The Catastrophic Impact of Covid Forced Societal Lockdowns

The present Covid-inspired forced lockdowns on business and school closures are and have been counterproductive, not sustainable and are, quite frankly, meritless and unscientific. They have been disastrous and just plain wrong! There has been no good reason for this. These unparalleled public health actions have been enacted for a virus with an infection mortality rate (IFR) roughly similar (or likely lower once all infection data are collected) to seasonal influenza. Stanford’s John P.A. Ioannidis identified 36 studies (43 estimates) along with an additional 7 preliminary national estimates (50 pieces of data) and concluded that among people <70 years old across the world, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.57% with a median of 0.05% across the different global locations (with a corrected median of 0.04%). Let me write this again, 0.05%. Can one even imagine the implementation of such draconian regulations for the annual flu? Of course not! Not satisfied with the current and well-documented failures of lockdowns, our leaders are inexplicably doubling and tripling down and introducing or even hardening punitive lockdowns and constraints. They are locking us down ‘harder.’ Indeed, an illustration of the spurious need for these ill-informed actions is that they are being done in the face of clear scientific evidence showing that during strict prior societal lockdowns, school lockdowns, mask mandates, and additional societal restrictions, the number of positive cases went up! No one can point to any instance where lockdowns have worked in this Covid pandemic.

It is also noteworthy that these irrational and unreasonable restrictive actions are not limited to any one jurisdiction such as the US, but shockingly have occurred across the globe. It is stupefying as to why governments, whose primary roles are to protect their citizens, are taking these punitive actions despite the compelling evidence that these policies are misdirected and very harmful; causing palpable harm to human welfare on so many levels. It’s tantamount to insanity what governments have done to their populations and largely based on no scientific basis. None! In this, we have lost our civil liberties and essential rights, all based on spurious ‘science’ or worse, opinion, and this erosion of fundamental freedoms and democracy is being championed by government leaders who are disregarding the Constitutional (USA) and Charter (Canada) limits to their right to make and enact policy. These unconstitutional and unprecedented restrictions have taken a staggering toll on our health and well-being and also target the very precepts of democracy; particularly given the fact that this viral pandemic is no different in overall impact on society than any previous pandemics. There is simply no defensible rationale to treat this pandemic any differently.

There is absolutely no reason to lock down, constrain and harm ordinarily healthy, well, and younger or middle-aged members of the population irreparably; the very people who will be expected to help extricate us from this factitious nightmare and to help us survive the damages caused by possibly the greatest self-inflicted public health fiasco ever promulgated on societies. There is no reason to continue this illogical policy that is doing far greater harm than good. Never in human history have we done this and employed such overtly oppressive restrictions with no basis. A fundamental tenet of public health medicine is that those with actual disease or who are at great risk of contracting disease are quarantined, not people with low disease risk; not the well! This seems to have been ignored by an embarrassingly large number of health experts upon whom our politicians rely for advice. Rather we should be using a more ‘targeted’ (population-specific age and risk) approach in relation to the implementation of public health measures as opposed to the inelegant and shotgun tactics being forced upon us now. Optimally, the key elements for modern public health include refraining from causing societal disruption (or at most, minimally) and to ensure freedom is maintained in the advent of pathogen emergence while concurrently protecting overall health and well-being. We also understand that at the outset of the pandemic there was little to no reliable information regarding SARS CoV-2. Indeed, initial case fatality rate (CFR) reports were staggeringly high and so it made sense, earlier, to impose strict lockdowns and other measures until such a time as the danger passed or we understood more clearly the nature of this virus, the data, and how it might be managed. But why would we continue this way and for so long once the factual characteristics of this virus became evident and as alluded to above, we finally realized that its infection fatality rate (IFR) which is a more accurate and realistic reflection of mortality than CFR, was really no worse than annual influenza? Governments and medical experts continuing to cite CFR are deeply deceitful and erroneous and meant to scare populations with an exaggerated risk of death. The prevailing opinion of our experts and politicians seems to be to “stop Covid at all costs.” If so, this is a highly destructive, illogical, and unsound policy and flies in the face of all accepted concepts related to modern public health medicine. Unfortunately, it seems that our political leadership is still bound to following the now debunked and discredited models of pandemic progression, the most injurious and impactful model having been released upon the world in the form of the Imperial College Ferguson model that was based on untested fictional projections and assumptions that have been flat wrong. These models used inaccurate input and were fatally flawed.

How Did We Get Here?

Let us start with a core position that just because there is an emergency situation, if we cannot stop it, this does not provide a rationale for instituting strategies that have no effect or are even worse. We have to fight the concept that if there’s truly nothing we can do to alter the course of a situation (e.g., disease), we still have to do something even if it’s ineffective! Moreover, we do not implement a public health policy that is catastrophic and not working, and then continue its implementation knowing it is disastrous. Let us also start with the basic fact that the government bureaucrats and their medical experts deceived the public by failing to explain in the beginning that everyone is not at equal risk of severe outcome if infected. This is a key Covid omission and this omission has been used tacitly and wordlessly to drive hysteria and fear. Indeed, the public still does not understand this critically important distinction. The vast majority of people are at little if any risk of severe illness and yet these very people are needlessly cowering in fear because of misinformation and, sadly, disinformation. Yet, lockdowns did nothing to change the trajectory of this pandemic, anywhere! Indeed, it’s highly probable that if lockdowns did anything at all to change the course of the pandemic, they extended our time of suffering.

What are The Effects of Lockdowns on the General Population?

On the basis of actuarial and real-time data we know that there are tremendous harms caused by these unprecedented lockdowns and school closures. These strategies have devastated the most vulnerable among us – the poor – who are now worse off. It has hit the African-American, Latino, and South Asian communities devastatingly. Lockdowns and especially the extended ones have been deeply destructive. There is absolutely no reason to even quarantine those up to 70 years old. Readily accessible data show there is near 100% probability of survival from Covid for those 70 and under. This is why the young and healthiest among us should be ‘allowed’ to become infected naturally, and spread the virus among themselves. This is not heresy. It is classic biology and modern public health medicine! And yes, we are referring to ‘herd immunity,’ the latter condition which for reasons that are beyond logic is being touted as a dangerous policy despite the fact that herd immunity has protected us from millions of viruses for tens of thousands of years. Those in the low to no risk categories must live reasonably normal lives with sensible common-sense precautions (while doubling and tripling down with strong protections of the high-risk persons and vulnerable elderly), and they can become a case ‘naturally’ as they are at almost zero risk of subsequent illness or death. This approach could have helped bring the pandemic to an end much more rapidly as noted above, and we also hold that the immunity developed from a natural infection is likely much more robust and stable than anything that could be developed from a vaccine. In following this optimal approach, we will actually protect the highest at risk amongst us.

Where has Common Sense and True Scientific Thought Gone?

There appears to be a surfeit of panic but a paucity of logic and common sense when it comes to advising our politicians and the public in relation to the pandemic. We hear often misleading information from hundreds of individuals who either hold themselves out as being infallible medical experts or are crowned as such by mainstream media. And we are bombarded relentlessly with their ill-informed, often illogical, and unempirical advice on a 24/7 basis. Much of the advice can only be described as being intellectually dishonest, absurd, untethered from reality and devoid of common sense. They exhibit a kind of academic sloppiness and cognitive dissonance that ignores key data or facts, while driving a sense of hopelessness and helplessness among the public. These ‘experts’ seem unable to read the science or simply do not understand the data, or seem blinded by it. They and our government leaders talk about “following the science” but do not appear to understand the science enough in order to apply the knowledge towards the decision-making process (if there are processes, that is; most political mandates appear random at best and capricious at worst). These experts have lost all credibility. And all this despite the fact that our bureaucrats now have had at their disposal nearly one year of data and experience to inform their decision-making and despite this they continue to listen to the nonsensical advice they receive from people who are not actually experts. Consequently, we are now faced with a self-created medical and societal disaster with losses that might never be reversed.

Sadly, when faced with rational arguments that run counter to the near religiously held beliefs, which hold that lockdowns save lives, bureaucrats and medical experts act as ideological enforcers. They attack anyone who disagrees with them and even use the media as their attack dogs once their fiats are questioned. Even more egregious are the often successful actions aimed at destroying the reputations of anyone holding diverse views related to the Covid pandemic. There is also no interest or debate on the crushing harms on societies caused by decrees made by ideologues. The everyday clinicians and nurses at the forefront of the battle are our real heroes and we must never forget and confuse these Praetorian vanguards with the unempirical and often reckless ‘medical experts.’ We hold that the very essence of science and logical thought includes the ability and in fact the responsibility to challenge (reasonably) currently held dogmas; a philosophy that appears to be anathema to our leaders and their advisors.

Current Data Concerning Lockdown Effects

Let us start with the staggering statement by Germany’s Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Muller, who has openly cautioned that global lockdown measures will result in the killing of more people than Covid itself. A recent Lancet study reported that government strategies to deal with Covid such as lockdowns, physical distancing, and school closures are worsening child malnutrition globally, whereby “strained health systems and interruptions in humanitarian response are eroding access to essential and often life-saving nutrition services.”

What is the actual study-level/report evidence in terms of lockdowns? We present 31 high-quality sources of evidence below for consideration that run the gamut of technical reports to scientific manuscripts (including several under peer-review, but which we have subjected to rigorous review ourselves). We set the table with this, for the evidence emphatically questions the merits of lockdowns, and shows that lockdowns have been an abject failure, do not work to prevent viral spread and in fact cause great harm. This proof includes: evidence from Northern Jutland in Denmark, country level analysis by Chaudhry, evidence from Germany on lockdown validity, UK research evidence, Flaxman research on the European experience, evidence originating from Israel, further European lockdown evidence, Western European evidence published by Meunier, European evidence from Colombo, Northern Ireland and Great British evidence published by Rice, additional Israeli data by Shlomai, evidence from Cohen and Lipsitch, Altman’s research on the negative effects, Djaparidze’s research on SARS-CoV-2 waves across Europe, Bjørnskov’s research on the economics of lockdowns, Atkeson’s global research on nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), Belarusian evidence, British evidence from Forbes on spread from children to adults, Nell’s PANDATA analysis of intercountry mortality and lockdowns, principal component analysis by De Larochelambert, McCann’s research on states with lowest Covid restrictions, Taiwanese research, Levitt’s research, New Zealand’s research, Bhalla’s Covid research on India and the IMF, nonpharmaceutical lockdown interventions (NPIs) research by Ioannidis, effects of lockdowns by Herby, and lockdown groupthink by Joffe. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) further outlines prominent public health leaders and agencies’ positions on societal lockdowns, all questioning and arguing against the effectiveness of lockdowns.

A recent pivotal study from Stanford University looking at stay-at-home and business closure lockdown effects on the spread of Covid by Bendavid, Bhattacharya, and Ioannidis examined restrictive versus less restrictive Covid policies in 10 nations (8 countries with harsh lockdowns versus two with light public health restrictions). They concluded that there was no clear benefit of lockdown restrictions on case growth in any of the 10 nations.

Key seminal evidence arguing against lockdowns and societal restrictions emerged from a recent quasi-natural experiment (case-controlled experimental data) that emerged in the Northern Jutland region in Denmark. Seven of the 11 municipalities (similar and comparable) in the region went into extreme lockdown that involved a travel ban across municipal borders, closing schools, the hospitality sector and other settings and venues (in early November 2020) while the four remaining municipalities employed the usual restrictions of the rest of the nation (moderate). Researchers reported that reductions in infection had occurred prior to the lockdowns and also decreased in the four municipalities without lockdowns. Conclusion: surveillance and voluntary compliance make lockdowns essentially meaningless.

Moreover, in a similarly comprehensive analysis of global statistics regarding Covid, carried out by Chaudhry and company involved assessment of the top 50 countries (ranked as having the most cases of Covid) and concluded that “rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and widespread testing were not associated with Covid mortality per million people.” Conclusion: there is no evidence that the restrictive government actions saved lives.

A very recent publication by Duke, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins researchers reported that there could be approximately one million excess deaths over the next two decades in the US due to lockdowns. These researchers employed time series analyses to examine the historical relation between unemployment, life expectancy, and mortality rates. They report in their analysis that the shocks to unemployment are then followed by significant rises (statistically) in mortality rates and reductions in life expectancy. Alarmingly, they approximate that the size of the Covid-19-related unemployment to fall between 2 and 5 times larger than the typical unemployment shock, and this is due to (associated with) race/gender. There is a projected 3.0% rise in the mortality rate and a 0.5% reduction in life expectancy over the next 10 to 15 years for the overall American population and due to the lockdowns. This impact they reported will be disproportionate for minorities e.g. African-Americans and also for women in the short term, and with more severe consequences for white males over the longer term. This will result in an approximate 1 million additional deaths during the next 15 years due to the consequences of lockdown policies. The researchers wrote that the deaths caused by the economic and societal deterioration due to lockdowns may “far exceed those immediately related to the acute Covid-19 critical illness…the recession caused by the pandemic can jeopardize population health for the next two decades.”

