The Freedom to Approve, Not Decide

Alysa Liu survived hard work and no drama to win Olympic figure skating gold, the first U.S. woman to do so in over two decades.

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Pro-Trump ads are flooding the TV, sponsored by Homeland Security. The government is advertising for the government.

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Nearly one in four adults in that generation currently identify as something other than heterosexual. This is in contrast to older Americans, among whom LGBTQ+ identification remains relatively uncommon.

Pick the sci-fi plot you like best.

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Government debt is projected under the CBO’s baseline scenario to balloon from nearly $31 trillion today to $56 trillion over the next decade.

If that is true, why is it not a topic of conversation, an interview subject, or an election issue?

What are the options to deal with it?

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The U.S. trade deficit hit a near-historic high of $901 billion last year.

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The Freedom to Approve, Not Decide

Every so often, the popular world teaches a lesson. Science is harder than people say. Dogs that 'never bite' sometimes do. Bread usually falls jelly-side down.

The recent American display at the Munich Security Conference was such a teaching experience. The Pretty Girl Representative (PGR) showed up for no good reason and behaved like a moron. When asked, she did not know the basic geography of her continent, did not know the dramatic origin of the modern American horse, and was unable to say anything beyond "Uhh....." to a simple — and expected — political question. Watching this stirred a feeling of recognition. What was this?

It was a replay of something many teenagers experienced: a friend who showed up at an uncle's business for a token interview before getting a summer job. It was an audition where the required qualities were assumed.

For the nephew, the required qualities were being a blood relative and not drooling. For the PGR, the qualities were...not drooling. The PGR was auditioning for the international stage. She has been a successful American politician, and she was the PGR. She just needed a nod of approval, and she would move on.

Her failure is beside the point. The real question is what she was doing there in the first place? How did the PGR advance to be considered at this level? It makes you think she was picked somehow in advance, sometime earlier, that let her onto the scene. If that sounds a little too conspiratorial, remember that after she exploded on the audition stage, she rushed in tears to call her uncle NYT.

 

So AOC thinks Venezuela is south of the equator. Probably thinks all South Americans are alike.

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What's with Netanyahu's low-profile visit to the U, S. recently? Avoiding the long arm of the UN court? A great idea from Kathy A.: They're planning heavy-duty Iran action, but they don't trust their domestic electronic security.

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What would happen to a farmer who polluted a waterway a fraction of the degree the government has polluted the Potomac?

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The president of a Florida insurance brokerage firm and the CEO of a marketing company were sentenced Wednesday to 20 years each in prison for leading a sprawling, $233 million Affordable Care Act fraud scheme

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Outrage. Surrender. Despair.

Overwhelming national and personal debt. Governments that can't prevent fires or rebuild after the damage. People who immigrate here because the filthy streets and rivers look just like home.

Growing evidence that what people do is ineffective and that government is a foolish backup plan.

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote of the lassitude that could arise in a nation. He described “an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives.” That multitude would be governed by an “immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate.” The people, in such a condition, would be reduced to enervation: “The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

A people that has lost hope, and has retreated from fractious, risky individualism to the comfort of centralized power; a people that has surrendered its autonomy in the mistaken belief that its autonomy was always an illusion. Once they begin to believe that their choices aren’t their own, that broad and powerful systems are to blame for their individual problems—then they are ripe for something far worse. They are ripe for tyranny.

Enervation eventually gives way to frustration, and then to rage, as soft despotism fails to achieve utopia. Then the people are left with a stark choice: a reversion to freedom, or the embrace of autocracy. As de Tocqueville concluded, “The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions, or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.”

Little Chicks Up Front

“Everything must change for everything to remain the same.”--The Leopard

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Norway has won the last two winter Olympics and is leading this one. They have 5 million people.

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A Swedish Olympic ski jumper is afraid of heights and is getting therapy.

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President Trump’s private company has filed for trademarks for airports not yet named after himself—setting up the possibility he could profit from what has historically been an honor in name only.

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Johnson, the American speed skater, started skating in in-line tournaments. She's a materials engineer.

