153 Comments

I believe it was president Eisenhower who said something to the affect of, "I could keep everyone safe, but I'd have to put everyone in prison." This is the direction we're headed in if we give up *any* of our God/creator given rights.

Expand full comment

Given the state of prisons, that also wouldn't keep everyone safe.

Expand full comment

People deserve prison for embezzlement. This sentence should not include rape.

Expand full comment

Based on how many people loved covid lockdowns, I think that's what a lot of people want. Just provide them with Uber eats and Netflix and they'll be content as pigs in slop.

Expand full comment

Some people have to work to make Karen feel comfortable.

Some people have to stay home to make Karen feel safe.

If you don't agree, Karen calls you selfish.

Expand full comment

Karen can go pop a xanax and hide under the couch. I'm going to the park, the store, and work without a mask, and saying whatever I damn well please, including Fuck Off to the speech nazis.

Expand full comment
Aug 5, 2022·edited Aug 5, 2022

I prefer "If you don't agree, Karen calls the Police (the same Police she was agitating to abolish just last week)"

Expand full comment

If you're aware of Myers Briggs Personality Theory, there is a category called "perceivers." It is just a label; it doesn't mean they are perceptive.

These people (perceivers) make up about 50% to 60% of our population.

They do not like to make decisions .Decisions cause them anxiety. That's why they won't do things like commit to lunch ahead of time, or make plans.

I suspect these are the people who like lockdowns. They don't have to make the decision, Uncle Sugar simply tells them what to do and sends them $$$

Expand full comment

Sounds like Ethan Klein when he said you don't even have to think about it, you just do what they tell you; wear a mask, get a vaccine, stay home

Expand full comment

Ugh. I think I resemble part of that definition. Nevertheless, I do not like lockdowns, or any other of these tyrannical mandates. I think it might be more cud-chewing right brain living happily in its intellectual present, and not wanting to be disturbed by executive left brain kicking it out of its comfort zone to deal with unnecessary changes.

Expand full comment

In the Myers Briggs typology, there is a wide range of traits. Someone may test hard or soft, depending on the person, or even on the day.

None of us are perfect, and we cannot change how we reacted in the past. I still roll my eyes and wear a mask at the doctors office because doctors are now batsh*t crazy. I shouldn't but I do. All of us can improve.

Expand full comment

But that presumes that prisons are safe places to reside, which is very unlikely to be the case.

Expand full comment

Already the US has more people imprisoned than any other country compared to population.

Expand full comment

shall we also deprive those who the government decides are “dangers” of other rights based on hearsay and no crimes in evidence?

-------

You would think the people who supposedly champion the little guy would understand that historically the government is the one picking on said little guy. I'm old enough to remember the police going into clubs and gay bashing! Is that where we're headed again, or do these people simply think they will always be the ones holding the nightsticks?

Expand full comment

This is basically the point. The Constitution was not written to save us from each other. It was written to save us from the government.

And, yes, you're right. Liberals used to understand that, particularly regarding the Bill of Rights.

Expand full comment

Exactly! You might like this article, which I wrote before you signed up IIRC:

https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/my-freedom-protects-you-your-freedom

Expand full comment

Great article!

Ironically enough, my father and uncle ended up in jail because they sold wheat on the black market in the 50s, I think, long before my parents were married and I was in the world. But I was brought up with a deep-seated distrust of government machinations, for obvious reasons.

I wish we would learn two things: (1) There is never an end that justifies the means, and (2) Whatever law you want or power you want, make sure you're willing to hand it over to the other side, because at some point you will, which was a point you beautifully made in that article.

Expand full comment

Ah, that reinterpretation of the commerce clause that has erased many restrictions on government. But that was during FDR's days when the Court gave in because of his threats. Fair prices, you know. Like Roe, I hope someday those changes will be eliminated. Would likely cut the federal gov't by more than half. Sadly wouldn't fix FDRs Social Security scheme and the time bomb that has arrived.

Expand full comment

I believe there are many who think they are so valuable that there will be a berth on the Ark of the Elite for them. Hence, they mask and vax and support the narrative.

They don’t understand that the very fact they didn’t get a “get-outta-vax-free card” is evidence that no such berth exists.

Expand full comment

Sorta like carbon offsets.

Expand full comment

Some of them were vaxxed into ITU or a coffin. Justice.

