On Embassy Flags

In his Letter in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, Peter Chaveas identifies himself as a foreign service  officer [including a couple of ambassadorships]…in Africa and Western Europe between 1970 and 2004. With that credential, he argued in favor of the Biden State Department’s permission for American embassies and consulates to fly BLM and gay-pride flags.

It would be hard for Mr Chaveas to be more wrong.

American embassies and consulates are there to represent America and American interests. The American flag, our stars and stripes, is the symbol of our nation, and it is the only flag appropriately flown at those facilities.

All other flags represent only our individual States and a variety of ideologies espoused by a variety of groups of Americans; they do not represent our nation as a whole. Those other symbols have no place at our embassies and consulates.

Chaveas is correct to point out our capacity for openly acknowledging our failures and shortcomings as well as our efforts to address them. No American was more admired than Martin Luther King Jr. Chaveas neglected to mention, though, that no BLM or gay-pride flag—or any other flag—was necessary “between 1970 and 2004” for embassy/consulate staff to teach that or for the citizens of the host nations to understand that.

Nor are they necessary now.

A Right to be Racist

Recall the Biden administration’s farm loan relief program that the Department of Agriculture had set up to provide loan relief to black and brown farmers while explicitly excluding white farmers.

Recall further that

Judge William Griesbach found in an order issued Thursday [10 Jun] that the white farmers “are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim” that the US Department of Agriculture’s “use of race-based criteria in the administration of the program violates their right to equal protection under the law.”

The Ag Department rejects that ruling:

We respectfully disagree with this temporary order and USDA will continue to forcefully defend our ability to carry out this act of Congress and deliver debt relief to socially disadvantaged borrowers.

Here are Progressive-Democrats forcefully defending their self-created right to be racist in their governance of our nation.

This is despicable, and it needs to be remembered throughout the fall of 2022, and beyond.

An Example

…of socialism’s control of private enterprise. California’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom has issued this diktat for how California-domiciled businesses must operate vis-à-vis the waning Wuhan Virus situation in that State.

Businesses were told by the state that they will have three options related to vaccines and mask mandates. Business owners can provide information to customers and not require anything at all. They can implement “vaccine verification” to determine which people must wear a mask, or they can require everyone to wear a mask.

Those three, and no other, options. Never mind that a business might wish, instead, to provide separate (not necessarily masked) seating for those not vaccinated. That’s not allowed.

No business decision to not ask at all a customer’s medical status regarding the virus. That’s not allowed.

No business decision to discriminate between not vaccinated by individual choice and not vaccinated by already having had the virus and recovered from it, and so not needing vaccination (another individual choice). That’s not allowed.

No business decision to do nothing at all, including not spending money on a State-mandated information campaign aimed at business’ customers. That’s not allowed.

No business decision to…. Don’t even think about it. That’s not allowed.

No, this is the socialist government dictating to private enterprise how it must operate. This is the socialist government dictating to private enterprise the government-allowed performance options.

Socialism: government control of the means of production. Government control of private enterprise.

Socialism: private enterprise isn’t private—it’s government enterprise.

Domestic Terror Threats

President Joe Biden (D) and his administration have a new strategy—and specific (more or less) targets—for combating domestic terrorism. “Domestic terrorism” is defined by the NSC:

activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the jurisdiction of the United States.

And

[D]omestic terrorists] espouse a range of violent ideological motivations [including] racial or ethnic bigotry and hatred, as well as anti-government or anti-authority sentiment. … exhort[] and target[] violence toward specific communities …. militias.

Who are Biden’s domestic terrorists [paraphrased by Fox News]?

White supremacy and “militia violent extremists” currently present the “most persistent and lethal threats.”

No mention of antifa, which assaults government facilities with a view to burning them down or otherwise destroying them. Antifa also routinely assaults others who object to their destruction, including police, civilians, anyone actually taking pictures or filming antifa persons or their activities, even journalists.

No mention of BLM, which freely riots, loots, burns down private businesses, especially targeting small mom and pops.

Biden made it explicit:

Domestic terrorism—driven by hate, bigotry, and other forms of extremism—is a stain on the soul of America….

Unless, of course, it’s antifa, BLM, and the like on the Left. They are exempted, their behavior excused.

Of course Biden—and his Party—won’t name antifa or BLM or the like as domestic terrorists, regardless of their activities intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion…by mass destruction.

Those entities are grassroots supporters of Party.

An Illegal Offering?

The Biden administration intends to lease some Federal lands in the waters roughly between Long Island and New Jersey, ostensibly to build a wind farm there.

The problem with that intent is this:

The proposed “competitive lease sale”…the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) [an arm of the Interior Department] is seeking feedback on several mandates tied to the sale, including the requirement “to create good-paying union jobs and engage with all stakeholders and ocean users[.]”
The “announcement of new proposed lease stipulations puts a priority on creating and sustaining good-paying union jobs….”

And there’s the problem. In addition to President Joe Biden’s (D) administration picking and choosing winners and losers in this enterprise—unethical at best, and completely out of bounds for the government of a free nation—the openly stated requirement for union jobs is illegal to the point of unconstitutional.

Picking winners and losers: the lease sale is, by design, not at all a competitive offering. Open shop companies—companies that are not unionized—are deliberately excluded from even bidding on the contract. That also creates artificially inflated costs to us taxpayers for any of these leases through that lack of competition and through the unions getting a free hand to raise their wage demands.

Illegal, unconstitutional: those non-union companies are denied their statutory rights to competitively bid at all for these Federal contracts. Beyond that, those non-union companies are denied equal protection under the 14th Amendment by being denied an opportunity to compete at all, much less on an equal footing, for participation in the contracts.

All non-union employees of those companies, individually and severally, are denied their equal protection under the 14th Amendment by being denied any opportunity to earn a paycheck under those contracts solely on the basis of their not being union members.