Overall, the research evidence alluded to here (including a lucid summary by Ethan Yang of the AIER) suggests that lockdowns and school closures do not lead to lower mortality or case numbers and have not worked as intended. It is clear that lockdowns have not slowed or stopped the spread of Covid. Often, effects are artifactual and superfluous as declines were taking place even before lockdowns came into effect. In fact, in Europe, it was shown that in most cases, mortality rates were already 50% lower than peak rates by the time lockdowns were instituted, thus making claims that lockdowns were effective in reducing mortality spurious at best. Of course, this also means that the presumptive positive effects of lockdowns were and have been exaggerated grossly. Evidence shows that nations and settings that apply less stringent social distancing measures and lockdowns experience the same evolution (e.g. deaths per million) of the epidemic as those that apply far more stringent regulations.

What does this all mean?

As a consequence of their (hopefully) well-intended actions, our governments along with their medical experts have created a disaster for people. It means that the public’s trust has been severely eroded. Lockdowns are not an acceptable long-term strategy, have failed and have severely impacted populations socially, economically, psychologically, and health wise! Future generations would be crippled by these actions. The policies have been poorly thought out and are economically unsustainable and there is a massive cost to it as it is highly destructive. Our children and younger people are going to be shouldered with the indirect but very real harms and costs of lockdowns for a generation to come at least.

What are the real impacts on populations from these disastrous restrictive policies? Well, the poorer among us have been at increased risk from deaths of despair (e.g. suicides, opioid-related overdoses, murder/manslaughter, severe child abuse etc.). Politicians, media, and irrational medical experts must stop lying to the public by only telling stories of the suffering from Covid while ignoring the catastrophic harms caused by their decree actions. Lives are being ruined and lost and businesses are being destroyed forever. Lower-income Americans, Canadians, and other global citizens are much more likely to be compelled to work in unsafe conditions. These are employees with the least bargaining power, tending to be minority, female, and hourly paid employees. Moreover, Covid has revealed itself as a disease of disparity and poverty. This means that black and minority communities are disproportionately affected by the pandemic itself and they take a double hit, being additionally and disproportionately ravaged by the effects of the restrictive policies.

Why would we impose more catastrophic restrictive policies when they have not worked? We even have government leaders now enacting harder and even more draconian lockdowns after admitting that the prior ones have failed. These are the very experts and leaders making societal policies and demands without them having to experience the effects of their policies. There is absolutely no good justification for what was done and continues to be done to societies, when we know of the very low risk of severe illness from Covid for vast portions of societies! We do not need to destroy our societies, the lives of our people, our economies, or our school systems to handle Covid. We cannot stop Covid at all costs!

How is Population Health and Well-being in the US Affected by Current Public Health Measures?

Businesses have closed and many are never to return, jobs have been lost, and lives ruined and more of this is on the way; meanwhile, we have seen an increase in anxiety, depression, hopelessness, dependency, suicidal ideation, financial ruin, and deaths of despair across societies due to the lockdowns. For example, preventive healthcare has been delayed. Life-saving surgeries and tests/biopsies were stopped across the US. All types of deaths escalated and loss of life years increased across the last year. Chemotherapy and hip replacements for Americans were sidelined along with vaccines for vaccine-preventable illness in children (approximately 50%). Thousands may have died who might have otherwise survived an injury or heart ailment or even acute stroke but did not seek clinical or hospital help out of fear of contracting Covid.

Specifically, and based on CDC reporting (and generalizable to global nations), during the month of June in the US, approximately 25% (1 in 4) Americans aged 18-24 considered suicide not due to Covid, but due to the lockdowns and the loss of freedom and control in their lives and lost jobs etc. There were over 81,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12 months ending in May 2020 in the US, the most ever recorded in a 12-month period. In late June 2020, 40% of US adults reported that they were having very difficult times with mental health or substance abuse and linked to the lockdowns. Approximately 11% of adults reported thoughts of suicide in 2020 compared to approximately 4% in 2018. During April to October 2020, emergency room visits linked to mental health for children aged 5-11 increased near 25% and increased 31% for those aged 12-17 years old as compared to 2019. During June 2020, 13% of survey respondents said that they had begun or substantially increased substance use as a means to cope day-to-day with the pandemic and lockdowns. Over 40 states reported rises in opioid-related deaths. Roughly 7 in 10 Gen-Z adults (18-23) reported depressive symptoms from August 4 to 26. There is a projected decrease in life expectancy by near 6 million years of life in US children due to the US primary school closure. These are some of the real harms in the US and we have not even discussed the devastation falling upon other nations. From June to August 2020, homicides increased over 50% and aggravated assaults increased 14% compared to the same period in 2019. Diagnosis for breast cancer declined 52% in 2020 compared to 2018. Pancreatic cancer diagnosis declined 25% in 2020 compared to 2018. The diagnosis for 6 leading cancers e.g. breast, colorectal, lung, pancreatic, gastric, and esophageal declined 47% in 2020 compared to 2018. From March 25 and April 10 in the US, “nearly one-third of adults (31.0 percent) reported that their families could not pay the rent, mortgage, or utility bills, were food insecure, or went without medical care because of the cost.”

Sadly, the very elderly we seek to protect the most are being decimated by the lockdowns and restrictions imposed at the nursing/long-term/assisted-living/care homes they reside in. Just look at the death and disaster New York has endured under Governor Andrew Cuomo with the nursing home deaths and the Department of Health (DOH) Covid reporting. The Attorney General Letitia James deserves credit for her bravery, for it brings to light not only a very dark day in New York’s history with Covid but that of the US on the whole given that New York and the accrued deaths make up such a large proportion of all deaths in the US and nursing homes from Covid-19. Deaths as per James may be at least 50% higher than was reported by Cuomo. Cuomo’s policy to send hospitalized Covid patients back to the nursing homes was catastrophic and caused many deaths. Gut wrenchingly, across the US nursing homes, reports are showing that the restrictions from visitations and normal routines for our seniors in these settings have accelerated the aging process, with many reports of increased falls (often with fatal outcomes) due to declining strength and loss of ability to adequately ambulate. Dementia is escalating as the rhyme and rhythm of daily life is lost for our precious elderly in these nursing homes, long-term care (LTC), and assisted-living homes (AL) and there is a sense of hopelessness and depression with the isolation from restricting the irreplaceable interaction with loved ones.

The truth also is that many children – and particularly those less advantaged – get their main needs met at school, including nutrition, eye tests and glasses, and hearing tests. Importantly, schools often function as a protective system or watchguard for children who are sexually or physically abused and the visibility of it declines with school closures. Due to the lockdowns and the lost jobs, adult parents are very angry and bitter, and the stress and pressure in the home escalates due to lost jobs/income and loss of independence and control over their lives as well as the dysfunctional remote schooling that they often cannot optimally help with. Some tragically are reacting by lashing out at each other and their children. There are even reports that children are being taken to the ER with parents stating that they think they may have killed their child who is unresponsive. In fact, since the Covid lockdowns were initiated in Great Britain as an example, it has been reported that incidence of abusive head trauma in children has risen by almost 1,500%!

In addition, the widespread mass testing of asymptomatic persons in a society is very harmful to public health. The key metric is not the number of new active cases (i.e. positive PCR test results) being reported and misrepresented by the vocal experts and media, but rather what are the hospitalizations that result, the ICU bed use, the ventilation use, and the deaths. We only become concerned with a new ‘case’ if the person becomes ill. If you are a case but do not get ill or at very low risk of getting ill, what does it matter if the high risk and elderly are already properly secured? It is also remarkable that while hospitals had nearly 10-11 months to prepare for the putative second wave of Covid, why do these healthcare institutions claim to be unprepared? Are the lockdowns and the resulting loss of businesses, jobs, homes, lives, and anguish that result, really due to government’s failures? And what are the reasons for the mass hysteria when most data show that whether prepared or not, most hospitals are not experiencing any more strain on their capacity than seen in most normal flu seasons? Why the misleading information to the public? This makes absolutely no sense.

Are we anywhere ahead today? In no way and we are much worse off today. So why not allow people to make common sense decisions, take precautions, and go on with their daily lives? We know that children 0-10 years or so have a near zero risk of death from Covid (with a very small risk of spreading Covid in schools, spreading to adults, or taking it home). We know that persons 0-19 years have an approximate 99.997 percent likelihood of survival, those 20-49 have roughly a 99.98 percent probability of survival, and those 50-69/70 years an approximate 99.5 percent risk of survival. But this ‘good news’ data is never reported by the media and “experts.” Covid is less deadly for young people/children than the annual flu and more deadly for older people than the flu. We must not downplay this virus and it is different to the flu and can be catastrophic for the elderly. However, the vast majority of people (reasonably healthy persons) do not have any substantial risk of dying from Covid. The risk of severe illness and death under 70 years or so is vanishingly small. We do not lock a nation down for such a low death rate for persons under 70 years of age, especially if they are reasonably healthy people. We target the at-risk and allow the rest of society to function with reasonable precautions and we move to safely reopen society and schools immediately. Moreover, and this cannot be overstated, there are available early treatments for Covid that would reduce hospitalization and death by at least 60-80% as we will discuss below.

Early Multidrug Therapy for Covid Reduces Hospitalization and Death

We must take common-sense mitigation precautions as we go on with life. This does not mean we stop life altogether! This does not mean we destroy the society to stop each case of Covid! We must let people get back to normal life. In fact, the most important information that is being withheld, bizarrely, from the US population is that there are safe and effective treatments for Covid! And most importantly we now know how to treat Covid much more successfully than at the outset of the pandemic. This therapeutic nihilism is very troubling given there are therapeutics that while each on their own could not be considered as being a ‘silver bullet,’ they can be used on a multidrug basis or as a ‘cocktail’ approach akin to treatment of AIDS and so many other diseases! This includes responding proactively to higher-risk populations (in private homes or in nursing homes) who test positive for SARS CoV-2 or have symptoms consistent with Covid by intervening much earlier (even offering early outpatient sequenced/combined drug treatment to prevent decline to severe illness while the illness is still self-limiting with mild flu-like illness). Early home treatment (championed by research clinicians such as McCullough, Risch, Zelenko, and Kory) ideally on the first day (including but not limited to anti-infectives such as doxycycline, ivermectin, favipiravir, and hydroxychloroquine, corticosteroids, and anti-platelet drugs that are safe, cheap, and effective) that is sequenced and via a multi-drug approach, have been shown to convincingly reduce hospitalization by 85% and death by 50%.

The key is starting treatment very early (outpatient/ambulatory) in the disease sequelae (ideally on the 1st day of symptoms emergence to within the first 5 days) before the person/resident has worsened. This early treatment approach holds tremendous utility for high-risk elderly residents in our nursing homes and long-term care/assisted-living facilities, including within their private homes, who are often told to ‘wait-and-see’ and all the while they worsen and survival becomes more problematic. We are talking about using drugs that are used in-hospital but we argue must be started much earlier in high-risk persons. This demands that governments and healthcare systems/medical establishments paralyzed with nihilism step back and allow frontline doctors the clinical decision-making and discretion as before in how they treat their Covid-19 high-risk patients. From where we started 9 to 11 months ago in the US (and Canada, Britain, and other nations), between the therapeutics and an early outpatient treatment approach, this is very good news! We must also not discount the potential damage to normally healthy immune systems that have not been locked down like this before but which otherwise could be expected to fight infection effectively in younger individuals at the least. We have to be concerned about the immune systems of our children that are normally healthy and functional and we have no idea how their immune systems will function into the future given these far-reaching restrictions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, given the cogent argument by Dr. Scott Atlas on the failure of lockdowns and school closures globally and the totality of the evidence presented above and AIER’s troubling compilation of the crushing harms of lockdowns, it is way past time to end the lockdowns and get life back to normal for everyone but the higher-risk among us. It is time we target efforts to where they are beneficial. Such targeted measures geared to specific populations can protect the most vulnerable from Covid, while not adversely impacting those not at risk. Why? Because we know better who is at risk and should take sensible and reasonable steps to protect them. Alarmingly, President Biden has already stated that there is nothing that can be done to stop the trajectory of the pandemic, yet fails to recognize that across the US, cases are already falling markedly, even going as far to warn of more deaths. More incredulous is that those in charge and particularly the ‘medical experts’ continue to fail to admit they were very very wrong. They were all wrong in what they advocated and implemented and are trying now to lay the blame on those of us who looked at the data and science and reflected and weighed the benefits as well as harms of the policies. They are blaming those of us who opposed lockdowns and school closures. They are using the tact that since you opposed these illogical and unreasonable restrictions and mandates, then it caused the failures, thus pretending and not admitting that their policies are indeed the reason for the catastrophic societal failures. Not our opposition and arguments against the specious and unsound policies.

It is very evident to populations that lockdown policies have been extraordinarily harmful. It is way past time to end these lockdowns, these school closures, and these unscientific mask mandates (see State-by-State listing) as they have a very limited benefit but more importantly are causing serious harm with long-term consequences, and especially among those least able to withstand them! Indeed, the Federalist published a very comprehensive description showing how masks do nothing to stop Covid spread. There is no justifiable reason for this and government leaders must stop this now given the severe and long-term implications! Donald A. Henderson, who helped eradicate smallpox, gave us a road map that we have failed to follow here, when he wrote about the 1957-58 Asian Flu pandemic and stated “The pandemic was such a rapidly spreading disease that it became quickly apparent to U.S. health officials that efforts to stop or slow its spread were futile. Thus, no efforts were made to quarantine individuals or groups, and a deliberate decision was made not to cancel or postpone large meetings such as conferences, church gatherings, or athletic events for the purpose of reducing transmission. No attempt was made to limit travel or to otherwise screen travelers. Emphasis was placed on providing medical care to those who were afflicted and on sustaining the continued functioning of community and health services.”

