REPUBLIC REBORN

I’ve always felt that the true test of character comes when one is made to choose between defending a position or belief all alone, going against what seems to be the majority of your fellow man, those who hold a belief or are bent on engaging in an act of which you know in your heart to be evil, or a path that leads to eventual ruin. It’s a rare sight, not dissimilar to walking outside at night, looking up, and seeing the sky filled with lighting sprites. Not impossible, but it catches you off guard. All you can do is marvel at it, thank the gods you were there to witness it, and pray you learned something from it. The quality I’m referring to is intransigence, that immovable bullheadedness that vanishingly few possess but can do enormous damage when awakened. And more than likely it is a quality that remains dormant for much of the unsuspecting individual’s life, placed there by whatever force breathed life into the cosmos, lying in wait in case it is ever needed. This individual could be moving along through life at a steady pace, meeting all the milestones that society demands of him or her. Yet one morning this person finds something wrong, he sees what he has always seen, yet this time he sees it as it truly is: crimes committed in broad daylight by a ruling class flanked by murderers and rapists of entire nations. He realizes with shame and outrage that he’s become a sharecropper of his own life, a vision of his children’s future becomes clear as a diamond sky, effectively delivering his children to a hereditary parasite that will never be satisfied until their futures and lives are consumed.

His sensibilities, his very nature is offended at the molecular level. All at once a sleeping star goes nova within him, something awakens, utterly possessing him, transforming him. The monkey brain chatter that his filled his mind for years is suddenly silenced. The mind clears, he sees the path before him. He picks up a large club, and he begins to walk. And as he walks, the history of entire countries change. His eyes are on the path, the goal, not the jeering horde of drones that mindlessly prop up the system that enslaves them. History itself is changed by this quality. It’s this quality that Matthew Arnold saw in Edmund Burke when he wrote:

“…when you hear all round you no language but one, when your party talks this language like a steam-engine and can imagine no other–still to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side of the question, and, like Balaam, to be unable to speak anything but what the Lord has put in your mouth.”

These people have existed throughout history, and they have changed that history. Their refusal to yield, their indifference to the odds of success, indifference to whether they stand alone or with millions, their inability to “speak anything but what the Lord has put in (their) mouth”, this is intransigence. Not just a bullheaded refusal to back down, but a continued, unceasing, advance toward the enemy, is its hallmark. It is what every ruling class fears, because it is almost impossible to defeat, and it is the harbinger of their doom. When a ruling class has openly committed crimes against the public long enough, the intransigent will awaken and begin pursuing them.

An intransigent person is like the Terminator. They just keep coming, and they won’t shut up. They can’t be bargained with, bribed, or cajoled. And they won’t stop until either your establishment has been dismantled, or they has been killed by agents of the Political Class. Any ember left alight within will continue to pursue its prey with every fiber of its being. A ruling class is virtually helpless in the face of an articulate, intransigent person.

We are living in an age where corporations and governments speak with one voice. Where crimes are committed at home and abroad, to thunderous applause, by a rapacious Political Class who are also intent on grinding into dust all dissent. What better testing ground could there be for bringing the intransigent to the foreground? And it certainly has. Ron Paul was the first major public figure to exhibit an almost superhuman intransigence in the face of evil.  More recently, Tulsi Gabbard has exhibited Jimmy Dore, comedian and host of the Jimmy Dore Show, certainly has it. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has an enormous amount of it.

With most of these people, you can point to some single moment or revelation that propelled them to action. Tulsi saw firsthand the evil of regime-change wars. Jimmy’s was the constant exposure to propaganda. RFK Jr. looked at the data behind the murderous Gardasil vaccine in disgust and horror. For Ron Paul it was the evils of the Welfare/Warfare State, and the rapid dismantling of liberty.

Intransigence is much more than an unwillingness to compromise. It calls out your crimes to your face. It will publish pamphlets of your crimes and distribute them. It will tell every person who will listen that you, the ruling class, are composed of human garbage and are fleecing them for every cent they have. They will be very persuasive, and will build a following. They will come for you.

Apparently the professors skipped out just as RFK Jr. was about to board his flight. He made the flight and showed up at Yale anyway and held a press conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Yf4-P2qbHo

Much has been said about “vaccine misinformation” in recent weeks. A Senate hearing was recently convened to address this crisis of “misinformation”, with a panel of doctors all speaking in unison regarding vaccine policy. At the request of California representative Adam Schiff, Facebook has pledged to combat the “misinformation”, Pinterest has removed anti-vaccine content, and Amazon has removed many documentaries containing this “misinformation”, with the hope that censoring the content will halt its spread. But what is strange about all this is that nowhere is this content ever addressed directly. What is this “misinformation” that scares them so much that they’re willing to censor it rather than address it directly? Rather than misinformation, could it be that parents find the widely-available facts surrounding current vaccine policy deeply disconcerting, and voice that concern? Those concerns warrant serious discussion, not censorship.