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So, the representative government passes a law about illegal immigration. Many people think this is artificial and should not be enforced because the land was previously occupied by another group of people who invaded it earlier. Why their invasion is more meaningful than the European one is not explained.

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There are 100,000 members of the Democratic Socialists of America in the world. The world.

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Little Chicks Up Front

There is a law passed by America's representative government that places certain requirements on people who wish to immigrate to America. People who ignore or subvert these laws are sought out and arrested by immigration police and deported back to their home country. This behavior is typical of most organized national cultures.

Recently, things have changed. A small number of people have decided to oppose the actions of these immigration police. Keep in mind, these are American citizens sworn by the immigration officials to enforce American laws passed by America's elected representatives. The self-appointed judges block, obstruct, attack, and, if possible, prevent the enforcement of the law. Sometimes they attack the police physically or with weapons. One can imagine the danger of injecting oneself into that dangerous interface between police and criminal. Many people have been injured and several killed in these meddled confrontations.

Sort of reverse vigilanteism.

Astonishingly, this behavior has been supported by many local and state officials. Local politicians are encouraging lawbreaking. One can only wonder which of their laws deserve violent opposition, which don't, and what they would do should the approval of lawbreaking culturally spread.

Cries for general strikes have been raised, and students from elementary and high schools are being urged to participate in The Resistance. Children are being asked to skip school to join the protests. And their teachers are encouraging them to do so. Politicians, political leaders, and educators are encouraging children--children--to place themselves between law enforcement and its objective.

Who said the Americans are uninterested in caring for their children?

 

Arrogance, Stupidity, and the Limits of Ambition

American-born Olympic freestyle skier Eileen Gu has made headlines for her talent and for her decision to compete under the Chinese flag — a choice National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, said is, though “not in the legal sense, of course . . . adjacent to treason.”

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Right now, there are about 70 million white-collar workers in the United States.

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Arrogance, Stupidity, and the Limits of Ambition

Who invites whom to Munich's Security Conference? And why? Can anyone just show up? Could I go and talk about baseball? AOC looked like a moron. Newsome looked like a social climber. Fortunately, Rubio was consoling for poor Europe.

In any sensible world, AOC in Munich would be her Dan Quale "potato moment." She could not have looked dumber. She, our Latina heroine, did not know where Venezuela was. Then, when asked a routine question about Taiwan, she blubbered for 10 seconds before denying the question's validity.

Most unsettling, she knew, presumably, that she was at a world conference on security. While it may just be a tax-funded good time, she certainly could have anticipated discussion about several of the world's top four or five concerns. But she didn't. She did not bother to study, even superficially, the problems she was auditioning to solve. Because she is: 1. entitled to the position, 2. pretty, 3. a popular minority, and 4. favored by the Press.

It will be interesting to see the response of her handlers/champions. Even in America, high cheekbones and a good jawline should only get you so far. (Melania aside.) Ambition should have some quality ceiling. We'll see if the culture--and the Press--have any discriminating scruples.

The Constitutional Flaw

On this day:

1503
Disfida di Barletta – famous challenge between 13 Italian and 13 French knights near Barletta.
1542
Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.
1692
Massacre of Glencoe: About 78 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland are killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange.
1935
A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.
1945
World War II: Royal Air Force bombers are dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment.
2000
The last original “Peanuts” comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.

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Buffett: On Focus. The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

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The Pirates' All-Star reliever Elroy Face has passed away at 97.

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The parody continues. Nevada is the only state where people can legally purchase sex, and now 'sex workers' at one of the state’s oldest brothels are fighting to become the nation’s first to be unionized.

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The Constitutional Flaw

For the last year, the winds of lies, innuendo, and manipulative conspiracies directed against Trump have reaped their poetic whirlwind.
A man, and a political group, who have been maligned and ridiculed by a small elite for as long as they can remember, have the upper hand for the first time since Reagan.