Expand full comment

Government and people who are in power. Many presidents openly, and to their dishonor, say IRSc should look into their enemies.

Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton, Trump to name a few

Expand full comment

Well... there might be something to be said for a mandatory IRS audit of anyone elected or employed by the federal government. Possibly on a yearly basis. Not just particular politicians' enemies, but all of them :)

Expand full comment

I'm sorry, but did you read el gato malo's post?

Expand full comment

...Yes? I was responding to Raymond's point about IRS auditing political enemies. My point was that it would probably be good if everyone employed by the federal government was audited on a regular basis as a matter of principle, regardless of whose enemies they were. I am not sure what part of that conflicts with gato's post, unless you are arguing that periodic IRS audits as a condition of federal employment (for elected officials as well) is against due process?

Expand full comment

A clerk making $25k A year?

Why don't you say, get rid of the US gvt?

I say cut it drastically

Expand full comment

I don't think there are many 25k$ a year clerks working for the Federal government; 12$ an hour seems a bit low. Still, they would have pretty straight forward taxes, and yes, I think if you are working in the power selling business it is reasonable to make sure you are paying your taxes too. Government officials are every bit as prone to graft and fraud as every day citizens.

I would absolutely agree that the federal government needs to be cut drastically as well. 100% on board there.

Expand full comment

Up thru Grade 3, 1st yr are under $25k... Look up salary tabke, Fed employees, General schedule.

Up thru GA 12, $68k.

Grade 15 is top for non Ses.

Most under 12 don't work giving out contracts etc...

People like to think poorly of all federal employees...

Mailmen, park rangers, school teachers etc...

Expand full comment

Yes they exist. I think I might be missing your other point.

Expand full comment

Sadly, there is never a shortage of people willing to sign up as informers, or helpers to the current Witchfinder General. No matter who is the designated witch at present.

Expand full comment

We are all witches now. (So we should all get busy and be casting some very potent hexes on the globalist WEF Great Reset scum and all their lackeys running the various governments !!)

Expand full comment

I began to feel a little perturbed when the peculiar concept of "hate crime" was codified into law. Surely the firm foundation of English Common Law criminalizing homicide, and assault, and destruction of property was sufficient to prosecute criminal behavior, but I ain't no legal scholar of course.

Gowdy of course is an absolute moron but there are plenty of smart but evil people chewing on the roots of our rights and trying to kill the tree every day.

Every single problem in society goes directly back to the family as its basic building block. I've not yet heard of a mass murderer who wasn't the fully ripe fruit of a lifetime of neglect and abuse, in one way or another, but that's the one thing no one wants to grapple with.

Expand full comment

Thank you SCA. I've been saying this about "hate crimes" ever since that idiotic concept came into being. I'm old enough to remember when "hate" was a motive, not a crime.

Now, you have news anchors breathlessly that the guy charged with that triple homicide, "is facing additional hate crime charges".

"Forget about those dead bodies Mable, it's worse than that. He HATED them."

Expand full comment

Yes, I really don't care what motivated you to kill me, I can't think of any reason that I'd find satisfactory, in the circumstances.

Expand full comment

As I lay dying, shot in the abdomen ‘Why did you shoot me? I’m dying.’ ‘You drive a Porsche. I’m a UAW union member. I hate people who drive foreign cars’. ‘Oh, okay. Well I guess that makes sense.’ Flops down dead.

Expand full comment

"Ladies & gentlemen of the jury, please understand that my client may have killed that man (in Reno) - but it was just to see him die not because he hated him for heaven's sake!"

Expand full comment

"Every single problem in society goes directly back to the family as its basic building block." (What is that talent of yours, writing things that just sets off my nostalgia bone and heart strings?)

This needs to be written with 1 000' high letters of fire in the sky or something like that.

Kind of friends I had growing up, wasn't one of them came from a happy home. The ones who were the least, let's say "normal-adjacent", had divorced parents or were accidents. One guy's father used to hand him money and tell the kid to keep away for two weeks, since dad was going to have a drinking binge with his friends. Guy was 12 the first time. After a stint in prison for a couple of dozen auto-thefts he shaped up and got together with a girl, also from a busted home.

And that's another thing I've noted: the ones who manage to shape up and walk straight become awesome parents. Freedom-loving, respectful, and raising their kids right without spoiling or savaging them. Too bad so few make it.

