to any Fourth Amendment perversions of probable cause yet – but don’t bet against it.
  • “Red Flag” laws have largely trashed the Fourth Amendment (more below).

Fifth Amendment

  • With the courts pretty much closed your right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury is pretty much toast for the duration.
  • Let’s not forget how the state gutted the justice system – including the rights of defendants to speedy drials, to face their accusers, and of their attorneys to effectively prepare cases – under the pretext of “public emergency restrictions”.

Privacy

  • Among the many other depredations of Minnesota’s “red flag” law – “Mental Health” professionals are in fact now deputized to participate in the abuse of those laws. I’d say “consider the unintended consequences”, but I don’t think there’s anything “unintended” about them.
  • Government used your cell data to track the effectiveness of social distancing. Think that genie’s going back in the bottle?

When Democrats refer to Republicans as “fascists”, it’s a Berg’s Seventh Law case. .

Tiers Of Tyranny

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Earlier this week, the Facebook page of the Scott County GOP compared Governor Walz and the DFL’s legislative majority to to Hitler and Stalin.

Silly Republicans. Only Democrats get to make specious, scabrous, historically-void comparisons to dictators.

Now, as someone who studies history – especially the history of tyranny – very seriously, I’d like to make two points:

  1. I hate willy-nilly dictator references. Calling people “Hitler” or “Stalin” is lazy. The only thing I hate nearly as much is…
  2. Dismissing legitimate claims of tyrannical behavior as if the claim itself, rather than the aptitude of the facts presented, is the joke.

Because it’s not like tyrannies generally drop in on society unannounced.

Tyranny, like cancer, has four stages. There is no stage five.

(Definition of terms: “Regime” is used in the original French sense of the term; it means the person, people or parties running the government).

StageCharacteristicsExamples
Stage IRegime uses populist means to expand government power to the detriment of citizens individual rights. Key institutions – media, education, the bureaucracy – find it in their interest to scratch the regime’s back, politically and socially. ???
Stage IIThe regime is part of an open coalition with the state’s bureaucracy, news media and social institutions, and are weaponized against the opposition. Opponents are actively targeted by the media, law enforcement, education and academia. Opposition parties and uncoopted institutions are actively harassed, either legally (via a legal system whose interests largely coincide with those of the regime) or via direct action groups “secretly” affiliated with the regime – who are able to operate fairly openly. Peaceful change of power is subject to a process controlled by the regime; being an opposition politician frequently results in harassment.Orban, Erdogan
Stage IIIAll institutions of the state are more or less openly and directly controlled by the regime. Opposition is harassed to the point where it largely or completely exists underground. Opponents are eliminated in ones and twos, using a co-opted version of the judicial process or, sometimes, direct action; the direct action groups are either tightly affiliated with the state, or are actually stage agents (the police). Peaceful change of power depends on the good will of the regime (as with post-Franco Spain); being an opposition politicians runs a very high risk of exile, prison, disappearance or death. .Franco, Mussolini
Stage IVThe Regime, it’s power and society as a whole are indistinguishable. All institutions are subsumed by the regime, which has an absolute monopoly on information and force. Opponents – or those perceived as opponents, or scapegoats – are eliminated in boxcar lots, sometimes literally; being “underground” is profoundly dangerous. Change of power is a lethal matter; the regime recognizes no power but itself. Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Un.

I’d say the Walz administration is a solid stage 1.

Thoughts?

Critical Marksmanship Theory

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SCENE: The year is 2028. Mitch BERG has just been sworn in as governor of Minnesota, via a series of happenstances too bizarre to go into. He is speaking to a press conference.

BERG: As the first phase of my plan, as promised, I’m directing the state Department of Education to begin mandatory instruction in grades K-12, and in state post-secondary schools, of “Critical Marksmanship Theory”.

“CMT” teaches a few tenets that are vital for a child’s moral and social development:

  1. It teaches them the essentials of the Second Amendment – how it deters tyranny.
  2. Children will learn, as part of that, that throughout American history, from the Revolution through the Civil Rights movement to the “Anti”-Fa War of 2026, those with firearms have been the ones able to defend their, and their neighbors’, freedom.
  3. Kids will learn that, throughout our history, the right to keep and bear arms has been a bellwether for the state of liberty, and a key defining line between citizenship and subjection.
  4. It teaches that societies that exalt and propagate marksmanship are superior, more free, more prosperous and more inclusive than those that don’t.
  5. It teaches kids the essentials firearm safety, which should slash the number of accidental shootings of children.
  6. Finallly, it teaches kids – all kids, from all backgrounds, races, creeds, genders – how to shoot, enabling them to participate in shooting sports, self-defense, and of course the main intent of the Second Amendment, deterring tyranny.

This will begin in the second semester of this school year, which starts (checks watch) tomorrow.

Questions?

MYLYSSA SILBERMAN (Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats): Yes, Mr. Berg…

BERG: Governor.

SILBERMAN (Winces): Right. Governor Berg. What if parents object to teaching kids how to shoot, and all this history about guns?

BERG: Teachers know better than parents. Next…you.

LEAKY THE BEAGLE (A dog, writing under a pseudonym for the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.  ) Govenah Burrrgk – vot is ze sense of forcink…

BERG: Was ist den mit deine fürchtbare Deutsche accent?

LEAKY THE BEAGLE: Huh?

BERG: That’s what I thought. Security!

(Security guards push LEAKY THE BEAGLE to the ground, stomp him into incoherence, throw him out).

Next.

CAT SCAT: (The designated “fact checker” at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “”MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, she is the office manager at a small phrenology practice. ) Why would you teach children…

BERG: Because parents in half of Metro households don’t actually teach their kids the reality of history – that unarmed people are basically meat on the hoof for dictators. We want our children to learn that history. Some people don’t. We have the power, so we don’t really care what they think. Yes, you?

MATT MCNEIL: (Rises,, face flushed, hands shaking. As a wet spot stains the front of his chinos, he runs fron the building.

BERG: Huh. OK. You.

Betty Rae TORSTENGAARDSEN (A writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.  She was Lac Qui Parle County Dairy Princess in 1987, and voted “most likely to end up as a freelance political writer” by her sorority at U of M Morris in 1992.): Yes, Governor Berg. “Critical Marksmanship Theory” seems like a massive incursion into parental rights.

BERG: You’ve seen the handout, right?

TORSTENGAARDSEN: Er…no?

BERG: Then it’s not CRM. We’re just teaching kids to shoot, as far as you know.

TORSTENGAARDSEN: What about parents who object to their kids being indoctrinated in the Second Amendment?

BERG: So you’re saying there are parents who want their kids to be ignorant of history, and ripe for the picking by criminals, tyrants and perverts?

TORSTENGAARDSEN: I’m not sure…

BERG. They sound like terrible, negligent parents to me.

TORSTENGAARDSEN: Uh…

BERG: But again, we’re not teaching kids about guns right this minute, as we stand here, so quit your whining.

(TORSTENGAARDSEN, SCAT and SILBERMAN confer, briefly).

SILBERMAN: He’s right. He’s got us there.

BERG: Good. Onward…

And SCENE

Expertise

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SCENE: Mitch BERG is having a glass of wine at the bar in Whole Foods in Saint Paujl, after a day of vigorous shopping. Lost in the reverie, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has walked in.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, shhhhhuuuure enough, it’s Avery. Long time no see. What’s u..

LIBRELLE: Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji Brown Jackson a stupid, badgering question at her confirmation hearing to be the best Supreme Court justice ever.

BERG: Best?

LIBRELLE: She is the most qualified jurist in history! The Washington Post showed it! Pictures, being science, never lie!

BERG: Well, not so much.

LIBRELLE: I never read National Review.

BERG: Clearly. So why do you think it was a “stupid, badgering question”?

LIBRELLE: It’s purely politicized, and she’ll never have to rule on that. “What’s a woman?” Mitch, please.

BERG: First: SCOTUS hearings, politicized? Bring that up when Robert Bork, Janice Rogers Brown, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are up for confirmation.

LIBRELLE: Those people were all in the past…

BERG: Exactly. As to never having to rule on that? Perhaps. But answering “what is a woman?”

LIBRELLE: It was an unfair question for which she had no time to prepare.

BERG: (looking at watch). A woman is an adult human with two “X” chromosomes. Three seconds. No prep time. And I didn’t even go to Harvard Law School.

LIBRELLE: She will never have to rule on what a woman is.

BERG: Perhaps. But she’ll be asked to rule on questions where much of the population does know what the answer is; the fact she’s willing to equivocate on something this comical, to keep the “progressive” wing of her party happy, is a very bad sign.

LIBRELLE: There are no such quesitons in the law! Its science!

BERG: When does human life being?

LIBRELLE: I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.

BERG: When do community standards violate free association?

LIBRELLE: I don’t know. I’m not the community.

BERG: Huh. When does the right to free speech interfere with private property rights?

LIBRELLE: I don’t know. I’m not a professor of rhetoric.

BERG: Huh. What does the phrase “Right of the People” mean?

LIBRELLE: I don’t know. I’m not a law professor.

BERG: A SCOTUS justice will be ruling on any or all of those things, including in the next term.

LIBRELLE: I don’t care. It was still a stupid question.

BERG: Nah. It fixed the front lines in the culture war – the issue beneath all the other issues in the upcoming mid-terms. And it showed which side are the metaphorical Russians, and which are the figurative Ukrainians.

LIBRELLE: Bla bla bla. So where are the avocados?

BERG: I don’t know. I’m not a grocer.

(And SCENE)

The First Of Many Wavings Of The Bloody Shirt

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I don’t disagree with any of the particulars of the National Review’s editorial about January 6:

There is no defense for what the mob did that day. None. The people have a right to form loud, angry crowds to petition and protest their government. They need not do so in ways that are pleasant or polite. The “Stop the Steal” protesters who listened to the speeches and went home were exercising their rights as citizens.

But ours is a government of laws, not of men. A rule-of-law system has no place for physical intimidation or mobs obstructing the peaceful, constitutional transfer of power. The Founding Fathers feared few things more than mob rule. They created a federal district to avoid a repeat of a 1783 riot around the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

Donald Trump, his lieutenants (especially Sidney Powell and the tragically-fallen Rudy Giuliani), and Trump’s personality cult, did something that doesn’t, and can’t, play well with small-“d” democracy: it put the person ahead of the process:

There is also no defense of what Donald Trump did to summon the crowd, tell it that there remained any option but counting Biden’s electoral victory, and urge the assemblage to march on the Capitol because “if we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country . . . you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Trump’s recklessness disgraced the office of the presidency.

Additionally, there is no defense of Trump’s pressuring Pence to take unilateral, unlawful action against the counting of electoral votes, then telling the crowd that Pence might do so, knowing full well that they would discover when they reached the Capitol that Pence would not. Some of them, entering the Capitol, chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.” It was Trump who led them to believe that his own vice president was allowing their country to be stolen.

Let’s be honest about what that explosion of personality cult over process actually did:

What happened at the Capitol that day is best understood as a riot that was particularly dangerous because of its setting and context. It was not a purely peaceful protest, or a cartoonish costume party with a little bit of trespassing. The Secret Service had to rush Pence to safety. Members of Congress emptied the chamber and fled for cover. The vote-counting process was interrupted for five and a half hours. The Capitol itself was wreathed in smoke. This is the stuff of a banana republic.

When the subject of banana republics pop up, Democrats perk their ears up, being wannabe Generalissimos in their own ways. Republicans, even Trump supporters, are correct in pointing out that Democrats were trashing the democratic process since before Donald Trump was a reality TV star, much less President:

For two decades, prominent Democrats have attacked the legitimacy of American elections. They claimed that the 2000 election was stolen from Al Gore. They indulged ridiculous fantasies about Ohio being stolen in 2004, resulting in dozens of Democratic members of Congress objecting to counting its electoral votes. Many of those Democrats are now powerful committee chairs, including the chair of the committee investigating January 6. Violent protests marred Trump’s inauguration, and leading Democrats denounced him as illegitimate. Polls showed that supermajorities of Democratic voters believed that Russian hackers stole the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton, and she has given every indication that she shares that view. In 2018, Stacey Abrams was anointed a hero by her party for refusing to accept the legitimacy of her loss of a governor’s race. It would have been wrong for Trump to emulate this behavior; but he went well beyond what even the most reckless Democrat has done in contesting an election.

Left-wing mobs have targeted the workings of government, for example overwhelming the Wisconsin state capitol in 2011 to protest Scott Walker’s union-dues bill. Republican legislators had to be evacuated by police, as Democratic legislators egged on the mob. In 2018, protesters repeatedly disrupted the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, chased Republican senators down hallways and into elevators, accosted them in restaurants, and broke through Capitol barricades, resulting in hundreds of arrests. Law enforcement was unduly lax in punishing these offenses against democratic self-government.

It’s true. But it’s no excuse – any more than January 6 will be a legitimate excuse for more Democrat violence and tyranny-mongering. That is, in fact, something that Republicans of good conscience need to stomp on, hard. Because it dismisses nothing to note that January 6 was an attack on the Constitutional process different from others only in its perps:

The New York Times editorializes that “Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now,” and one of its columnists argues that Democrats should “Wave the ‘Bloody Shirt’ of Jan. 6” as Republicans did against Democrats after the Civil War — as if this compares to a four-year war in which 3 million Americans served and 750,000 died. Other opportunists (including Joe Biden) call the riot the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” or say it is comparable to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. CNN and other cable news obsessives plan wall-to-wall coverage of the anniversary in order to inflate its importance and help Democrats wave that bloody shirt.

