Douglas Wilson Summarises the COVID-19 Debacle
Douglas Wilson
. . . But I will tell you what I think.
The devastation that has occurred because of this panic in high places is not likely to have cameras trained on most of it. If the cameras are running, and someone walks up behind someone else and clocks him with a baseball bat, the cause and effect is easy to see. The fellow who does that sort of thing is therefore charged with assault. And this is because everybody can see that an assault is in fact what happened. What happened is visible to all.
But when the damage is done to millions of people, and a large number of well-connected other people profit from it, then the case devolves into a political battle. Factions and parties develop, and all the usual political tools, manufactured in our national laboratories of obfuscation, are deployed. And so the chances are excellent that during the course of the debate, the people directly affected will fade into a gray statistical twilight.
Meanwhile, the damage is actually done, and for those willing to look straight at it, there is no denying it. The people on the margins are the ones who will be hit hardest, but because political careers will be dependent upon not ever recognizing the damage we have done, the chances are good that that we will be compliant, and will not recognize it.
Scientific consensus is oxymoronic. Faith in the scientific process is one thing. Faith in scientists is quite another. Faith in scientific spokesmen (e.g. Fauci or Birx) is actually faith in telegenic people with scientific credentials who have been selected for political reasons. And that is why we have been slathering the nation broadside with scientific solutions when there should have been a scientific debate.
But there are some signs of hope. Despite what I just wrote, there are signs that a debate might occur anyhow, however belated, and I am doing my best to see that it happens. This was as debacle for the ages. And this leads me back to the theme of this post.
One of the “tells” that indicates that something is seriously wrong is that the governor of a conservative state like Idaho can simply announce that he is doing something, cite the part of the Idaho Code that authorizes him to do it, but then, when we go and have a sober look at that portion of the Idaho Code we find something else entirely. But we have written constitutions for a reason. We have legal codes, written down in big, fat books, for a reason.
The code says you can quarantine the sick. What was done was a quarantine of the healthy. The code says that you can isolate the contagious. What was done was the isolation of everybody.
Following this logic, the right to keep and bear arms means that you don’t have the right to keep and bear arms. The right to free speech means that you had better shut up. The right to assemble means that you can look at flickering images on Zoom, with no telling who is vacuuming up that data.
The time to kick is now.
Showing posts with label US Constitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Constitution. Show all posts
Thursday, 30 April 2020
Friday, 24 January 2020
A Velvet Glove Revolution
The New Post-Trump Constitution
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
The new normal: Impeachment as a routine partisan tool, endless investigations, lying under oath with impunity, surveillance of political enemies, zero accountability …
The Left sees Donald Trump’s comportment, rallies, and tweets as a new low in presidential behavior that justifies extraordinary countermeasures. But Trump’s personal characteristics are idiosyncratic and may or may not become institutionalized by subsequent presidents. And it is not as if liberal icons such as FDR, LBJ, JFK, and Bill Clinton suddenly became saintly in office.
What is far scarier is the reaction to Trump, in both the constitutional and political sense. What follows are likely the new norms for the next generation of presidents, and they will probably be equally applied to Democrats who implemented them in the Trump era.
1) Private presidential phone calls with foreign leaders will be leaked and printed in the major media. The point will be not so much to air breaking news as to embarrass the president or to use such disclosures to stymie his foreign policy. Those who leak such information will be canonized as part of a “resistance.” Prominent officials in government will publish anonymous op-eds in the New York Times bragging about how they are daily undermining a new president’s administration.
2) Impeachment is now a casual affair. It requires no report of illegal or unethical behavior by a special counsel or special prosecutor. It will not be bipartisan but solely the action of the opposition party in the House when it is in the majority.
Public support will not matter. Much less will it be needed. Impeachment will be applied equally to a first- or second-term presidency. And it will become useful in a reelection year to help drive down an incumbent’s popularity.
Even when there is no chance of conviction in the Senate — as when the impeachment indictment is weak and the president’s own party controls the upper House — impeachment will nonetheless proceed, because it is now seen as a banal, politicized vote of no confidence and thus an occasionally useful political tool.