Jacoby summarizes it. "In just the past few weeks, the American president has threatened military action against Denmark, a NATO ally, if it doesn’t surrender Greenland to the United States. He moved to punish a US senator — a retired Navy captain and combat veteran — for reminding service members they must not obey illegal orders. He posted a grotesquely cruel message on social media jeering the deaths of director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. He sent his press secretary to warn CBS News that unless it broadcast a presidential interview complete and unedited, we’ll sue your ass off.” He deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, then announced that the United States was now “in charge” of that country, and “we’re going to be taking oil.” He summoned Justice Department attorneys to berate them for not moving fast enough to prosecute his critics and opponents. And when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good, an unarmed American citizen, the White House instantly pronounced her a “domestic terrorist” and refused to open an investigation into the shooting."

Jacoby calls this vengeful thuggishness, and to some degree, he's right. But how much Federal rummaging through your wife's underwear can a guy take? How much journalistic-approved lying vitriol are you supposed to tolerate?

In El Salvador, not much; in America, a lot.

This country is not an accident of geography, not a religious or ethnic redoubt. It is a philosophical creation, an embodiment of ideas and principles long debated. It is complicated because its citizens do not recognize each other in the street by their color, their physiogonomy, or their religious apparel. They are united by belief, a belief that, until recently, any man in history could only dream of. But there is a change in the country, a change that Trump does not epitomize but only represents. It is an essential defect in the Constitution.

The Constitution makes an assumption, an assumption of a precondition in its citizens and its leaders. Virtue. And the preference for the betterment of the nation over the whims of the few. 

These last years have revealed a loss of virtue. People do not take the Constitution's morality seriously.

Many of our problems--particularly foreign ones--are missteps. Bad judgment. With good intent, they will self-correct. But the real problems that threaten the nation are simple moral laxity and malice. A disregard of-- or overt animosity to--the guiding principles of the country--and how they impact the very health and well-being of the nation.

How could the national debt not be a front-page discussion topic? The topic? How could the Biden Regency — the complete takeover of the executive branch by a small cabal — not be in the daily conversation? How could Obama amend environmental legislation without a word of objection? How could Trump's gratuitous insults and chest-thumping--however gratifying to those who have been ignored, belittled, and insulted for so long--not be rejected? 

How have the politics of El Salvador immigrated here?

When the president was asked in a recent interview whether he recognizes any checks on his powers, he was his direct self in response: “Yeah, there is one thing,” he said. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

The fatal flaw of the U.S. Constitution is revealed. The law of the land must start with reverence for it. Its virtues. It's not a tool in a shed; it is a relic in a tabernacle. And it is worthless when it takes itself more seriously than do the people it is supposed to guide.

 

Señor Bunny

 

On this day:

1554
A year after claiming the throne of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason.
1593
Japanese invasion of Korea: Approximately 3,000 Joseon defenders led by general Kwon Yul successfully repel more than 30,000 Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.
1689
The Convention Parliament declares that the flight to France in 1688 by James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch, constitutes an abdication.
1999
President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial.
2001
NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touchdown in the “saddle” region of 433 Eros becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

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“We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences.”-- Sharma, on AI

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1976 Senate special committee charged with emergency powers reform was appalled that four national emergencies were in effect at that time, yet “today we live under 50 active national emergencies, several of which date back decades and all of which unlock broad executive powers—under IEEPA mainly but also several other US laws—that are typically reserved to Congress or delegated to the president in a much narrower fashion.” --Lincicome

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Greenland's strategic importance—missile defense, Arctic access, and denial of Chinese or Russian influence—is real and longstanding.
Why must it be confrontational now?

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Señor Bunny

The NFL made history with the Superbowl show in two ways. For the first time, it had a performer who sang in a language that about 85 percent of the U.S. population doesn’t speak, a victory for gratuitous inscrutability. (Were none of the stars who sing in English available?)

Also, for the first time ever, the NFL gave its stage to a performer who sought to put the country in its place. So often, inept builders resort to tearing down their surroundings, seeing the relative change as an enhancement of their position. So Mr. Bunny sought to undermine the US claim to be called “America.” That is, to make America generic. To make the world's first written democratic republic one of many faux democracies. And, in the New World, to make freedom geographical. As Obama said, American exceptionalism was a provincial thought. After all, aren't we all El Salvadore?

To think that, once upon a time, the likes of Prince and Katy Perry simply aimed to put on a good show.