This is a loss of perspective. In 1915, a former Harvard professor set off a bomb at the Capitol and shot J. P. Morgan. In 1954, five congressmen were shot by Puerto Rican nationalists in the House chamber. In the early 1970s, the left-wing Weather Underground set off bombs at the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department. In 1983–84, the Communist group M19 bombed the Capitol, an FBI office, and Fort McNair and the Navy Yard in D.C. In 2001, 3,000 people died on 9/11, air travel was grounded across the country, the president was shuttled to a secure location, and a wing of the Pentagon was destroyed. In 2017, a gun-toting Bernie Sanders supporter attempted to massacre Republican congressmen at a baseball practice, gravely wounding Steve Scalise, the Republican House whip.

I say “Republicans of good conscience” because there are Republicans who have joined the personality cult, and many who’ve prospered, politically and financially, greatly from it.

And some Republicans have reacted by washing their hands of the GOP – some for reasons I can respect (Ed Morrissey), others I can not (the Lincoln Project), many in between. Some “Never-Trumpers” yip and bark at the party like bitter ex-spouses.

Others presume the GOP’s reckoning rates a generation in the minority – as Kevin Williamson says in his otherwise worthy piece on the subject, again, I agree with in most particulars – except for its conclusion:

It is my view that none of the Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 results should ever hold office again, and that no candidate who is unwilling to forthrightly condemn both the violence of January 6 and the lies that inspired that violence ought to enjoy the support of any conservative, any organ of the Republican Party, or, indeed, any American who calls himself a patriot. No candidate who cannot give a simple yes or no answer — and give the correct one — to the question of whether the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump ought to hold office. If that puts the Republican Party into the minority for a generation, then the Republican Party deserves it, having become a menace not only to the conservative principles and governance it purports to cherish but to the political structure of the nation and the Constitution itself. Those who have no use for caudillos and mobs, and who hope to see our constitutional order endure, should seriously consider separating themselves from the Republican Party unless and until it proves capable of reforming itself.

“Reforming itself”

Like, magically?

Well, no. The party “reforms itself” when those who show up decide it shall be reformed.

Our democracy – and the Constitutional process Williamson rightly extols elsewhere – won’t survive a generation of one-party government by today’s Democrat party. The Democrat party of the Watergate era, led by Ernie Hollings and Scoop Jackson and Daniel Inouye, people who believe in America whatever their political differences, didn’t see power as the means to the end. They weren’t the generation of “progressives” that gave us San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore and Minneapolis, or for that matter California and Illinois, as they are today; those are the inevitable consequences of one-party rule, at least by this Democrat party at this time in its history.

Packed courts.

Centralized elections.

A packed Senate.

More promotion of the administrative state to circumvent the legislative and judicial processes that can’t be won in elections.

Those are the consequences of a “generation of minority status” for the opposition.

That’s not acceptable.

The GOP will have to “reform itself” by good people showing up and reforming it.

Not by sitting splendidly above it all listening to Bulwark podcasts and heckling.

Not by waiting for some third-party to spring into place.

Not by waiting for the Reform Fairy.

Not, for that matter, by waiting for someone else to reform it. With all due respect to those who stormed out in a cloud of principled righteousness in 2015, 2017 and 2020, starting next month, your opinions are duly noted, and will no longer be of any relevance.

No. It happens by reforming the GOP.

More on that next week.

I Think I Figured It Out

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An allegory in three acts:

Act 1

SCENE: An elementary school classroom.BULLY is sitting at the desk next to KID. A half dozen pencils lie strewn about the floor around KID’s desk.

BULLY: Throws a pencil at KID. KID looks annoyed, but shakes it off.

BULLY: (Sotto Voce) Hey, kid! (KID looks over as BULLY whips another pencil at him. KID, more annoyed, shakes it off)

BULLY: (Sotto Voce again). Hey, kid!

KID: Tries to ignore BULLY.

BULLY: (Flings pencil, hard . The pencil catches KID in the corner of the eye, and it hurts.

KID: (Jumps up). What’s your problem?

BULLY: Ms. Walburn! Ms. Walburn! The Kid is trying to pick a fight with me!

MS. WALBURN: Kid, you have detention tonight!

BULLY: Ms. Walburn, have I not been warning you about Kid’s propensity to bullying for days, now ?

KID: What the…?

And SCENE

Act Two

SCENE: In the kitchen of a single-wide trailer. WIFE Is sitting on the floor sobbing. HUSBAND is looking around, apparently making sure nobody saw what just happened.

HUSBAND: Look, you provoked me.

WIFE: (Sobs)

HUSBAND: I mean, OK, hitting was wrong, but you have to admit, the way you badger me about things is emotional abuse. And you know what they way – emotional abuse is worse than physical abuse.

WIFE: (Sobs)

HUSBAND: And you were badgering me. I mean, criminy, we both have big problems, here.

WIFE (Sobs)

HUSBAND: I mean, since emotional abuse is worse, and you do a lot of it, we’re really still not even even-up, here…

WIFE: (Sobs)

HUSBAND: I mean, you’re lucky I’m willing to call it even. It’s a gift.

WIFE (Sobs)

Act Three

SCENE: The United States, today.

BIG LEFT: “Whiteness” is a mental disorder that goes along with merely being white. Whiteness and systemic racism are inseparable.

NORMALS: That’s bulls#it.

BIG LEFT: That’s your privilege, racism, misogyny, transphobia and ethnocentrism talking.

NORMALS: That’s just word salad at best. “Inclusion language” – an arcane code designed to show you’re one of the “good ones” – at worst.

BIG LEFT: What if your employer were to find out about your retrograde thinking? They might not appreciated it.

NORMALS: So you’re going to try to cancel me, now?

BIG LEFT: Pffft. There is no such thing as “cancel culture”.

NORMALS: Sure there is. If we’re mainstream conservatives, and haven’t gone as undercover as a Mossad operative in Tehran, we can’t get jobs in Academia, public education, much of private education, Hollywood, many public employee unions, the news media, a whooole lot of BIg Tech, an increasing number of smaller companies. And if we break cover – or any “evidence” of mainstream conservatism is found, we can get hounded out of our jobs, our hobbies, our volunteer work, deplatformed, and have our personal lives upended as well.

BIG LEFT: Republicans do it too!

NORMALS: So let me get this straight – it doesn’t exist, but Republicans do it too?

BIG LEFT: Evangelical groups picketed LGBTQ bookstores! Gays were oppressed!

NORMALS: OK, so that’s a “yes”. And let’s be clear on this – you go back almost forty years, to very localized episodes, to find behavior that pretty much every significant conservative repudiates today. As opposed to people being barred or drummed out of whole swathes of academia, business and culture. No cancel culture? Please.

BIG LEFT: Nope. There is only “accountability culture”.

NORMALS: “Accountability” for what? Having, much less voicing, utterly mainstream Republican views?

BIG LEFT: For the results of your Privilege and Whiteness!

NORMALS: Privilege – an Orwellian deflection of classist and cultural privilege shared by the left’s “elites” over to race? “Whiteness” – a bit of made-up pseudo-social-science designed entirely to denigrate and invalidate people without needing to engage in any facts?

BIG LEFT: Sounds like “white fragility” talking…

NORMALS: More word salad, with a siding of making facts up as you go along.

BIG LEFT: Here’s the only “fact” you need: January 6! The worst act of terrorism in American history!

NORMALS: Leaving aside the fact that it’s far from the only partisan violence at the seat of American democracy, January 6 was something that every significant conservative repudiated. But you keep on trying to apply it to everyone you disagree with, as if it gives The Left a permanent intellectual get out of jail free card.

BIG LEFT: Bet you wouldn’t be talking so big if you had a bunch of protesters in front of your house, would you? It’d be a shame if something…broke.

NORMALS: Go ahead. Make my day.

BIG LEFT: It’s a threat! It’s a threat! Behold the wave of white supremacist terror we’ve been warning you about for the past fifteen years!

And SCENE.

Declaring The Causes That Impel Us

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We’re into month two of the “State of Emergency” in Minnesota.

Let’s stipulate in advance – government does have emergency powers, and should have them, at least as a broad concept. One of government’s few genuinely legitimate roles is to exert its power to react to things that are beyond the power of the individual, or (rarely, at least in theory) subsidiary levels of government; invasions, natural disasters and, yeah, epidemics. We can argue the “should government have emergency power” question if you’d like, but it’s pretty much the status quo.

One of the obligations of a free people – and especially of a free people that wants to stay that way – is to push back when government overreaches. Not just in emergencies (although that’s the subject today), but always, on every facet of liberty. Conservatism holds that order and liberty exist in a constant state of tension; without order (or health) prosperity is impossible; without health, freedom is academic (subsistence farmers don’t have time to petition for redress of grievances); without freedom, order is onerous and, let’s be honest, prosperity is most likely concentrated among those keeping the order.

Government power, like a handgun, is a necessary tool in extreme circumstances. And like any necessary tool, free people need to make sure that the newbie isn’t sweeping people at the firing range with her hand on the trigger, and that goverment isn’t getting drunk and profligate with its use, or abuse of power.

And I think we can make a pretty solid case that Governor Walz’s emergency declaration does exactly that.

First – Covid clearly is an emergency. There is a valid public health reason to treat it as more than just the flu. But the record shows different states taking very different approaches to the emergency, and with very different results; New York State went full-on Mussolini, but between having one of the most densely populated cities in the country and being run by bungling clowns like Bill DiBlasio, it didn’t work; California also went full-on tyrant, but it seems to be working. Other states went the other way; in the Dakotas and the rural west, it seems to be working out fairly well, while in Louisiana and Florida, the libertarian approach (combined with a lot of ill-advised, Italian-style revelry in the face of the threat) didn’t pan out so well.

Minnesota has trended more authoritarian. I get the rationale. But let’s be honest – even if you ignore the ham-handedness of the administration’s management of information (of which more later in the week), it’s fair to say the Governor and his Administration have clobbered civil liberties while reacting to the crisis – in many cases, wrongly.

So lets put together a list of the usurpations:

Life and Liberty

  • While the movement restrictions in Minnesota are fairly benign so far – serving more as a muted threat than an active clampdown – the idea of telling people not to go to their lake cabin (i.e., trying to prevent people from moving temporarily from a place of high desnsity and greater vulnerability to someplace safer) is an intrusion. And Mayor Frey’s active use of the police to curtail traffic isn’t just a muted threat.
  • The ability to visit family, especially in hospitals and nursing homes. To be fair, in many cases this is a private response to the epidemic – it’s why I can’t see my mother, notwithstanding the fact that her husband of nearly 30 years just died – but it’s driven by the response to government regulations and the litigiousness that government regulators have promoted.
  • We’re paying for a lot of government “services” of dubious value in the best of times, that we’re not getting at all today.

The Pursuit of Prosperity

Here, the DFL’s disdain for business and private property rears its head, above and beyond any actual response to the epidemic.

  • The right to transact business is clearly subject to arbitrary, and in some cases seemingly capricious, interference. Small businesses are shut down (as big ones, and business with more, better lobbyists remain open), in many cases without regard to the business’ actual susceptibility to the virus (lawn services? Landscapers? They’re pretty socially distant to begin with). Arbitrarily shutting down businesses regardless of their own instincts for self-preservation, ingenuity and ability to achieve some resiliency against the epidemic (like all the small grocery stores turning their lanes into one-way thorofares) qualifies as a taking in my book. Classic example – liquor stores are “essential”, but vape and smoke shops aren’t. It’s best that your vices not be politically unfashionable.
  • The assignment of “essential” status was clearly utterly politicized.
  • While it seems an act of charity, and might even be justifiable, barring all evictions and foreclosures is certainly an arbitrary taking without some sort of compensation. The idea that
  • Contracts are pretty much irrelevant – business are foreclosed by decree, in many cases, from fulfilling them, and the courts are closed for purposes of arbitrating the results.

Government Transparency

  • The Administration is making huge, life-altering decisions about the economy based on a model that seems to be giving very different results than most other models, and whose proprietors are keeping secret for the most paternalistic of reasons: “On Friday, [State health economist Stefan] Gildemeister said he had concerns that models that let anyone use them might be “irresponsible” because “it allows folks to make assumptions that aren’t very realistic ones.” While “transparency” isn’t necessarily a constitutional issue, the idea that state bureaucrats treat the math and code that they created on our dime like something they have to prorect from a bunch of drooling savages should make every freedom-loving citizen hot under the collar, and ready to vote a whole lot of scoundrels out of office in seven months or so.
  • The legislature, already prone as it is to operating as a “star chamber” with the Governor, Speaker, and the two Majority Leaders, has gotten even less transparent than before; online gatherings (kept just below legal “quorum” status) have been substituting for public committee meetings; policy is being made completely absent public scrutiny.
  • The governor’s “press only” press conference Friday – if that doesn’t bother you, what does?

First Amendment

  • The banning of group gatherings of all kinds – as opposed to pushing for voluntary enforcement of containment and distancing – pretty much forswears all protest against government overreach.
  • The enforced closing of places of worship – as opposed to strongly suggesting people wear masks, stay at home if sick, and observe spacing between family groups in services – is a clear violation of freedom of religion.
  • While closing places of worship by decree is onerous, many churches – including my own – closed voluntarily. But there are aspects to faith – Sacraments like Last Rites, Baptism and Confession, for Catholics, and there are many others in other faiths – that must be done in person, and where remote exercise is banned as a matter of doctrine. I’ve been informed of cases where priests have been barred from hospitals; no avenues left open for the administration of such Sacraments, whether through prudent adaptations (priests in masks and PPE, isolation rooms, whatever) or not. One administrative size fits all, whether talking about an ad agency or a church. This – not just the closing down, but the forbidding of any adaptation – has to be a clear violation of the First Amendment.
  • Freedom of assembly? Do I even need to say it?
  • Along with that – the right to petition for the redress of grievances, private or public, is pretty much toast until the courts decide to start meeting again.

