Chip and Commie Sue have a discussion on the future of the United States.

In tribute to Willie Nelson, "Mothers don't let your children grow up to be moronic rioters". //

Since the death of George Floyd, I’ve been struck by how much of the riot video involves young people between 20 and 30 years old — and many even younger. My completely unscientific estimate from what I’ve watched has me believing the number must be close to 90%.

Based on my own experiences as someone who lived through that age, and has now raised children through that age, they are convinced of 1) the absolute correctness of their own worldview, and 2) they have nothing to learn from the generations that came before them. //

I know people in exactly this same situation. Parents who are distraught over their children, whom I have known since they were born, and who are out in the streets in the Pacific Northwest every night. It’s heartbreaking to hear my friends say “We don’t even recognize our children. They sound nothing like us with the things that come out of their mouths. We spent 18 years trying to teach them right from wrong, and two years in a college has transformed them into young adults who I would never choose as friends.” //

The university environment of the last 20 years is cleaving the current generation from the generations of their parents and grandparents. It has taught them to hate that which came before them – things they didn’t experience but can only learn through being told by others. The narrative they are taught in college by people who have always hated the United States as a historical institution – notwithstanding what it has given to those college educators – is that the generations that came before them need to be the targets of their wrath. Burndown and destroy what has been built for you so that you can build something yourself with the instructions we have for you.

The tendency to abuse power is so basic to humanity that, over 3,000 years ago, the prophet Samuel warned Israel about the dangers of seeking a king. Samuel warned that a king would conscript their sons, force their daughters to work, tax their crops, and give their possessions to his friends. This warning still rings true today. Sadly, our elites have demonstrated this timeless human tendency repeatedly during the coronavirus crisis.

We should heed the wise words of Samuel from antiquity and realize what the pandemic is confirming today: When tasked with distributing the limited resources of a socialist state, leaders and elites will invariably funnel others’ wealth to themselves.

Socialist theory ignores power’s corrupting influence, turning the dream of a communal utopia into a living nightmare. That’s why socialism has always failed—and always will.

This is not a coincidence //

Andrew Cuomo
✔
@NYGovCuomo
Are you are interested in being a COVID tracer?

Great! NY is building an army of contact tracers.

You can apply online here:https://careers-pcgus.icims.com/jobs/5244/contact-tracer/job … //

DeAnna Lorraine 🇺🇸
✔
@DeAnna4Congress
CAli is training an army of 20,000 "Contact Tracers":
To identify & intervw anyone who tests positive, track down all of THEIR contacts, then keep tracking & checking in on all of their symptoms indefinitely thru text, chat, emails calls.
Sound good to u?https://tinyurl.com/ya5cg7c2 //

Selena Simmons-Duffin
✔
@selenasd
UPDATE: Since @NPR published our contact tracing survey results, states have announced plans for 30k more tracers.

We now have data from 44 states and D.C., and plans are for 66,197 contact tracers.

Updated map and state lookup tool here 👇https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/28/846736937/we-asked-all-50-states-about-their-contact-tracing-capacity-heres-what-we-learne?live=1 … //

The current protocols for contact tracing do not allow tracers to tell you who you came into contact with, you have to take it on faith that you did, in fact, come into contact with such a person. It isn’t hard to see this model being used against any person or group who fights this silliness. You can actually lock them up forever via a rolling series of 14-day self-quarantine orders imposed without the ability to legally challenge them.

And if you think Levin misspoke about dragging you from your home and locking you away is farfetched, I’d only suggest that you have not been paying attention. //

I think WuFlu contact tracing is a trial run. Pretty soon, the next 'contaigon' will be dangerous ideas like freedom--and who you contact will be studied by these Kravits. If one of these nosy busybodies calls, tell them to show you a warrant. Me? I;m going to tell them to pound sand.

On Sept. 16, 1989, Boris Yeltsin was a newly elected member of the Soviet Parliament visiting the United States. Following a scheduled visit to Johnson Space Center, Yeltsin and a small entourage made an unscheduled stop at a Randalls grocery store in Clear Lake, a suburb of Houston. He was amazed by the aisles of food and stocked shelves, a sharp contrast to the breadlines and empty columns he was accustomed to in Russia.

Yeltsin, who had a reputation as a reformer and populist, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” wrote Stefanie Asin, a Houston Chronicle reporter. He marveled at free cheese samples, fresh fish and produce, and freezers packed full of pudding pops. Along the way, Yeltsin chatted up customers and store workers: “How much does this cost? Do you need special education to manage a supermarket? Are all American stores like this?”

Yeltsin was a member of the Politburo and Russia’s upper political crust, yet he’d never seen anything like the offerings of this little American grocery store. “Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev,” Yeltsin said.
A Sickening Revelation

It’s difficult for Americans to grasp Yeltsin’s astonishment. Our market economy has evolved from grocery stores to companies such as Walmart and Amazon that compete to deliver food right to our homes.

Yeltsin’s reaction can be understood, however, by looking back on the conditions in the Soviet Union’s economy. Russia grocery stores at the time looked like this and this:

Now compare that footage to the images of Yeltsin shopping at a U.S. supermarket. The contrast is undeniable. Yeltsin’s experience that day ran contrary to everything he knew. A longtime member of the Communist Party who had lived his entire life in a one-party system that punished dissent harshly, Yeltsin had been taught over and over that socialism wasn’t just more equitable, but more efficient.