Just one of these concerns is the simple fact that vaccine manufacturers are exempt from liability in the event of an adverse reaction to a vaccine. This is due to the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1986, which also created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which funnels petitioners to the “vaccine court”, where the families of the vaccine-injured must make their case in order to receive compensation. Over $4 billion have been paid out as part of vaccine injury settlements by this program since its inception, according to NVIC.org. And in just the first quarter of this year, the Department of Justice has reported that $110 million in settlements has been paid out to victims. The program, ostensibly created to put an end to the wave of lawsuits that vaccine-injured individuals were bringing against vaccine manufacturers, has now clearly created a very dangerous, textbook example of moral hazard.

A possible result of this moral hazard is found in disturbing video footage of a 2018 meeting of the Advisory Council on Immunization Practices, which shows a vote being held on a vaccine containing an adjuvant with unknown side effects and safety, yet receives unanimous ‘yes’ votes. After the vote, the members appeared to discuss when the data on the new vaccine would be available, implying that the general population would, in effect, be the test subjects for the unproven vaccine for the next several years.

This is reckless in the extreme, and clear evidence that we have every reason to distrust regulatory bodies that operate in this manner, as well as distrust any policy or product emerging from their deliberations.

After the passage of the 1986 Act, Congress assigned responsibility for monitoring vaccine safety to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who was required to submit a report to Congress every two years that details the state of vaccine safety. Thanks to a lawsuit filed by the Informed Consent Action Network and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., it has been revealed that HHS has not filed a single vaccine safety report since the creation of the program 30 years prior. This isn’t misinformation, it’s fact. Inconvenient, but fact nonetheless.

Vaccine safety isn’t some idle concern among parents. Autism, autoimmune disorders, and chronic illness are rising at alarming rates among children. This is a serious concern for children and their parents. A 2010 EPA study, “Timing of Increased Autistic Disorder Cumulative Evidence”,  traced the origin of the modern autism “epidemic” to 1988, when cases began spiking dramatically. As of 2018, according to the CDC’s own stats, approximately 1 in 37 boys is diagnosed with autism, whereas 1 in 151 girls receives the diagnosis.

And, more fundamentally, what number of vaccines would be too many? The standard schedule calls for around 28 doses of 13 separate vaccines by age 2, 35 by age 5. At what point would it be considered excessive by even the most pro-vaccine advocate? 50 before age 2? 100? The misgivings of parents are informed and entirely rational. Marginalizing these people, and attempting to silence them will not make them go away. A demand for censorship is an implicit admission that you have no faith in your ability to persuasively respond to your opponent’s argument. It is an admission of defeat.

Parents who have even the slightest misgivings over the number of doses, their contents, and their possible dangers find their concerns dismissed with an eye roll, and eventually, if they continue to voice their concerns or network with like-minded individuals, find themselves marginalized by the medical establishment at large.  They find themselves dismissed as the “useful idiots of the anti-vaccine lobby”, as Peter Hotez did when he smugly spat it at the mothers of vaccine-injured children after a Senate hearing on vaccines on March 5th. Later, they listen to an interview in which Hotez, rather than address any of the arguments of the “anti-vaccine lobby” or even affirm the value of some type of public debate, says that “some of this anti-vaccine media empire needs to be dismantled”, blatantly calling for censorship, regardless of any First Amendment violations. Does he really have such little faith in his arguments in favor of mandatory and expanded vaccine policy that the only option is to silence his critics?  A real debate must happen, it can’t be swept under the rug. Something is wrong with vaccine policy and our entire approach to health in general. It requires discussion, no matter how uncomfortable that discussion may be for either side. The future of health and the future of our children vitally depend on it.

And now for something lighter: a few notes on my experience, thus far, with that most infamous, blood-thirsty, maniacal breed of dog on the planet, the pit bull. 

Lucy is my pit bull, the first one I’ve ever owned. About 18 months ago I decided I needed some kind of energetic beast in my life, and only a dog would do. I’ve grown up around other types, just never a pit. But I’d heard the hysterical stories about this maligned breed. I’d also heard the good things that came from pit bull owners, along with their bewilderment that anyone would think this breed in any way vicious if they’d actually ever been around them. They’re reputed loyalty, intelligence, and athleticism pushed me over the top: I contacted a seller with a new litter the next day. First I confirmed that she was full-blood rather than a mix, and made a small road trip to Ardmore to pick her up. The rest are just a few observations that may either dispel or confirm the stereotypes, but they are observations based on my first-hand experience from a new owner. 

