"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
. . .that I can’t quite get behind, IYKWIMAITTYD.
Nah. That’s WAY too friendly, and besides, feds aren’t my type. You know, human. I’m not into bestiality, ya know. (Ya can’t blame me for dehumanizing the feds, because they have done it to themselves.)
*heh* I adapted a Babylon Bee “meme-y thingy” to more closely match my perceptions of Kamalamadingdong. ‘Tis a poor thing but mine own” as it were. . .
Just askin’ because. . .
A whole lotta nuthin’ goin’ on. . . and coming out of Kamawa (FWEEDOM!) Hawwis’s mouth.
The Dhimmicrap Circus of Klowns has put forth its A-Team:
(And yeh, as known to any literate person, the 20th Century KKK was a Democrat organization and populated by such notables as Senator “KKK,” Robert Carlyle Byrd, so the Koup Klutz Klan has tradition going for it in its lynch mob tactics.)
Given all the anti-Russia yammer in the Hivemind and elsewhere, I’ve enjoyed sitting back (admittedly behind a decent VPN) and using Yandex for more and more things “Interwebby.” Save for a Gmail account that I use less and less, Google, THE single most evil internet gang, is completely blocked on my computers. Yeh, I know Google says its tracking of me and suchlike is turned off, and what it reports as having on me is the next thing to zero (Google’s lying, of course), but thanks to a decent VPN and other measures (TOR!), much of what Google has on me is ancient history, and much of the rest is. . . not exactly accurate. It’s a pleasure to not have seen a Google ad for years, now, for example.
Yandex is a Russian-based, multi-national company and “is the 5th largest search engine worldwide after Google, Baidu, Bing, and Yahoo!.” (Wikipedia) I quite often use its search capabilities to good effect, and the email service it offers is slowly replacing Gmail in my daily use. Slowly. Perhaps because of my VPN use, and a few other things, ads and other obvious intrusions from Yandex just haven’t appeared on my horizon, and I have yet to discover any blatant politicizing of search results, as seemed so common with Google.
And, by avoiding Google as much as possible, I lend as little support as possible to such as this:
BANNED BY GOOGLE FOR OPPOSING INFANTICIDE
As I said in the post title, it is my considered opinion, supportable by evidence such as that which is noted at the linked article above, that Google is evil. Period. IMO, not even Me$$y$oft, Apple, and FarceBook combined approach Google’s evil. Avoid Google “services.” The (as yet) unborn will bless you, if nothing else.
N.B.: I frankly DGARA about foreign affairs, except where developments might have a local effect because of “feddle gummint” stupidities or deliberately malicious intent (toward citizens) in policies. So, by “current scene” you can expect me to comment on what was once quaintly known as “the home front,” for the most part.
Today’s topic: Censorship, “feddle gummint” skulduggery, Sharyl Atkkisson, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and a possibly appropriate citizens’ response.
By now, anyone with at least one firing neuron who’s not been living under a rock knows that our dear “gummint” placed spying software on Sharyl Atkkisson’s computers. Anyone in denial about the runaway skulduggery in effect in nearly every agency of the “feddle gummint” is either delusional or a part of (or expects to benefit from) the underhanded, nefarious, unscrupulous behavior that seems to now be the norm for “feddle gummint bureaucraps.” Heck, even the WaPo is “viewing with alarm” the appallingly stupid, criminal “feddle gummint” spying on a journalist.
If the feds can do it to her, they can do it to you. “Evidence” of “computer crimes” on ANYONE’S computers is now subject to The Sharyl Atkkisson Caveat: if the feds can plant things on her computer, who’s to say they didn’t plant stuff anywhere else they wanted to?
From now on, any claims by the “feddle gummint” to have found “evidence”–of ANYTHING–on a citizen’s computer should be loudly and raucously mocked.
Citizen response? So far, just the usual “view with alarm” stuff like the WaPo article. Sound and fury, etc. What would be appropriate, I think would be for a “vigilance committee” of patriotic hacker citizens to engage in a “Manhatten Project”-style effort to crack open every government computer system possible and flood the net with everything they want to hide from us. Snowden? He should be so far back he wouldn’t even be visible in the rear view mirror. Of course, it could happen that _some_ secrets could be minimally detrimental to national security, but I seriously doubt there are many such. Most “national security” secrets are more than likely just bureaucratic turf building/protecting.