His eyes were opened that day, and the revelation left the future Russian president feeling sick.

“When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin later wrote in his autobiography, “Against the Grain.” “That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.”

Yeltsin was not the only person fooled, of course. There is copious documentation of Western intellectuals beguiled by the Soviet system. These individuals, who unlike Yeltsin did not live in a state-controlled media environment, saw the Soviet system as both economically and morally superior to American capitalism despite the brutal methods employed in the workers’ paradise.

Capitalism, sometimes called “Corporatism”, is not the same thing as free enterprise.

Both are certainly preferable to socialism or communism, but free enterprise is considerably more conducive to freedom and widespread prosperity than capitalism.

History has proven the following: 1) Under capitalism, the divide between rich and poor naturally increases; 2) In a free enterprise system, the prosperity, freedom and dignity of nearly everyone in the society inevitably rises.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn pointed out that while modern American capitalism was clearly better than Russia’s twentieth-century communism or Europe’s contemporary attempts at socialism, the U.S. implementation of capitalism left much to be desired.

For example, he noted, under American capitalism the question of, “is it right?” became less important to many people and companies than, “is it legal?”

Likewise, the culture of capitalism frequently asks, “is it profitable?” before (or instead of) asking, “is it good?”

American capitalism, Solzhenitsyn said, created a nation more materialistic than spiritual, more interested in superficial success than genuine human progress.

Note that Solzhenitsyn was adamantly anti-communist and anti-socialist.

But he also found capitalism lacking. //

Isn’t it time for an end to the outdated debate about socialism versus capitalism and a national return to the free enterprise system which made America great?

During its first century-and-a-half of application, free enterprise brought us major wealth, a standard of living for most citizens that rivals or surpasses the lifestyles of history’s royals, world power, major technological and medical advancements, and the end of slavery.

It also brought the repudiation of racism, male dominance, religious persecution and a host of other ills that have existed for millennia.

With all these areas of progress, imagine what we could do if we re-adopted the free enterprise values and culture in our time.

Laws that give special benefits to wealth and capital while withholding such opportunities from the rest can never bring the progress, advances, freedom and prosperity that free enterprise will.

It’s time for a change, and the first step is for all of us to start using the phrase “free enterprise” a lot more.

Her vision of ‘accountable capitalism’ would destroy savings built over a lifetime—and sink the economy. //

Who owns the vast wealth of America? Old folks. According to the Federal Reserve, households headed by people over the age of 55 own 73% of the value of domestically owned stocks, and the same share of America’s total wealth. Households of ages 65 to 74 have an average of $1,066,000 in net worth, while those between ages 35 and 44 have less than a third as much on average, at $288,700.

A socialist might see injustice in that inequality. But seniors know this wealth gap is the difference between the start and the finish of...

As part of my collection of pro-and-con libertarian humor, I’ve shared some images of “Libertarian Jesus.”

There’s another perspective, of course. Many mainline protestant denominations have very statist political agendas, and there’s a “liberation theology” strain of Catholicism.

Some of these people even might argue that Jesus was a socialist. Back in 2009, I shared some excerpts from a skeptical column by Cal Thomas on this topic. Today, let’s take a deeper look.

In a video for Prager University, Larry Reed looks at the Bible to determine whether Jesus was a socialist.

I’m certainly not an expert on theology, but I definitely liked Larry’s point about the warning against envy in the 10 Commandments.

After all, “Thou shall not covet” certainly seems inconsistent with class-warfare policy.

Let’s see what others have written on this topic.

Yesterday’s column weighed in on the debate whether Jesus was a socialist.

Like Cal Thomas, I don’t think the Bible supports coercive redistribution by government.

Today, let’s look at the same issue, but from a humorous perspective.

For those on the other side of the debate, Socialist Jesus has a very efficient mechanism to collect alms for the poor.

The ongoing suppression of the truth by the Communist Party is evident throughout the mini-series. You might not know this from reading the New York Times. //

The Chernobyl disaster was not the result of undermining expertise. It was the result of the deliberate suppression of scientific analysis by a totalitarian state with the power to terrorize people into silence. //

The comparison of Chernobyl to the climate change debate is also bizarre, quite beyond the paranoid premise that America now resembles anything like the dystopian Soviet nightmare depicted in the mini-series. It is considered an article of faith that there is a “scientific consensus” about climate change. Yet in the Soviet Union, the “scientific consensus” was that a RMBK reactor literally could not explode, because dissent was silenced by those with power. //

the surprising conclusion at the Daily Beast: “By its finale, Chernobyl has transformed from a story about plant-operator faults to one about systematic deception on the part of the stubborn, arrogant, blind and foolish Soviets, whose communist culture—demanding absolute loyalty to the Party, which is always perfect and infallible, even when facts say otherwise—compelled everyone to cover up the truth lest they be vilified as nation-besmirching traitors.”

But on balance, too many entertainment writers decided to review a story about suppressing the truth by imitating the apparatchiks.