Dr. Henderson along with Dr. Thomas Inglesby also wrote, “Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.” Overall, they messaged that several options exist for governments of free societies to use to mitigate the spread of pathogens (traditional public health responses which are less intrusive and disturbing) but closing down the society or parts of it is not one of them. These experts never championed or endorsed lockdowns as a strategy when confronting epidemics or pandemics for they knew and articulated the devastation that would fall upon societies that were in many instances potentially irrecoverable.

As Dr. Martin Kulldorff explains, it is critical that the bureaucrats, the public health system, and medical experts listen to the public who are the ones actually living and experiencing the public health consequences of their forced lockdown and other actions. Social isolation due to the lockdowns has devastating effects and cannot be disregarded and government bureaucrats must recognize that shutting down a society leads to suicidal thoughts and behaviour and excess deaths (deaths of despair to name one). I end by perhaps the most cogent phrase by experts (The Great Barrington Declaration): “Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone.”

1Dr. Paul Alexander (University of Oxford, University of Toronto, McMaster University-Assistant Professor, Health Research Methods (HEI))

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This article was originally published by the American Institute of Economic Research on January 30, 2021, and is reproduced with permission.

Mail In Ballots Were the Key to What Went Wrong

The 2020 election was a disaster for the republic. Lax voting procedures, last-minute rulemaking by unauthorized parties, and hundreds of accounts of process irregularities created such an atmosphere of suspicion and rancor that 60 percent of Americans of all parties believed the election to be basically illegitimate.

The hapless Trump team looked foolish by blaming rigged voting machines and international conspiracies. In fact, mail-in voting was at the heart of what went wrong.

Democrats, using the Covid epidemic as a wedge, were able to increase mail-in voting to 65%, up from 25% in 2016. Eligibility and security standards were relaxed. Registrants who had not previously voted were signed up to receive bulk mail ballots.

By the time Trump was raging about the “stolen“ election, the contest was over. Hundreds of thousands of ballots have been mailed into a security void, been returned and counted, and separated from any tracking information.

We’re supposed to believe that all these ballots, mailed to corrupted voted lists, were completed without improper influence by the intended voter only and that the ballot harvesters were simply trying to boost voter turnout without regard to partisan interest.  Since fraud would leave no trace in this process, the Greek chorus (media) began their “no evidence of fraud” chant.

But simple reflection reveals that it’s a matter of how much, not whether.  The evidence comes out in dribs and drabs, cascades of individual coincidences.

Squirrely counts of thousands of consecutive votes, almost all for one candidate, clumped together, an unrealistically large number of “voters“ compared to registrations and boxes of ballots suddenly available for accounting when needed are all explained most likely by millions of nonsecured ballots “out there“.

The ultimate security check for mail-in ballots is signature verification. But it defies common sense to claim that a minimally trained clerk checking signatures provides the same fraud protection as picture ID at the polls.

Actual signature verification of historical photographs, for example, requires great skill and expertise. The slapdash, subjective process used by election officials is biased towards acceptance. Simple testing has shown that it is easily gamed.

Yet the Left is working assiduously to make the system even less foolproof. In Georgia, Stacey Abrams, who registered 185,000 voters for the Senate runoff elections,  bragged openly about the lack of signature verification once she had “eviscerated“ the “exact match“ standard.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that ballots couldn’t be rejected at all based on signature comparisons.  You might as well hang out an “Open for Fraud” sign.

State officials claim they have safeguards in place that provide complete fraud protection. But all they can know is their procedures were executed as prescribed and that the votes received were accurately counted.  That hardly proves that all the non-secured ballots arriving by mail were valid.

The only available check on their work is the recount, which is nonsensical. Counting the same ballots, no matter their origin over and over is unlikely to produce more accurate results.

Actual reform of mail-in voting would center on the better vetting of voters on the front end of the process. Assuring that only properly identified, eligible voters receive and return ballots would be difficult, but the real problem is the Democrats won’t stand for it.

They’ve struck electoral gold. They elected a feeble, unpopular candidate with no particular platform with 81 million votes by circumventing the traditional methods used to persuade and enthuse voters. They’re not about to give it up.

So an Arizona proposal to clean up registration rolls by striking voters who hadn’t voted in two election cycles and didn’t respond to mail is being hysterically shouted down as “voter suppression”.  Objectors to mail-in voting are lumped in with conspiracy theorists and stolen election rhetoric and then expected to share alleged responsibility for the Capitol riot.

Republicans may have no choice but to learn to play the game themselves. But America needs better.

We seem fated to have close, hyper-partisan elections. The losing side in the past two presidential elections has refused to accept defeat. In this toxic atmosphere. we will never find peace with an election process that constitutes an open invitation to fraud.

*****

Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.

Goldwater Takes On Government’s COVID Overreach

While COVID-19 curfews and closures may be adopted with good intentions, these government efforts to stop the spread of COVID have often backfired. And sometimes, these efforts are even unlawful.

Earlier this week, a Pima County Superior Court judge ruled that the county’s 10 pm to 5 am curfew violates state law and cannot be enforced. The lawsuit—brought by a group of business owners and supported by an amicus brief from the Goldwater Institute—argued that the county’s order, forcing all people to stay out of public places during those hours, violates state law as well as the executive order issued by Governor Doug Ducey in May. As Goldwater Vice President for Litigation Timothy Sandefur told Tucson’s KGUN 9 this week, “The county does have authority to impose curfews in certain emergency situations there, but Arizona law only allows counties to impose emergency curfews to prevent violence or breaches of the peace, and it doesn’t allow curfews, in the case of a pandemic.”

And in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot recently did an about-face on the question of restaurant closures in the Windy City. Now, she’s calling on the state to reopen restaurants and bars “as quickly as possible.” Her reason? People are getting together anyway, and since the government can’t effectively regulate what happens behind closed doors, it’s safer to let them gather in the open.

Sandefur writes at In Defense of Liberty, “mandates and compulsory curfews increase the likelihood of confrontations between law enforcement and citizens—confrontations that can turn violent, or result in people being taken to jail, where their exposure to COVID-19 is probably higher.” And as the Chicago story shows, “curfews are more likely to encourage people to congregate in secret, in confined places where there is a greater risk of infection, rather than in relatively safer outdoor business places.”

Private actors are much better at dealing with and adjusting to the realities of COVID than are government central planners. And that’s why Goldwater is standing up to government overreach where it exists across the country.

*****

This article is an excerpt from the Defense of Liberty Blog, published January 23, 2021 by the Goldwater Institute.

Some Modest Suggestions on Election Integrity

Much righteous rhetoric has been thrown about recently about the recent capitol riots and the desecration of the “citadel of democracy.”  While we join in the condemnation, we think it is largely disingenuous.

Please, more log rolling, deal cutting, corruption, sexual harassment and veniality occurs within those hallowed halls than anywhere else in the country.

Besides, the President preceding Mr. Trump had his political launch occur in the living room of a man actually involved in the bombing of the capital.

We are not impressed by the selective outrage.

The true citadel of democracy is the integrity of the election process. For if the process is not honest, and if the results are rigged in advance, there is no point in politics and representative government is a sham.

It appears the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will conduct some kind of audit of the election.  That is a good start but we are not clear whether it is a simple recount or an inspection of the ballots themselves.

The Arizona Republic editorial page suggests Congressman Biggs and Gosar should resign if fraud is not found.

It seems perfectly legal and proper for representatives to question election results. Democrats have done that vigorously over the past few election cycles. We don’t recall the Republic demanding their resignation or those that said Trump was illegitimate and the benefactor of Russian collusion.

Maybe we could get the Arizona Republic editorial board to resign if fraud is found, in whatever small amount it may be determined?

Our concern should be for election integrity. What has happened in the past is hard to correct but we can go forward to the future with a better system. It is unacceptable that up to half of the population believes the process is dishonest. Whether this concern is justified or not, such suspicions are corrosive to the democratic process.

Arizona could become a national leader for election integrity.

We are not lawyers or legislative bill writers so the suggestions here are conceptual in nature.

From the beginning, we need to dispose of the idea that public officials and public employees are free of bias and serve only for the public good. Public Choice economists long ago established that public employees have selfish interests just as people do in the private sector. However, unlike the private sector, there is often no outside regulation or competition to control this inherent bias. Government has a monopoly on certain societal functions.

If you are not familiar with Public Choice literature, simply look today at how the largest group of public employees, the teachers unions, actually conduct themselves. Can anyone seriously argue they are free of bias and only function to lift knowledge and do not bring their prejudices into both the class room and into politics?

Vote counting should be viewed with the same seriousness we treat private sector players who handle investors’ money. Those with the interest in the outcome have to be audited on a regular basis, not on an exceptional basis, by independent auditors.

For example, banks are supervised by both state and federal agencies such as Federal Reserve, the FDIC and state level agencies which require the use of auditors, compliance officers and bank examiners.

Likewise, the securities industry is highly regulated at both the state and Federal level and by the industry itself.

One of the principles of this regulation is that you never get to audit yourself. It has to be done by outside agencies or firms. The private firms have professional codes of conduct, special educational requirements, and reputations at stake.

We suggest the establishment of a state wide agency, The Office of Election Integrity.  Its primary job will be to regularly audit election results from city elections to Senate races and to Presidential races as well.

Audits will be conducted during each and every election cycle. It will not be an extraordinary event, but rather a routine procedure just like in the private sector.

Revenue to operate this office will come from a tax on political spending. The more money spent on elections, the more revenue is collected. It should be progressive in nature. The most expensive elections should pay a higher rate, low-cost level local elections, a lower rate. Money that comes from outside of the state will pay the higher marginal bracket, regardless of the cost of the election.

All qualified auditing firms will be chosen before any given election and selected at a public lottery by the Secretary of State. No auditor can be chosen for back-to-back elections. If such an event were to occur during the public lottery, the Secretary of State would try random selection again until a different firm is chosen.

Auditors will be present at all counting facilities.

Auditing the election results does not mean a simple recount of the vote. The real issue is what are you counting.

For example, in a bank, if we were to ask a teller at the end of the day to count the cash in her station, we would not accept a simple count of paper bills regardless of denomination or origin. You would want to check for counterfeits, foreign currency, and you would not count a $100 bill as if it was a $1 bill. Just simple counting a number of bills does not give you an accurate monetary count.

Thus, votes to be counted need to pass through a qualifying screen. The votes should be one voter, one vote.  The voter should be a citizen, a resident of the state. The voter should not be coerced or paid to vote. The voter should be alive and have a home residence, not a P.O. box or business address. Signatures should match. Once all that is determined, then a counting should take place with representative of all political parties present and auditors as well.

Our modest suggestion is that elections be audited by outside agencies in the private sector, just like firms that handle money are regulated, in the private sector.

Obviously, there are technical details to be worked out to be sure only valid ballots are counted, and they do not come arrive suddenly in the night from sources unknown. There must be a secure chain of custody between the voting booth and the counting facility

We would further suggest the end to early voting and that we have one day to vote. Absentee ballots on request can be continued but generalized mail in balloting is too insecure to allow further.

If auditing results on a regular basis delays the results, that is not much of a sacrifice for integrity.  The breathless news media can wait.

We will leave the granular details to the bill writers but we think the aforementioned suggestions would help the process.

 

Emergency Orders Are Being Abused

How often do you experience an emergency? Monthly? Weekly? Every day? More than likely, it’s pretty uncommon—as it should be.

Maybe someone should tell the government. Because it seems like every time you read the news, some government official is declaring a new “state of emergency.” But these declarations stopped looking like real emergencies long ago. And this past year in the midst of COVID-19, it’s gotten out of control. This is especially true in cities and counties across Arizona, where officials are using emergency orders to beat up on local citizens.

Using COVID to grab more power

One year ago, words like “masks,” “lockdowns,” and “social distancing” weren’t a part of our regular vocabulary. But then COVID hit the United States, and local officials seized the opportunity to enact closures and mandates that did little to address the pandemic.

Flagstaff Mayor Coral Evans was among the first to make a power grab, limiting dining at restaurants and closing most gathering places.

And in March, then Gilbert Mayor Jenn Daniels rushed to close park playgrounds and sport courts without a single case of the virus in town. Just a few months later, she followed that up with a mask mandate. This was at the same time Maricopa County, of which Gilbert is a part, issued its own mask mandate.

Meanwhile Scottsdale residents have likely been experiencing mask-mandate whiplash. They had to deal with a mask mandate in June that was rescinded in September and then reinstated this January, one day after Mayor David Ortega was sworn into office.

And then there’s Pima County. In December, officials there announced a daily COVID curfew from 10 p.m until 5 a.m. Because apparently the virus only comes out at night? Thankfully, a Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order halting enforcement of the curfew earlier this month. But it didn’t take long before Pima County filed an appeal.

And while COVID is an issue that may warrant some action (which should NOT include crushing small business or trampling on our rights), did you know that some cities in our state are starting to use these powers to declare “climate emergencies”?