1. Lucy is intensely loyal to me, in a way that I’ve never encountered before in a dog. Her exuberance at just being around me is almost always at the max, but it’s very self-contained and controlled. She doesn’t jump all over me or my children, but just tap-dances in place until she feels she’s permitted to come over.
2. When you take a pit bull for a stroll around town, people do cross the street. Maybe it’s their preconceptions, maybe it’s the dead stare that she gives people from a distance. Whatever it is, people move. Comedian Bill Burr said that everyone owes it to themselves to walk a pit bull down the street at least once. It is a glorious experience.
3. Her athleticism is a sight to behold. Lucy’s only desired material possessions are her blanket (that she prefers to arrange herself) and tennis balls. In lieu of a live squirrel, Lucy is content to chase and fetch a tennis ball as long as you’re able to throw it. In fact she is faster than your ability to throw the ball. She’ll bring it back, but not before performing several victory laps around the yard. Pits are muscular in a compact, barrel-chested way, and you can see every muscle’s purpose when they’re running at top speed. 
4. Intelligence. Her ability to quickly learn commands is something I’ve never encountered before in another dog. I chalk it up to her eagerness to please. Almost all of my handful of commands to her aren’t even verbal, but merely hand gestures and finger snaps.
5. She is by far the most even-tempered animal I’ve ever encountered. That is not hyperbole, merely an observation. 
6. Pits do have boundaries and will enforce them in a casual way with people they’re unfamiliar with. It’s probably never a good idea to approach a stranger’s dog before being introduced, and I wouldn’t recommend it with a pit bull. They won’t rip your arm off, but they will make sure you keep your distance.
7. For home security, a pit bull is far better than an alarm system or even a gun. She hears every noise in the house, and can somehow parse the noises of my two cats with anything that seems to her to be suspicious. On the rare occasion she thinks something needs to be checked out, she lets out a single, full-throated bark, walks slowly around the entire house, then goes back to bed.
8. There isn’t a violent or impulsive bone in her body. On the contrary, Lucy is the least-impulsive of any dog I’ve ever been close to. Her extremely cool, even temper is one of her greatest features. On the single occasion that a neighbor’s dog entered my backyard, rather than tearing each other limb from limb, that dog and Lucy spent the next twenty minutes running in figure eights at full-speed.

So there it is, my un-embellished impression of the infamous breed of dog after one year. Was it helpful? Who knows. But what is astounding is that hundreds of high-quality specimens are practically given away every day on Craigslist. Few people want them due to the stigma. Guess what? The stigma is baloney. If you want a very good dog, consider a pit bull.

Well, more like a nest of snakes or roaches, at the CNN “townhall”. Here is coverage from the Jimmy Dore Show:

It seems that every silver-tongued devil that has ever lied a U.S. soldier to his death in some faraway land is now lined up to take on Tulsi’s intransigent stance against this hideous policy that acts as a meat grinder for American soldiers and whichever unfortunate Third World nation our government has fixated upon. Tulsi’s grace, patience, and steadfastness in the face of the smears and propaganda is currently winning the hearts and minds of thousands at a time. The Political Class that draws it’s lifeblood from endless war recognizes this, and will begin throwing everything it can at Tulsi. But Tulsi has ideas on her side, her adversaries only have guns. And, as we and her enemies know, ideas are bulletproof.

Oklahoma state senator Nathan Dahm discusses the amount of the time that legislators are given to read bills before a vote is cast on them. Dahm explains that legislators were given the agenda for 85 bills on Tuesday night at 10pm, with voting commencing the next morning at 9am. Follow the below link if it allows you to:

It is outrageous that this state of affairs is allowed in our government. Before anything else needs to happen, something needs to be done about this reckless speed-voting on a pile of bills all at once. The process must be slowed down, the bills must be read in their entirety, there must be a limit to how much extra crap that can be stuffed into a single bill, and the lobbyist who writes the bill must be made known. It would slow the process tremendously, which would be a good thing. That bills must not be voted on before they are read seems like common sense, and to vote on a bill you haven’t read sounds like the height on idiocy. Yet this is standard operating procedure for every level of government in the Unites States.