Second Amendment

  • Many counties are curtailing the ability to apply for, or renew, carry and purchase permits.
  • The operation of the ranges necessary for taking permit training is pretty much shut down.
  • Thanks to a law passed by a bipartisan majority in 2015, government in Minnesota can’t confiscate guns, or shut down gun stores unless literally every other business in the state is closed, due to a state of emergency. This was an admirable bit of foresight – it doesn’t take a vivid imagination to see Jacob Frey, Melvin Carter and Kim Norton (frothing anti-gun ninny mayor of Rochester) sending their cops door to door in times like this. More on this later.

Fourth Amendment

Fifth Amendment

  • With the courts pretty much closed your right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury is pretty much toast for the duration.
  • And the closing down of the Judicial Branch offices give defense attorneys – who, unlike prosecutors, have no online access to Judicial Branch records – a serious disadvantage in prepping for cases for when they can get to trial.

Privacy

  • Government is using your cell data to track the effectiveness of social distancing. While we’re assured that government and the big cell providers they’re in bed with aren’t mis-using that data, we all know that’s only as safe as the government’s least ethical employee.

Got more (specific to Minnesota, for now)? Leave ’em in the comments, please.

I gave the example of Minnesota’s gun rights movement’s successful drive to foreclose government’s ability to confiscate firearms and abrogate the 2nd Amendment during crises. Gun Rights groups in Minnesota are big, well-organized, and badly funded (you can sure help out) but make up for it in volunteer action and the justice of our cause.

The lesson, though? Minnesotans need to get together in the same way to put stronger guard rails on the other excesses of government emergency power we’re seeing.

Unpacking The Invisible NPR Tote Bag

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“White Privilege” has been all over the news this last couple of years.

 It’s been there because the Big Left has ordained that it should be.  My theory;  in a nation full of “privilege” – class, racial, academic, social and, let’s be honest, the privilege of being born here rather than Russia or Nigeria or Burma – Big Left needed to focus on racial, “white” privilege to whip up black votes for Hillary Clinton, a geriatric white plutocrat.  As a result, all discussion of other “privilege” is off the table.

Terms, Terms, Everywhere Are Terms: White privilege exists, of course.  It goes hand in hand with the idea of “we-ism” – the idea that everyone on earth is more comfortable around, and accomodating of, people more like them than less.

Beyond that?  In my more sardonic and less cautious days, I defined it as being a descendant of a society from a harsh, lethally inhospitable place that had zero words for “hakuna matata” but more words for “stab him!” than Eskimos have for “snow”; a dour, patriarchal warrior culture that killed everyone that had designs on enslaving them.  As a result, my culture has no commonly-held concept of being enslaved.  We  operate from the standpoint of people who’ve been free (or at least subjects of generally benign monarchs) as far back as our cultural memory goes.  On behalf of all my cultural cousins, I am sorry for those of you who are descended from matriarchal hunter gatherer societies that couldn’t effectively resist the slave merchants, but I can’t change history any more than you can.  Just the present – a present I and my cultural cousins have been trying to change for 240-odd years, now.

More soberly, and after interviewing a representative of Black Lives Matter on my show, I arrived at the idea that “white privilege” is the ability to walk into a room and not have everyone wondering if you’re “one of the good ones”.   It was a little after that that I first encountered the academic paper in which the term “white privilege” was coined, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.   It supplied fifty definitions of white (also male) privilege.

Every one of which, by the way ,translates to “freedom”, “justice” and “being accorded the dignity of being treated as an autonomous individual rather than a member of a group” – all of which are supposed to be values near and dear to our Republic and Western Civilization itself, and all of them things we should be working tirelessly to spread to everyone.

And when some mindless Social Justice Warrior jabbers about “smashing white/male privilege”, the proper response is “so – you want to smash freedom, justice and individual dignity?  See you at the barricades”.

Discussion of all other privileges – academic, social, class – were drowned out.  As they were intended to be.

But with the complete subsumation of the left by identity politics, it’s time to return the favor Peggy McIntosh did us; it’s time to define Urban Progressive Privilege.

Unpacking The Invisible NPR Tote Bag:  I’m going to borrow McIntosh’s format – which I suspect was actually tacitly borrowed from Jeff Foxworthy – of the simple list of attributes of Urban Progressive Privilege.

To wit:

Urban Progressive Privilege; Unpacking the Invisible NPR Tote Bag

Mitch Berg

“You were taught to see Urban Progressive Privilege as a bit of talk show rhetoric – not in terms of a very vislble system conferring dominance on my group via a meritless meritocracy”.   

As an urban progressive, you have been taught about “privilege” by others who have that privilege.  Being able to caterwaul about privilege is a prerogative of the privileged.

Like the concept of “white privilege” (which, conventional wisdom tells us, that “whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege”), the first rule of Urban Progressive Privilege is “I don’t believe there is such a thing”; it’s the water in which the Urban Progressive swims.  So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have Urban Progressive Privilege. I have come to seeUrban Progressive Privilege as an invisible and group package of unearned assets that I can count on using daily, but about which it’s hard to be anything but oblivious.

Urban Progressive Privilege is like an invisible weightless NPR tote bag of special permissions, immunities, secret handshakes, Whole Foods gift cards, a virtual echo chamber accompanying everyone who has that privilege, filtering out almost all cognitive dissonance about political, social or moral questions, and a virtual “cone of silence” immunizing them from liability for anything they say or do that contradicts the group’s stated principles.  As we in Human studies work to reveal Urban Progressive Privilege and ask urban progressives to become aware of their power, so one who writes about havingUrban Progressive Privilege must ask, “having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?”

So – when assessing Urban  Progressive Privilege, can you say any of the following?:

  1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people who believe exactly as I do about politics, society, philosophy, morality and the like, all or nearly all of the time.
  2. I was educated from my earliest years through post-secondary education by people whose political and social beliefs mirrored mine, and who didn’t challenge any of mypolitical, social, philosophical and moral beliefs.
  3. My progressive beliefs were never challenged through four or more years of higher education – indeed, they were reinforced, while competing views were shamed and shouted down.
  4. When I went into the working world, my politics, social background or philosophy were never adversarially questioned.
  5. I work, very likely, in an environment staffed with people who agree with and never challenge my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
  6. My social life is made up of people who share, pretty much to a fault, my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptins.
  7. I can avoid, during my daily life, spending time around anyone who will challenge my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
  8. My neighbors – the people in my physical community in which I live – share, almost without exception, my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs.
  9. If someone in  my social or professional life does express a point of view discordant with my and my group’s political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions intrudes into my sphere, I can count on overwhelming support from the rest of my personal, social, professional circles to defend me.  Those who don’t share our beliefs thus either keep quiet, or are shamed into silence.  Thus, their beliefs have no impact in my life. .
  10. My informational world – my news media, my online social circle, my institutional associations (churches/synagogues, my social groups – will not contradict my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
  11. I can count on the news media I listen to – my community’s newspapers, TV stations, as well as stereotypical outlets like NPR, PBS and the like – to reinforce my political and social assumptions.
  12. I can count on as the entertainment media not to contradict my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
  13. I can count on the education system in my community not to undercut the political, social, philosophical and moral I’ve tried to pass on to my family.
  14. My kids’ schools give them textbooks, lectures and other materials that reinforce, never undercut, my political, social, philosophical and moral worldview and that which I’ve tried to teach them.
  15. I can be fairly certain that when I go to my kids’ school, the principle will not condescend to me based on my perceived academic or social background.
  16. I have never had anyone laugh at the accent or vocabulary of my native spoken English.
  17. I can rest fairly certain that no “well-meaning” pundit or scholar will ever paternalistically castigate me for “voting against my interests” (as determined by the pundit’s / scholar’s political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions) for voting in accordance with my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs.
  18. I can choose to ignore the parts of our society outside the East Coast, West Coast, and selected “progressive” archipelagos in between, and express not only ignorance but mockery of the rest of the country, without being seen, shamed, and scorned as a provincialist.
  19. I can express scorn for individuals, groups, religions and social classes that don’t share my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs, accents and worldviews, entirely based on those beliefs, and not be shamed and labeled as a bigot.
  20. I can make racist, sexist and classist statements about people who do not share my community’s political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions, and rest assured I will not be castigated for violating community standards.
  21. I have never been treated as a foreign culture in my own country; I have never had journalists, academics or pundits dispatch a special group to research, analyze and report on why my social circle believes and votes as they do – because the media, academics and punditry are from my class, and share my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions; the more aware ones would be offended by being subjected to such a condescending, patriarchal bit of cultural chauvinism.
  22. My children and family are safe, almost entirely, from the economic, social and criminological  consequences of my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs; indeed, I personally am almost entirely insulated from them.
  23. I can simultaneously say “I believe in science, and have a fact-based worldview” – while never being corrected, much less called out or scorned, for expressing beliefs that have no scientific basis (belief that there are no evolutionary differences between men and women, believe a human isn’t a human until it emerges from the birth canal, believe that there’s scientific evidence that homosexuality is genetic).
  24. I can simultaneously eschew racism and racists, even as I gang up with others like me to oppress black, latino, asian and females who disagree with my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.  I can say things like “That’s not a real, authentic (Black, Latino, Asian) person!” and not get scorned as a racist and patriarch.
  25. I can exhibit ghastly contradictions in my world view and be reasonable sure that nobody in my regular social circle is going to say or do anything about it; if I call someone I disagree with a “fascist” or “patriarch” or “1 percenter” while displaying Che Guevara memorabilia or studiously intoning approval for “Chavezism”, nobody in my social or professional life is going to castigate me for it.
  26. I tut-tut about the virtues of Western civilization and praise Multiculturalism – but do so entirely from a perspective that could not exist outside of Western civilization.  Nobody in my personal or profession or social circles ever brings this up, because they all believe the same thing.

I’m looking for more examples.  Keep ’em generic – not related to any specific issue.   .

Open Letter To Those Who Just Don’t Get It Yet

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To:  Some Of You Trump Opponents Out There
From:  Mitch Berg, Ornery Peasant
Re:  Terminology

Dear Hollywood and New York Showbiz and Media “Elites”

As we come up on inauguration day, some of you are still sore about Donald Trump.  I get it.  I mean, I didn’t vote for him, either.

You’d like to pretend he’s not your president.  Yadda yadda.  Whatever.  Gotcha.  It’s a free country (and will stay that way, so quit  your whining), so you can say what you want, and I can mock you for it.  But relax; I’m not mocking you for that.  Not now.

No, this is worse.

It’s come to my attention that some of you Hollywood types are calling yourselves “the Resistance”.

Stop.  Now.

You are among the wealthiest, most privileged, most untouchable residents in one of hte wealthiest, most privileged parts of the wealthiest and free-est society in the world.   You lost an election.  In four years, you’ll get a rematch (although the way you all are going at this point, most of you will stroke out by mid-terms).  And you will get the rematch; there’ll be no dictatorships, no camps, no nothing.  Why, I bet a President Trump won’t even jabber about siccing the Federal Elections on your blogs, or turn a politicized IRS and DHS loose on your political movements, the way Obama did for eight years.  Our democratic process, imperfect as it is, will go on, and if you don’t go full-blown Joan Crawford on us, you might have a shot, again, someday, God help us all.

So stop using – I believe the term these days is “Appropriating” – the term “Resistance”.  That’s a term used by people who had actual skin in the game; the Jews who, as disarmed as you want us all to be, fought back against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto; the Norwegians who overcame the impossible and destroyed the Nazi nuke program; the Polish fighters who rose and took Warsaw, only to be betrayed by one dictator and hunted down like rats by another; the Danes who, the risk of a summary execution hanging over their heads, snuck their nation’s Jews out to safety; people who, with all hope extinguished, still pulled together and rose up and, mostly, died, but gave their tormentors and murders and bloody nose and, in a few cases, against higher odds than Michael Moore winning the NYC Marathon, survived the war to witness against their captors.

Real people, who left behind whatever hadn’t been taken from them, and fought a real enemy who promised to kill them and their families if they failed.

Not overpaid, plushbottom Hollywood prima-donnas upset that they can’t install their choice of president by coup now that the hoi polloi have rejected their candidate.

Here’s my promise to you; call yourselves “the resistance” to my face, and I will spit in yours.

That is all.

NPR’s “On The Media”: Fake Analysis Of “Fake News”

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There are a few things in the American media for which I have more contempt than the WNYC  program “On The Media”. I’ve written about it in the past – it’s an NPR show, hosted by Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, that seems to be based around the premise the journalist is a noble order of high priest of information, having a salonic conversation about the rarefied heights of American journalism.

In point of fact, it’s a Democrat party propaganda mill, no different than “Occupy Democrats” or any of the left’s other “fake news” mills.

Prosecutors exhibit A? This past weekend’s broadcast, which focused on “not normalizing Trump”.

And as a Tfump non-supporter and someone who was taught journalism by old-school practitioners who actually valued telling the story, rather than achieving a political goal,, I get it.