Emergency orders for the climate

Let’s start with Flagstaff, who as we mentioned earlier, leapt at the opportunity to use emergency orders after COVID hit. But officials didn’t stop there. In June, the Flagstaff City Council actually declared a climate emergency as well. And right now, they are using this radical declaration to impose a slew of extreme Green New Deal mandates that will destroy businesses, cost taxpayers a fortune, and likely violate state law. You can read all about their plans right here.

Maybe these officials should stop and read state law. After all, several years ago Arizona passed Proposition 207, which protects property owners from any land use law by cities that devalue their property. Passing ordinances that put a bunch of mandates on property owners without their consent, even under a so-called “climate emergency,” is a violation of this law.

And that brings us back to Tucson, which of course is within Pima County. This January, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero and the city council followed Flagstaff’s lead, declaring a “climate emergency.” And now they are proceeding with a plan to make Tucson carbon neutral within the next decade.

But does any of this sound like a real emergency?

It’s time for the legislature to act

These emergency orders have gotten out of control in our state. Too many government officials are abusing their powers. And in the process, they are crushing local citizens, destroying small businesses, and pushing the Green New Deal.

But that’s not what emergency orders are for. Emergency orders should be used for real emergencies. That’s why this level of government overreach needs to stop.

Now, it’s time for the legislature to act and put an end to these types of emergency declarations. Otherwise, local citizens will be paying the price for years to come.

*****
This article from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club was originally published on January 28, 2021 and is republished with permission.

Bolick Introduces Bill Aimed At Restoring Checks and Balances In Elections

HB 2720, introduced by Rep. Shawnna Bolick, is said to be one of the most comprehensive approaches to addressing on-going and emerging election-integrity issues proposed this year.

Currently, Arizona’s secretary of state is the only person who decides whether Arizona’s election results will be certified. Bolick’s bill would create a legislative check and balance over the exercise of this authority. Under Bolick’s proposal, the legislature, which already has the power to subpoena evidence and audit elections, would be able to countermand the secretary’s decision to certify an election but would not be able to pick its own winner. The legislature, which has seen itself rendered powerless to act in the face of major issues, such as the pandemic, when it is not in session, would be able to exercise this authority throughout the year.

Bolick’s proposal would require counties to keep track of how many ballots they print so that election observers could verify that the number of ballots cast does not exceed the number of ballots in circulation. It would also prevent courts from dismissing election challenges on technical grounds without first hearing evidence, a practice that has frustrated many voters and fed widespread public distrust with Arizona’s elections…..

*****

Continue reading at Arizona Daily Independent.

The Conservative Path Forward in the Biden-Harris Era

There is plenty to lament right now. But conservatives’ time and energy would be better spent thinking ahead and plotting a future—one that, in all likelihood, can still be salvaged.

The presidency of Joseph R. Biden Jr., a thoroughly mediocre and gaffe-prone career politician in the throes of debilitating senescence, has commenced. It has done so with disingenuous paeans to unity, thinly veiled swipes at his “deplorable” political foes and an immediate executive action-driven assault on his predecessor’s legacy—from the environment to immigration to religious liberty—that is simply breathtaking in its scope.

Worse, the Biden-Harris regime has taken power as America’s myriad corporate bastions, led by Big Tech, dutifully promise to punish dissenters to the regime’s enforced monolithic orthodoxy.

For conservatives, it could get ugly out there as we spend our near-term future in political exile. And this is before even considering the possibility that the U.S. Senate, now under de facto Democratic leadership, may well ditch the legislative filibuster, opening up a Pandora’s box of power-grab possibilities that could irrevocably transform the republic—chiefly, “packing” the Supreme Court and lower courts, and statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

At first blush, it is difficult to sugarcoat such a would-be dystopia. There is, it seems, no limit to what a Democratic-controlled House-Senate-White House trifecta might be able to accomplish. But the reality, once we step back and soberly assess our predicament, is more nuanced; there is a path forward for a conservative revival by the time of either the 2022 midterm elections or the 2024 presidential election.

In terms of the federal government, conservatives still nominally control the Supreme Court and, post-Trump, the majority of the crucial circuit courts of appeals. Democrats may try to “pack” these courts if they nuke the filibuster, but unless and until they do so, the judiciary—however unreliable Republican-nominated judges often are—will still often redound to conservatives’ interests and forestall much of the Biden Administration’s worst impulses. It is thus incumbent upon well-positioned bastions of conservative legal clout, centered around Texas’s Office of the Solicitor General, to aggressively litigate and seek recourse in the courts.

In terms of state governments, Republicans still retain a majority (30) of unified state legislatures. Indeed, nearly half of all states (23) have both a Republican governor and a unified Republican state legislature. These red states can and ought to serve as hubs for conservatives’ own quasi-“resistance” over the next four years.

Conservatives must do the hard work of actually building up the digital and corporate infrastructure to push back in earnest against Big Tech, “woke” capital, and the broader “cancel culture” threat to the American way of life…..

*****

Continue reading at American Greatness. This article was originally published on January 21, 2021.

Josh Hammer is the opinion editor of Newsweek. A popular conservative commentator, he is of counsel at First Liberty Institute and a syndicated columnist through Creators. A frequent pundit on political, legal and cultural issues, Hammer is a constitutional attorney by training. He is a former John Marshall Fellow of the Claremont Institute and was a law clerk for Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah).

Carlsbad, California Says No More Lockdowns. May It Be A National Model!

“I’m not willing to give up without a fight — I’m just not.” – Annie Rammel, Carlsbad, CA restaurant owner.

It’s been said off and on over the decades that California is a bellwether of sorts. What happens there is a preview of what’s going to happen elsewhere in the U.S.

In the late 1970s the passage of Proposition 13 foretold a national tax revolt. Californians used a referendum to limit the tax power of grasping politicians in the Golden State, and the pushback eventually went national.

A different, more local revolt began last weekend in Carlsbad, CA, a town just north of San Diego. Its restaurant and bar owners decided they’re weren’t going to take it anymore. They’re no longer going to allow witless politicians to destroy what they’ve worked so long to build. They’re going to open their businesses to eager customers.

Some will ask what California legislators right up to Governor Gavin Newsom will say. Ideally the mini-revolt will wake these sick people up to the extraordinary damage they’re doing, but if not it’s worth reminding everyone that the very individuals in government who are presently limiting your right to work, operate your business, and live your life as you desire, used to not be in government. Some even used to have regular jobs in the private sector. The main thing is that they’re not experts on medical matters, nor are they abnormally smart. They just happen to be good at politics. They’re in no position to tell us how to live, or operate our businesses, or whether or not we should have a job to go to. They’re just people who want power, prestige and money, only they want it the easy way.

This is worth remembering as businesses, jobs and life as we know it vanish thanks to politicians imposing their force on us. Why allow them to do that? People should be free to do as they wish with their property. Period. This includes Twitter and Facebook if they choose to censor comments and commenters. If Amazon chooses to not do business with certain people or companies, that’s its right. If bakers choose not to bake cakes for events that offend their personal morality, that’s their right. Business owners who want to meet the needs of willing customers while a virus is spreading should be free to open up as they see fit.

Interesting and happy about scenic, seaside Carlsbad is that in a state that is largely locked down, in a state where most restaurants can’t even serve customers outside, Carlsbad is open. Its restaurants and bars are open outdoors and indoors. Some of the bars are packed. Please learn more about this happy story of protest against what is ridiculous. Please support it.

Of course, the owners of the bars and restaurants in OPEN (!!!!!) Carlsbad are far more diplomatic than yours truly. They’re calling their exercise of their property rights a “peaceful protest.” And peaceful it is. Nothing could be more peaceful than operating a business that can only succeed insofar as its patrons are pleased for having patronized it, only to come back over and over again.

Furthermore, the protest is one lodged under desperate circumstances. These businesses can’t not be open. If they remain shuttered by decree, or limited in their ability to serve their customers by decree, they will close for good. Though some business owners may have political leanings, this is not political. It’s about survival, and it’s something all who consider themselves decent should cheer. This includes those who’ve not been out in public or inside a public venue since March. Freedom is its own virtue.

Arguably the most important supporters of the beautiful story unfolding in Carlsbad would be other business owners. They must open if they feel inclined to re-open. The simple truth is that the power-mad can’t arrest everyone. If restaurants and bars open en masse in California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and every other city and state overseen by authoritarians, what can the authorities do? There aren’t enough jails and handcuffs, and there aren’t enough guns to subdue a mass, nationwide, owner, employee and customer protest against a tragic lapse of reason.

Crucial about what’s happening in Carlsbad, and that should happen everywhere, is that there’s nothing violent about it. It’s much more than just a “peaceful protest.” It’s reasonable. It’s common sense. It’s businesses, workers, and customers exercising their right to operate, work, and live as they want. They’re not forcing their values on others. Businesses that choose to stay closed should do just that. Worried employees should stay home. The people fearful of the virus should similarly stay home.

For the rest of us who feel inclined to resume living, it’s time for us to do that. Again, those who are sickeningly intoxicated with power can’t incarcerate us all. As for the businesses terrorized by the political class in Carlsbad, they decided they no longer have any choice. Given the choice between going out of business and defying politicians, they chose the latter. Good for them.

Let’s again support what’s happening in Carslbad, including purchasing gift certificates from its restaurants and bars. Let’s also emulate them. May Carlsbad be a national model!

*****

John Tamny is editor of Real Clear Markets.  This article was published on January 22, 2021 by The American Institute of Economic Research,  AIER and is reproduced with permission.

The 2020 Election Aftermath Is Not At All Unprecedented In U.S. History

The presidential election was close. Only 84 Electoral College votes separated the contenders. Widespread allegations of ballot fraud were claimed by national party chairmen in 11 states, with court challenges lasting into the middle of the year following the election. Changing the results in just two states would flip the election.

The fraud allegations were serious, including dead people voting and votes far in excess of registered voters in some counties. Yet partisan election boards quickly certified the results while local judges, loyal to the political machines that installed them, threw out legal challenges. Eventually, 650 people were charged with election fraud, but only three were convicted, all given short sentences.

No, this isn’t a story about 2020. It’s a story of 1960. U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy defeated two-term Vice President Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election by 303 to 219 electoral votes (with 15 ballots going to Sen. Harry F. Byrd). Nixon “lost” Illinois by 8,858 votes and Texas by 46,257. Had those two narrow losses been overturned, Nixon would have won and America might not have fought and lost the Vietnam War.

Since 1960, a myth has grown up around Nixon: that as a statesman, he decided not to challenge the results so as not to divide the nation. Even so, the Republican National Committee contested the results in the courts until mid-1961.

It was more likely that Nixon knew there was no practical path to overturning the results, clear evidence of fraud or not. That Nixon played the statesman was a convenient myth for all parties involved.

IT WASN’T JUST 1960 OR 2020

The election of 1876 was even more contentious, with Congress exercising its constitutional role as an arbiter of competing electoral slates sent by the states. Then, as now, the national climate was unsettled. The victorious North was weary of maintaining a standing army in the South.

In the years after the Civil War, some 1,500 black office holders, most recently freed slaves, were elected or appointed, mostly in the South. They held federal and state offices in all 11 of the states that constituted the core of the Confederacy. President Grant won reelection in 1872, prevailing in all but three of the 11 states of the old Confederacy—Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas—with the votes of black Republicans.

But four years later, as federal troops were being drawn down, the Ku Klux Klan emerged as a terrorist tool of the Democratic Party, driving black Republicans out of office and voters away from the polls. When combined with poll taxes that charged the equivalent of about $20 for the right to vote, literacy tests, and official intimidation, large numbers of black Republicans were prevented from voting.

There was still a viable Republican Party apparatus in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina to claim victory, although the Democrats also forwarded competing slates of electors backed by a Democrat winning the governorship in Florida, with two disputed gubernatorial elections in Louisiana and South Carolina that saw the Democratic candidates installed after the presidential electors were assigned to Rutherford B. Hayes.

In the end, rather than risk losing a messy battle over the competing electoral slates, Republicans struck a devil’s bargain, formally agreeing to end Reconstruction in exchange for the presidency. Mechanically, the constitutional crisis was resolved through a bipartisan Electoral Commission, as the Constitution is silent on exactly how Electoral College disputes should be settled.

This constitutional silence appears to be a major oversight. The Founders, skeptical of politicians wielding power at the expense of the people’s liberty, set up a system of divided government—three national, co-equal branches along with the states—in a federal system.

Given that most of the Founders’ concern over the erosion of liberty was aimed at the national government, there was little direction given over how the electors were to be selected beyond three paragraphs in Article II, Section 1. Simply put, these paragraphs specify that state legislatures determine the manner of the electors’ appointment and that Congress determines both the election day and the day the electors vote.

Absent in this process is any sort of a check on the states. What if a state’s electoral system is corrupted? What if big city or regional political machines shift the election outcome, as was alleged in 1960 and 1876?

COURTS WON’T DO IT, THAT’S FOR SURE

The courts have proven to be a notoriously ineffective check against election fraud. Prior to an election, when much of the advance work needed to cheat is accomplished, the courts will generally find a lack of standing, as no harm has yet been done. After a corrupted election, courts will shrug and say the point is moot—the election is already over. As with impeachment, the question appears to be political.