In an echo of singer Billie Eilish inveighing at the Grammys against America stealing land, Mr. Bunny said of his language proficiency in a pre–Super Bowl press conference, “English is not my first language. But it’s okay; it’s not America’s first language either.” Like so many bumper stickers, this sounds clever until you give it a moment’s thought. Mr. Bunny’s first language, Spanish, was a colonial imposition in the Western Hemisphere beginning in 1492. If the rapper wanted to associate himself with languages before this wave of European settlement, he’d have to sing in, say, Nahuatl or Algonquian.

The Spanish language indeed got a head start over English in what’s now the United States, when Ponce de Leon showed up on the Florida peninsula in 1513. But so what? English speakers forged a permanent presence at Jamestown in 1607. They then populated the Eastern Seaboard, won their independence, stood up enduring institutions of representative government, and made English the most important and widely spoken language in the world.

That the country they founded goes by “America” is an affront to elements in Latin America and on the left. They consider it insulting to everyone else living in North America or South America. Aren’t they Americans, too?

Certainly not everyone feels this way. The Canadians have as little interest in being called “Americans” as they do in becoming the 51st state. It is people hypersensitive to any Yanqui imperialism, including “linguistic imperialism,” who complain about us hogging the name “America.”

Sad to say, they are late to the game. Americans began calling themselves Americans in the 1700s to set themselves apart from the British. An anonymous writer in the Virginia Gazette in March 1776 referred to “the united states of America,” and Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence said it was a statement of “the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” (subsequently changed to “the thirteen united States of America”).

Once we were the U.S.A., the question became how to refer to our people. As “United States men and women”? Various solutions were tried out before we settled on “American,” which now denotes not just our country but a set of clearly defined cultural traits. And political concepts.

It’s bizarre that the NFL had a half-time show that questioned this understanding, although in the league’s defense, surely, few people picked up on it — or understood anything else said.

And why do the Spanish-speaking countries want to be named after an Italian cartographer anyway? Maybe it's just an attempt to ride on the success of others.--much from NR

Sound, Fury, et al

 

On this day:

660 BC
Traditional date for the foundation of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.
55
Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman Emperorship, dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome. This clears the way for Nero to become Emperor.
1531
Henry VIII of England is recognized as supreme head of the Church of England.
1861
American Civil War: United States House of Representatives unanimously passes a resolution guaranteeing noninterference with slavery in any state.
1978
Censorship: the People’s Republic of China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

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There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. -James Thurber, writer, and cartoonist (8 Dec 1894-1961)


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Until 2009, India was poorer than Pakistan on a per capita basis. India truly became richer than Pakistan after 2009 and since then it hasn’t looked back. If trends continue for a decade, India will be more than twice as rich as Pakistan soon…
So why has India pulled ahead in GDP per capita? The reason is simple. Pakistan’s high fertility has driven population growth faster than India’s. In 1952 Pakistan had about one-tenth of India’s population; by 2025 it had grown to nearly one-seventh.

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The outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury's mother was Churchill’s personal secretary, married a businessman, had an affair with Churchill’s other secretary, and Justin was the result (he didn’t learn this until he was 60!). He went to Cambridge, had a mystical experience that converted him to Christianity, worked for an oil company in Nigeria for 11 years, then quit to get ordained as a priest. He says he can speak in tongues – “It’s just a routine part of spiritual discipline – you choose to speak and you speak a language that you don’t know, it just comes” – and has written a book called “Can Companies Sin?”. He lost his archbishop position last month for the most stereotypical possible reason – failed to investigate sex abuse by a church leader who was a friend of his. (Wiki)

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Sound, Fury, et al

10 days of speculation about the missing Guthrie woman. 10 days of preempted programs explaining what is not known. This is a metaphor of modern America, of politicians, political parties, Hall of Fame voting, and things like the Epstein Files.

Suspicion. Guesswork. Possibilities.

This has become the substitute for information in this country, what we do when we circle some worrisome thing...at a respectable distance. Until we start to sell the nooses.

Breaking News: El Paso airport is shut down for 10 days. One TV expert suspects a "Pearl Harbor-type event."