And one problem is, if we can't act pre-empitvely, we have to let people like my friend's dad behvae like that over and over and over again until they finally do something warranting a harsh response. Meanwhile, that's another kid bites the dust before even getting out of the starting blocks. I've got examples of things that wouldn't have been out of place in Unit 731, but I'll save those for a different time. Let's just say some of my old friends childhoods is part of what made very pro-capital punishment.

Expand full comment

Amazing Rikard, I had the exact opposite experience growing up, and the results further solidify your and Bad Cat’s conclusion. All of my close friends (and me) grew up in what would be considered, if not smiley faced happy, at least stable households. Two parents, mother home raising the children, none of whom were being treated as an inconvenience. And 40+ years after high school all these friends are more than 30 years into their first and only marriage.

I’m convinced that the key factor is that at least one (preferably two) of the parents prioritizes child rearing above all else. The preponderance of single parent and two-working-parent households really decreases the odds of that dynamic being in place. It’s not impossible, nor unheard of, but definitely less common than it was half a century ago. To the detriment of our nation, in my opinion.

Expand full comment

It's almost as if all the thousands of years of human history up until the 20th century was based in experience, and we in our hubris just threw it out.

I very much agree with you that (and SCA) that destroying the family is key to toay's problems, which means healing the family is key to stopping them. Family represents order, an order based not on coercion but co-operation for the betterment of others (the children and grandchildren, and in older communities your own paents and grandparents). Remove the family, atomise us to super-individuals, and co-operation can only be based on either coercion or greed or both.

And a society so divided will fall.

Expand full comment

Until HS, I was convinced that everyone else came from a wonderful happy home and I was uniquely cursed. It was a relief to learn I wasn't.

Expand full comment

It was a very short step to "hate speech".

Expand full comment

And they covered it on speed skates.

Expand full comment

The hideous Hate Crime Law was to shut down any conversation about the deliberate policy to flood the UK with immigrants with which the then Labour Government led by the odious Tony Blair wanted to change the demography to provide more votes for Labour and destroy British culture and tradition.

Under Common Law freedom of speech is a passive Right except to incite hatred or violence - so in fact the Hate Crime Law was not needed.

Except: to prosecute successfully for incitement of hatred or violence, required a number of tests. Did the person intend incitement? Was it likely their words could cause incitement? Was it likely the audience would be incited? Was their audience incited?

Difficult to prove particularly when people are just discussing something or unlikely to have any effect on listeners, or make a joke or stupid/unpleasant remark. So just using a word or phrase with respect to the designated group is now in itself a crime. Words have become crimes. Thoughts have become crimes. Plus it introduced causing offence as a crime, but only if it offended the favoured group - and only one person needed to be ‘offended’ and not even of that group.

England! Birthplace of Common Law, Mother of Parliaments, Life, Liberty, Right to peaceful enjoyment of property, rule of law. Shameful

That the legislation has survived 12 years of Conservative Government, tells us all we need to know about the state of the British Conservative Party.

Expand full comment

You might be interested in a site called "Psychohistory" The author explores just that phenomenon and on a wider scale as well.

Expand full comment

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin.

Expand full comment

Did you see Pelosi used this quote (backwards and upsidedown, but it had some of the sameish words). She thought she was quoting Ben Franklin... the President. Plus vodka gibberish,

https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1554698177781108736

Lord help us.

Expand full comment
founding

That depraved and corrupt harpy may well have cost the Taiwanese their independence by providing China with a plausible casus belli to attack.

The combination of narcissism, stupidity and hubris is nothing short of breathtaking.

Expand full comment

The trip was about this: “We will sell you arms, and we will print US dollars to loan to you to buy the arms. But....I have to get it through the House. What is in it for me? And Joe has to sign the bill we pass. What’s in it for him?”

Expand full comment

You must have been a fly on the wall.

Expand full comment

likely also about her investment in nvidia

Expand full comment
Aug 4, 2022·edited Aug 4, 2022

Drunk as a skunk, someone replied. If I ever wanted to show up drunk to work, it's time to find a new job.

Expand full comment

Man! She made reference to Ben Franklin and seemingly referred to him as President.

Expand full comment

She was sloppy drunk.

Expand full comment

we should immediately remove Gowdy's right to free speech because it sounds dangerous.

wait, what? lol.

Expand full comment
founding

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

~ William Pitt the Younger in a speech to parliament in 1783

Same BS, different century.

