Civil Liberties

Apropos of nothing, really: The Browder Boys

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Jay Nordlinger’s National Review article has stuck in my mind – an interesting family history of curious (in both senses) people and how complicated man and his loves and choices are. I know nothing about math and little about American communists, who seemed (and seem) to me quite foreign.

But the Browders were broad in their abilities: perhaps the effect on of Russia and America, communism and western values, might draw observations, especially if readers are more familiar than I with their lives. Bill Browder “goes around the world campaigning for “Magnitsky acts” — laws in honor of the murdered lawyer” who had represented him, battling Putin who was behind Magnitsky’s persecution and death. His grandfather is probably not a familiar name today, but he represented the Communist Party in America for decades and was famous for what we may (I’m sure my parents who were more his contemporaries would) see as absurd, the concise argument: “Communism is 20th-century Americanism.” The generation between – three sons – were remarkable American mathematicians.

The complexity of human nature? What we learn from our parents and what we believe and how we rebel? How remarkable talents are handed down and how some families are able to cultivate those talents? How math can deliver real answers and politics become fuzzy as consequences, empirical evidence, is ignored? Oh, well, at least this may entertain as we await Tuesday’s verdict on our culture – perhaps a temporary one but important nonetheless.

Is Free Speech Too Exhausting?

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A group of Duke Law students, demanding the disinvitation of visiting speaker, used the phrase ‘we are tired.’  Jonathan Turley remarks:

Those three words sum up a great deal of the anti-free speech movement growing on our campuses. Students and faculty have grown tired of free speech. Opposing views are now treated as threats and intolerable for students.

It does seem that a lot of people these days–especially, perhaps, people of college age–find it incredibly wearying and even threatening to be presented with any views that contradict their own.  Reading the above, I was immediately reminded of a remark that a young woman made (to writer Ida Wylie) during the Nazi era:

We Germans are so happy.  We are free from freedom”

There definitely seems to be a reaction against free expression going on in America today…how strong it is and how deep it goes remains to be seen.  But as one indicator, a survey by YouGov shows that 43% of those who identify as Liberals favor firing an executive who *privately* donated money to Trump, and 22% of those who identify as Conservatives favor firing an executive who privately donated to Biden…the numbers are 50% and 36% for *strong* liberals and conservatives respectively.

What are the causes for the apparently-growing hostility toward free speech in the US?  Part of it, perhaps, is a hankering for security.  David Brooks suggests that:

The values of the Millennial and Gen Z generations that will dominate in the years ahead are the opposite of Boomer values: not liberation, but security; not freedom, but equality; not individualism,  but the safety of the collective; not sink-or-swim meritocracy, but promotion on the basis of social justice…Distrustful people try to make themselves invulnerable, armour themselves up in a sour attempt to feel safe… start to see threats that aren’t there.

I’m not generally much of a fan of Brooks’ analyses and conclusion, but even a stopped (analog) clock is right twice a day.  Perhaps he has a valid point here?

Another factor, I suspect, is changes in family structure.  Kids who are put in a day-care situation at a very early age may develop a lifelong or at least long-term tendency to identify with the group…whatever that group might be…more than those who are raised in a traditional family situation, and especially so if there is only one parent in the home.  As one data point, here’s an interesting article by someone who was raised in a collective situation in an early Israeli kibbutz.

And perhaps the threats and realities of Islamic terrorism have also had an influence…for 20 years now, there has been a constant (if low-level) sense that ‘if you say anything that the radical Islamists don’t like, they may kill you.’  Has this led to a habit of speech-guarding that has been generalized into many aspects of life?

 

When Big Tech Came for the NY POST – “Our 2020 Abbotabad Moment”

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I’m writing this Chicagoboyz piece to clarify the moment we are living in with regards to the Techlords oppression of America’s 1st Amendment constitutional right to free speech on their social media platforms.

I’m calling it  “Our 2020 Abbotabad Moment” (see photo) because, like the SEAL Team 6 killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad Pakistan, it was a “Moment of Strategic Clarity“ about the nature of an oppressive & corrupt regime that cannot be unseen.

In Pakistan’s case, it revealed a nationalist, separatist, tribal, and above all a terrorist-supporting regime rent by murderous religious and ethnic hatreds. One where the one thing all the leadership factions there can agree on is fear of India. Think of a nuclear-armed Somalia in the mountains, but one good enough at faking a government to get military & economic aid from stupid foreigners.