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
The new normal: Impeachment as a routine partisan tool, endless investigations, lying under oath with impunity, surveillance of political enemies, zero accountability …
The Left sees Donald Trump’s comportment, rallies, and tweets as a new low in presidential behavior that justifies extraordinary countermeasures. But Trump’s personal characteristics are idiosyncratic and may or may not become institutionalized by subsequent presidents. And it is not as if liberal icons such as FDR, LBJ, JFK, and Bill Clinton suddenly became saintly in office.
What is far scarier is the reaction to Trump, in both the constitutional and political sense. What follows are likely the new norms for the next generation of presidents, and they will probably be equally applied to Democrats who implemented them in the Trump era.
1) Private presidential phone calls with foreign leaders will be leaked and printed in the major media. The point will be not so much to air breaking news as to embarrass the president or to use such disclosures to stymie his foreign policy. Those who leak such information will be canonized as part of a “resistance.” Prominent officials in government will publish anonymous op-eds in the New York Times bragging about how they are daily undermining a new president’s administration.
2) Impeachment is now a casual affair. It requires no report of illegal or unethical behavior by a special counsel or special prosecutor. It will not be bipartisan but solely the action of the opposition party in the House when it is in the majority.
Public support will not matter. Much less will it be needed. Impeachment will be applied equally to a first- or second-term presidency. And it will become useful in a reelection year to help drive down an incumbent’s popularity.
Even when there is no chance of conviction in the Senate — as when the impeachment indictment is weak and the president’s own party controls the upper House — impeachment will nonetheless proceed, because it is now seen as a banal, politicized vote of no confidence and thus an occasionally useful political tool.
Tuesday, 21 January 2020
The Emerging Fifth Column
Safeguards Schmafeguards
Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog
Introduction
I just finished reading Ball of Collusion by Andrew McCarthy, and what a grim treat that was.
McCarthy walks us through the entire Russia collusion story that has been wound tight around America’s news axle for the last several years, and explains what was going on in painstaking detail. And what was going on can best be described as high-level shenanigans. By this I mean monkeyshines among the principalities and powers, and they were the kind of monkeyshines that were far from sober, judicious, or legal.
In short, because Hillary was supposed to win the election and didn’t, and because all the colludery-type things Trump was supposed to be doing had actually been done by his die-hard opponents, and because now there would be no Hillary Justice Department to bury the bodies, and because the best defense is a good offense, we have been treated to three years of prosecutorial indignation, with noses in the air and everything. The self-righteousness with which the collusion narrative has been pursued has been thick enough to spread on crackers, not that you would want to.
But the most noteworthy thing about this record of tawdry malfeasance, the dirty deeds done dirt cheap, the felonious and aforementioned monkeyshines, the highhanded pretentiousness, and then all the other stuff, is that McCarthy’s account does not contain any mention of any of the principal bad guys going to jail for what they manifestly did. This is because nobody from the ranks of the principal bad guys did go to jail. He didn’t record that because it didn’t happen.
Nobody. Mark that spot in your thought processes.
And there is a lesson in this for all defenders of the 4th Amendment, which will be quoted below in due course. Let’s get to it.
God-Given Rights
The rights that are outlined in the Bill of Rights are not rights that are bestowed by the Bill of Rights. In fact, one of the arguments used by the Federalists against including a Bill of Rights with the Constitution at all is that people might over time come to believe that these rights were positively bequeathed to us simply because they were mentioned in the Constitution. Although all my sympathies would have been with the Anti-Federalists, this particular argument had some force. People have come to think of it that way, and frankly, between you and me, they need to stop it.
We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. We have not been endowed by our politicians with certain transient and tenuous quote unquote evanescent rights. God is the one who wants you to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. To argue otherwise is to say that God wants you to live under tyranny.
Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog
Introduction
I just finished reading Ball of Collusion by Andrew McCarthy, and what a grim treat that was.