The collectivist war on due process is also an attack on the general rule of law, the fruits of which we are seeing everywhere now as those with the "proper" politics literally get away with homicide (e.g. Andrew Cuomo, Alec Baldwin etc.) and legions of leftists burn down swathes of cities with impunity, but people on the other side are held for years without trial and sentenced to years in jail for a trumped-up "insurrection".

We are getting very close to the leftist paradise:

"You bring me the man, I'll find you the crime."

~ Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria

Expand full comment

Truckers protested in Canada.

And the government froze their assets. For complaining about their own government.

This isn't about guns, this is about absolute control

Expand full comment

Rowan Atkinson recently called on folks to do more insulting. Anyone else see that? A very good speech

Expand full comment

Really? I’d love to see that.

Expand full comment

https://youtu.be/oS9Ey3C_E-U

Expand full comment

When I was a kid I laughed a lot because of Mr. Bean. Little did I know 30 years ago that my respect towards the actor will increase tremendously. Big respect.

Expand full comment

"Riskcrime." Perfect encapsulation.

The minute you attempt preemptive justice, you claim for yourself absolute knowledge of the future. Everyone covets this and everyone loves to pretend they have it. But no one actually does.

When we criminalize some act, we are saying "if we know you're guilty of this there will be consequences." But the problem is one of epistemology. What does it mean to "know" someone is guilty? Due process seeks to address that problem. And sometimes being patient enough to exercise due process sucks, a lot. People get away with stuff in a system of due process. But that's nothing compared to how much it sucks if you try to short-circuit it; then people get away with a lot more and at taxpayer expense.

Expand full comment

"The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People ... they may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty." --John Adams

Expand full comment

Metaphorically speaking, as a society we have been selectively breeding to eliminate virtue...

Expand full comment

And God!

Expand full comment

By that standard, and I do not disagree with it, we went into the sh*tter 150 years ago.

Expand full comment

Two words: Patriot Act.

Expand full comment

This is the first mention I’ve seen about “pre due process” if I can call it that. Extremely troubling.

Expand full comment

As you say, freedom is all of one piece. Once the noose is around your neck, it doesn’t matter how long the rope is or how loosely it is held, you’re no longer free.

“One Freedom”

Freedom is, at its core, indivisible. One is either free or one is not. We can talk about degrees of slavery, but freedom is literally all or nothing.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZDT7NO4

There are no exceptions to freedom.

https://russellmadden.substack.com/p/freedom-except-for?s=w

Expand full comment

A Man for All Seasons

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the

benefit of law?

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do?

Cut a great road through the law to get after

the Devil?

William Roper: I'd cut down every law in

England to do that!

More: Oh, and when the last law was cut down,

and the Devil turned round on you, where

would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

This country is planted thick with laws, from

coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if

you cut them down, and you're just the man to

do it, do you really think you could stand upright

in the winds that would blow then? Yes! I'd give

the Devil the benefit of law, for my own safety's

sake!

Expand full comment

Thanks.One of my favorites.

Expand full comment

Absolutely spot on, El Gato!! My, you are a smart kitty cat.

Expand full comment

I wonder if Trey Gowdy would support castrating men who might rape children. Doubtful he would recommend that for men who actually have raped children.

I was surprised by Gowdy's monologue on Sunday night. Before his stint in the House, he was an assistant US Attorney and later the 7th Circuit South Carolina Solicitor. Perhaps he's seen his share of ugly crimes? Dunno.

I think ole Trey should watch "Minority Report".

Expand full comment
Aug 5, 2022·edited Aug 5, 2022

There are lots of Republicans in politics-- and in the media-- that are playing a role. Gowdy is one of them.

I suspect they are all controlled opposition, members of The Party.

There is only one Party, and it skews heavily left. A large majority of the "conservatives" in government are simply there to give the illusion of choice.

Expand full comment

Yes lots of sophistry, imprecise generalizations etc. Regarding losing a job, however, I think he was referring to a GOVERNMENT job or benefits (eg welfare benefits cannot be taken away without a fair hearing), not a private sector job. But even this analogy bothered me by implication that the recent military dismissal of unvaccinated soldiers was somehow OK. He also seems to have ignored or discounted other rights in the constitution, not just the due process clause of the 14th amendment. 

Expand full comment

The ones who have already are reddit mods and thus untouchable.

Expand full comment