Two relevant lawsuits in the 2020 contest illustrate this principle. Texas filed a lawsuit challenging the election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin as being tainted by sidestepping state election laws. The U.S. Supreme Court threw out the case, merely stating that, “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

The second lawsuit was brought in Pennsylvania, where it was contended that a statute, 2019’s Act 77, allowing a huge expansion in mail-in voting, violated the state’s constitution. After the state supreme court rejected the argument more on process than substance, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

This leads to a pressing concern. How can illegalities reasonably be proved in the 79 days from Election Day to Inauguration Day—or, more urgently, the 35 days to Dec. 8, the “Safe Harbor” deadline for resolving any controversies over electors and electoral votes? Proving election-changing fraud in a mere five weeks, typically in the face of a state political apparatus that is loath to admit error or fraud or, worse yet, was an active participant in it, is difficult at best and, in a practical sense, impossible.

THERE ARE TYPICALLY TWO OPTIONS

With courts unwilling to accept cases, the typical processes to validate an election come down to two means: recounts and audits. Recounts will, in most cases, simply recount any fraudulent votes and, on occasion, uncover genuine errors or simple attempts at cheating by transposing election returns, hiding ballot boxes, or counting some precincts twice. Audits, routinely done in many states, are a tool to validate that computerized machine counts match with any sort of paper backup the system may use.

Neither audits nor recounts will uncover traditional types of fraud such as aggressive harvesting of mail-in ballots, including from the deceased, those living under a guardianship due to mental incapacity, or people subject to pressure or inducements, such as small amounts of cash or access to a food pantry run by those connected to the local political machine.

We know that election fraud does occur in America, contrary to the repeated claims by Democrats and their allies in corporate and social media. In 2020, in New Jersey’s third-largest city, Paterson, new municipal elections were ordered after massive and systemic vote-by-mail fraud was uncovered. A councilman, councilman-elect, and two others were charged with voting fraud. Also, in 2020 in nearby Philadelphia, former Democratic congressman Michael “Ozzie” Myers was charged with ballot-box stuffing over three years of elections, 2014, 2015, and 2016 by conspiring with and bribing a judge of elections.

We all saw the alarming and suspicious behavior of elections officials in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and other areas where election observers were blocked or held back so far they were unable to monitor the counting, or were told to go home as counting was done for the night. COVID-19 also provided the excuse that people who stood in line to grocery shop could also not safely stand in line to vote—thus necessitating what was, in many swing states, a massive expansion in by-mail voting with a concurrent relaxing of safeguards, such as signature matching, designed to minimize fraud.

The opportunities for systemic cheating had never been greater in 60 years. The relevant legal question is, was it enough to change the election results? The practical question is, could election-changing fraud be proven in only 35 days?

POLITICAL MACHINES USE THEIR POWER TO WIN

Imagine if a well-placed elections official in Philadelphia came forward and admitted to significant election fraud and provided corroborating evidence. Would the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a Democrat-majority body thoroughly in the thrall of partisan politics, have acted? Would the Democrat governor or Democrat secretary of state have acted?

The legislature might have acted, but any electoral slate they put forward would have been superseded by the slate certified by the governor. Congress might have acted, but, at best, would have deadlocked, meaning the governor’s certified slate would prevail.

The aftermath of the 2020 election finds the nation unsettled, with legitimate concerns about election fraud overshadowed by the capitol riot and kooky conspiracy theories, such as the tale that U.S. Special Forces were killed in an operation to seize election-related computer servers operated by the CIA in Germany, where the agency was working to change votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

The original source of the rumor was said to be a tweet in German. The translated tweet was rapidly picked up and circulated by QAnon, an informal grouping of conspiracy theorists. It’s probable the tweet was crafted by Russian or Chinese intelligence services with the express intent to increase distrust in U.S. institutions. At the very least, the unfounded rumor distracted from real efforts to uncover and prove election fraud.

Regarding the reprehensible riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6: had the declared election winner been reversed, there’s no doubt the scale of the violence would have been far greater, while the media and elites would have supported it, as they did over last summer’s long season of discontent.

HR 1 has been reintroduced in the U.S. House. 2019’s version passed the House and never received a vote in the Senate. It seeks to cement Democrat dominance of national elections by instituting a national voter registration program, making Election Day a federal holiday, requiring prepaid postage for mail-in ballots, criminalizing some forms of political speech, removing the power to redistrict from state legislatures, and eliminating the ability of state officials to maintain accurate and up-to-date voter lists.

Winning elections with fraud may be easy enough, but governing a people with vanishing trust in the system will be increasingly difficult. The nation would benefit from a thorough and honest review of the 2020 election—but it almost surely won’t happen.

*****

This article first appeared in The Federalist on January 12, 2021 and is reproduced with permission.

Watch Out for the Verbal Jujitsu

It is hard to remember a similar time when political intimidation was at this kind of frenzy.

Probably the most similar period was right after the assassination of President Kennedy. Those old enough to remember recall that immediately after the shooting, the media called Dallas a city of “hate.”

Kennedy was killed in the city, but the connection was less than thin. A retired general (Edwin Walker) lived in the area had criticized our young President extensively, but ironically the same man that shot Kennedy attempted earlier to kill the general.

Conservatives had created a “climate of hate”, the media told us, that somehow was responsible for the murder of our President. We were all complicit in his killing.

It was a difficult time to have been a critic of Kennedy. Collective guilt is technique used by many historical bad actors.

Kennedy had been in for some criticism after the bungled Bay of Pigs invasion, especially after he had his CIA trained Cuban exile army land on the beaches and then he inexplicably withdrew their promised air cover.

They were all killed or captured. It was a mess.

Anyone who disagreed with Kennedy (who in retrospect looks more like a Conservative today) was pinned with creating an “atmosphere of hate” and thus connected to the assassination.

The Democrats and media leveraged the tragedy with the argument that you should accept our agenda to make amends for your complicity in his murder. It worked wonderfully for them.

James Pierson wrote an interesting book on the period a few years ago called Camelot and the Cultural Revolution that goes into this period with detail and novel analysis. It is highly recommended.

It was one of the great executions of verbal jujitsu ever pulled off. The reason was Kennedy was killed by Communist Lee Harvey Oswald, but blame was placed on Conservatives because of their thought.

A little context for the younger folks. America had fought a war in Korea with Communists and was fighting again in Viet Nam. The country had been heavily penetrated by Communists in cabinet offices, the White House and Hollywood. Domestic American Communists had stolen the atom bomb technology and given it to the Soviets, the enemy. Given these facts, you would have thought the public would be enraged with all things Communist but instead they turned against their Conservative neighbors who had nothing to do with the killing. That was largely because the media and the Kennedy family directed them to do so.

Yes, there are a host of other theories that question whether Oswald was the killer and we will not get into them here.

The very liberal and anti-Trump author Vincent Bugliosi, who is best known for Helter Skelter, his book on the Manson murders, did an exhaustive study of all the Kennedy assassination theories in his massive Reclaiming History. It took twenty years to write and runs over 1,500 pages. After reading the book, it is undeniable that Oswald was the shooter, although he may have been involved with others.

After you read the book, then you are qualified to argue about it, not before.

That aside, the point is at the height of the Cold War with Communism, the anti-communists got smeared by Jaqueline Kennedy, Chief Justice Earl Warren and a host of powerful Democrat liberals of the day even though it was a Communist who killed the President.

Instead of looking into Communist activities in the nation, the press and the Democrats led the attack against innocent Conservatives and yes, gun owners.

Oswald had purchased his Italian military rifle by mail order.

Let’s fast-forward to January 6, 2021. At this point in history, we don’t know who was behind all of the difficulties at the U.S. Capitol building. Almost always, early press reports are wrong.

As far as the Capitol “riot” is concerned, all guilty parties should be punished regardless of motive or political affiliation. But rhetoric does not “cause” law breaking.

It appears at this time to be a combination of some Trump supporters and some Leftist agitators, and frankly, some people who appear just plain nuts. But what were leftists doing at a Trump rally? Will we ever find out?

Hundreds of thousands of people attended the rally and went back to their hotels peacefully only to find out on TV what had happened. And millions of other Republicans sat at home with their heads in their hands having absolutely nothing to do with this travesty.

It also appears the attack on the Capitol started a full half-hour before the end of the President’s speech and his invitation to peacefully demonstrate at that location. Strange videos show the Capitol police inviting people in and taking down barricades. It is odd, to say the least.

The fact that we don’t know what actually occurred allows a lot of things to be made up and unfounded accusations to be made.

The two events are not the same, I quite agree. But, like after the Kennedy assassination, the Democrats and media are using the trauma of this event to discredit and impugn all of the ideas of a large swath of Conservatives and conservative thinking.

Instead of arguing the merits of policy they want to mobilize public hysteria to shame and accuse anyone who disagrees as an “insurrectionist.” This includes Congressional members acting under Constitutional procedure to question election results.

This, mind you, after the left has murdered the President in Broadway Plays, “comedians” have severed his head, and more importantly, they endorsed the Marxist Black Lives Matter and (very fascist) Antifa organizations that sacked American cities all summer. Even President Biden said he personally wanted to beat up Trump. Gee, does that not create an “atmosphere of hate”?

Speaker of the House Pelosi actually stated publicly that she wondered why there had not been an insurrection against the Trump Administration.

Here are the two jujitsu moves:  1. Trump is illegitimate and it is patriotic to say so (the ‘”resistance”) but to question Biden’s election is insurrection.  2. Questioning election results are “insurrectionist” while actually committing voter fraud is OK.

Excuse me, didn’t the hallowed Stacy Abrams spend the last couple of years questioning election results? Her affiliation with Black Lives Matter may make her an insurrectionist but questioning the election results does not.

Democrats have been more than questioning the legitimacy of Donald Trump. They used foreign agents, enemy intelligence and the security apparatus of the Federal Government to impeach a President. All while lying to the FISA courts.

Talk about attacking the citadel of democracy!

The investigation into election results is independent of the capitol invasion. After the strange flipping of California House seats in 2018 using ballot harvesting the whole process has cried out for an investigation for some time.

If the Arizona Senate wants to look into election irregularities, that IS the patriotic thing to do because Fair Elections Matter. Ignoring the problems only spreads further the corrosive disbelief among about half the population that the election was stolen.

Democrats are desperate to have the issue of election fraud go away and if they can use this tragedy to force it they will.

Well, the flak is heaviest when you are over the target. Republicans need to investigate.

Let law enforcement and the courts apprehend and try those guilty of bad actions and criminal actions but not because of different political thoughts.

And, make election integrity a chief priority for the sake of the democratic process and the confidence the people need to have in it.

Finally, stay home and don’t get anywhere near any demonstrations surrounding the inaugural. All of us should do our part to cool down the current tempest.

Big Tech v. America: How to Fight Back and Win

This article was originally published at American Spectator on January 15, 2021.

We can stop pretending Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, and Amazon aren’t out to get half the country, and start doing something about it.

Read more

A Libertarian Judge Champions Privacy Rights Against Warrantless Police Searches

Justice Clint Bolick dissents in Arizona v. Mixton.

Since joining the Arizona Supreme Court in 2016, libertarian litigator-turned-jurist Clint Bolick has made a name for himself as a judicial defender of constitutional rights. Justice Bolick did so again this week in a case that pitted the U.S. Supreme Court’s flawed Fourth Amendment jurisprudence against the more expansive privacy protections guaranteed by the text of the Arizona Constitution.

The case is Arizona v. Mixton. At issue was whether the police must get a warrant before obtaining a suspect’s I.P. address and internet service provider (ISP) subscriber information. With that info in hand, the police are able to determine which websites a suspect has visited. Taking its cue from the U.S. Supreme Court—which said in Smith v. Maryland (1979) that “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties”—a majority of the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in favor of warrantless I.P. address and ISP data searches.

Writing in dissent, Justice Bolick faulted his colleagues for shortchanging the text and history of their own state constitution…….

*****

This article was published on January 12, 2021 at Reason.

Imprimis: Orwell’s 1984 and Today

The following is adapted from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College reception in Rogers, Arkansas, on November 17, 2020. The content is from the December 2020 edition of Hillsdale College’s Imprimis.

On September 17, Constitution Day, I chaired a panel organized by the White House. It was an extraordinary thing. The panel’s purpose was to identify what has gone wrong in the teaching of American history and to lay forth a plan for recovering the truth. It took place in the National Archives—we were sitting in front of the originals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—a very beautiful place. When we were done, President Trump came and gave a speech about the beauty of the American Founding and the importance of teaching American history to the preservation of freedom.

This remarkable event reminded me of an essay by a teacher of mine, Harry Jaffa, called “On the Necessity of a Scholarship of the Politics of Freedom.” Its point was that a certain kind of scholarship is needed to support the principles of a nation such as ours. America is the most deliberate nation in history—it was built for reasons that are stated in the legal documents that form its founding. The reasons are given in abstract and universal terms, and without good scholarship they can be turned astray. I was reminded of that essay because this event was the greatest exhibition in my experience of the combination of the scholarship and the politics of freedom.

The panel was part of an initiative of President Trump, mostly ignored by the media, to counter the New York Times’ 1619 Project. The 1619 Project promotes the teaching that slavery, not freedom, is the defining fact of American history. President Trump’s 1776 Commission aims to restore truth and honesty to the teaching of American history. It is an initiative we must work tirelessly to carry on, regardless of whether we have a president in the White House who is on our side in the fight.