By way of contrast,   Big Tech’s censorship of   the NY Post, the Trump campaign, Trump’s press spokeswomen, the GOP House Judiciary Committee and others, followed by the open endorsement of the “Free Press” on Twitter of these actions have showed we don’t have a “Free Press.”

We don’t have a “Press” at all.

We have OPRESSORS.

They are the propaganda arm of an unelected & unaccountable elite that hates the American Republic.

I’d call these people’s disregard for free speech “Unamerican Activities” but, point in fact, they are as American as the Ku Klux Klan.   Or more on-point, the Pinkerton men putting down the United Mine Workers.   Complete with Denver Channel Nine’s hiring of a Leftist activist as a security guard who subsequently murdered a Trump supporter at a protest they covered.

If this were the movie “The Empire Strikes Back,” we would be at the point of the film where Lando Calrissian picks up the mike and says “Attention. This is Lando Calrissian. The Empire has taken control of the city; I advise everyone to leave before more Imperial troops arrive.”

Unfortunately, there is nowhere to run. The moment of strategic clarity the NY POST’s censorship has brought shows is this is no longer just a “9/11/2001 election.”

We are on Sun Tzu’s “Desperate Ground” with a choice of acquiescence to enslavement by inches, or a fight for freedom where absolutely nothing is guaranteed, even if you “win.”

And Sun Tzu advises that, on Desperate Ground…FIGHT.

The Politicization of Yelp

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I noted recently the steps of twentieth century nations toward the abyss of totalitarianism; these were summed up in a Firing Line conversation with Richard Pipes.

First, clear the stage for a one party state, then give omnipotent power within the state to the political police, and finally enforce that power with deadly terror and “re-education” camps.

The last decades revealed the United States is not immune to the use of “political police” when the swamp – bureaucracy, media – is aligned with the executive, breeding a “one party state” (whether of city, state or country): governmental oppression of Tea Party and religious groups using the great power of the IRS as well as EPA, OSHA, etc. or arresting a hapless filmmaker after Benghazi, etc. Power changed, and the Russia hoax demonstrated swamp power alone could baffle and thwart executive and legislative power, leaving them at the mercy of institutions they theoretically led and funded.

Then, in the petri dish of covid isolation and a presidential election summer, “woke” power grew. A friend e-mailed Yelp’s classification punishment for establishments bucking Portland’s politics. The service seemed useful if easily weighted, but some anarchists perceptively saw its potential as a map to bring the unwoke into line through violence. Clearly Rioters Trash Portland. . . But Black Owner Just Got the Last Word was the logical consequence. Of course, Yelp, as many grander and prouder institutions before it, lost credibility but that was intended. Only the party, eventually, remains. Still, real men, real Americans, lead:

But Jackson will have the last word. Not only are people of good will planning to eat at his restaurant as never before, but he told Fox News that the attack “solidified my Trump vote. I’m done with this weakness and we need some real strong leadership.”

However the next paragraph is also telling; men like Jackson are fewer as the models and narratives that give us courage are destroyed as well:

Day of Ragers also targeted the Oregon Historical Society, bashing windows and ripping out several historical items, leaving them trashed on the street.

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Millions of 2020 Votes Will Be Stolen – How To Tell If Yours Is One

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The Democratic Party’s vote-by-mail scheme (which is NOT the same as absentee ballots) and, worse, its previous and expanded “vote-harvesting” scheme, will steal millions of votes to re-elect Trump, and for Republican candidates, in the 2020 election. This is NOT counting fraudulent votes. This is stealing Republican votes by changing them to Democratic votes. Here is how they do it, and how you can determine if your vote is stolen. If this clear signal that your vote has been stolen appears, do not walk away quietly. FIGHT BACK! How to do that is also explained.

Absentee ballots and vote-by-mail differ in that individual voters request absentee ballots for their current address, while mail-in-ballots (or “applications” for them) are automatically sent by state voting officials to every possible voter at their last-known address, even if they are dead or have moved away. And absentee ballots must be received by Election Day, while mail-in ballots in most states allowing them can be received days or even a week after the election and, depending on the state, do not require post-marks or other evidence that they were posted by election day. Every state allows absentee ballots, while there is a wide variation on mail-in votes. Some states don’t allow them at all, some states do only for 2020 due to COVID-19, some states send “applications” for them which voters purportedly fill out and return, and some states send every possible voter a ballot to be filled out and returned.

