After the Elections

E.M. Cadwaladr published “After the Elections” at American Thinker last month, and I bookmarked it for sharing closer to next week’s election.  The author may sound cynical, but he/she strikes me as realistic – and with some glimmers of hope.  Here are a few extracts:

The people who are currently in charge will cheat in the upcoming election.  There can be no reasonable doubt about this.  The question isn't one of if — it's only how.  It is a question of whether or not they'll be successful, or whether or not enough people of our side will show they have the functional remnants of a backbone.  Whatever shakes out after the circus of mail-in ballots, ballot-harvesting, and all the other tricks we've come to expect — we must remember that the leadership of the Democrat party does not believe in elections even in principle.  They will not consider any manipulation of the electoral process to be cheating.  In their view, they're entitled to win.  If I eat a piece of steak, I do not moralize at all about the unfair slaughter of the beast that it was taken out of.  Our political rights, in the eyes of most of the political class, are something on the order of civil rights of cattle.  This is to say — they are rights they don't believe exist.

. . .

We owe our enemies no consideration whatsoever.  None.  They are not merely the misguided members of our less than perfect national family anymore.  They are as alien to us as anybody could be.  Just consider some of the policies the Democrats have shown themselves quite willing to defend.  Which party was it that brought us degenerate young men on women's athletic teams, or genital removal surgery for toddlers?  What nation in the history of Earth has concluded that the elimination of its own borders was a swell idea, or that subordinating our laws to the whims of unelected foreigners was the height of postmodern chic?  Do you like the wholesale dismantling of your culture as seen every night on television — both in the programming and in the commercials?  How about the war on the economy?  Is that a price you are willing or even able to pay — so that the idiotic "thought leaders" can feel good about themselves?  Did you vote to give up your individual freedom to the WEF [World Economic Forum]?  Do you think Klaus Schwab and Co. consider you anything more than a laboratory animal to be disposed of at the end of their experiment?  It is no longer even tenable to hold onto the least hope that they might somehow, miraculously learn to care.  They have declared themselves our enemies in innumerable polices and in quite explicit language.  It is time we take them at their word.

I am tired of "let's tone down the language" and "let's turn the other cheek."  We have turned the other cheek and gotten it bloodied and bloodied again.  It is good to pray for even the most evil if you can find it in your heart to do so — but there is no virtue whatsoever in entrusting them with anybody's children.  It does little good for the livestock to appeal to the conscience of the butcher.  The butcher does not have one.

I hope the election goes well — but we need to be prepared, as a people born into freedom, to rise in civil disobedience whenever our rights are overthrown.  We need to be prepared to follow the example of the French Yellow Vests, the Canadian Truckers, and the Dutch Farmers.  We need to have the guts to make an ugly, resolute, and inconvenient nuisance of ourselves.  We are Americans.  We have the constitutional rights to assemble and to protest — whether those rights are currently acknowledged by the authorities or not.  We need to accept that we will never restore our freedom sitting in our chairs and waiting for next time.  At the very least, if you can do nothing else, you can still rattle your congressional representative's phone.  If you have feet to stand on, you should be ready and willing to stand in the way of those who despise you and stop the madness they're fomenting.  If we do not stand together now, we'll be divided and eliminated individually, one by one.

Read the entire column here.  

RELATED:  "Through Twitter, Democrats telegraph their last-ditch plan to save their midterms" by Monica Showalter at American Thinker.

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Face Masks and Civil Disobedience in Burbank

 

Time to tear a page from a Burbank restaurateur. Carl Durrek at NOQ Report has the inspiring development:

Civil disobedience has been a staple of American culture since before the nation broke free from England. It is a necessary component of our freedom as government tends to lean towards authoritarianism whenever it sees a clear path. Covid-19 has opened up such a path for many authoritarians across the nation with California leading the way towards a dystopian near-future.

The city council of Burbank, California, has been in a mini-war with businesses from the beginning of the pandemic. One business in particular, Tinhorn Flats Bar and Grill, has chosen to fight back. Following yesterday’s unanimous vote by the city council to shutter the oldest bar in the city, the response from the local business was short and sweet:

As promised, the bar opened for business as planned. An hour after opening, there had been no word from the city or visits by law enforcement. So far it appears the civil disobedience is happening unimpeded. But that likely won’t last long as the strongarm of the law will soon step in. Very similarly to the infamous Hank Rearden speech in Atlas Shrugged, owner Baret Lepejian believes if government wants to stop them from doing business, they’ll have to do so with more than just an order.

“The pathetic-losers on the Burbank City Council had obviously made up their minds way before the ‘meeting'” ever started,” the bar posted on Facebook. “This was nothing short of a vicious mob with pitchforks coming for that who stands against their campaign of fear. I WILL NOT COMPLY AND I WILL NOT CLOSE MY BUSINESS TO THESE PATHETIC, UNAMERICAN SOCIALIST COWARDS. If need be, I will go down with my ship..”