We must carry on the fight because our country is at stake. Indeed, in a larger sense, civilization itself is at stake, because the forces arrayed against the scholarship and the politics of freedom today have more radical aims than just destroying America.

I taught a course this fall semester on totalitarian novels. We read four of them: George Orwell’s 1984, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.

The totalitarian novel is a relatively new genre. In fact, the word “totalitarian” did not exist before the 20th century. The older word for the worst possible form of government is “tyranny”—a word Aristotle defined as the rule of one person, or of a small group of people, in their own interests and according to their will. Totalitarianism was unknown to Aristotle, because it is a form of government that only became possible after the emergence of modern science and technology.

The old word “science” comes from a Latin word meaning “to know.” The new word “technology” comes from a Greek word meaning “to make.” The transition from traditional to modern science means that we are not so much seeking to know when we study nature as seeking to make things—and ultimately, to remake nature itself. That spirit of remaking nature—including human nature—greatly emboldens both human beings and governments. Imbued with that spirit, and employing the tools of modern science, totalitarianism is a form of government that reaches farther than tyranny and attempts to control the totality of things.

In the beginning of his history of the Persian War, Herodotus recounts that in Persia it was considered illegal even to think about something that was illegal to do—in other words, the law sought to control people’s thoughts. Herodotus makes plain that the Persians were not able to do this. We today are able to get closer through the use of modern technology. In Orwell’s 1984, there are telescreens everywhere, as well as hidden cameras and microphones. Nearly everything you do is watched and heard. It even emerges that the watchers have become expert at reading people’s faces. The organization that oversees all this is called the Thought Police.

If it sounds far-fetched, look at China today: there are cameras everywhere watching the people, and everything they do on the Internet is monitored. Algorithms are run and experiments are underway to assign each individual a social score. If you don’t act or think in the politically correct way, things happen to you—you lose the ability to travel, for instance, or you lose your job. It’s a very comprehensive system. And by the way, you can also look at how big tech companies here in the U.S. are tracking people’s movements and activities to the extent that they are often able to know in advance what people will be doing. Even more alarming, these companies are increasingly able and willing to use the information they compile to manipulate people’s thoughts and decisions…..

Continue reading at Imprimis: Orwell’s 1984 and Today

*****

Larry P. Arnn is the twelfth president of Hillsdale College. He received his B.A. from Arkansas State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School. From 1977 to 1980, he also studied at the London School of Economics and at Worcester College, Oxford University, where he served as director of research for Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill. From 1985 until his appointment as president of Hillsdale College in 2000, he was president of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. He is the author of Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education; The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution; and Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government.

Fight or Flight?

Editors’ note: The following essay is a response to recent articles by Neland Nobel and Victor Davis Hanson appearing in The Prickly Pear.

*****

Prediction: the date 11/3/2020 will become as infamous in history as 9/11/2001. Already, the recent turn of events in the post-11/3/20 world has, predictably, produced a number of deconstructions of Donald J. Trump and his presidency. Included on that list is Piling on Trump in The Prickly Pear (Neland Nobel, 1/8/21) in which every criticism of Trump is absolutely true. Unless, however, you believe that Trump’s loss on 11/3 was legitimate, they are also absolutely irrelevant.

Without going into a point-by-point breakdown, just consider the summary statement in the aforementioned article – “Yes, it would appear that Trump’s personality quirks may have lost us the Presidency.” That is precisely what Democrats want us to believe, that we lost the election and that it was due to a flawed candidate. They want that, nay, they NEED that in order to complete their mission of destroying the Trump brand, legacy and agenda. They do not want to face another Trump. The above quote would only be relevant if one were to totally disregard the massive evidence of election fraud while also ignoring the fact that Trump gained many millions more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.

One must consider that the “steal,” as it is called, had to be a sure thing, and so it was. It did not rely on one or two factors. It did not rely, for example, on the Dominion voting system alone. It had to be a sure thing, because if it failed, the perpetrators would be in big trouble in Trump’s second term.

“We need to talk about why we lost,” writes Nobel in conclusion, missing the point again. We did NOT lose. That is the ONLY point and the discussion can never leave that point until the issue has been properly and fairly adjudicated with the results serving to correct the injustice. Until then, it trumps all other issues.

The 1/11/20 edition of The Prickly Pear includes an article by one of the brightest minds in America, Victor Davis Hanson. But bright people don’t always get it right and often do not possess the qualities of those with lesser IQs, notably grit, valor and common sense.

Hanson’s op-ed, Crazy 2020 is Dead! Long Live Crazier 2021! continues from The Prickly Pear, via a link at the bottom of the page to the balance of the piece at America Greatness.

In the continuation portion of the article, Hanson writes;

“As for Trump, there was a road, a far better road for him, not taken. He likely knew by the second week in December, when the electors were chosen, that his flurry of months-long lawsuits, recounts and objections would not lead to either a new national election or the disqualification of votes in four or five key states.”

Hanson goes on to amplify on the above:

“So, Trump erred in pressing is unrealistic claims of winning the election and thereby giving his supporters expectations that the irregularities in the voting would translate into a second Trump term. Again, fairly or not, legally or illegally, rightly or wrongly, that simply was never going to happen. To insist that it would was to mislead his most loyal base. And the disconnect from the finality of November 3, may have contributed to the Republican Senate losses in Georgia, and, for now, has clouded his legacy of real achievement.”

These points need breaking down:

You may note that Hanson never does reveal what he considers to be the “far better road” for Trump to have taken. Continuing with the first paragraph, how on earth could Trump have known in December that his lawsuits to that point would fail? Does Hanson have inside information on corruption and bias within state supreme courts and the federal court system? If not, then his opinion is nothing more than Monday morning quarterbacking and worse, it entirely misses the larger point which I will make in a moment. From my thirty years as a trial consultant, I can testify that the cowardice and even corruption we have witnessed from the courts in this case is the least surprising element of this saga.

In the second paragraph, Hanson goes on to refer to the election results as “irregularities.” No, the evidence, even by mid-December, but more so since, points to outright fraud and it was that fraud that formed the basis for the lawsuits in that it alone accounted for more than enough votes to reverse the outcomes. Or, possibly, Hanson views electronic vote switching, running the same ballots through the counting machines multiple times, the processing of more votes than there were registered voters and various other facts as mere “irregularities.”

Then Hanson offers the wildest speculation that Trump’s stance “may have contributed” to the loss of the Georgia Senate races, while offering no logic for that claim. Considerably more compelling could be the argument that drawing the voters’ attentions to the November election’s fraudulent outcome would make for an effective call to action. One could easily understand that motivating Trump supporters who must have been angry after learning of the fraud in their state would be a good strategy. Ask yourself which of those two positions sounds more valid when held to the test of common sense?

Now to the “larger point” mentioned above:

When do you fight and when do you run or surrender? One needs to look no further than the history of this country for a fine example of an answer. George Washington, the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, together with a rag-tag assembly of untrained civilian volunteers had no business believing they could defeat the most powerful military on the planet. If Victor Davis Hanson was advising them, it seems now that he would have said “Forget it boys, you can’t win.” Indeed, there were many in 1776 who said the same thing. Luckily, they were ignored, but they weren’t ignored because the argument made no sense. They were ignored because the argument was irrelevant. The fight needed to be fought because it was the right thing to do.

Indeed, battle history is replete with similar examples, some with results as above, some in defeat, including many where defeat was the outcome known in advance. If need be, ask Texans to explain. The battle of the Alamo serves as a prime example. It was lost before it started, but because it was fought, the war was won. The battle of Midway in WW II is another. The U.S. Navy’s torpedo planes attacked the Japanese fleet without fighter protection. They didn’t stand a chance and were wiped out by the enemy fighters. But their adherence to duty and their bravery brought the enemy fighters down to sea level, leaving our Navy’s dive bombers who followed moments later with a clear path to destroy the enemy’s aircraft carriers and win a battle that was the turning point in the war. Significantly, neither of those examples were intellectual exercises, nor have intellectuals ever been credited with winning a battle, let alone a war.

Where Hanson claims Trump’s fight “clouded his legacy,” I argue it IS his legacy, win or lose, just as capitulation would be his legacy if he had chosen not to fight. Finally, those who would dismiss Trump’s achievements, as Hanson suggests, due to his fight to preserve the integrity of U.S. elections lack much more than common sense.

*****

David Tunno is a retired trial consultant and California refugee now living in Paulden, Arizona. More information about David Tunno is found at www.tunno.com.

There Once Was a Dream

There once was a dream of a worldwide electronic web where commerce and communications could be linked, providing wide consumer choice, lower costs, and creating a marketplace of ideas. Anyone with access to the Web could access the common knowledge of the world with the keystroke of ever cheaper and more powerful devices.

It created rapid change and considerable “creative destruction”, as new ways of doing things were adopted and old ways discarded.

To be sure, there were serious instances of hacking and fraud. But not enough to stop most everyone from migrating to the Web and establishing a digital presence.

And humans, being the flawed creatures that we are, developed a number of consumer scams, have engaged in degrading pornographic sites and generated the proliferation of strange and kooky ideas. Such is the price one pays for freedom of expression; you might say.

Many people find communication on the web addictive. It has almost destroyed personal conversation and led to ever shorter attention spans.

But it has allowed citizen journalists to outperform legacy news organizations. Almost any viewpoint or household chore can now be found on YouTube.

The downside of the Web is that it has concentrated the power to dispense information and the power to destroy competition in the hands of a handful of companies and CEOs.

Despite these warning signals, trust in the Web has expanded so that people now place their most precious photographic memories in “the cloud”, their important documents, financial affairs and their personal thoughts. Companies have moved their accounting, marketing, compliance and even their phone services to the Web. All of it is out there to be either hacked or restricted.

Much of our monetary activities now occur on the Web. You can deposit checks on your phone, utilize credit and debit cards, even apply for and obtain home mortgages. There are now more than 2,000 digital currencies worth almost $900 billion dollars.

We even count votes with machines that are wired into the Web. That of course leaves the results open to hacking and manipulation.

This has all proven to be a mixed bag. It would seem, most of us believe the pluses outweigh the minuses.

But in a very vital sense, all of this was based on the idea of the integrity and safety of using the Web.

There are now reasons to seriously doubt there is either safety or integrity in the system that all of life seems to have become dependent upon.

In terms of safety, there are an alarming increase in hacking incidents. Not just hacking into the system of the neighborhood dentist and holding his operations up for ransom, but successful intrusions into some of the most sensitive government operations, such as our nuclear arsenal. There seems to be no place one is really safe on the Web.

It is clear that cyber warfare is now part of the arsenal of most advanced nations and that the Web could be collateral damage to this new form of war.

And now we see the most sinister turn, the use of the Web to control a population, such as the social credit score system in Red China.

The integrity of the system was that it was to be free, with all the flaws caused by human fallibilities.

But the government of China, and especially U.S. tech companies closely associated with that government, have decided that they will dictate what ideas can and cannot be communicated on the Web.

They also can determine what services, sites and other things one may want to do on the Web.

In the case of Parler, Amazon on the same day as the actions taken by Apple, cut off hosting services to a platform that carried news, views and ideas used by Conservatives and Libertarians. They basically put a company out of business.

You can say, well Parler can find another hosting company, there is a free market, right?

Not so fast. It appears that Amazon possesses such economic power that they are intimidating any competitor who wants to come along and pick up the business Amazon is refusing.

This is pure naked, monopoly power on display. If Amazon can do this to Parler, they can do this to anybody.

It would be equivalent to U.S. Steel owning the railroads and refusing to ship steel manufactured by someone else. And, if the steel company that is a competitor to U.S. Steel, found trucking companies willing to take their freight, U.S. Steel comes at the trucking companies and frightens them into declining the business, thus choking their competitor to death.

Liberals and Progressives would object to that, right?

But this wasn’t just about intimidating competitors, it is a deliberate attempt to destroy free speech.

For the sake of freedom of expression, this must be resisted. One man’s insurrection seems to be another man’s demonstration.

The rules are arbitrary and capricious. It is OK to upload child pornography but wrong to go to a site that might support the President of the United States. It is OK for Black Lives Matter to be on the Web (which caused a summer of mayhem, murder, and destruction) but not for Dan Bongino to have a presence.

By denying access, the information on the Web can be converted into a political weapon.
And in strictly a commercial sense, by these actions, these tech monopolies are breaking down the trust necessary for commerce. They can destroy any one they want for commercial or political reasons.

If Big Tech can ban access for me to read Dan Bongino on Parler, may they not deny me access to my digital currency or perhaps even my bank or brokerage account? Will they deny us access to credit because we have a point of view different than they do? What about if we have religious views different from them? Where will the censorious attitude stop?

We know from what is occurring on American college campuses. Any deviation from what Mark Zuckerberg thinks is a “hate crime.”

Will they now set prohibitions as to what magazines and news sites I am permitted to read? Do they surveil what we are doing and report our tendencies to the government? Our government or perhaps the Chinese government?

If safety and integrity break down, with so much of our business and personal affairs now linked to the Web, a loss of confidence in the system in which so many of our commercial activities take place, could do massive and almost instantaneous economic damage.

These tech giants now are not just a political threat. They are a threat to the commercial well being of the world. We just can’t know who or what they might decide to restrict next.