Vote-harvesting lets people other than the US Postal Service deliver ballots purportedly filled out by voters to polling places, even hundreds of ballots at once. Vote-harvesting as allowed in California in 2018, and now in other states such as North Carolina, has no controls whatever against fraud by the people delivering the harvested ballots. Vote-harvesting is voter fraud pure and simple. No state allowing it is a democracy any more.

Mail-in ballots are so vulnerable to fraud that the United States seems to be the only country in the world which allows them. The most common way the Democrats commit fraud with mail-in votes is made possible by a rule or practice that the “first ballot processed” by election officials from a particular voter is deemed the only official one.

So if a fraudulent mail-in ballot, purportedly from a registered voter, is processed by election officials before the real voter votes in person, only the fraudulent mail-in ballot is counted.

Sometimes the real voter finds out about this in the polling place “You’ve already voted so we won’t give you a ballot” and, if the voter complains, is given a provisional ballot to fill out, only the provisional ballot is mostly ignored when the robbed voter leaves. Sometimes provisional ballots are counted too, but so is the fraudulent mail-in one, so the real voter’s ballot is at best cancelled out. Here is an example of how that works in progress from the email of a Colorado friend who alerted one of my e-mail lists to this practice.

“Hey, I know this. I watched polls. Let me tell you, by the way, that year 2012 1/3 of the people in my precinct in Colorado Springs ran into that. Our counterparts in Denver said 2/3 did.
 
Which means that I guess dementia is rampant in Colorado. Coff. Because there’s no voter fraud, right.    That was, btw, the election in which the left eeked enough of a majority to then go full time vote by fraud. I mean mail.
 
What happened I’ve had people tell me no, that’s not what happens, but hell I was there, and I know how it was explained is that these people got to fill a “provisional vote”. Later, the records would be examined, and if it was shown they really hadn’t voted before those votes would be counted.
 
In other words, people are fobbed off. Even should their votes be counted as some people insist they are then they would count for ½ because there’s no way to retrieve votes already cast.
 
This is why I say the left has been winning by fraud for several cycles already and the only reason Trump won is that they were so sure it would be a Hillary landslide they failed to manufacture enough votes.”

Mail-in vote fraud occurs when the perpetrators obtain mail-in ballots, before they are sent to voters, from election officials who are part of the fraudulent vote conspiracy, or when for the same election officials simply give the perpetrators all the information needed to print their own fraudulent mail-in ballots and return envelopes, fill those out and mail them to the election postal box numbers/addresses. It is also possible for fraudsters to obtain the necessary information about voters online, but that requires far, far more work than if election officials give it to them.

However fraud with mail-in votes is done, it is so easy to do that no other nation seems to allow mail-in votes at all, let alone the way it is being done in America.

Note also that it is easier, and therefore more likely, for mail-in vote fraud to be targeted at all voters than just Republicans and independent voters. A lot of Democratic voters who choose to vote in person on Election Day may have polling place workers refuse to give them ballots because they have allegedly already voted by mail.

The simplest and best way to keep your vote from being stolen in this way is to have your vote be designated the first received from you. This requires that you vote as early as possible, preferably in person so there is no question about your identity, and so the US Postal Service doesn’t delay or lose your mailed ballot (which was a major problem earlier this year, and seems to be happening now). Don’t wait for Election Day vote as early as possible. As an example, October 5 (Monday) is the earliest people can vote in person in California. Do so in your state.

If you do wait until election day to vote in person, a sure tip-off that your vote has been stolen will be a polling place worker refusing to give you a ballot because you allegedly have already voted. Don’t just walk away. Insist that you haven’t voted and demand that you be given a ballot. Don’t let them fob you off with a “Provisional” ballot. Insist on a real one. Make a screaming stink about it, and insist on speaking to a Republican poll watcher who will hopefully follow up on your problem, and add you to a list of names of people who have been denied ballots.

But it would be better if you also volunteer as a Republican poll watcher at a polling place on election day so you can protect other voters from having their votes stolen. They’ll be easy to spot – a polling place worker will refuse to give a ballot to a prospective voter. Your county Republican Party will love to have more volunteer poll watchers, and they’ll give you a little training on, including on what to do when voters are denied ballots. The Trump re-election campaign and Republican Party are prepared for massive nationwide Democratic voter fraud, and need help documenting it as it happens.

Do something about it yourself. Vote Early! Become a poll watcher!

But the problem will remain. This is the first national election involving massive nation-wide vote fraud by a major party. That means a nation-wide political conspiracy, and my Colorado friend’s experience indicates it has been building for  years. How can America remain a democracy when a large portion of the country rejects the core American, and democratic, value of free and fair elections?