McCarthy walks us through the entire Russia collusion story that has been wound tight around America’s news axle for the last several years, and explains what was going on in painstaking detail. And what was going on can best be described as high-level shenanigans. By this I mean monkeyshines among the principalities and powers, and they were the kind of monkeyshines that were far from sober, judicious, or legal.
In short, because Hillary was supposed to win the election and didn’t, and because all the colludery-type things Trump was supposed to be doing had actually been done by his die-hard opponents, and because now there would be no Hillary Justice Department to bury the bodies, and because the best defense is a good offense, we have been treated to three years of prosecutorial indignation, with noses in the air and everything. The self-righteousness with which the collusion narrative has been pursued has been thick enough to spread on crackers, not that you would want to.
But the most noteworthy thing about this record of tawdry malfeasance, the dirty deeds done dirt cheap, the felonious and aforementioned monkeyshines, the highhanded pretentiousness, and then all the other stuff, is that McCarthy’s account does not contain any mention of any of the principal bad guys going to jail for what they manifestly did. This is because nobody from the ranks of the principal bad guys did go to jail. He didn’t record that because it didn’t happen.
Nobody. Mark that spot in your thought processes.
And there is a lesson in this for all defenders of the 4th Amendment, which will be quoted below in due course. Let’s get to it.
God-Given Rights
The rights that are outlined in the Bill of Rights are not rights that are bestowed by the Bill of Rights. In fact, one of the arguments used by the Federalists against including a Bill of Rights with the Constitution at all is that people might over time come to believe that these rights were positively bequeathed to us simply because they were mentioned in the Constitution. Although all my sympathies would have been with the Anti-Federalists, this particular argument had some force. People have come to think of it that way, and frankly, between you and me, they need to stop it.
We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. We have not been endowed by our politicians with certain transient and tenuous quote unquote evanescent rights. God is the one who wants you to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. To argue otherwise is to say that God wants you to live under tyranny.
Thursday, 18 October 2018
Terrible College Case
The High Cost of ‘Believe Women’ Mantra
By David French
National Review Online
There is no substitute for evidence and due process.
Through much of the last month, the American people have been treated to a version of the emotional and ideological argument that’s dominated the American academy for much of the last ten years. The argument goes something like this: Women rarely lie about rape. Thus, the failure of criminal or civil justice systems to achieve overwhelming rates of conviction or impose liability at the rates of predation means that fundamental reform is mandatory.
Consequently, we must make it easier for women to bring claims, protect them from the rigors of proving claims, and utilize decision-makers trained to understand and respond to the unique trauma of victims. Moreover, when considering sexual-assault claims outside of courts, understand that due process is less important when a man’s liberty isn’t at stake. After all, a campus court isn’t a criminal trial. It’s an evaluation of academic suitability.
The result of this argument has been wholesale national reform — part of it mandated by the Obama administration’s Department of Education, and part of it willingly undertaken by colleges themselves — that has caused universities to lower burdens of proof, channel serious claims into summary proceedings, restrict the ability to cross-examine witnesses, and even limit access to evidence in an effort to streamline the process of punishing sex offenders.
It’s been a disaster.
By David French
National Review Online
There is no substitute for evidence and due process.
Through much of the last month, the American people have been treated to a version of the emotional and ideological argument that’s dominated the American academy for much of the last ten years. The argument goes something like this: Women rarely lie about rape. Thus, the failure of criminal or civil justice systems to achieve overwhelming rates of conviction or impose liability at the rates of predation means that fundamental reform is mandatory.
Consequently, we must make it easier for women to bring claims, protect them from the rigors of proving claims, and utilize decision-makers trained to understand and respond to the unique trauma of victims. Moreover, when considering sexual-assault claims outside of courts, understand that due process is less important when a man’s liberty isn’t at stake. After all, a campus court isn’t a criminal trial. It’s an evaluation of academic suitability.
The result of this argument has been wholesale national reform — part of it mandated by the Obama administration’s Department of Education, and part of it willingly undertaken by colleges themselves — that has caused universities to lower burdens of proof, channel serious claims into summary proceedings, restrict the ability to cross-examine witnesses, and even limit access to evidence in an effort to streamline the process of punishing sex offenders.