Of course, when OTM talks about “not normalizing” someone like Donald Trump, not a word will be mentioned about the media having normalized bald-faced support for Hillary Clinton, at a level that we have once been considered a crime against journalism.

Bonus visit bit of nausea induction: as a guest, Bob Garfield interviewed George Lakoff, a noted linguist who pointed out the techniques that Trump has mastered in turning  peoples opinions on their heads, and the need to not normalize that sort of thing…

Of course, Garfield didn’t mention that Lakoff has been working, and as I recall been paid for quite some time now, to try to do exactly what the program complains about Trump doing; trying  to turn language to the service of Democrats.

Apparently they didn’t think we needed to know that.

The Slogan-Based Life

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SCENE:  Mitch BERG is at a hardware store, shopping for a chainsaw sharpener, when around the corner steps Bud GUNKEL, chairman of the CD2 chapter of “Former Republicans for Ron Paul”.  

GUNKEL:  Hey, Merg.  The only way to fix the system is…

BERG:  …yeah, I heard it.  To “withhold your consent from it“.   Feel free to tell the IRS, the BATFE and the Minnesota Department of Revenue you’ve “withheld your consent”; I’m sure everyone will get a good laugh but you.

GUNKEL:  He who would trade freedom for security…

BERG:  …deserves neither.  Good Lord, Bill, do you people ever communicate in anything but the form of clichés?   I mean, do you even know what that means?

GUNKEL:  It means he who would trade liberty for security deserves…

BERG:  …neither.  Yep, I got that.  Again.  I mean, have you thought through what it means?

GUNKEL:   What are you talking about?  What else could there be?

BERG:  Here’s another quote for you; without order, prosperity is impossible.  Without prosperity, liberty is pointless.

GUNKEL:  So you’d give up…

BERG:  …no, no, no, stop right there.   Here’s a quote back atcha; without order, prosperity is impossible.

GUNKEL:  So you want to be like a herd animal…

BERG:  No.  “Order” is a very broad term!   It just means that there’s a general understanding that everyone is playing by the same rules, and that if you bring you product to market, there’ll be consequences for people who try to steal it on the way to the market, or swindle you when they get there.

“Order” can mean “a voluntary agreement that whose end of, everyone holds up”, like the anarchists say; that’s perfectly legitimate.  And it can mean full-blown Danish bureaucracy regulating the transaction, or a medieval baron making sure everyone upholds their end of the bargain for the good of his fiefdom.   And the whole American experiement was built around the idea that order should be maintained with the minimum amount of government and force possible – while allowing for the inevitability, given human nature, that some was likely to be needed at some point.

GUNKEL:  So you mean government!  Government is theft!  Nothing but!

BERG:  Sure, if you let it get out of control.  And we in the US largely have, and that’s a very valid discussion to have.  But the fact is, human nature being what it is, it’s inevitable that if the means of keeping order disappear, while 99% of the people will be just fine, there’s that 1% who’ll decide that what they want is what you got.  It can be a mugger, it can be those accursed Methodists, it can be that whole group of people over the ridge that think your ancestors stole from their ancestors, whatever.

GUNKEL:  So you’re a warvangelical?

BERG:  No – I merely observe human nature.  As I observed in my book, while the vast majority of humans are perfectly content to live and work and produce and interact peacefully, there are some that prefer to take what others produce.  It’s just easier.

GUNKEL: So  you’d give up freedom for thirteen pieces of silver?

BERG:  Wow – way to mix milieus.  Here’s another quote for you:  without prosperity, freedom is irrelevant.  If you don’t have prosperity – if you’re a hunter-gatherer or a subsistence farmer – “freedom” is a very relative thing.  You’re free to speak and worship and assemble – but you’re busy seeing to your survival from dawn to dusk, year-round, like a medieval fyrd.  Which means not only are your more abstruse freedoms irrelevant, but you have neither the time nor the energy to see to things like prosperity and order – making you ripe pickings for anyone who wants to take what you’ve worked for.  And this time you’ll have no surplus to see to your very survival!   Which is, by the way, a condition that also makes you ripe pickings for whomever would call himself your king, either against your will or, as tired and close to starvation as you are by this point, with your full consent.

GUNKEL:  So you will trade freedom for security!  Hah!

BERG:  You make it sound like a binary, black or white thing.

GUNKEL:  It is!    If you don’t have all the freedom, you have none of it!

BERG:   That’s just madness.  You say because the American people have given up some freedom, we’re no different than North Korea?

And no.  I won’t trade my freedom, all or nothing, for security – not while I have anything to say about it.   I will, as a constituent of a limited government that has a few carefully-enumerated jobs, engage some agents to keep the order we all need.  And no more.

GUNKEL:  That’s not how government works today!

BERG:  You’re telling me!  Y’see, that’s the problem with “libertarians”; they take poli-sci class absolutes and try to apply them to the real world.   So I’ll do it back atcha:  without prosperity, freedom is academic; without order, prosperity is impossible.  Therefore, without order, paradoxically, freedom is impossible.

GUNKEL:  So you say freedom is impossible?

BERG:   Nope.  I am saying that while absolute tyranny is very possible, absolute freedom cannot exist in a world where others have the “will to power” to become tyrants.

There is a trade-off; it’s the job of a free people to simultaneously see to the order that enables the prosperity that makes freedom possible, and make sure the “order” they create doesn’t become oppressive.

GUNKEL:  All involuntary order is oppressive!

BERG:  So you throw off a “government” that governs by consent of the governed…

GUNKEL:  Yes!

BERG:   And live in a world with only “gentlemens agreements” for order…

GUNKEL:  Yes!

BERG:   So that you can be conquered or killed by someone who took advantage of the fact that you have no means to see to public order?

GUNKEL:  Er…yes!  Better dead than…er…

BERG:  Naturally.

And SCENE

What A Terrorist Wants

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SCENE:  December 8, 1941, in the well of the House of Representatives – in an alternate universe.    President Barack Delano Obama is addressing a joint emergency session of Congress.

OBAMA:  Yesterday, December Seventh, 1941, is a day which will live in infamy.

Now, let me be clear:  this attack did not represent the Real Japan.  Japan is an ancient, honorable culture, dating back over 2,000 years; Shinto is a religion of peace, famous for its pastoral scenes and transcendental poetry.

And this attack does not represent the real Japanese people; a people who invented sushi, and baseball, and the number zero, named after their fighter plane.

We know the attackers were the junior varsity; who even knew the Japanese had aircraft carriers?

The lesson of yesterday?  We must not give in to fear, or bigotry, in framing our response to this attack.  We must not let fear drive us to launching an air raid on Tokyo, or a two-pronged offensive through the Solomon Islands, or an island-jumping campaign through the Central Pacific, because that is exactly what the attackers want.  If they force us to attack them, we are playing their game, their way.

We must respond to the parts we control – to the National Rifle Association, which has, through the intransigence of Congressional Republicans,  made it easier for criminals like the attackers to buy bombs than books in Tokyo.

I urge Congress also to accelerate passage of the Affordable Defense Act.

Thank you, and let’s not waste this crisis.

A Parable

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(SCENE:  A small aircraft is flying over the prairie.  Inside the plane are:

  • Carpal POX:  a golf pro from Wayzata, and Vice Chair for Ideological Purity at the Minnesota 5th CD Libertarian Party
  • Viktor VON-SCHLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE: a professional fraternity organizer, and Vice Chair for Education at the 5th CD Libertarian Party
  • Stephanie Marie ANNAN: Community Organizer for the Minnesota 5th CD Libertarian party.
  • Mitch BERG:  Guy, travelling space-available
  • Buck SAVAGE: The pilot. 

Suddenly, the right engine bursts into flames.  The plane begins to vibrate and starts to swerve to the right)

SAVAGE:  Crap!  Everybody grab a parachute!  We’ve gotta bail out!

VON-SCHLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE:  Oh, dude! Is this like one of those jokes, where the Pope, Hitler and Kim Kardashian are in a plane and there’s only two parachutes? 

SAVAGE:  No, there’s five.  Hurry up and put one on…

ANNAN:  …or what?  The (makes scare quotes in the air) “plane” will “crash” and “kill” us “all”?  How do we know this? 

BERG:  Um, yeah – I’ll take a ‘chute.  Thanks. 

POX:  Wait – I think there’s a third option.  Or maybe several third options. 

VON-SCHLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE:  That means like third through maybe millionth options, you douche!

POX:  Let’s think about this.  Who’s to say there’s any absolutes, here? 

BERG:  (Frantically donning parachute) I’d say “the plane is crashing” is pretty absolute.

ANNAN:  That’s assuming the parachutes work.  I’ve read that they don’t always work.  Sometimes they actually cause accidents. 

SAVAGE:  Look, ma’am, pretty soon the fire in the engine is going to melt the wing spar, and the wing is going to fall off and the plane will go into an uncontrollable spin, and the centrifugal force will pin you to the wall of the plane so hard you won’t be able to move. 

ANNAN:  Oh, don’t even get me started on the melting point of steel. 

BERG:  The wing spar is aluminum, isn’t it, Mr. Savage? 

SAVAGE:  Yeah…

POX:  Look, the point is that this is a fine time to brainstorm for more, better options than the ones our authority figure – no disrespect intended…

SAVAGE:  (Handle on the hatch handle) None taken.

POX:  …tells us.  Because the biggest problem with the human mind is that we allow authority figures to shackle our imagines, and the bounds of logic to dictate the parameters of the possible.  What other options are there besides “flaming death” and “parachute?”

BERG:  “Dying while engaging in navel-gazing magical thinking?”

POX:  Not quite in the spirit intended, but there are no bad ideas here…

VON-SCHLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE:  Dude, I reject the premise that there’s any difference between the two.  Choosing one or the other merely perpetuates a binary system.  I’m not going to pick either one. 

SAVAGE:  Well, yeah – you will pick one.  Or more to the point, it’ll pick you. 

VON-SCHLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE:  Don’t tase me, bro. 

POX:  Benghazi!  Benghazi!

(ANNAN and VON SCHLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE giggle)

ANNAN:  I’m done talking with people who think in terms of “life” or “death” as absolutes. 

BERG:  Well, that’s a perfectly fine metaphysical and theological point, but crashing in the plane sort of moots the discussion. 

ANNAN:  That does it.  I’m shunning you. 

POX:  OK.  Fourth option; we concentrate real hard and levitate the plane?  Again, no bad ideas, here.  Any more? 

BERG:  So I pull this ring here? 

SAVAGE:  After we’re out of the plane. 

POX:  Some people just can’t be cured. 

ANNAN:  There is no difference between the disease and the cure. 

VON-SCHLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE:  I’m totally posting this to Facebook. 

(BERG and SAVAGE jump, count to three, and pull the rip cords, as the plane, engine ablaze, sails into the distance). 

ANNAN (in the distance):  Bunch of ‘chutists.

VON-SCHLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE and POX:  ‘Chutists!  ‘Chutists! 

(And SCENE)

Tragedy On A Dimmer Switch

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The nation wracks itself in grief – justifably – over the deaths of 20-odd children in Connecticut.  I’d shudder to meet the monsters that don’t recoil in horror and outrage.

I’m  struck, though, by the lack of outrage over the carnage in President Obama’s home town, the town run by the machine that put him in office, the city run by his former Chief of Staff.

In Chicago, since 2008, 622 children have been murdered.  That’s almost thirty Sandy Hook classrooms full of kids.  They didn’t have the “luck” to look, largely, just like the children of our nation’s “elite”, our media, business and wonk classes – white, exurban, upper-middle-class.  The died in ones and twos, not in a bloody pile that became a media feeding frenzy.  They weren’t killed by children of privilege, shot by weapons that the dominant political class was trying to turn into a boogeyman and political wedge; they were mostly murdered by their neighborhoods’ own criminal underclass, carrying mundane, mostly-stolen pistols and illegally-modified shotguns, almost none of them by any “assault weapon” anyone would recognize.

No – they’re mostly black and latino.  They’re mostly from poor families, students at Chicago’s wretched public schools.  And they live – lived – in a city that has been the American left’s social laboratory for the better part of a century.  And they died in a city that is a fully-owned subsidiary of the American left, and a key part of its national power base, and a place that has made it harder for the law-abiding citizen to buy guns than to buy crack, heroin or a hooker. A city that trumpets the ambitions – and exhibits the failures – of everything American “progressivism” stands for.

They’re minority, they’re poor, they’re rhetorical guinea pigs in America’s biggest leftist lab.

And they’re dying at the rate of seven or eight classrooms-full a year – not on one horrible bloody Friday, but every year, for years past and for years to come.

And outside their communities, their families, their neighborhood’s churches?  They die anonymously.

And there is the American left’s concern for “the children”.

So let’s do make sure that’s part of the “Conversation about Guns”, shall we?

Stay Hard, Stay Hungry, Stay Alive If You Can

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I got an email from MPR the other day.  It was actually a combo email from MPR News and “The Current” asking what song we thought best summed up the state of the nation during this election season.

I wrote back with my suggestion – a song that has layer upon layer of significance to our nation, our society, our zeitgeist and the election itself.  A song that’s all about dreaming a big dream, and having those dreams run up on the rocks, and hitting that moment where you have to think “was that a dream or was it a mirage?”.  A song about that moment when you have to decide – do I drown, or do I sack up and carry on?

A song about truth and consequences.  A song that, on a work week after a long trip across the prairie, reminds me of the huge swathe in the middle of this country, the square states full of bitter gun-clinging jebus freaks like me that are, in fact, my home and background and blood and my past.  And that is, with a blessing and a tailwind, may be our nation’s future.

