Monthly Archives: April 2020

If Gov. Whitmer Had Been President During WW II, You’d Be Reading This in German

Rob Meyne

  • April 22, 2020
  • 5 min read

Rant warning! But, hey, I know you’ve got time to read! :

I’m apparently, part of a small minority that’s outraged at how much our government has restricted our freedom. Most people have accepted it with the timidity of a newborn puppy. If these folks had been making decisions in WWII, we’d be having this discussion in German and you wouldn’t have a single living Jewish friend or relative.

The pandemic is a very complex problem that we simply can’t solve quickly. Predictably, people make mistakes, experts disagree with each other, leaders change their minds here and there, people hear conflicting messages, and recommendations change the more we learn.

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SPECIAL: Why Do We Keep Acting as if the COVID-19 Pandemic is Worse than It is?

J Robert Smith

  • April 19, 2020
  • 4 min read

Truth: This virus is new and can be deadly. We have been afraid that something bad was going to happen. We knew we were not prepared so we hit the panic button. We were wrong and caused a lot of unnecessary damage. We don’t want to admit it so we are stuck. Everyone is to blame.

Rod Shapard, Twitter Post, April 19, 2020

Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.

Bertrand Russell, “The Impact of Science on Society”, p.88, Routledge

When the governor, however entitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule, and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.

John Locke, Chapter 18, Of Tyranny, “On Gouvernment”

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SPECIAL: Does Democratic Governors’ Petty Tyranny Spell Doom in November?

J Robert Smith

  • April 17, 2020
  • 4 min read

At least one protester, Monica Faith Ussery, 51, of Holly Springs [North Carolina], was charged with violating the [Governor Roy Cooper’s] executive order.

“I have a right to peacefully assemble,” she said as officers led her away, her hands bound with a zip tie. “God bless America.”

The News & Observer, April 14, 2020

[Gov. Gretchen] Whitmer’s order generated a great deal of pushback. It includes a prohibition on large retailers selling allegedly nonessential items, such as paint and outdoor supplies, meaning stores like Home Depot had to tape off those sections from customers. Lawncare services have been temporarily shuttered. With very few exceptions, the order prohibits people from traveling between residences [snip]

Reason, April 15, 2020

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If We Can Save Even One Life, Maybe We Shouldn’t

Rob Meyne

  • April 17, 2020
  • 3 min read

Imagine you could time travel back just three months. You’re watching your local news and the reporter says “The governor today issued orders banning church services, golf, eating at restaurants, or assembling in groups of ten or more.” If you value freedom as much as you should, you would have been stopped in your tracks, amazed, rattled, scared, and absolutely certain you heard this wrong. “No,” you would say, “Surely I can’t actually have just heard that church services have been banned. That not only makes no sense, the First Amendment actually guarantees freedom of religion.” You would be right to be outraged. Today, we hear such things daily, and don’t bat an eyelash. Why? Because we’ve been conned into thinking our health is the only thing that matters. Whatever we do to stay safe, we should. Period.

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SPECIAL: Following COVID-19 Pied Pipers Off the Cliff

J Robert Smith

  • April 10, 2020
  • 3 min read

An expert avoids all of the many pitfalls on his or her way to the grand fallacy.”

Henry Mintzberg Collection of Expert Quotes

“When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.”

Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August

THE TAKE

The experts and epidemiological models have been embarrassingly wrong. COVID-19 isn’t a figment of our imaginations, but it’s not the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic – not by a long shot. We’re in the midst of an historic overreaction to a contagious infection. Tens of millions of working Americans and small businesses are paying the price. Paychecks and jobs, lost, and small businesses hanging by threads.

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SPECIAL: Why are Democrats, MSM Excusing Xi Jinping’s COVID-19 Catastrophe?

J Robert Smith

  • April 5, 2020
  • 5 min read

[Rep. Sean] Casten’s [D-IL] sin, in the National Republican Congressional Committee’s view, was a pair of conference calls during which he told constituents that China had acted “quickly” and “to their credit … shut down the entire province that this was in, and they seem to largely have isolated the cases.”

The Washington Post, April 3, 2020

Most critically, Beijing succeeded from the start in steering the World Health Organization (WHO), which both receives funding from China and is dependent on the regime of the Communist Party on many levels. Its international experts didn’t get access to the country until Director-General Tedros Adhanom visited President Xi Jinping at the end of January. Before then, WHO was uncritically repeating information from the Chinese authorities, ignoring warnings from Taiwanese doctors—unrepresented in WHO, which is a United Nations body—and reluctant to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” denying after a meeting Jan. 22 that there was any need to do so.

Foreign Policy, April 2, 2020

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Is Compromise Possible When You Can’t Even Agree on Whether the Sky Is Blue

Rob Meyne

  • April 1, 2020
  • 4 min read

Most in the mainstream media place President Trump somewhere on a spectrum that runs from worthless, to dangerous, to evil. Hopefully, the opinions of future historians will not necessarily be clouded by slavish devotion to the Left/Democratic Party/Socialists/media (but I repeat myself).

It would seem logical that people who fail at something, and want not to fail the next time, would ask what they need to do differently? If you hit a golf ball into the rough, you generally assume you did something wrong. You don’t assume the bad shot was the result of demonic intervention, a gypsy spell, or the heartbreak of psoriasis. If you want to hit the next shot better, you need to, well, hit it better.

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