A war against “vaccine misinformation” is currently underway by the largest tech corporations, with a heavy nudge from Democratic rep. Adam Schiff, backed by the full faith and force of the federal government. A hearing was held on March 5th by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, and Labor to address ‘vaccine misinformation’, and repeatedly state that vaccines are safe while pushing for social media censorship of this ‘misinformation’. A panel of scientists spoke briefly, followed by a testimony from 18-year old Ethan Lindenberger, on the subject of vaccine safety, but none of the arguments against vaccine safety were directly addressed, nor was anyone from the shadowy “anti-vaccine lobby” allowed to address the hearing. Why is that? I sense that, in much the same way that government sells war, they do not want anyone to hear the opposing arguments. If Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Del Bigtree, or Suzanne Humphries had spoken for just 10 minutes it would probably have taken all the wind out of the sails of the censorship campaign. Instead, we get no real debate, just an insistence that those who oppose mandatory vaccination must be silenced, in the same manner that Peter Hotez recently did on the Joe Rogan Experience, where, rather than debate anyone, he called for the “anti-vaccine lobby” to be dismantled, free speech and the Constitution be damned. Do they really have so little faith in their argument? Who do they think this lobby is, anyway? That “lobby” consists primarily of the crowd of mothers of vaccine-injured children sitting at the back of the hearing. How about letting them speak? Of course, it would be too heart-wrenching for the taste of the assembled manufacturers of consent, and would pull the rug out.

This post isn’t pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, it’s the question of why can’t the other side be heard? Before any frenzy of lawmaking commences, the accused should have a right to defend themselves, the public should hear it all out. This is how all bad wars and bad laws begin, and nothing good will come from muzzling the other side.

Colbert: “Do you think the Iraq war was worth it?”

Tulsi: “No.”

Colbert: “Do you think that our involvement in Syria has been worth it?”

Tulsi: “No.”

This is too good, and while the benefactors of endless war have declared a propaganda war against Tulsi, they will make themselves look like fools in the face of a polished Major in the Army National Guard. Could you imagine the upbraiding Trump would receive on the debate stage by her. Gabbard will make Trump look like a clown.

Notice also, in the below interview, how strangely pro-war Colbert comes across. He has utterly bought into the regime change talking points that have been regurgitated and retrofitted for each new intervention, most recently used to push for regime change in Venezuela. What is also interesting to see, is that it is clear that nothing that Tulsi is saying to Colbert seems to be getting across. His mind is captive to the endless war rhetoric that has been weaponized to support an endless string of wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Another gem from Tulsi during that exchange: “In order to be a force for good, we must actually do good.”

Watch the whole thing:

Department of Justice report, released on March 8th, shows that 307 vaccine injury petitions were filed between 11/16/18 and 2/15/19, with $110 million already paid out to the families of vaccine-injured individuals in the first quarter of this year.

From page 134 of volume 2 of his criminally underread trilogy, Law, Legislation, and Liberty: 

Most people are still unwilling to face the most alarming lesson of modern history: that the greatest crimes of our time have been committed by governments that had the enthusiastic support of millions of people who were guided by moral impulses. It is simply not true that Hitler or Mussolini, Lenin or Stalin, appealed only to the worst instincts of their people: they also appealed to some of the feelings which also dominate contemporary democracies. Whatever disillusionment the more mature supporters of these movements may have experienced as they came to see the effects of the policies they had supported, there can be no doubt that the rank and file of the communist, national-socialist or fascist movements contained many men and women inspired by ideals not very different from those of some the most influential social philosophers in the Western countries. Some of them certainly believed that they were engaged in the creation of a just society in which the needs of the most deserving or ‘socially most valuable’ would be better cared for. They were led by a desire for a visible common purpose which is our inheritance from the tribal society and which we still find breaking through everywhere.”

Hayek, with his formal English, and penchant for 300-word sentences, can be intimidating to read, but it’s entirely worth it. I’ve found that it’s a skill, and once your mind has acclimated to his prose, you can glide through it.  The insight and wisdom packed into these three slender volumes is priceless, and reading them pays enormous dividends in the understanding of the nature of a free society.

The above quote is timely in that it reminds me of the hysteria currently seething around the vaccine debate. A pro-vaccine propaganda blitzkrieg is presently underway, and has the same feeling as the all-encompassing propaganda campaigns immediately before the US starts another overseas war. The suppression of dissent is an integral part of these campaigns, and we see it now in the intense pressure placed on the social media giants to de-platform anyone who holds a heterodox viewpoint of vaccines, or expresses concern that the vastly under-reported autoimmune crisis could be caused by another product of Big Pharma.  That appears to be an eminently reasonable concern. It was these pharmaceutical companies that gave us the opioid epidemic, laced our food with cancer-causing pesticides, and insanity-inducing antidepressants.

We shouldn’t be so quick to let our “moral impulses” be hijacked, and succumb to every manufactured crisis, particularly one in which the largest news organizations, governments, and corporations speak with one voice.