The song is “This Hard Land” by Bruce Springsteen.

It’s a song he wrote during a John Steinbeck jag, for Born in the USA, and that should have been on the album (be honest – would anyone miss “Downbound Train?”) and was in its day one of the most sought-after bootlegs in Springsteen’s oeuvre.

So many layers to this song, and to the reasons I chose it.

First verse?

Hey there mister can you tell me what happened to the seeds Ive sown

Can you give me a reason sir as to why they’ve never grown

They’ve just blown around from town to town

Till they’re back out on these fields

Where they fall from my hand

Back into the dirt of this hard land

Thomas Hobbes, the 18th-century British intellectual who was one of the patron saints of conservatism as we understand it today, couldn’t have expressed better the fundamental conservative ideal that “life’s a bitch”, that there are forces that are bigger and more powerful than men and their dreams.

But well return to that.

Now me and my sister from germantown

We did ride

We made our bed sir from the rock on the mountainside

We been blowin around from town to town

Lookin for a place to stand

Where the sun burst through the cloud

To fall like a circle

Like a circle of fire down on this hard land

America is a land of myths.  Mostly big and glorious ones – like the ones that drew our forefathers, like the singer and his sister, from their old homes, the Germantowns and Norwayvilles and Saigon Centers, to This Hard Land.   Much of what America sees as its own self-image – whether the wilderness of the Badlands or the wilderness of the tradiing floor or the inventors garage or the moon or the neighborhood or the entrenched beliefs of the human heart – is about the epic American dream of going where your ancestors have never gone before, of being something they weren’t.

And over the past seventy years, it’s become about the marketing of those dreams, whether via John Wayne or “Hope and Change”.

But like all dreams – and their cousins, the myth and the chimera – they run afoul a brutal reality:

Now even the rain it don’t come round

It don’t come round here no more

And the only sound at nights the wind

Slammin the back porch door

It just stirs you up like it wants to blow you down

Twistin and churnin up the sand

Leavin all them scarecrows lyin face down

Face down in the dirt of this hard land

The prairie is dotted with the remains of old farm homes from families that just didn’t make it, flindered remains of their back doors still slamming in the wind.  Just as America is dotted with businesses that tried and failed, leaving behind empty buildings, rusty frames, doors drifting back and forth in the desultory breeze.  And yes, the wreckage of government initiatives like the one that’s dominated our political life this past presidential term, a dream – a chimera from a brief majority four years ago – of an undertaking that, despite the fervency of its dreamers’ beliefs, has failed as completely as the sodbuster in the song.  Whether through poor design, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or being fundamentally wrong or – like the singer and his sister – just from suffering a bad run of luck in the face of a merciless and uncaring Nature, all of human existence is a tough grind dominated by forces we don’t, by ourselves, control.

Being human, we attempt to control them anyway – to bring order to the chaos, and to tame the untameable:

 From a building up on the hill

I can hear a tape deck blastin’ “Home on the Range”

I can see them Bar-M choppers

Sweepin’ low across the plains

Its me and you, Frank, we’re lookin for lost cattle

Our hooves twistin and churnin up the sand

Were ridin in the whirlwind searchin for lost treasure

Way down south of the Rio Grande

Were ridin cross that river

In the moonlight

Up onto the banks of this hard land

It’s human nature to try to bottle up and contain Nature, whether the nature around us or the nature inside us.

And it’s one of the great dividing lines in human nature, the one between those who are content for their “home on the range” to come recorded, to have the almighty Bar-M or The Almighty  or The One out looking for the strays, for those who are just fine being “Julia“…

…and those whose dreams, or mirages, embrace the chaos that ensues where life and Nature, natural and human, are in conflict.

And the last verse is for them:

Hey frank wont ya pack your bags

And meet me tonight down at liberty hall

Just one kiss from you my brother

And we’ll ride until we fall

Well sleep in the fields

Well sleep by the rivers and in the morning

Well make a plan

Well if you can’t make it

Stay hard, stay hungry, stay alive

If you can

And meet me in a dream of this hard land

Whether it’s the pioneer seeking more elbow room from all the other settlers and their choppers and tape decks, or from bouncing back from a failure, or a big part of a nation taking a deep breath and saying “this is not the path we want”, or, I dunno, Atlas shrugging for all I know, this verse – with allusions to Okies loading up their trucks and bidding their relatives goodbye, or immigrants climbing on the boat and wishing their old lives auf wiedersehen, or men kissing their wives and kids and mustering down at Liberty Hall as the drums and the hobnails rattle on the wind, or a people saying “thanks, Julia, and all the best to you and that mysterious niece and/or nephew that appeared a few frames back, but I’m looking for something a little more…epically mythical” – is the American myth; the idea that we are a restless pack of strivers looking for a newer, better, freer horizon.

Beyond that, in terms of politics today?  Every generation dreams of leaving a better world to their kids, as I do for my kids and my new granddaughter. We have a distinct chance, as things go, of leaving them a world that my ancestors in the Dust Bowl would look at and whisper “there but for the grace of God…”.  And unlike the the Okies, our immigrant forefathers and protagonist in “This Hard Land”, this time there’s noplace to ride away to to start over.  We’re stuck with this hard land.

For me, the song also is further evidence that Springsteen – my favorite American R&R songwriter since Johnny Cash – is America’s best conservative songwriter. Looking at his prime output from the height of his muse, there’s a case to be made that once you peel off the rhetoric and the Hollywood and the political dross of the past decade, his music was fundamentally conservative.  And I’ll make the case, since American conservatism’s most important non-electoral mission is to engage in this nation’s larger non-political culture.

More on this after the election.

Anyway – ask a question, you’ll get an answer.  Usually.

UPDATE:  Hobbes, not Hume.  Sigh.  It’s been a few years.

UPDATE 2:  Welcome, Bob Collins’ readers!

Continue reading →

Chanting Points Memo: Slouching From Fargo

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How do you measure success in a politician?

If you’re a liberal, it’s likely in terms of sheer volume of legislation created and money moved about.  Because to a liberal, government is about creating reams of paper, rules, laws, stuff for government to do.

If you’re a conservative, it’s probably more a matter of princple; of getting government out of the way, of taking pointless laws and needless regulations off the books.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Mike McFeely is a talk show host in Fargo.  He’s the current house liberal at KFGO, which was at one time the WCCO of the Fargo area, and like WCCO has shrunk greatly since its heyday (and since I left North Dakota).  He fills the role Fast Eddie Schultz used to play on the station, the token lefty.  Like Schultz, he’s apparently a former small-market sportscaster; like Schultz, he sounds like it.

And like a lot of liberal D-list pundits and pseudo-celebs, he’s got a jones for Mary Franson, GOP incumbent in District 8B and, like most uppity female and minority conservatives, the same sort of catnip for lefties that Michele Bachmann has been for the past decade and a half.  It started  a few weeks ago, with McFeely’s Schultz-like chanting of rumors that even some of the smarter regional leftyblogs long ago debunked.  McFeely came across in that case as a small-town crone abusing the “power” of his radio bully pulpit (and as much as KFGO has atrophied, it’s still not chicken feed)

I’ll give the guy kudos for at least trying to go legit in this letter to the editor in the East Otter Tail County Focus last week.

Rep. Mary Franson does not represent Greater Minnesota values and, by her own admission, will not have a strong voice for her constituents in House District 8B if she is re-elected.

Now, whenever a critic says their target has said something “by their own admission”, you can usually be pretty sure someone’s trying to play a rhetorical card trick; they admitted nothing of the sort.

While Rep. Franson has made embarrassing headlines nationally and statewide for, among other things, comparing her constituents who receive food assistance to wild animals (a claim she repeated even after “apologizing” for it on social media)

Now, when you’re a sportscaster, you can pretty much babble any kind of crap you want – because it’s just sports.  McFeely – like Schultz before him – seems to think politics is about the same.

But no – the smart people dispensed with that meme, too, and months ago; Franson pointed out, correctly, that long-term dependence dehumanizes people, and casts government in the role of the benevolent, responsible pet owner.   The remarks were taken out of context during a fractious session by a DFL noise machine that exists only to provide grist for their campaign mill.

And like a lot of D-list talk show hosts – and yes, my NARN pals and I are better than this – McFeely and “context” are never really on good terms:

At the event during which she repeated her comparison of assistance recipients to wild animals, Rep. Franson admitted that members of her own party did not support her and distanced themselves from her.

Yep.  During the “Animals” fracas, the House leadership shamefully backed away from Franson – one of several “ready fire aim” moments in a trying session for GOPers.

But teapot-tempests come and go; at the end of the day, always, “it’s the economy, stupid”.  McFeely takes a brisk dip into actual fact:

Despite low unemployment in Douglas and Todd counties

Wait – back up.  This Republican corner of the state is doing pretty well, you say?

Huh.

So let’s take a quick breather and set up some actual, factual history:  Representative Franson was…:

  1. …elected in the Tea Party wave in 2010 on a conservative ticket…
  2. …to represent a traditionally conservative Republican part of the state…
  3. …that’s doing relatively well, and apparently – by dint of having sent a conservative freshman legislator to the legislature in the middle of a grueling recession – wants to keep it that way.

Just so we’ve got that straight.

McFeely:

Instead of spending time in St. Paul fighting for issues specific to her constituents – such as lowering property taxes for farms and small businesses in rural Minnesota – Rep. Franson spent her two years in the Legislature authoring bills that accomplished nothing.

Perhaps McFeely would favor us by showing us the bill where Franson raised – or declined to lower – property taxes.

Go ahead, Mike, We’ll wait.  Cough up that bill.

[Mr. McFeely – don’t look at this next statement.  Scout’s honor?  OK – all the rest of you know that property taxes are the role of county commissions and city councils.  The legislature doesn’t set property taxes.  Now, the Democrats have spent the last two years babbling about how lowering Local Government Aid inevitably raises property taxes.  McFeely would have you believe that on Franson’s watch, taxes rose as a direct, cause-and-effect consequence of lowered LGA.  It’s one of those chanting points the left throws out there to gull the ill-informed.  But, again, that’s the job of the counties and cities.  Assuming LGA was cut.  Was it?  We’ll come back to that – but I’ll give you a little spoiler; McFeely makes Ed Schultz look smart and ethical].

Got that bill, Mike?  Hint:  It’s between the snipes and the half-round squares.

———-

Next, McFeely botches history – and by “botch”, let’s be charitable and assume he just doesn’t know the actual facts involved; if he does, then he’s just lying:

In her two years in St. Paul, Rep. Franson authored 36 bills. None became law. Very few were even discussed or forwarded. Even her own party wasn’t interested in the agenda Rep. Franson was trying to push. That is the definition of an ineffective legislator.

Wait – authoring laws that don’t get passed “defines” “ineffective?”

Let’s go back to the beginning of the post; conservatives don’t believe generating new laws defines success.

But let’s go by the left’s – and McFeely’s – definition of “effectiveness”.  None of Franson’s 36 bills passed into law.

Which is exactly the same record as House Minority Leader Paul Thissen; none of the two bills he authored passed into law, either!

Or how about a more rank-and-file member?  Ryan “The Intellectual Id Of The DFL Caucus” Winkler chief-authored 22 bills.  None passed; none even came close.

And do you know what?  Neither Thissen’s 0/2, Winkler’s 0/22 or Fransen’s 0/36 are even below average – because in a typical session (for example, 2008, the latest one with statistics) over 4,000 bills are introduced, and around 100 get signed.  That’s about 1 out of 40.

In other words, McFeely tossed out a number that is in itself meaningless without context.  Just like the “Animals” comment and his “property taxes” comment; either he doesn’t know what he’s taking about and doesn’t care, or he does and he’s hoping nobody checks his facts.  Like all Democrat campaigns, he – and by extension, the Cunniff campaign that McFeely is supporting – is hoping people aren’t curious enough to poke at those numbers.

Oh, we’re not done.

———-

McFeely turns next from misleading context to just-plain-ignorance:

At the same time, Rep. Franson consistently voted to raise taxes on residents of Greater Minnesota. She supported elimination of the Market Value Homestead Credit, raising property taxes on all Minnesotans and particularly those in rural Minnesota.

MVHC was a subsidy of metro-area housing; it kept metro-area property taxes artificially low, and subsidized spending by the wastrel DFL governments in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth.  Like LGA itself, it transferred money from the parts of the state that support themselves to our basket-case metro areas.

But at least that was a chanting point with a coherent argument.  Next, McFeely wafts away into fantasy-land:

Rep. Franson sided with metropolitan legislators by failing to fight for an increase in Local Government Aid, a tool that provides property tax relief primarily for Greater Minnesota cities and towns.

Local Government Aid, as we’ve discussed in the past, was originally a way to transfer money to poor, outstate towns from the wealthy Metro, to allow them to buy some of the amenities of modern life; modern schools, roads, water treatment plants and the like.  It’s turned into a subsidy of Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth (although Iron Range towns get the most aid per capita).

(And while McFeely doesn’t name, and I suspect doesn’t know, the “metropolital legislators” with whom he claims Franson sided, it’s worth noting that the Metro is divided between cities that are constantly begging for more aid, and suburbs that largely receive none).

The GOP ran in 2010 on a platform of returning LGA to its original purpose – supporting smaller towns that don’t have the tax base to buy the necessities of modern government. And how’d that work?

State funding for LGA has been cut 25 percent over the last 10 years and has remained flat since 2010.  Eliminating or reducing LGA will seriously weaken regional centers like Alexandria and small cities like New York Mills.