It’s been a disaster.
Thursday, 5 April 2018
Vast Overreach of Power By US Courts
Nationwide Injunctions Are a Threat to America's Constitutional Order
By Jeff Sessions
United States Attorney General
National Review Online
Using nationwide injunctions to shut down elected officials from carrying out our laws effectively silences the people who voted for them.
[Editor’s Note: This essay is adapted from a speech given to the Federalist Society’s National Student Symposium on March 10, 2018.]
Under our Constitution, Congress writes our laws, the executive branch carries out our laws, and the judiciary applies those laws to cases and controversies.
These branches are coequal. The courts are not superior. On matters of policy, the branches that are directly accountable to the people must be given proper respect. That’s why it’s so alarming that judges are increasingly issuing nationwide injunctions — orders that block the entire federal government from enforcing an executive-branch policy or executing a statute. These injunctions block the government from carrying out a law — not just in one district or to one person, but anywhere in America.
Scholars have not found a single example of any judge issuing that type of extreme remedy in the first 175 years of the Republic. In just over one year in office, President Trump has been hit with 22, more than any other president in our history.
By Jeff Sessions
United States Attorney General
National Review Online
Using nationwide injunctions to shut down elected officials from carrying out our laws effectively silences the people who voted for them.
[Editor’s Note: This essay is adapted from a speech given to the Federalist Society’s National Student Symposium on March 10, 2018.]
Under our Constitution, Congress writes our laws, the executive branch carries out our laws, and the judiciary applies those laws to cases and controversies.
These branches are coequal. The courts are not superior. On matters of policy, the branches that are directly accountable to the people must be given proper respect. That’s why it’s so alarming that judges are increasingly issuing nationwide injunctions — orders that block the entire federal government from enforcing an executive-branch policy or executing a statute. These injunctions block the government from carrying out a law — not just in one district or to one person, but anywhere in America.
Scholars have not found a single example of any judge issuing that type of extreme remedy in the first 175 years of the Republic. In just over one year in office, President Trump has been hit with 22, more than any other president in our history.
Saturday, 4 April 2015
Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow
Three Senators and a Leper
Douglas Wilson
One of
our great cultural problems today is that Christians do not understand
civics. And by civics, I do not mean the “how a bill becomes a law” kind
of civics, but rather I refer to our very common misunderstanding of
the true nature of our appointed government. We have a particular form
of government de jure, laid out for us in the Constitution, and we have another, very different, form of government, de facto, sitting atop Lady Liberty, strangling her to death.
Actually, it is the reverse. Our responsibility is found in Romans 13, but it requires us to look at this far more closely than we are accustomed to do.
It is not the case that the Federal government simply outranks local officials, the way (we think) a king outranks a duke. In a government of law, the king outranks all others in his appointed duties, and a duke outranks all others in his appointed duties. This is how separation of powers works.
“But when he was strong, his heart was
lifted up to his destruction: for he transgressed against the Lord his
God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar
of incense. And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him
fourscore priests of the Lord, that were valiant men: And they withstood
Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It appertaineth not unto thee,
Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but to the priests the sons of
Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary;
for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine honour from the
Lord God” (2 Chron. 26:16–18).
So, simple question. Does a king outrank a priest?
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow
On Ransacking the Penumbrae
Douglas Wilson
Friday, July 11 2014
When
confronted with the prospect of a devolution into tyranny, most
Christians are clear on the nature of such tyranny, and the fact that it
is bad, but are unclear on their liberty to oppose and disregard it.
No, I should say more — on their duty to oppose and disregard it.
Well, yes and no. If we were in the position of the early Christians, building a new civilization from scratch, we should do exactly what they did. When we are not starting from scratch, we should live up to what we have attained. And one of the things we have attained — because the Spirit has been at work in the world on this particular project for two thousand years now — is the rule of law.
Our current system of administrative rules, regulations, laws, and penalty kicks, is not just a bad system of governance, although it is that. It is — all of it — profoundly unlawful. Most of it has gone well past the point of being unconstitutional, and is now overtly anti-constitutional.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)