The podcast leaves me with the same old question and that is ...... what do I detest more? The fear mongering of the Left or the Hypocrisy of the Left.
I am not a good writer but let me share one of many good articles in response to this podcast.
The article was too long to post so here is the Link and some excerpts of the article
Under cover of this onslaught, Biden has become the most autocratic president in at least 50 years. Justified by the fallacy that authoritarianism on behalf of so-called equity (i.e., racism) and other progressive causes is democratic (small “d”), and emboldened by the progressive echo chamber, the Biden administration pursues its left-wing agenda with smug indifference to bedrock rules of American jurisprudence and governance.
To suppress opposition to Biden’s unconstitutional and unlawful acts, government and other progressives seek to cleanse vocabulary and the public square of their utility, vilify and punish those who do not acquiesce, and foster corrupt (and unconstitutional) alliances with media and Big Tech that silence the opposition. Americans are justifiably afraid to speak out under the yoke of a weaponized Justice department, and intolerant school boards, universities, and professional organizations with the power to suspend and disbar, such as the American Medical Association and American Bar Association.
When President Biden instructs, authorizes, or merely permits the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to disregard U.S. immigration law, or federal departments and agencies to hire personnel, enact policies, and grant funds based on race, or to collude with social media to deplatform, demonetize, and censor private speech, he violates this core presidential responsibility, among other core protections guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law. The immigration crisis is Joe Biden’s unlawful plan to annul immigration laws to expand the potential Democrat base.
The Taylor Force Act, enacted in 2018 by a bipartisan vote, generally requires the U.S.to cease funding the Palestinian Authority until the PA stops paying stipends to Palestinian terrorists and their families who target U.S. and Israeli citizens, takes steps to end violence, publicly condemns anyone who tries to kill an Israeli or a U.S. citizen, and fully investigates such crimes. The PA has made clear it will not comply. Nonetheless, consistent with anti-Israel sentiment among progressives, Biden lawlessly restored financial aid to the PA. Recent grants total about $1 billion.
Parents who objected to Covid shutdowns, Critical Race Theory, affirmative action, and schools’ secretly supporting LGTBQ priorities, are speaking out at school board meetings. To crush them, in September 2021, the White House secretly collaborated with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to write a letter from the NSBA to Biden seeking Federal assistance to stop the parents. Five days later, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a directive to the FBI and U.S. attorneys to meet with state and local leaders to develop strategies to address the purported threats of violence. FBI agents began investigating and questioning parents, even though the alleged violence was a matter for local police. These coordinated actions led to an apology from the NSBA, but Garland never backed down, putting DOJ’s lethal thumb squarely on the side of the administration.
Article I of the Constitution exclusively vests in Congress the right to appropriate funds and set the U.S. debt. During and after the 2020 presidential election, leading Democrats, including then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Biden, talked about seeking Congressional action to forgive student debt. Both acknowledged that the president lacked the authority to do so without Congressional action. As the midterm election neared and polls showed the potential for the Republicans to sweep the House and take the Senate, Biden bribed voters with more than $400 billion of federal funds by forgiving $10,000 in student debt for individuals with incomes below $125,000 or household incomes below $250,000, and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.
Despite being blatantly unconstitutional, at least 80 senior officials in 11 federal agencies, including the White House, DHS, CDC, and FBI, have participated in a concerted, until now largely covert, enterprise to suppress dissenting voices by colluding with, and coercing, social media companies into blocking, demonetizing, and suppressing views to which the administration objects, including so-called misinformation (views the Biden administration labels as false) and disinformation (views that are inconvenient for the Biden administration, or lack its preferred context). I wrote at length here about this fundamental danger to a free society.
More than once, the Supreme Court has opined that “distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people” (e.g., Rice v. Cayetano [2000] and Hirabayashi v. United States [1943]). Chief Justice John Roberts observed that using racial discrimination to undo racial discrimination doesn’t work; rather, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 [2007]). In Shaw v. Hunt (1996), the Court unambiguously explained: “Racial classifications are antithetical to the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in federally funded programs, and Title VII does the same in private employment. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibits the federal government from varying individual property and contract rights based on race or color.
Despite the unambiguous strictures of the Constitution, federal law, and Supreme Court precedent, on its first day in office, the president issued an executive order requiring a “whole-of-government” effort to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in all aspects of federal-government policies and American lives. As I explained last year, Biden then issued a second order on DEI in the federal workforce, a government-wide strategic plan, and a Gender Equity Plan that require government agencies to adopt plans to make personnel, policy, contracting, and financial decisions based on race and LGBTQI+ status.
The Biden administration’s 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP) and trillion dollar infrastructure bill included billions to advance “equity” for restaurants, farmers, small businesses, homeowners, and construction companies. These benefits are unavailable to straight white males, and, often, other whites and Asian Americans. For example, ARP included $28.6 billion for grants to restaurants that the administration generally made available only to blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, and Asian Americans from the Indian subcontinent. Another act granted loan relief to minority farmers, excluding whites.