McFeely gives a statewide number – but since McFeely’s writing about Franson’s performance in re her district, 8B, let’s ask what are the district’s specifics?

Let’s track LGA payments in 2008 and 2011 – payments, not pledges – for the three counties in Rep. Franson’s district, as well as the state averages and the metro areas (measured in per-capita dollars actually paid to the various jurisdictions).  All figures come from that noted conservative tool, the State of Minnesota:

City or County 2008 Payment ($/capita) 2011 Payment ($/capita) Change
Douglas County 123 118 -5
Otter Tail County 237 245 +8
Todd County 262 273 +11
State Average 101 98 -3
St. Paul 178 175 -3
Minneapolis 178 166 -12
Duluth 321 321 Bupkes

Ah.  So that’s why McFeely gave a statewide number!  Because since 2008 – the only period Rep. Franson had any control over as a legislator – LGA actually rose in Otter Tail and Todd counties; it shrank by an insignificant amount in Douglas County, where Alexandria is. and where as McFeely himself admitted, the economy is doing better than the state average.

So if you’re a liberal?  District 8B’s LGA was steady to slightly up.  More money!  Franson was effective!

And if you’re a conservative?  LGA spending in the district was in line with the GOP’s platform, raising payments to smaller out-of-state jurisdictions that actually need it, and were the original intended target of this spending.  Franson was still effective!

And if you have a functioning BS detector?  Mike McFeely is out of his depth writing about anything that doesn’t involve throwing a ball, and is serving as a trained chimp reciting DFL chanting points he may not understand, and certainly hopes you, the voter in District 8B, won’t.

Like the following:

Under her watch, property taxes have risen sharply…

Although, as the state’s figures show, not because of anything the legislature did, least of all in District 8B.

…while she has embarrassed her constituents with controversial national headlines.

Which were cowardly manglings of context by people who are getting more and more desperate at their prospects in two weeks, and for whom female conservatives are like red capes in front of bulls.

Franson did get an 86 from the Taxpayers League, among many other spiffs from conservative groups.  She was one of the freshmen “Tea Party” class that held the line on things like spending, tax hikes, and giving money to Zygi Wilf, while erasing the deficit, reforming regulations, keeping Minnesota’s unemployment rate way below the national average, and working to reform our state’s business climate.

In short, she did what the majority of (pre-redistricting) District 11B’s voters – mostly Republican, mostly conservative – sent her to do.

And if this is how desperate her opponent, Bob Cunniff, and his campaign are getting, it looks like she’ll do the same for new district 8B.

And if you live in the area, feel free to let the East Otter Tail Focus – and Mike McFeely – know I said so.

———-

So we started the article by asking how you measure a politician.  The answer – whether you’re left or right – most likely involves doing what one is sent to the Capitol to do.  Has Mary Franson done this?  That’s for the people in her district – not talking heads from Fargo or the Twin Cities – to decide.

So how about a media figure, an uninvited pundit?

Getting one’s facts straight, or at least being honest, would be a great start.

Chanting Points Memo: Buying Minnesota With Daddy’s Money

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So far in this campaign, as the DFL hammers its way toward its primary next month, most of the attacks against Tom Emmer have come from a shadowy group, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”.

I’ve busted them repeatedly stretching the truth and/or lying; Channel Five followed suit earlier this week.

But who are these people?  And where did they get the money to run all these slick (if utterly truth-free) ads, and all these posh (but amateurishly-designed) websites?

Because they run through a lot of money!

2006 Campaign – We first heard of “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” (A4aBM) during the 2006 campaign.  During that outing, A4aBM spent $2,545,162 – about $2.3 million of it in ads against Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Where did that money come from?

Their donor list is as follows:

  • CWA COPE $5,000
  • MAPE $5,000
  • Midwest Values PAC (Franken) $5,000
  • MN AFL-CIO $5,000
  • United Food Comml Workers $7,500
  • Ma Mah Wi No Min Fund1 (Mille Lacs Tribe) $7,000

Unions and Native American gambling interests so far; no big surprises.

  • Tom Kayser (MN) $7,500  [One of Mike Ciresi’s cronies]
  • Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux $15,000
  • MN Nurses $15,000
  • United Steelworkers $22,000
  • Afscme Council 5 – $25,000
  • Lks and Plains Carpenters $25,000
  • IBEW MN State Council $25,000
  • Intl Union of Operating Engineers $25,000
  • America Votes MN $30,040 [aka “ACORN 2.0“]
  • Coalition for Progress $50,000 (Mich)
  • Laborers Dist Cncl $60,000
  • Pat Stryker (CO) $100,000
  • SEIU MN State Cncl $100,000
  • Educ. MN $135,000
  • Tim Gill (CO) $300,000
  • Alida Messinger (NY) $746,000
  • Win Minnesota $778,500;

So – out of two and a half million dollars spent, about 20% – about $449,000 – came from those whom I thought were the most likely suspects, the unions.

And nearly 2/3 came from two sources – “Alida Messinger”, and a group called “Win Minnesota”.

We’ll come back to both of them.

2010 Campaign So Far – To date in the gubernatorial campaign, A4aBM has raised $93,386 (as of this past Tuesday).  They’d spent $72,383 of it as of Tuesday (on ads that were, as we ascertained earlier this week, wall to wall bullcrap).   Of that $93,386, 79.636 of it came from the “Win Minnesota PAC”.

So that’s two election cycles in a row (so far) where “Win Minnesota” has been the leading funder of scabrous hit pieces against Republican candidates.

Win Minnesota?  Seems pretty innocuous, doesn’t it?

Who is “Win Minnesota”, And Who Funds Them? – Here’s the list of major contributors to “Win Minnesota” during the 2006 campaign.  I’ll be adding the emphasis for reasons that’ll become fairly obvious:

  • Anne Bartley (San Fran) $25,000 [Linked via the Rockefeller foundation to Alida Messinger – whose maiden name was “Rockefeller” and who…well, we’ll get back to that.  She’s also linked to Hillary Clinton’s “Women’s Leadership Council” and former Clinton administration figure]
  • Shayna Berkowitz (Mpls) $100,000; ]
  • John Cowles (Mpls) $20,000; [Why yes, the former Strib publisher!  But don’t you dare say the Strib is biased!]
  • Andrew Dayton (Mpls) $1,000;
  • David Dayton (Mpls) $5,000;
  • Eric Dayton (Mpls) $1,000;
  • Mark Dayton (Mpls) $25,000;
  • Mary Lee Dayon (Mpls) $100,000;
  • Vanessa Dayton $1,000;
  • Sandra Ferry (NY) $50,000; [Yet another Rockefeller – sister of Alida Messinger]
  • Barbara Forster (Mpls) $25,000; [generic liberal with deep pockets]
  • Roger Hale (Mpls) $100,000; [Former Daytons’ executive]
  • John Harris (PA)$20,000;
  • Myron Kunin $5,000; [Hair care tycoon]
  • Kim Lund (Mpls) $25,000
  • Darlene Luther 47A Committee $10,000 ;
  • alida Messinger (NY) $165,000;
  • Midwest Values PAC (Franken) $20,000;
  • Linda Pritzker (TX) $30,000; [Scionette of the Hyatt fortune, big-time liberal with deep pockets; major donor to MoveOn.org]
  • Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux $10,000;
  • Tina Smith (Mpls) $10,000;
  • Linde Uihlein (WI)$100,000; [Schlitz heiress, long-time political plutocrat]
  • Julie Zelle (MN) $5,000

That was a lot of Daytons, and people linked with the Daytons…wasn’t it?

So how about this year?

So far in 2010, “Win Minnesota” lists the following donors to “Win Minnesota”‘s current warchest (currently worth $1,173,500), again with emphasis added by me:

  • Andrew Dayton $1,000
  • David Dayton $50,000
  • John cowles $25,000 [Remember him from 2006?]
  • MaryLee Dayton $250,000
  • Emily Tuttle (MN) $5,000
  • Ronald Sternal (MN) $5,000
  • Alida Messinger (NY) $500,000
  • James Deal (MN) $50,000
  • Roger Hale (MN) $10,000 [Remember him from above?]
  • Barbara forster (MN) $25,000
  • Democratic Governors Association $250,000;

So of the $1.1 and change million warchest, $851,000 came from Daytons, and Alida Messinger.

But wait!  There is another fund registered with the state, with a different account number but with the same email and street addresses, that has $850,000 socked away but has spent no money.

And where did that $850,000 come from?

  • Alida Messinger (Mpls) $50,000
  • Win Minnesota $50,000
  • Education MN $250,000
  • Laborers District Council $100,000
  • MAPE $50,000
  • IBEW MN State Council $50,000
  • MN Nurses Assc $50,000
  • Local 49 Engineers $25,000
  • Vance Opperman $50,000
  • Afscme Council 5 $50,000
  • MN AFL-CIO $25,000
  • SEIU MN State Council $50,000
  • AFSCME (Wash DC) $50,000;

And who is this Alida Messinger who has contributed so mightily – over $1.46 million over the past four years! – to the cause of disinforming Minnesotans about Republicans?  Other than the youngest daughter of John D. Rockefeller III?

The ex-wife of candidate Mark Dayton.

So “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” is essentially a front for a group of unions and, to the tune of millions over the past four years, Mark Dayton’s family, friends and ex-wife.

They are paying millions of dollars to advertise – and hiding it from casual view behind two layers of astroturf.

Mark Dayton is trying to buy the election, but he’s taking great pains to make sure you don’t know about it.

Chanting Points Memo: The Alliance For A Deceitful, Sloppy, Not Very Bright Minnesota

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The “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” – an astroturf group sponsored by a consortium of DFL-linked pressure groups – has been behind much of the smear-mongering against Tom Emmer so far this campaign. They’ve occupied themselves with a klutzy false-flag website, a couple of twitter accounts (one of baldfaced propaganda, and one, “StuffEmmerSays”, that tried to mock Emmer statements but actually made him sound like Ronald Reagan to the point I spent the last month mocking it as a pro-GOP site; it seems to have worked, and the account seems to have demised).

And if that’s the best the DFL can do, this election’s not going to be nearly as hard as I’d worried.

“A4aBM” ran the first anti-Emmer ad of the campaign this week; and the Republican Twitterverse has been redounding with bits and pieces of the information A4aBM got wrong.

Long story short; the ad is warm runny bulls**t.

Claim #1: Audio: “Tom Emmer sided with Governor Pawlenty and opposed a plan that would force corporations and CEOs to pay their fair share of taxes”  ABMBackup: “On May 18, 2009, Emmer voted against the second attempt at a DFL- written FY2010-2011 revenue bill…

Sounds pretty gnarly, huh?

The Truth: Tom Emmer did not cast a vote on this roll call.

Oh, my.  You mean, A4aBM got a fact wrong?

Well, the ad is 0-1 so far.

Claim #2: Audio: “They cut funding for education” ABM Backup: “On April 18, 2007, Emmer voted against HF 6, the K-12 funding bill, which passed the House with a huge bipartisan majority of 119-13. On May 8, 2007, Emmer again voted against the bill as it was re-passed on a similar 119-14 vote…

Voted against it twice?  Emphasis added:

The Truth: After April 18, 2007, there were no additional votes taken on this bill that year.  During the 2008 session, this bill was used as a “vehicle” and a delete-all amendment was added completely changing the bill.  The vote they reference on May 8, 2007 was actually a vote on May 8, 2008 and it wasn’t a vote on the bill but, rather, a procedural vote on whether the bill should be taken from the table.  Emmer voted against taking the bill from the table.

You’re trying to say A4aBM lied about the real intent of voting on a picayune procedural technicality in the life of a background-noise bill to try to smear Tom Emmer?  Say it isn’t so!

0-2 so far.

Claim #3: Audio: “[Tom Emmer and Tim Pawlenty] cut funding for education.”

The Truth: There is nothing in the bill cited that included a cut to education.  In addition, KSTP’s Tom Hauser recently had this to say about the claim that Governor Pawlenty cut education funding: “As for Pawlenty cutting education funding, that’s not true.  According to the education department, per pupil funding has gone up since 2004.”

0-3 – well, more like 0-4, really.

Claim #4: Audio: “[Emmer voted to cut] job training.”

The Truth: Nowhere in ABM’s backup is there any support for this claim.  “Training” is mentioned only once in the legislation, and that is in reference to home ownership education.  This bill had nothing to do with job training.

Zero for five.

Claim #5: Audio: “[Emmer and Pawlenty cut] job training and health care”.  On screen: “Source: Minnesota House Journal, 4/25/2005”

The Truth: According to the Minnesota House of Representatives Journal, the House was not in session on 4/25/2005, meaning there could be no Journal of the House for that day.  The Alliance’s citation, therefore, does not even exist.

So the lesson for today is, whenever “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” speaks, distrust and then verity.

Because the DFL asssumes that you, the people, are too stupid to know any better.

A Day In The Life Of Every Uppity Conservative

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ME:  Hi!

REPRESENTATIVE GROUP OF LIBERALS (RGOL):  Conservatism is fundamentally racist!

ME: Um – beg your pardon?

“RGOL”:  Racism oozes from every pore of conservatism!

ME:  OK, that’s what we call “bigotry” where I come from, but what the hell, I love a good ad-hominem argument.  Do tell!

“RGOL”:  Nixon’s “southern strategy” brought all the racists to the GOP!