Government regulation would be dangerous. Political parties and these tech behemoths and media companies are already aligned with each other and using their alliance for political means, so evident in the 2020 election.

Besides the political threat, economists call it regulatory capture. Almost always, the industry being regulated, eventually captures the regulatory agencies that do the regulating.

We need free and open competition. We need to break up the monopolies. Application of the anti-trust laws certainly seem applicable to maintain competition and choice.

If this is not done promptly, the dream will fade and be replaced by a nightmare worse than envisioned by George Orwell.

You can do your part.

Write your U.S. Representative and Senators raising concerns about this monopoly-based suppression of speech.

Quit doing business immediately with Amazon, Whole Foods or any of its affiliates.

Why Trump Voters Don’t Trust the People that Count Votes

Perhaps not since the nineteenth century have so many American voters so fervently doubted the outcome of a national election.

A Slate headline from December 13 reads: “82 Percent of Trump Voters Say Biden’s Win Isn’t Legitimate.” If even half true, this poll means tens of millions of Americans believe the incoming ruling party in Washington got its political power by cheating.

The implications of this are broader than one might think. Under the current system, if many millions of Americans doubt the veracity of the official vote count, the challenge to the status quo goes beyond simply thinking that Democrats are cheaters. Rather, the Trump voters’ doubts indict much of the American political system overall and call its legitimacy into question.

For example, if Trump supporters are unwilling to accept that the vote count in Georgia was fair—in a state where Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion—this means skepticism goes well beyond mere distrust of the Democratic Party. For Trump’s vote-count skeptics, not even the GOP or the nonpartisan election officials can be trusted to count the votes properly.

Moreover, unlike the general public, Trump supporters appear to have adopted a keenly suspicious view toward these administrators and the systems they control. This is all to the best, regardless of the true extent of voter fraud in 2020. After all, government administrators—including those who count the votes—are not mere disinterested, efficiency-obsessed administrators. They have their own biases and political interests. They’re not neutral.

Trump as Outsider

How did Trump supporters become such skeptics? Whether accurately or not, Trump is viewed as an antiestablishment figure by most of his supporters. He is supposed to be the man who will “drain the swamp” and oppose the entrenched administrative state (i.e., the deep state).

In practice, this means opposition must go beyond mere partisan opposition. It was not enough to simply trust the GOP, because, either instinctively or intellectually, many Trump supporters know he has never really been a part of the GOP establishment. The opposition from within the Republican Party has always been substantial, and the old party guard never stopped opposing him. For Trump’s supporters, then, the two-party system isn’t enough to act as a brake on abuse by the administrative state—at least when it comes to sabotaging the Trump administration. In the minds of many supporters, Trump embodies the anti-establishment party while his opponents can be found in both parties and in the nonpartisan administrative state itself.

This view has formed over time in a reaction to real life experience. Trump supporters have been given plenty of reasons to suspect that anti-Trump sentiment is endemic within the bureaucracy. For example, from the beginning, high-ranking “nonpartisan” officials at the FBI were actively seeking to undermine the Trump presidency. Then there was Alexander Vindman, who openly opposed legal orders from the White House and lent aid to House officials hoping to impeach Trump. Then there were those Pentagon officials who apparently lied to Trump in order to avoid drawing down US troops in Syria. All this was on top of the usual bureaucrats, who already tend to be hated by conservative populists: education bureaucrats, IRS agents, environmental regulators, and others responsible for carrying out federal edicts.

And then there were the federal medical “experts” like Anthony Fauci, who insisted Americans ought not to be allowed to leave their homes until no new covid-19 cases were discovered for a period of weeks. Translation: never.

Health technocrats like Fauci came to be hated by Trump supporters, not just for seeking to shut down churches and ruin the lives of countless business owners, but for setting themselves up as political opponents of the administration through daily press releases and other means of contradicting the White House.

It only makes sense that Trump’s supporters would extend this distrust of the bureaucracy to those who count the votes. After all, who counts the votes has always been of utmost importance. It’s why renowned political cartoonist Thomas Nast had Boss Tweed utter these words in an 1871 cartoon: “As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?”

Boss Tweed

 

This has always been a good question.

Old party bosses like Tweed are now out of the picture, but the votes nowadays are calculated and certified instead by people who, like Tweed, have their own ideological views and their own political interests. The official vote counts are handed down by bureaucratic election officials and by party officials, most of whom are outside the circles of Trump loyalists.

Given the outright political and bureaucratic opposition Trump has faced from other corners of the administrative state, there seems to be little reason for his supporters to trust those who count the votes.

Learning to Mistrust the Administrative State

Thus, whether facing FBI agents or election officials, Trump supporters learned to take official government reports and pronouncements with a healthy dose of skepticism. The end result: for the first time, under Trump, the American administrative state came to be widely viewed as a political force seeking to undermine a legitimately elected president, and as a political interest group in itself.

Naturally, the media and the administrative state itself have reacted to this with outrage and disbelief that anyone could believe that the professional technocrats and bureaucrats could have anything in mind other than selfless, efficient service to the greater good. The idea that lifelong employees of the regime might be biased against a man supposedly tasked with dismantling the regime was—we were assured—absurd.

Civil Service Reform and the Rise of the Permanent Bureaucracy

Although Trump’s supporters may get some of the details wrong, the distrustful view of the bureaucracy is the more accurate and realistic view. The view of the American administrative state as impartial, nonideological, and aloof from politics has always been the naïve view, and one pushed by the Progressive reformers who created this class of permanent government “experts.”

Before these Progressives triumphed in the early twentieth century, this permanent class of technocrats, bureaucrats and “experts” did not exist in the United States. Prior to civil service reform in the late nineteenth century, most bureaucratic jobs—at all levels of government—were given to party loyalists. When Republicans won the White House, the Republican president filled bureaucratic positions with political supporters. Other parties did the same.

This was denounced by reformers, who maligned this system as “the spoils system.” Reformers insisted that American politics would be far less corrupt, more efficient, and less politicized, if permanently appointed experts in public administration were put into these positions instead.

The Administrative State as an Interest Group

But the rub was that in spite of claims by the reformers, there was never any reason to assume this new class of administrators would be politically neutral. The first sign of danger in this regard was the fact that those who wanted civil service reform seemed to come from a very specific background. Murray Rothbard writes:

The civil service Reformers were a remarkably homogeneous group. Concentrated almost exclusively in the urban Northeast, including New York City and especially Boston, the Reformers virtually constituted an older, highly educated and articulate elite. From families of old patrician wealth, mercantile and financial rather than coming from new industries, these men despised what they saw as the crass materialism of the nouveau riche, as well as their lack of good breeding or education at Harvard or Yale. Not only were the Reformers merchants, attorneys, and educators, but they virtually constituted the most influential “media elite” of the day: editors, writers, and scholars.

In practice, as Rothbard has shown, civil service reform did not eliminate corruption or bias in the administration of the regime. Rather, the advent of the civil service only shifted bureaucratic power away from working-class party loyalists, and toward middle-class and university-educated personnel. These people, of course, had their own socioeconomic backgrounds and political agendas, as suggested by one anti-reform politician at the time who recognized that civil service exams would be employed to direct jobs in a certain direction:

So, sir, it comes to this at last, that…the dunce who had been crammed up to a diploma at Yale, and comes fresh from his cramming, will be preferred in all civil service appointments to the ablest, most successful, and most upright business man of the country, who either did not enjoy the benefit of early education, or from whose mind, long engrossed in practical pursuits, the details and niceties of academic knowledge have faded away as the headlands disappear when the mariner bids his native land good night.

Gone were the old party activists who had worked their way up to a position of power from local communities in which they had skin in the game. The new technocrats were something else entirely.

Today, of course, the bureaucracy continues to be characterized by ideological leanings of its own. For example, government workers, from the federal level down, skew heavily Democrat. They have more job security. They’re better paid. They’re less rural. They have more formal education. It’s a safe bet the bureaucracy isn’t chock full of Trump supporters. Civil service reform didn’t eliminate corruption and bias. It simply created a different kind.

Trump supporters recognize that these people don’t go away when “their guy” wins. These are permanent civil “servants” whom Trump supporters suspect—with good reason—have been thoroughly opposed to the Trump administration.

So, if the FBI and the Pentagon have already demonstrated their officials are willing to break and bend rules to obstruct Trump, why believe the administrative class when they insist elections are free and fair and all above board? Many have found little reason to do so.

*****

This article was first published by Mises Wire on January 6, 2021 and is hereby reproduced by permission of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Our Election Rules Are A Mess

Supposedly our election rules are left to the states. The problem is most people seem not to care about anything other than our biennial elections for Congress and the President every four years. Bill de Blasio — the worst mayor in American history — was elected by just 8% of NYC voters. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was thrust on the American scene by winning a primary that was arguably tantamount to a general election with just 16,898 votes.  It is time to clean up this mess. The problem is the political parties are worlds apart.

The Democrats have done much to loosen election rules. They argue that even simple rules are voter suppression.  That is even though they know the inherent problems with cleaning voter rolls maintained at the county level.  Just dealing with the deceased is a major problem. Almost 3 million Americans die every year. That means nearly six million dead people are potentially on voter rolls since the last biennial election, not including ones never removed in past elections. Then there are the people who have moved. Forty million Americans move every year many between states or at least change jurisdictions within states.

California has been at the forefront of destroying the integrity of our elections. First, they issue driver licenses to foreign nationals including illegal aliens. They have made the DMV (the least trusted name in government operations) a center point of registering people and all you need to vote is a driver’s license whether here legally or not. Then ballot harvesting was established as a statewide manner of damaging election integrity.  Harvesting allows a stranger to come to your house and take your ballot to deliver it for you. What could go wrong with that?  They mailed out ballots to every registered person in this last election with return postage paid despite all the dead and relocated people still on the voter rolls. Worse, there was little preparation for handling the onslaught of mailed-in ballots.

The U.S. Commission on Federal Election Reform had something to say about this in 2005. Chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, the commission made clear that “absentee ballots (mailed) remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” They also stated, “vote-buying schemes are more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.” Yet more states are moving that way.

The Democrats want to create even more havoc in the rules of our election. Don’t believe it?  Look at the first bill they presented in the House of Representatives when they took over in January 2019. House Resolution 1 in 2019 was all about rewriting our election rules. It came in at 600 pages just to make sure it was unclear. The more pages the less clarity.

Here are some of the things the bill proposed:

  1. The states would be required to offer early voting.
  2. The states would have to offer registration up to and including Election Day.
  3. The states would have to offer online registration (nothing could go wrong there).
  4. The states would have to automatically register people from government databases (nothing could go wrong there).
  5. The states would have to register 16-year-olds to vote two years in advance (This is a step toward their wanting 16-year-olds to vote).
  6. The bill requires states to accept absentee ballots for any reason.
  7. The bill would provide for prepaid return postage for any ballots involving a federal election.
  8. The bill would establish ballot harvesting across the nation.
  9. The bill would disable most voter ID laws across the nation.

The bill has not passed, but that is not the end of it. Many of the provisions were part of the Cares Act in 2020 before they were cut. These rules will be brought forward until the Democrats get this passed. For elections to have integrity, virtually none of this should be done.

Democrats are always telling us they are the party of science and that we should be more like other countries.  Except when they do not want to do either.

Democrats are constantly making comments that voter ID is racist. It harms Blacks and Hispanics. We all know that is not true. Blacks and Hispanics have a government-issued photo ID for the same reasons everyone else does. More importantly, we are the only modern country that does not require voter ID. The largest democracy in the world, India, does. So do Israel and France and Germany and Britain and Canada and Mexico and Sweden and Norway and the United Kingdom and on and on. We held an election in Iraq and required voter ID.

The question is why Democrats would not want voter ID.  The same answer comes up because it is the only answer – they want to lessen the integrity of our elections. That can be the only answer. That is the answer as to why they want election day registration, limited voter roll cleaning and they think ballot harvesting is a sane idea in a free country.

Oregon has all mail-in ballots and online registration and is the model for much of Democrats’ ideas. Yet they still cut off registration 21 days ahead of election day and require voter ID to register. There are currently four states that have online registration. Arizona, Washington, and Kansas are the other states that allow online registration.  How they verify that the authenticity of the registrant is unclear.

You cannot get an election official to admit there is errant voting in their elections. The NYT contacted election officials from all 50 states, and everyone not surprisingly said it all went swimmingly. That is despite many states having new rule changes that impacted their registration and mail-in-ballots. That is despite independent sources identifying multiple cases of improper election-related behavior.

Christopher Krebs was fired by Mr. Trump. Thus, he had to be a good guy in the eyes of the Media. He was our first director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). He was head of the predecessor organization. After being fired he went on various national news shows and told the world we had the most secure election yet. That defies simple logic with multiple states changing to statewide mail-in ballots despite having inadequate preparation for doing such. More importantly, Mr. Krebs’ organization was simultaneously responsible for the oversight of our cyber systems which had the largest hack in history known as SolarWinds. He should have been fired for that, but Trump jumped the gun and fired him for his oversight of election integrity. Needless to say, his credibility is shot on both issues.

Election officials deny there is anything is wrong with their procedures. There obviously is and with demands for further loosening of the rules, we have two parties in juxtaposition. One wants to assure greater security for our elections and the other wants to make it easier to create mischief in our voting system. One believes as always that our citizens are helpless, and the government needs to do everything for them.