The administration has ordered that 11 percent of federal contracting dollars be awarded to small businesses owned by so-called marginalized minorities, and makes certain grants available only to “disadvantaged minorities” for medical research, infrastructure, student aid, and public housing.
Courts have consistently ruled against the administration’s racial agenda. In June 2021, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional the provisions of ARP for distributing COVID-relief by race and sex. An ARP program that allocates debt relief based on race and excludes white farmers has been enjoined by numerous courts, though the government has obtained stays in enforcement. More than a dozen other lawsuits are pending against Biden’s DEI programs
Yet, the Biden administration shows no sign of relenting. In accordance with Biden’s executive orders, at least 140 agencies have announced they are developing action plans to prioritize race in their mission.
We live in a democracy with three branches of government. When the executive branch knowingly disregards the Constitution and federal law the remedies are largely confined to expensive, protracted litigation, and impeachment, conviction, and removal, as provided for in the Constitution. Litigation is cumbersome, and Biden has generally evaded adverse decisions by slow-walking compliance, and issuing new, similar orders. Impeachment and conviction are impracticable given the small Republican majority in the House, Democrat control of the Senate, and the chilling fact that Kamala Harris is next.
With America’s elite institutions, the media, and a majority in the Senate aligning to excuse and even encourage growing autocratic overreach, including censorship and violent DOJ attacks on citizens exercising their Constitutional rights to petition Government and express their views, they create the circumstances in which progressive bogeymen may become real.
"You begin your critique of the liberal establishment - represented by the Biden administration - with the charge that it is essentially authoritarian in its politics. While I would certainly join issue with you regarding a number of substantive critiques that you level against the liberal, woke, center-left, I cannot agree with the charge of authoritarianism. Arrogance, perhaps. Elitism, possibly. But not authoritarian. A government’s desire to impose its will and to insist on certain standards and on the proper relationship between science, reason and policy, is understandable and, more than that, legitimate - even if substantively in error - so long as that government is acting within the bounds of constitutional jurisdiction and with a mandate that results from a free and fair election.
If authoritarianism is your greatest fear and concern, you are going to be seeing more of that in the coming months and years than America has seen since WWII. And it won’t be courtesy of Biden or the Democrats or the liberal left. "
The podcast leaves me with the same old question and that is ...... what do I detest more? The fear mongering of the Left or the Hypocrisy of the Left.
I am not a good writer but let me share one of many good articles in response to this podcast.
The article was too long to post so here is the Link and some excerpts of the article
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-biden-autocracy/
The Biden Autocracy
Under cover of this onslaught, Biden has become the most autocratic president in at least 50 years. Justified by the fallacy that authoritarianism on behalf of so-called equity (i.e., racism) and other progressive causes is democratic (small “d”), and emboldened by the progressive echo chamber, the Biden administration pursues its left-wing agenda with smug indifference to bedrock rules of American jurisprudence and governance.
To suppress opposition to Biden’s unconstitutional and unlawful acts, government and other progressives seek to cleanse vocabulary and the public square of their utility, vilify and punish those who do not acquiesce, and foster corrupt (and unconstitutional) alliances with media and Big Tech that silence the opposition. Americans are justifiably afraid to speak out under the yoke of a weaponized Justice department, and intolerant school boards, universities, and professional organizations with the power to suspend and disbar, such as the American Medical Association and American Bar Association.
When President Biden instructs, authorizes, or merely permits the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to disregard U.S. immigration law, or federal departments and agencies to hire personnel, enact policies, and grant funds based on race, or to collude with social media to deplatform, demonetize, and censor private speech, he violates this core presidential responsibility, among other core protections guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law. The immigration crisis is Joe Biden’s unlawful plan to annul immigration laws to expand the potential Democrat base.
The Taylor Force Act, enacted in 2018 by a bipartisan vote, generally requires the U.S.to cease funding the Palestinian Authority until the PA stops paying stipends to Palestinian terrorists and their families who target U.S. and Israeli citizens, takes steps to end violence, publicly condemns anyone who tries to kill an Israeli or a U.S. citizen, and fully investigates such crimes. The PA has made clear it will not comply. Nonetheless, consistent with anti-Israel sentiment among progressives, Biden lawlessly restored financial aid to the PA. Recent grants total about $1 billion.
Parents who objected to Covid shutdowns, Critical Race Theory, affirmative action, and schools’ secretly supporting LGTBQ priorities, are speaking out at school board meetings. To crush them, in September 2021, the White House secretly collaborated with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to write a letter from the NSBA to Biden seeking Federal assistance to stop the parents. Five days later, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a directive to the FBI and U.S. attorneys to meet with state and local leaders to develop strategies to address the purported threats of violence. FBI agents began investigating and questioning parents, even though the alleged violence was a matter for local police. These coordinated actions led to an apology from the NSBA, but Garland never backed down, putting DOJ’s lethal thumb squarely on the side of the administration.