ME: Er, let’s get back to “the south” in a bit here.  You did read my post last week about Jacob Weisberg’s article in that noted racist conservative hangout Slate, that noted there are distinct differences between Northeastern, Southern and Western conservatism, right?  How Northeastern conservatism is largely comfortable with big government but with an emphasis on making big government more fiscally sane – think Mitt Romney – and race is largely a non-entity, and in fact part of the roots of Northeastern conservatism are at least partly in the abolition movement?  And how Western conservatism, the conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan, is fundamentally libertarian, which means racism is anathema, since libertarian government is utterly color blind, and all real racism – the racism that makes people unequal before the law – is entirely a function of excessive and illegitimate government power, right?  Which leaves southern conservatism, which certainly had racists among its adherents, but whose fundamental “racism” is at least partly a matter of framing by, well liberals?

“RGOL”:  Of course we did.  Now – look at this list of southern conservatives and the racist things they’ve said…

ME: OK, you’re more or less dodging the point here.  Can individuals be racist?  Certainly.  I mean, every human in the world is a “we-ist”, more comfortable around and attuned to people like their own community, and less to to people less like them in ways that are manifested as everything from pointed humor to muted suspicion to blind hatred.

“RGOL”:  Right.  Like conservatism!

ME:  Well, no.  Liberals too.  I mean, mention, say, a white fundamentalist from Mississippi who resurfaces driveways for a living…

“RGOL”:  Hah!  Dumb redneck wingnut!

ME:  …or an NRA member…

“RGOL”:  Bigger gun clinging snake-handling cousin-kissing Jeeeeeebus freak hahahahahahahaha!

ME: ….right, or Sarah Palin…

“RGOL”:  Hahahahaha!  She went to community college!  Trig is Bristol’s baby!  She can’t even write and has fake boobs and slept with her deputy mayor and …

ME:  …or the Japanese…

“RGOL”:  Er…what?

ME:  Well, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the godfather of the modern nannystate, did not only order the most singularly racist government action in the past 100 years – the mass internment of American citizens of Japanese descent – but did it after two terms in which he supported California’s deeply racist anti-Japanese immigration laws.

“RGOL”: …

ME: OK, fine, it was seventy years ago.  Still, your entire case that “conservatism oozes racism”  seems to be based on 1) a bunch of anecdotal stories of Republicans who said racist things 2) a bunch of memes from Media Matters and the like, that largely yank statements by the likes of Rush Limbaugh so far out of context you’re getting into borderline defamation, and 3) framing conservative issues as fundamentally racist.

To which I reply 1) Why does Robert Byrd never make it into those lists, 2) Gosh, a liberal flak group waterboarding context, notify the media, and 3) when your entire argument is designed to try to misleadingly frame your opponent as something evil – and we all agree that racism is a bad thing, right? – then you are committing a crime against truth!

“RGOL”:  What are you talking about?

ME: For example, every time a conservative talks about strengthening the Tenth Amendment, some idiot lefty will come back with “That sounds like “states rights”, which was once used to defend slavery.

“RGOL”:  Right!   Conservatism supports slavery!

ME:  {{facepalm}} No.  No, we are pretty much the opposite extreme; we are the party of individual self-determination.  And, by the way, it is a fact that Jim Crow after 1900 was largely a government initiative that overrode the free market; that in most southern states, the business community – which are stereotypically conservative, right?…

“RGOL”:  Bosses!  Bosses!

ME: …right.  They largely opposed Jim Crow, since Jim Crow took anywhere from 10 to 50% out of their markets!

“RGOL”:  But the southerners were racists!  And Nixon brought them into the GOP!

ME:  Well, no and yes and no.  The “Southern Strategy” sought votes from southerners who were upset over a variety of things – federal intrusions into property rights and free association as a matter of principle, the size and growth of government, and the federalization of an awful lot of things that had always been left to the states.  And yes, there were no doubt some among ’em that were upset that the Feds poked their nose into race relations – because a racist citizen’s vote counts just as much as yours does.  Which galls the crap out of me when I see some of those anti-semitic filth at left-leaning demonstrations, by the way – but I digress.  The framing of all southern conservatives’ flight to the GOP as race-related has become part of the conventional wisdom, to the extent that all defenses of the thesis become tautological.  Just watch:  “The southern strategy was not primarily about race”.

“RGOL”:  But the southern strategy was racist because it brought racist southerners into the party…

ME:  Thanks.  I rest my case.

“RGOL”:  …um…

ME:  Move along.

“RGOL”:  Yeah?  Well…what about Arizona?

ME:  Jeez.  More framing.  The Arizona law – which most Americans support, in its final form – is about securing our borders.  That is one of the missions of government, no?

“RGOL”:  But it’s racist!

ME:   Huh?  Let me ask you something; if Minnesota were awash in Canadians sneaking across the border, and illegal Canadian immigration were forcing down American wages, and if in coming here they rejected American culture and upheld Canadian culture with their back-bacon and hockey-worship and mass drunkenness, and if the Canadian Army were charging across the border to help out Canadian drug smugglers and killing people on our side of the border, that “illegal” Gordon Fitzpatrick wouldn’t replace the “illegal” Juan Jimenez as the boogeyman du jour?

“RGOL”:  But that’s just dumb.

ME:  What if our hypothetical Gordon Fitzpatrick was pro-charter schools and anti-card-check?

“RGOL”:  Then he’d be racist and he’d hate children…

ME:  Er, yeah.  Look – do our laws mean anything, or do they not? Are we a sovereign nation, or are we not?

“RGOL”:  Er…huh?

ME:  …

“RGOL”: You are obviously a racist.

ME:  Riiiiight.

My Tax Day At The Capitol Mall

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So I not only got to attend the Tea Party at the State Capitol yesterday, but it was my immense privilege to be the lead-off speaker; mine was the first in a long stream of excellent speeches, including that of my NARN cohost  Ed Morrissey, whose speech I videotaped and is currently up at Hot Air, and Twila Brase, and Katie Kieffer, who will no doubt post video, also gave an excellent speech.  There were more.  Many more.

Lil ol me. Courtesy Peter Anderson.

Lil’ ol’ me. Courtesy Peter Anderson.

I estimated about 1,500 people at the event at its peak around 6:30 or so.  It was good-sized, jovial crowd – but not quite as big as last year.  Some people were worried about this.  I’m not; last year, people were upset, and wondering what the hell to do, and the Tea Party was like a psychological life ring to a whole lot of people whose political activism had never gone beyond going to the polls, maybe, every couple of years.  Over the past year, though, conservatives have changed; we turn out for rallies; we call Congresspeople in vast numbers; better yet, of the 11,000 who attended last week’s Bachmann/Palin rally, over 1,000 volunteered to be election judges.   We saw similar results last night.  Conservatives are doing what they need to do to turn the spirit of the Tea Parties into the action this nation needs.

One group that was not in evidence were the “crashers”; this wasn’t the case everywhere, and the Saint Paul Tea Party was ready with a sizeable group of volunteers armed with orange vests and cameras to handle security – but other than half a dozen “Tax Me More!” activists who stood across the street for about half an hour, and a “Thanks To Taxes” billboard-truck that desultorily circled the capitol grounds (the billboard seemed to imply that we have children, sunshine and sex because of taxes), there was really no “opposition” at all.

And while last year I saw a few signs that made me cringe, I didn’t even see much of the far-out fringe in the crowd this year, either.  I mean, if you’re one of those lefties who gets the victorian vapours over references to John Galt, then yeah, I suppose the crowd was big and scary.  But the far-out, Alex Jones fringe was mostly absent from the rally itself.  I saw not a single “Birther” sign, much less anything I”d call racist.  Indeed, almost all the far-out fringe contingent…

…was up on stage.   For some reason, one of Toni Backdahl’s co-MCs was a guy from AM1710, a little 15 watt AM station in Maple Grove that could be charitably said to be out there on the Alex Jones fringe of the movement.   And one of the opening “musical” acts was a kid in an “InfoWars.com” t-shirt (these are the folks that make the radical Randers shake their heads and go “good lord, how wierd”) who did a pseudo-rap rant that might have fit in at an anarchist rally and whose message would have made me cringe even had the kid not considered “intonation” part of a socialist conspiracy.  There were also a few speakers that sputtered about the unconstitutionality of the income tax, which is pretty much the norm at these things.

Now, I don’t fault the Tea Party’s organizers for including a lot of people that I, personally, disagree with strenuously – because that’s the whole point of the Tea Party.  It’s a group of people, some of whom would not normally agree about anyting, gathering together for a common cause; making government smaller, more responsible, and less frivolous with our rights and liberties.

And so I say “Yay” to all; the mainstream-of-the-mainstream Republican, the disaffected Democrat, the Ronulan, and everyone in between, and all of us who are united behind the idea that we are all created equal, and that people aren’t free until government is limited; let’s all kick ass in November.

Indeed, the only problem I heard about involved a reporter from “The Uptake”.  He’s a local leftyblogger who usually blogs anonymously; he went by “Steve” on the Uptake’s video.  Now, he interviewed me briefly last year; I never saw his final product, although I was told either his voiceover or his editing really mangled the context of my interview; I wouldn’t know – I don’t watch the Uptake much.  I did another standup with him after I got offstage – I figure if he and the Uptake want to Maye what I said, it says more about him and them than it does about me.   He referred to the people around him as “tea-baggers”; I gently corrected him, but I got a sneaking hunch it was a tell as to “the Uptake’s” overall tone of “coverage”.

But shortly after that, a few of the orange-clad security guys came up to me and said they’d been getting complaints about the Uptake’s crew.  I asked them for specifics; they took me to a couple that that said the Uptake’s crew hadn’t identified themselves as a “news” crew that was going to publish an interview online, and that they seemed to be trying to get them to say something stupid, to make them – Tea Partiers in general, it seemed – look stupid.    The woman said that the “reporter” seemed to be trying to pick a fight with her, trying to one-up her on her knowledge of issues; “I”m not an encyclopedia, I can’t answer all the questions he has right away”, she said, still visibly exasperated.   Her husband, a Vietnam veteran, echoed his wife’s thoughts; “he was trying to pick a fight; he was harassing us”.

I walked away, wondering – is “the Uptake” still trying to be an actual news organization, or are they down to trying to do bogus Jon Stewart-style “attack” man-on-the-street interviews?   It’s entertainment, I suppose, watching a self-professed “smarter-than-thou” taking pot shots at those he and his viewers consider inferiors for cheap yuks.  But is it “news?”

Now, I haven’t contacted The Uptake about this, and I doubt that I will; when it comes to “reporting” on the Tea Parties, even the mainstream media seem to find waterboarding context acceptable.  But I think it’s curious that an organization that is fighting for its standing on the Capitol Press Corps would seemingly take such gratuitous liberties with the whole idea of “journalistic ethics”, whatever they are, with this kind of behavior, if true.

Bill Salisbury at the Pioneer Press, and Jessica Mador of MPR both did good, balanced jobs of reporting on the event; or at least I got no complaints from security about either of them (except from the guard that Salisbury bowled over in his rush to interview Katie Kieffer).

I’ll be looking forward to next year.  Goodness knows there’ll be work to do.

Continue reading →

One Day At The Oceanaire

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(SCENE:  At the Oceanaire – a tony seafood restaurant in Downtown Minneapolis.   Representative Paul Thissen, Senator Tom “Baby Got” Bakk and Speaker of the House Margaret Anderson-Kelliher are sitting at a table with five empty chairs.  Anderson-Kelliher, bored, drums her fingers on the table.  Thissen checks his watch, and Bakk rock nervously in their seats. )

(Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak enters the room)

THISSEN, BAKK and ANDERSON-KELLIHER, SIMULTANEOUSLY:  Hello, Mayor Rybak.

RYBAK:  Hey, Margaret!

(BAKK and THISSEN, deflated, go back to gnawing on toothpicks)

RYBAK:  Thanks for calling the meeting, Margaret.  What’s up?

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  I’d like to lay out some ground rules and strategy for the campaign.

(SEN. MARK DAYTON walks into restaurant).

RYBAK: That’s a great idea.  (Notices DAYTON).  Hey, Mark!

DAYTON:  Aaaaaaagh!   (DAYTON dives to floor, rapidly low-crawls to the table, furtively sits in chair).

THISSEN:  What’s the matter, Mark?

ANDERSON-KELLIHER – Shut up, er…

THISSEN: Paul…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: …whatever.  (Turns to DAYTON)  What’s the matter, Mark?

DAYTON:  (Affixing a lobster bib) Er, nothing.  Why?

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Just curious.  (Looks at menu, as former Senator MATT ENTENZA, with wife LOIS QUAM, enter the restaurant.

BAKK: “Hey, Matt…”

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  I said SHUT UP!

BAKK: You told Paul to shut…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Don’t care! (turns to ENTENZA) How are you today, Matt?

ENTENZA: I’m doing…

QUAM: (A little too effusive) He’s doing just fine, Margaret!  (ENTENZA abruptly stops).

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: Ah, excellent!

(A loud belch issues from outside the entrance.  Rep. TOM RUKAVINA walks in, pounding his chest.  He shakes out another mild belch).

THISSEN:  Hey, Tom…(Trails off as ANDERSON-KELLIHER stares him down; THISSEN looks bash fully at his menu).

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Excellent!  I believe that’s everyone…(counts noses)…except…

(Harps play in the hallway.  A little dry ice fog obscures the floor.  Sen. JOHN MARTY, hands clasped as if in prayer before him, moves across the floor as if floating, and lands like a hummingbird on the remaining chair.  A golden aura briefly suffuses the room, then vanishes).

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Hey, John.