Sadly, I do not have the skills necessary to make a contribution to the effort, and nor do I any longer have an audience/readership to influence toward that effort, since my work to remake this blog into nothing more than exercise space for “the voices in my head” has borne fruit. *heh*
In further mind-boggling abuses of rights supposedly protected under the First Amendment, while a student who is a Sikh has rightly received a pass on carrying a knife (“ceremonial dagger”) in pubschool, for religious reasons, Christian students who carry or read their Bibles, share their faith with other students or who are seen or heard praying or even just expressing opinions informed by their faith are continually oppressed. (Sure, schools pretty regularly lose in lawsuits over this, but the push against Christians practicing their religion in a pubschool setting is regularly, improperly, assaulted).
And cognitive dissonance never sets in with the left, because. . . it requires cognition? *sigh*
One of the things that most disturbs me about politics nowadays is the consistent brutality politicians and Hivemind Podpeople (but I repeat myself; Mass MEdia Hivemind Podpeople are just political operatives with bylines *sigh*) perpetrate upon language and reason by means of corrupting terms. For example, there are very (very) few “conservatives” who espouse anything even remotely resembling conservative values or policies, and there are even fewer “liberals” who have any even remote connection to liberal values or policies. (Democrats who continually try to poison democracy by vitiating voting integrity commit vile calumny of democracy by claiming “democratic” principles, for example.)
My mind was “tainted” as a lad when both my extended family of pastors and theologians and historians, and my readings of Aquinas, Mill, and many others led me to think that calling things by honest terms is really the only way to approach finding true things, and that finding that which is true is a Very Good Thing.
Nowadays, in politics, The Hivemind (in all its forms), in the groves of Academia Fruitcake Bakeries, etc., lies in the form of words used to cloak their opposites are the norm.
Consider a fair definition of “speech codes” often in effect on so-called “liberal” campuses, nowadays,
“. . .a “speech code” [is] any university regulation or policy that prohibits expression that would be protected by the First Amendment in society at large. Any policy—such as a harassment policy, a protest and demonstration policy, or an IT acceptable use policy—can be a speech code if it prohibits protected speech or expression.
“Many speech codes impermissibly prohibit speech on the basis of content and/or viewpoint. An example of this type of policy would be a ban on “offensive language” or “disparaging remarks.” Other speech codes are content-neutral but excessively regulate the time, place, and manner of speech. A policy of this type might limit protests and demonstrations to one or two “free speech zones” on campus and/or require students to obtain permission in advance in order to demonstrate on campus.”
As against such statements as these from the prototypical classic liberal, John Stuart Mill:
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. . .
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Mill, in his essay, “On Liberty” expands on the very principles the Founders sought to carve into the law of the land. Interestingly, Edmund Burke, the prototypical English conservative recognized that the Founders were expressing their understanding of the rights of individuals within the framework of conservative values. (“Conciliation with the Colonies,” March, 1775)
GENUINE liberalism and GENUINE conservatism BOTH hold free speech to be a cardinal liberty, due protection by the state. So-called “liberals” nowadays most certainly do not (though they lie and say they do), and many so-called “conservatives” today are not much better.
One can simply list fundamental individual rights and go down the list checking off those that so-called “liberals” genuinely demonstrate support for or that so-called “conservatives” genuinely attempt to protect and find little in the way of liberal efforts to support expression of individual rights or conservative efforts to protect existing expression of individual rights. What one is more likely to find is both camps saying they are doing so while really simply trampling individual rights in the process of creating privileged classes.
I really tire of these lying scum. One suspects such behavior would only be amenable t amelioration by means of citizens’ vigilance committees bringing back tar and feathers. Like that’s gonna happen. . . *sigh*
[By “Leftists” I mean, of course, the full spectrum of Dhimmicraps–and their Bureaucrappic minions–and all others to the left of “mainstream” Dhimmicrappic thought, Academia Nut Fruitcakes–almost all of them in the “humanities”–and at least 99.99% of the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind.]
In every aspect of leftist propaganda–from hardcore Marxist theory to anthropogenic climate scare-ism to social “welfare” policies–leftist theories have been tested in the real world and found to be fatally flawed. Whenever I view the real world wreckage of leftist cant, I’m reminded of a Robert Heinlein comment:
“One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. . . “
By any honest assessment, whether one were to use Heinlein’s metric for science or Popper’s or any other honest scientist, leftist thought is anti-science.
Juuuust in case things should ever “get real,” 1776-style, having such things as FM3-07.22* and other military manuals to have some ideas how to counter the counters, as it were, might be handy. . . *heh*
*”Counterinsurgency Operations. Knowing what “counterinsurgency” might entail would be useful to those seeking to restore rights as the Founders were forced to do. Do keep in mind that I’m not advocating another American Revolution to overthrow illegitimate government, though our “feddle gummint” has certainly delegitimized itself. After all, the Founders themselves counseled overthrowing an illegitimate government only as a last resort. But should it ever become necessary, “know your enemy” is wise counsel. . .