This isn’t the first attempt by the city to shut them down. Last month, they revoked the restaurant’s public health permit in hopes of bullying the establishment into shutting its doors. But as noted by attorneys for the bar, they have never had a health violation. This latest move to revoke their business license has brought the city and bar national attention. Burbank City Attorney Amy Albano said that if the restaurant’s owners do not comply a lawsuit will be filed and a court order will be sought to close the business.

We wholeheartedly stand with Tinhorn Flats Bar and Grill as they fight to keep their rights to operate safely and within reasonable guidelines that follow medical science. Their story is America’s story. Their fight is our fight.

Which is why I posted this.  We’ve let the owners of our favorite neighborhood bistro know that if they want patrons who will refuse to wear a mask or to practice social distancing, we’ll be there. In the meantime, I continue to wear my [useless] mask like a beard across my chin.

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Sundance on civil disobedience

 

Over at Conservative Treehouse, Sundance reports on a shop owner in North Carolina who is not requiring customers to wear masks.  He includes a link to the store so that readers can have a way to show their support.  And he expands on the options we all have to stop petty tyrants – governors, county officials, etc. – from exceeding their authority.  Here’s a brief extract:

Local, regional and state officials know they can control the behavior of an individual. If one barber shop opens, the owner becomes a target. However, those officials also know they cannot control the behavior of the majority. If every barber shop and beauty salon in town opens… there is absolutely nothing the government can do about it.

If one restaurant and/or bar opens, the state can target the owner. But if every bar and restaurant in town opens; and if everyone ignores and dispatches the silly dictates of the local, regional or state officials; there isn’t a damned thing they can do about it.

The power of the local, regional or state authority comes from the expressed consent of the people. As soon as the majority of people in that municipality deny that consent, those officials and state authoritarians lose all of their power.

Yes, it really is that simple.

They want you to think otherwise, but it is not true.  If WE THE PEOPLE demand freedom and stand together the control authority is useless.

Those who construct the systems of control need to weaponize fear.  Fear of arrest; fear of losing a business; fear of losing liberty or financial security.  Local, regional and state officials rely on fear.  As soon as the people are no longer fearful, the control ends.

The overwhelming majority of dictates around COVID-19 mitigation are not laws. There was no debate; no input from representative government; and no option for the public to weigh-in on the decisions.

All unilateral rules are arbitrary, and despite many proclamations to the contrary, they rely upon voluntary compliance.  As soon as citizens no longer voluntarily comply, the term of the rules has expired.  If masks are so effective then why didn’t government give masks to prisoners, instead of releasing the inmates?

Read the entire posting here.

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The Unnecessary Lockdown

art credit: clipart

"Salons And Barbershops Across America Are About To Show How Unnecessary This Lockdown Was" --  Scott Morefield at Townhall :

In the eyes of many, Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther has become the latest face of justified resistance against governmental tyranny for her steadfast refusal to back down on keeping her business open despite the prospect of going to jail.

Luther’s Salon a la Mode opened for business last Friday, then promptly got slapped with a court order to close because of coronavirus restrictions. Instead of meekly complying, as most others doubtless would have, Luther stood outside her salon and literally ripped the thing to shreds. Indeed, it was a moment that would have made Patrick Henry proud. (I’m also pretty sure it would have made another person with the surname “Luther” proud too.) The salon owner told media she has “had enough” of stupid, nonsensical restrictions on her livelihood and that of her employees, and is more than willing to go to jail to make her point.

“Essential, non-essential,” Luther said. “That’s ridiculous what has been deemed essential and non-essential because right now the pet groomer next door has been essential this whole time. So pets can get their hair done but someone can’t walk in my salon and get their hair cut? So why is a pet getting essentials?”

Good on her. The continued enforced closure of hairdressers, barbershops, salons, and the like are one of the most ridiculous in a sea of ridiculous aspects of the current coronavirus lockdown insanity. Turns out, while the generally solid GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has finally signed off on allowing some types of businesses to open, salons and barbershops inexplicably aren’t yet among them. They are “nonessential,” don’t you know, and the people who work in them apparently don’t deserve the same chance to feed their families that others do.

Insisting that salons are still not “safe,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins ripped Luther and other like-minded business owners as supposedly “putting their own need to make money ahead of public health.”

But Luther disagrees: “It’s pretty ridiculous to think that our place would be unsafe. The second part of that is we’re all grown adults. We decide where we want to go and if someone does not want to come in the salon, I respect that decision.”

Truly, is there any logical reason to think salons and barbershops are any less safe than most any other public place, particularly if owners and employees utilize masks, gloves, and regularly sanitize between customers? 

. . .

The full article is here.  It’s frightening to think that going to work or getting your hair cut is now civil disobedience.

RELATED:  Tyler O'Neil at PJ Media:

Early estimates of the COVID-19 death rate, cited to justify the lockdowns, have proven far too pessimistic. In March, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated a 3.4 percent fatality rate and Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated that the fatality rate of the coronavirus was about 2 percent. As PJ Media’s Matt Margolis reported, at least five studies have placed the death rate below 1 percent, confirming President Donald Trump’s hunch.

Recent studies have found that far more people than expected have COVID-19 antibodies — meaning the virus has spread faster than previously thought, but also proving that it is far less deadly than previously thought.

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