MARTY:  May the blessing of my presence bring you peace.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: Er, yeah.  I called you all here today because voters are having a hard time telling the difference between us.  For the good of the DFL race, it’d be best if we all come up with some sort of differentiation between us before the convention.

RYBAK:  Primary.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Convention!

ENTENZA: Yeah, convention!.

QUAM:  Primary!

ENTENZA: Er, yeah.  Primary.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Convention!

THISSEN:  Convention, just like Margaret says…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  For the last time, shut the **** up! (ANDERSON-KELLIHER flings a salt-shaker at THISSEN, hitting him in the face.  He falls backward over his chair, and lies on the floor, motionless.  DAYTON dives for the ground).

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Like I said, convention.  So I’d like you all to think of things we can do to distinguish ourselves to the voters…

WAITRESS (Approaches with order pad in hand):  Hello, my name is Wendy, and I’ll be your…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  For the last ****** time, shut the **** up…

RYBAK: Er, Margaret?  She’s the waitress…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Oh.  Go ahead, then.

WAITRESS:  Er, OK.  Any drink orders before we order dinner?”

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Boilermaker.

RYBAK: Appletini, please.  Extra tini.

BAKK:  I’ll have whatever Margaret is having.

THISSEN:  (Groans incomprehensibly)

RUKAVINA: Grain Belt Premium!

ENTENZA:  I’ll take your house chablis…

QUAM:  He’ll take the house merlot, and so will I.

ENTENZA:  Er…yeah.

DAYTON:  A diet Pellegrini.

WAITRESS:  Sir, all Pelligrini is “Diet”.  It’s water…

DAYTON:  Two diet pellegrinis.

MARTY:  I shall have a glass of water.  But please bring it in gaseous form.

WAITRESS: Er…wait – you want a cup of steam?

MARTY:  As it is said, so shall it be poured.

WAITRESS:  Er, OK.  And would you all like to start a tab?

(All at table break up into uproarious laughter)

RUKAVINA:  Baby, you ain’t seen nothing.

(WAITRESS LEAVES)

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: OK.  I’d like everyone to say, for the record, what makes you different.  Paul?

THISSEN:  (Groans, puts hand on forehead).

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: OK.  Matt?

ENTENZA:  (Looks at QUAM)

QUAM:  He will raise taxes for a better Minnesota.

(ENTENZA nods enthusiastically).

RYBAK:  Well, I’ll raise taxes for a better Minnsesota, too.

BAKK:   Well, I won’t…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: Yes, you will.

BAKK:  Yes, I will.

DAYTON:  I will raise taxes.  For a better Minnesota.  (Eyes door furtively).  I will.  I will.  I will.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  OK.  Not getting what I want here…

RUKAVINA:  I’ll raise taxes more for a better Minnesota!

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Better…

WAITRESS (Carrying tray of drinks):  OK, that’s two house Merlots,  a Grain Belt Premium, two Boilermakers, an Appletini, two “diet Pellegrinis” a cup of steam, and (looks at THISSEN) some smelling salts.

THISSEN:  (grunts painfullly)

WAITRESS:  That’ll be $77.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: No.

WAITRESS:  Er, maam?  I brought the drinks.  You need to pay up.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Shut up.

WAITRESS:  Maam?  This isn’t funny.  You wanna leave me on the look for almost $80 worth of drinks?

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Shut up!

RUKAVINA:  Yeah.  Shut up!

WAITRESS:  I’m gonna call the police.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  (Stands at table)  Attention, everyone in the restaurant.  Please pay our drink tab!  It is for a better Minnesota!

(RUKAVINA, BAKK, RYBAK, QUAM, and ENTENZA applaud; DAYTON balances spoon on his finger; THISSEN groans)

MARTY:  As it is written, so shall it be done.  (MARTY disappears in a blinding flash of pure light).

And…scene.

Kill The Death Penalty

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This post is an expansion of a comment in a thread way down below.  Partly because my monkeying with my code this morning put a crimp in my morning blogging schedule.  Partly because the subject deserves it.

I oppose the death penalty, not because I break with most conservatives on the issue, but  because I am a conservative.

Stay with me on this one.

Conservatism is about upholding time-honored truths.

One of those truths is that the individual – one of the “Free Association of Equals” that our society is supposed to be, in the conservative view of things – is of supreme importance, and should be protected from the excesses of government. It’s why we conservative natter on about things like the Tenth Amendment – because we uphold the worth of the individual; there are some things that, to protect the individual, the government should just stay out of.

This directly contradicts the notion that individuals are “eggs” to be broken in the interest of the state’s convenience to make a social “omelet”. Frequent liberal commenter “RickDFL”’s left a remark in the comment section yesterday, that actually sent me looking for a remark about eggs and omelets that I coulda sworn Lenin or Stalin or Mao or Hitler made. No dice – the closest I got was Stalin’s “one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic” – but Rick (I puke in my mouth a little bit in writing this) is right; it’s something one of them would say.

Conservatives do believe that the pursuit of good requires sacrifice; the Americans who died at Omaha Beach and Gettysburg and Chosin Reservoir were also of incalculable value, and they did nothing to deserve what happened except serving their country, and their loss was a tragedy for all of us. But they died (most of us believe) for a greater good, in a time and a place and for a cause for which there was no alternative, and which helped bring immense good as a result.

Killing an innocent person to “deter” the guilty? It brings no good (the guilty party goes free forever!) (I mean, what DA is going to say “oops – killed the wrong guy the first time! Let’s try this again!”), there is an alternative, and, lest we forget, it kills an individual who did no wrong – which is exactly who this society is supposed to protect.

And it echoes Andrea Dworkin (or Catherine McKinnon?  Jeff Fecke?  I get confused) who said it’d be “good” if men got falsely imprisoned for rape, to make all the real rapists a little more afraid. It’s an idea straight out of the worst of the French Revolution (which had no problem executing the innocent “pour l’encourager les autres“), carried on via Stalin and Hitler and Mao and Pol Pot.

Hypothetically, if the system could be “perfected”, would I support it? Sure. But that’s another tenet of conservatism; mankind can never be perfected; the hypothetical is pointless. And to a conservative, protecting people from the problems that human imperfection brings to government drives what government is supposed to do – including impelling government to back out of big parts of our society.

So since…

  1. Mankind – including prosecutors and the police – can never be perfected, and…
  2. these imperfections kill the innocent, and…
  3.  killing the innocent is immeasurably evil, and…
  4.  since a foolproof alternative exists that surely and swiftly punishes the guilty (remember – life in supermax without parole begins at sentencing; death takes an average of 12 years) while protecting the innocent, and…
  5. protecting the innocent is one of society’s supreme goods, then…

…abolishing the death penalty is supremely conservative.

To me, the logic of my stance depends on the five interconnected points above – all drawn from orthodox conservative beliefs to a finely-polished “t”.  If you want to disagree, by all means do it in the comment section.  But if you can’t successfully attack that five-point chain of logic, I’m not sure you’ll get a lot of traction with me.

Distrust But Verify. Then Distrust Some More.

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The Violence Policy Center has a long record of cooking data to try to build a national case against civilian ownership of firearms.

They’ve failed, of course; more Americans own guns today than ever, while the idea of a link between crime and the demonstrably law-abiding armed citizen is almost too specious for modern physics to measure.  Gun control is a third rail like few others in American politics.

Which doesn’t mean they won’t try; the VPC – the very definition of an astroturf group – has masters with deep pockets to obey. And so they keep cranking out the material.

Like this “study” (which should be getting slavering coverage from the bought-and-paid-for lefty media) to show pervasive violence on the part of carry permit holders nationside.

The “study” summary:

As the impact of lax CCW laws grows, the evidence is now overwhelming that these laws have completely failed to reduce crime or increase public or personal safety.

Overewhelmingly lacking, at any rate; John Lott proved the case, and while astroturf hacks like the VPC may jump up and down and cry otherwise, they are bringing jackknives to sword fights.

But that’s really not the issue:

On the contrary, these laws have armed individuals who have murdered law enforcement officers and innocent citizens. Review of the devastating facts surrounding the 30 incidents detailed in this study alone should immediately halt any effort to create a national concealed carry system and, in addition, impel the
repeal of state “shall issue” laws allowing the carrying of concealed handguns.

Well, it’s an interesting conclusion.  Although not only is it not borne out by evidence in general, but even the VPC’s own evidence, viewed in detail, convincingly refutes the VPC’s own claim.

  • Over the two-year period May 2007 through April 2009, concealed handgun permit holders have slain seven law enforcement officers resulting in criminal charges or the suicide of the shooter. All of the killings were committed with guns. An additional three law enforcement officers were injured in these incidents.
  • Over the two-year period May 2007 through April 2009, concealed handgun permit holders have slain at least 43 private citizens resulting in criminal charges or the suicide of the shooter. All but one of the killings were committed with guns. An additional six private citizens were injured in these incidents.
  • In six of the 30 incidents (20 percent), the concealed handgun permit holder killed himself, bringing the total fatality count to 56.

So let’s look into the numbers in detail.  As noted above, “Carry permit holders” accounted for seven dead and three wounded law enforcement officers; 43 dead and six wounded citizens, and six suicides (all of them after other shootings).

But if you look at the individual cases, some facts emerge that the VPC found inconvenient to stress.  I broke them out into several categories:

  • Self-Defense Cases Gone Seemingly Awry: One of the problems with self-defense claims is that ones’ decision to respond to an attack that needs to be made in seconds under mind-warping pressure will be picked apart by prosecutors and jurors who have leisurely days and weeks to judge the results.  Two of the killings – one not charged as of yet, one resulting in a manslaughter conviction – fit this description.
  • Self Defense Against Law Enforcement Officers: One of the trickiest cases in all of self-defense is when a citizen believes – legitimately or not – that a law enforcement officer (whether known to them or not) presents them a lethal threat.  Law enforcement enjoys special protections under the law – usually for good reasons.  But cops screw up, too; in Minneapolis a few years ago, a SWAT team executed a no-knock raid – on the wrong address.  The owner of the house, an Asian man in a crappy neighborhood crowded with scumbags, had no idea who was charging into his house; he was eventually exonerated.  In the VPC report, two law-enforcement officers (federal and local) were killed and two wounded.  In one case, the killing was the result of a seemingly stupid response on the part of the shooter, and ended in a manslaughter charge (although, significantly, not murder). The other killing, and the two wounded, were the result of no-knock raids seemingly gone awry.    Note that these cases all took place in the citizens’ dwellings – and thus have nothing to do with the carry permits.  You don’t need  a permit, in most places, to have a gun.
  • Accidents: One of the killings was an accidental shooting involving a pistol owned by a carry permittee.  Tragic, certainly – but it has nothing to do with the permit.
  • Shooters Who Shouldn’t Have Gotten Permits: It’s generally agreed that people with criminal records, or records of mental illness or just-plain-violent behavior, should not be granted permits.  When this happens, it’s usually a matter of less-than-thorough investigation by the granting authority (usually a county sheriff), or, as is the case in jurisdictions where permits are issued purely by police discretion (this was the case in a shooting in New York state), faulty use of discretion.  Shootings involving people who should never have been issued permits included 12 incidents, involving 24 dead and two wounded.

And with all of those out of the way – the ambiguous cases or the people who should never have gotten permits at all – that leaves us with the actual, unambiguous crimes where a carry permit holder did something for which they were clearly, unambiguously at fault; Ten cases, involving 20 deaths.  It’s skewed a bit, of course, as it includes one mass murder case, the Michael McClendon case in Alabama which claimed ten people and the shooter.

Of course, concealed carry permits are hardly a direct contributor to mass spree killings; many have happened at the hands of people with no hope of ever getting a permit.  But for purposes of dealing with the article, let’s grudgingly count it among the 20 unambiguously wrongful deaths where no blame is shared with other peoples’ negligence.

Now – how many carry permits have been issued nationwide?  Nobody has a complete count, but the general rule seems to be about 1% of eligible citizens seem to apply; that ratio holds true in Minnesota (5 million people; over 50,000 permits issued).  Other states are higher, some might be lower.  Now, about 220,000,000 Americans live in states with shall-issue laws, or with no restrictions at all (Alaska and Vermont, where no permit is required); it seems reasonable to assume that 2.2 million Ameircans have some sort of carry permit.

2.2 million Americans with permits divided by 20 murders committed over the course of two years equals less than .5 murders – half a murder – per 100,000 carry permittees per year.  Even using the VPC’s numbers exactly as they are in the “study” means the 2.2million permittees are responsible for 56 wrongful deaths over the course of two years (ambiguous or not, related to carry permitting or not) gives a murder rate of about 1.4 per 100,000 permitted Americans.  Of course, the chance of any American being wrongly killed by a permit holder (using the VPC’s statistics, which as we’ve seen above are poppycock) are .014 per 100,000 Americans.

The overall murder rate in America in 2007 was 5.9 per 100,000.  In other words, Americans are 1/421th (roughly) as likely to be murdered by a carry permit holder as they are by a typical citizen – and that’s using the VPC’s numbers without qualification, which as we’ve noted in the past, one should never do.  If we leave out the ambiguous cases, the accidents and the others that have nothing to do with concealed carry, the average American is almost three orders of magnitude less likely to be killed by a legal carry permit holder than by, say, anybody else.

Let’s be clear, here; we want no unjustified killings by holders of carry permits, which are supposed to be a tool for the law-abiding.

But when you see this VPC study being flogged by the media, pass the word; there’s less there than meets the eye.

About 1/421th as much.