Category Archives: culture

That’s the Point

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A couple of letter writers in Thursday’s WSJ are spot on.

One writes,

[The] vital principle of representation was brought into our Senate, which wasn’t simply a more select gathering than the House of Representatives, but also a gathering of the representatives of organized places (states), many far from each other, and no less divergent in culture and livelihood.
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The Democratic Socialists of America’s proposals to abolish the Senate and concentrate power in the hands of the urban dole-masters amount to a formula for the dissolution of our country.

That is, indeed, the goal of the DSA. In addition to abolishing the Senate, they want to abolish our borders, defund—abolish—our local police forces, and tear down our prisons. That would most certainly destroy our nation.

Another writes,

Can DSA members take the Congressional Oath of Office honestly? They must “solemnly swear” that “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.” It’s hard to see how an adherent to the DSA’s written platform could swear that earnestly, even believably.

In essence, the very first act of a DSA Congressman or Senator on his ascendancy to office would be to commit perjury during his swearing in.

The DSA’s platform can be read here. Understand, too, that the DSA’s platform is rapidly becoming the platform of the Progressive-Democratic Party, as the two continue to merge into each other.

I’ve Said These Before

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However, they bear repeating.

The WSJ editors rightly warn against killing the Senate filibuster. Progressive-Democratic Party Senators already have committed to eliminating it as soon as they seize the majority. Ill-informed Republican Senators, along with unthinking Republican Senators and President Donald Trump (R), are pushing to eliminate the filibuster first on the idiocy that the Progressive-Democrats are going to do it, anyway, so why not, and on the excuse that it’s necessary in order to pass the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

The SAVE Act is, indeed, a critical piece of legislation, and one that the House already has passed, twice. However, it’s not worth the elimination of the filibuster, which would lead to far more and far wider damage to our Republic.

The loss of the filibuster would reduce the Senate to a simple majority rule popular contest, which along with the House’s simple majority rule would reduce our nation to a popular democracy and the elimination of our republican democracy.

With the filibuster intact, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R, SD) should hold the vote, regardless of his view of the potential vote count. Average Americans need to know, ahead of this fall’s elections, which Senators of either party favor secure elections in which only American citizens vote, and which ones favor, openly or tacitly, elections in which non-citizens, including illegal aliens, are allowed to vote.

“Journalists Shouldn’t Have To Face That Risk”

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The “risk” that Judith Miller, of the Manhattan Institute, faced was going to jail (temporarily realized for all of three months as she refused to give up the source who’d illegally passed her national security information. Miller wants a shield law that would place journalists above the law.

This is typical—demonstrative—of the intrinsically arrogant and dishonest “industry” of which she is a part.

By Miller’s own admission, she had been given a leak of national-security information. This was an obvious illegal transferal, and everywhere outside the journalism guild, receiving stolen property like this “leak” was would itself be a crime.

Further to Miller’s dishonesty, she chose to conflate her subpoena with the recent badly done subpoenas for New York Time news writers as though badly done subpoenas justify tossing correctly done ones like the one that sent her to jail for three months.

Further to Miller’s dishonesty, she noted that she was released only when her contempt of court was cured by her source giving her permission to reveal him. No permission was necessary and no permission is necessary today: journalists must be required to give up their sources of illegally transferred information whether or not they choose to publish those stolen goods.

Shield law: she already has one, as she noted:

…Justice Department guidelines call for issuing subpoenas to journalists only as a last resort and after a thorough investigation fails to determine the source of the leak….

Along with our court system, which deals appropriately with subpoenas to journalists that do not meet those guidelines, just as the court did with those NYT subpoenas.

There is no right of confidentiality for journalist-source relationships, as there is for lawyer-client or doctor-patient, nor should there be. Even with those latter two relationships, lawyers and doctors are required to notify law enforcement or other appropriate authority of the fact of an impending crime if not of which of their clients or patients may be the impending criminal.

Finally, Miller doesn’t even know what national security-related information is:

National security wasn’t compromised by the Qatari plane stories….

Of course it was. The President’s change of movement plans in response to a perceived security threat, as that NYT article itself acknowledged, certainly was national security related, compromising as it did the President’s movement changes, the fact that our government knew about a threat in advance of its realization, and compromised that threat’s goal before they could attempt their move and be intercepted and arrested.

Constitutionally protected newsgathering is vital to a democracy.

Certainly. But there is no constitutional protection for receiving stolen goods. Neither is that protection necessary for effective newsgathering.

In one respect, though, Miller is right about facing the risk of jail. Jail for concealing the sources of illegally transmitted information should be a certainty. Even if the source is later identified. The illegal reception crime would still exist and still want jail in response.

DSA and Government Structure

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The Wall Street Journal editors are rightly worried about the ascendancy of the Democratic Socialists of America. The center of their concern rests on DSA intent to restructure our government:

…replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

Sure. Parliament, with its largely figurehead House of Lords, and Parliamentary Superiority vis-a-vis the British courts has worked so well for the UK.

Similarly, the Duma and the National People’s Congress have done so much for the people of Russia and the PRC.

The DSA isn’t about “radical change” for the sake of us average Americans; it’s about a naked grab for party political power–which is to say a naked grab for personal power for those persons atop the DSA. That the bulk of the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians are silent or openly supportive of DSA goals shows how thoroughly Party has chosen to absorb the DSA into its core (or, the other side of that coin: how thoroughly the DSA has coopted Party). The only Party members who are beginning to object to the DSA are on Party’s far right–that fringe group who are Establishment Democrats.

The contest for power within Party is one that legacy Party politicians—those Establishment Democrats—think they can win. They’re likely wrong on that. Keep in mind, in this intraparty power struggle the DSA leadership has made no bones about their candidates running on the Progressive-Democratic Party ticket. It’s a ballot line, and nothing more. DSA plans to supplant the Progressive-Democratic Party, whether by absorption or by replacement.

“Socialism’s Slippery Definitions”

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The subheadline makes it plain:

The hard left is whatever it needs to be at the moment.

That’s certainly the case for the Left and for far too many others. The even plainer fact, though, is that there’s nothing slippery about American English dictionary and textbooks written in American English definitions of socialism. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production—government ownership of an economy’s businesses—from which flows government determination of what to produce, allocation of that output, and determination of the wages involved. All because, hold socialists, government knows better than any of us how to determine what to produce, how to allocate that output, and how to determine the wages involved.

All of the rest, those slippery definitions, are simply taken from the Left’s Newspeak Dictionary. Those slippery definitions, too, are little more than a variety of labels used to obscure. Democratic socialism, social democracy, even communism (itself misused in such discussions) are used only to create artificial definitions, as Matthew Hennessey noted in his article at the link, to suit the moment.

It’s unfortunate that our education systems, up through graduate school, fail to make clear which of those competing definitions is the accurate one.

It’s unfortunate, and dangerous to our economy and so to our national security, that one of our political parties actively and enthusiastically trades on those false definitions of the Newspeak Dictionary in its own push to inflict socialism, that government control of the engines of our economy, on our nation.