Article I of the Constitution exclusively vests in Congress the right to appropriate funds and set the U.S. debt. During and after the 2020 presidential election, leading Democrats, including then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Biden, talked about seeking Congressional action to forgive student debt. Both acknowledged that the president lacked the authority to do so without Congressional action. As the midterm election neared and polls showed the potential for the Republicans to sweep the House and take the Senate, Biden bribed voters with more than $400 billion of federal funds by forgiving $10,000 in student debt for individuals with incomes below $125,000 or household incomes below $250,000, and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.
Despite being blatantly unconstitutional, at least 80 senior officials in 11 federal agencies, including the White House, DHS, CDC, and FBI, have participated in a concerted, until now largely covert, enterprise to suppress dissenting voices by colluding with, and coercing, social media companies into blocking, demonetizing, and suppressing views to which the administration objects, including so-called misinformation (views the Biden administration labels as false) and disinformation (views that are inconvenient for the Biden administration, or lack its preferred context). I wrote at length here about this fundamental danger to a free society.
More than once, the Supreme Court has opined that “distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people” (e.g., Rice v. Cayetano [2000] and Hirabayashi v. United States [1943]). Chief Justice John Roberts observed that using racial discrimination to undo racial discrimination doesn’t work; rather, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 [2007]). In Shaw v. Hunt (1996), the Court unambiguously explained: “Racial classifications are antithetical to the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in federally funded programs, and Title VII does the same in private employment. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibits the federal government from varying individual property and contract rights based on race or color.
Despite the unambiguous strictures of the Constitution, federal law, and Supreme Court precedent, on its first day in office, the president issued an executive order requiring a “whole-of-government” effort to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in all aspects of federal-government policies and American lives. As I explained last year, Biden then issued a second order on DEI in the federal workforce, a government-wide strategic plan, and a Gender Equity Plan that require government agencies to adopt plans to make personnel, policy, contracting, and financial decisions based on race and LGBTQI+ status.
The Biden administration’s 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP) and trillion dollar infrastructure bill included billions to advance “equity” for restaurants, farmers, small businesses, homeowners, and construction companies. These benefits are unavailable to straight white males, and, often, other whites and Asian Americans. For example, ARP included $28.6 billion for grants to restaurants that the administration generally made available only to blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, and Asian Americans from the Indian subcontinent. Another act granted loan relief to minority farmers, excluding whites.
The administration has ordered that 11 percent of federal contracting dollars be awarded to small businesses owned by so-called marginalized minorities, and makes certain grants available only to “disadvantaged minorities” for medical research, infrastructure, student aid, and public housing.
Courts have consistently ruled against the administration’s racial agenda. In June 2021, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional the provisions of ARP for distributing COVID-relief by race and sex. An ARP program that allocates debt relief based on race and excludes white farmers has been enjoined by numerous courts, though the government has obtained stays in enforcement. More than a dozen other lawsuits are pending against Biden’s DEI programs
Yet, the Biden administration shows no sign of relenting. In accordance with Biden’s executive orders, at least 140 agencies have announced they are developing action plans to prioritize race in their mission.
We live in a democracy with three branches of government. When the executive branch knowingly disregards the Constitution and federal law the remedies are largely confined to expensive, protracted litigation, and impeachment, conviction, and removal, as provided for in the Constitution. Litigation is cumbersome, and Biden has generally evaded adverse decisions by slow-walking compliance, and issuing new, similar orders. Impeachment and conviction are impracticable given the small Republican majority in the House, Democrat control of the Senate, and the chilling fact that Kamala Harris is next.
With America’s elite institutions, the media, and a majority in the Senate aligning to excuse and even encourage growing autocratic overreach, including censorship and violent DOJ attacks on citizens exercising their Constitutional rights to petition Government and express their views, they create the circumstances in which progressive bogeymen may become real.
Thank-you Jerry. I look forward to reading your text in depth. I will forward it to Peter for his comments.
Always a pleasure my boy. Wishing you a very Happy New Year and the best always. Keep up the good fight.
ahimsa papa j
Hi Jerry,
This is the response to your comments from Peter:
"You begin your critique of the liberal establishment - represented by the Biden administration - with the charge that it is essentially authoritarian in its politics. While I would certainly join issue with you regarding a number of substantive critiques that you level against the liberal, woke, center-left, I cannot agree with the charge of authoritarianism. Arrogance, perhaps. Elitism, possibly. But not authoritarian. A government’s desire to impose its will and to insist on certain standards and on the proper relationship between science, reason and policy, is understandable and, more than that, legitimate - even if substantively in error - so long as that government is acting within the bounds of constitutional jurisdiction and with a mandate that results from a free and fair election.
If authoritarianism is your greatest fear and concern, you are going to be seeing more of that in the coming months and years than America has seen since WWII. And it won’t be courtesy of Biden or the Democrats or the liberal left. "