The Dems say voting is our most sacred right. They should treat it as such. When you have a sacred right you should have to work to protect that right. Showing up with a voter ID is not too much to ask. Registering to vote instead of it automatically occurring by a government agency is not too much to ask. Getting your ballot either in the mail or at a polling place and then returning that ballot with your own effort is not too much to ask.  Remember it is a right in a true democracy to abstain from voting, and many people opt for that right.

If we continue to divorce the individual effort from voting, then we will continue to open our electoral system to mayhem. Don’t believe the lies from election officials that this was a safe and secure election. It was a mess because it was designed to be a mess. We need to change that or the value of our vote will be dissolved.

*****

This article first appeared in Flash Report  on January 10, 2021 and is reproduced with the permission of the author.

Crazy 2020 Is Dead! Long Live Crazier 2021!

Hang on. It is going to be Mr. Toad’s wild scary ride for all of 2021.

The proper conservative response to last Wednesday’s violent entry into the Capitol and vandalism, as well as assaults on law-enforcement, is to identify the guilty parties and ensure they are arrested.

Such deterrence will prevent any future devolution from legal popular protests into thuggery. No constitutional republic can tolerate its iconic heart stormed, breached, and defiled.

Is Some Violence Worse than Others?

Of course, there is no such thing as “good” or “acceptable” violence of either Trump supporters or of the Antifa and BLM sort.

Yet the latter were largely exempt from any consequences for most of the summer—despite Joe Biden’s demagogic implication that the now multibillion-dollar funded BLM was treated harshly in comparison to the rogue Trump rioters.

Do we remember the authorities’ exemptions given to “warlord” Raz Simone and his armed thugs who, with absolute impunity, took over a Seattle “autonomous zone” known as CHOP or CHAZ, where four shootings and two deaths followed? Who exactly destroyed or vandalized thousands of state and federal public monuments—some in Washington, D.C.—and burned and looted hundreds of buildings with impunity?

Those who wrongly demanded to defund the police, now rightly deplore the lack of a Capitol police presence. Their only consistency is their own perceived political self-interest.

Biden himself rarely if ever, without exceptions, outright condemned the atrocious violence of Antifa and indeed contextualized it as an “idea”—a disincarnate entity that apparently could magically also burn and loot.

Again, his inaugural call for unity was quickly superseded by his surreal accusations that the police were racist in not quelling the violence. Yet the problem at the Capitol was not that security was racially selective, but that there was not much security at all. And the lapse was probably not by design as much as sheer incompetence.

The president-elect’s demeanor and furor certainly were not compatible with his media image as the supposedly angelic uniter of the country. Within 24 hours he had gone from blasting the police authorities as racists to the old reductio ad Hitlerum trope of comparing a few Republican senators to Nazi propogandist Joseph Goebbels, in a hysterical rant that descended into incoherent numerology about the bombing of Dresden. I’m sure Xi Jinping and Ayatollah Khamenei were impressed by his historical recollections.

Would that summer candidate Biden had just once said a word on behalf of the victims of Antifa and BLM—more than 700 injured law enforcement officers, billions of dollars in damage, and dozens killed over a summer of hateful violence that also wrecked the lives of thousands of struggling small business owners and their employees. What Kamala Harris said about the violent summer protests was appalling, and she was most worried about bailing out those arrested for street violence. Somehow a summer of hate and destruction earned BLM $10 billion in corporate gifts. Did anyone suggest that CEOs were subsidizing violence by crassly buying protection?

Continue reading at American Greatness

The Liberal Left Has Gone Full Illiberal

Over ten months, I have watched with incredulity as the liberal-left has unquestioningly and unequivocally embraced policies, ostensibly to manage the coronavirus pandemic, that are not only illiberal but authoritarian. With each passing day, those on the left-liberal side of the political spectrum display greater acceptance of increasingly oppressive measures.  Maybe I should have been prepared.

With more and more frequency during the past years, I have found myself departing from my cohorts’ consensus during various discussions arising from current events, particularly insofar as they pertained to civil liberties issues. More disturbing than the substantive disagreement was the utter lack of regard for difference of opinion among many of my peers.

Nevertheless, I did not anticipate that the left would soon abandon all pretense of concern for liberal values, which are widely understood to consist of tolerance, open-mindedness, and protection of individual rights and dignity (As a preliminary matter, I am using the term “liberal-left” broadly, to describe: individuals who so identify, the Democratic Party and politicians, and center-left news outlets such as the New York Times, New Yorker, Washington Post, MSNBC, and CNN. I am aware that there is diversity of opinion, but believe it is fair to characterize the overarching left-liberal view as one that accepts the efficacy and morality of lockdowns, masks, and forced human separation).

At this point, those of us unfortunate enough to live in blue and purple states, as well as in many other parts of the world, have been deprived of our basic liberties for nearly a year. We cannot freely associate with other people, operate our businesses, send our children to school, or travel to many places without having to isolate for two weeks, which often translates into visiting loved ones becoming a practical impossibility. College students are imprisoned in dorm rooms for weeks because they or someone they interacted with tested positive for the virus (I will leave the topic of the unreliability of these tests for another day). They are expelled, harshly punished, and shamed for attending parties and socializing in groups. It is no surprise that, condemned for engaging in the most natural activities for those their age, suicidal ideation, depression, and drug usage have skyrocketed in this demographic. Children are forbidden from playing with one another or forced to do so while muzzled.

These oppressive policies, which at face value constitute grotesque violations of civil rights and liberties, are enacted and enforced primarily by Democratic politicians, not least among them the governors of New York, Michigan and California: Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom, respectively. For the most part, these pandemic management strategies are lauded by their constituents and center-left publications alike. To the extent they are criticized from the left, it is usually for failing to enact the measures sooner or enforcing them more stringently.

Particularly chilling is a piece published in the New York Times on January 4, 2021, “In a Topsy-Turvy Pandemic World, China Offers Its Version of Freedom,” by Li Yuan. Notably, this article appeared not in the opinion pages, where arguably it could defensively be printed, but in the news section, and accordingly can be deemed representative of the Times’s views. It is worth pointing out that the Times’s influence cannot be overstated: it is the journalistic arm of the Democratic establishment and informs the consciousness and values of the urban professional class. One can be fairly certain that the beliefs of most doctors, teachers, lawyers, and professors will reflect the ideas propagated in the paper.

The premise of Ms. Yuan’s piece is that the post-enlightenment values that until recently were considered non-negotiable in most Western democracies– freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom of assembly – are dispensable.

That is because, according to Ms. Yuan, China has triumphed over the virus, needless to say by trampling on these very rights, and in doing so allowed for a different set: the freedom to live a normal life (“the West may find it has to work harder to sell its vision of freedom after China has made its model seem so attractive”).

Who is to say which rights are more important? the article queries.

Ms. Yuan next speculates that “[t]he global crisis could plant doubts about other types of freedom” as “[n]early half of voting Americans supported a president who ignored science and failed to take basic precautions to protect their country. Some Americans assert that it is their individual right to ignore health experts’ recommendations to wear masks, putting themselves and others at increasing risk of infection.”

These are an astonishing set of assertions: they appear to call into question the importance of democracy itself, and more vaguely the rights of Americans to make their own decisions about their health and to question and dissent from government mandates. Perhaps I am naïve, but I was under the impression that in a free society, people are at liberty to evaluate the evidence for any proposition — especially one as personal as whether or not to wear a face-covering – to assess the risk, and to act accordingly.

It is deeply troubling that neither Ms. Yuan nor the New York Times appear to recognize the danger in allowing “experts” to dictate our every move (never mind the faulty premise underlying this, as the science supporting mask usage as a means of curbing coronavirus spread is at best incredibly shoddy). More disturbing, evidently the rights of the individual are no longer sacrosanct; rather, they may be subverted for the betterment of society.   People should not be forced to choose between leading a normal life (i.e. socializing, attending school, earning a living, going to restaurants, and experiencing the arts) and possessing fundamental civil liberties.  Both are absolute, immutable features of a liberal democracy.

Conveniently, the article fails to mention that China’s willingness to sacrifice the individual in furtherance of the communal good has led to the creation of concentration camps for Uighur Muslims, that include, among other horrors, torture and forced sterilization. Amnesty International’s China 2019 page opens by observing that: “[t]he human rights situation continued to be marked by a systematic crackdown on dissent.  The justice system remained plagued by unfair trials and torture and other ill-treatment in detention. China still classified information on its extensive use of the death penalty as a state secret.”

Likewise, Human Rights Watch’s [HRW] webpage states that:

 China’s government sees human rights as an existential threat. Its reaction could pose an existential threat to the rights of people worldwide. At home, the Chinese Communist Party [CCP], worried that permitted political freedom would jeopardize its grasp on power, has constructed an Orwellian high-tech surveillance state and a sophisticated internet censorship system to monitor and suppress public criticism. Abroad, it uses its growing economic clout to silence critics and to carry out the most intense attack on the global system for enforcing human rights since that system began to emerge in the mid-20th century.

If China eradicated the virus — and there is widespread agreement that the CCP’s coronavirus data cannot be trusted — it did so using the same tactics that are violative of human rights discussed above by HRW and Amnesty International (incidentally, the Times itself recognized that a mere ten months ago). That the Times and Ms. Yuan apparently consider it appropriate to gloss over that reality is nothing short of astounding.

On the other hand, Ms. Yuan’s article is simply a more express admission than many of the paper’s more subtle suggestions that liberal values are overrated and ought to be abandoned in favor of virus suppression policies that do not bother with such annoyances as human rights. A recent Op-ed argues that doctors who question the efficacy of masks and social distancing should have their licenses revoked. Another heavily insinuates that speech deemed a danger to the Republic should be illegal. Ms. Yuan’s article also bears striking resemblance to various recent, albeit slightly more nuanced, pieces in, for instance, the Economist and the New Yorker, implying that perhaps we should look to China and adopt its virus management strategy.

Many in the scientific and medical community have similarly expressed admiration for China’s approach. At a September press conference, Mike Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, offered his “congratulations” to the Chinese for bringing the virus under control. Gregory Poland, director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic, observed that China’s success could be attributed, in part, to a compliant population and a government that “can put bigger constraints on individual freedoms than would be considered acceptable in most Western countries.”

Apparently, some members of the New York legislature agree that the CCP’s model should be emulated. Lawmakers in the state are contemplating a bill that would permit the State to forcibly detain individuals who might be carrying an infectious disease. It is not difficult to imagine a near-future in which people like me, who refuse to abide by inhumane, nonsensical, and never-ending dictates, end up behind bars as potential pathogen carriers.

Likewise, in a fashion that would make leaders of the CCP proud, critics of lockdown and mask policies are silenced by the media and educational institutions. For example, a tenured professor at New York University is currently under investigation after a student reported him and petitioned for him to be fired because he suggested — in a course on media propaganda, no less! — that students read studies finding that masks do not provide protection from the coronavirus, in addition to those reaching the opposite conclusion.

Not only have the scientists who wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, which rejects the lockdown approach to coronavirus management, been personally and professionally persecuted, but they have faced significant efforts to silence them, leading one writer to observe that “their critics want them removed from the public sphere. This has all the characteristics of a modern high-tech witch-hunt.” Keep in mind that these are three of the world’s preeminent epidemiologists, from Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford Universities. There are countless stories of scientists and others who have been censored on social media platforms for departing from the prevailing wisdom on the seriousness of the coronavirus or appropriate and effective methods for managing it.

A free, liberal society fosters open discussion and debate. It does not silence and punish those who offer opinions that depart from the consensus, however inconvenient those ideas may be to the people in control. It does not use state power to lock people in their homes for the crime of existing in a world along with pathogens. Nor does it prevent them from seeing family and friends, educating their children, and earning a living. It certainly does not contemplate imprisoning people in detention camps because they could carry a pathogen.

Maybe I was naïve to be so startled by Topsy-Turvy Pandemic World, and its thesis that we should remake our conception of freedom in the image of China’s. In retrospect, it was the natural next step in the creeping authoritarianism that I witnessed for about a decade and has crescendoed in the last year. It is as close to an express concession as I have seen thus far that the liberal-left has entirely abandoned the tenets of liberalism.

Even Neil Ferguson, whose wildly inaccurate Imperial model spurred lockdowns in the West, was surprised that the public acquiesced to China-style virus suppression measures. In a recent interview, he observed that “people’s sense of what is possible…changed quite dramatically between January and March.” At first, scientists in the U.K. presumed that “locking entire communities down and not permitting them to leave their homes…would not be an available option in a liberal Western democracy…and then Italy did it. And we realized we could.”

That the liberal-left appears untroubled by the grotesque violations of civil rights and liberties we have witnessed over the past ten months tells us all we need to know. Human rights are negotiable under this new ideology. I am not certain what this political theory should be called – perhaps left-wing authoritarianism – but it bears no resemblance to liberalism whatsoever. To the extent we have not gone quite as far as China in violating human rights in the quest to suppress the virus, the consensus on the liberal-left is plain: we have not gone far enough.

One of the particular features of tyrannical regimes is that most people remain unaware of their true nature until they have solidified their grip on power. It is far easier to acquire and maintain control over a population that at least initially believes the governing force is benevolent.

Pick up a history book if you believe that in the near future the pandemic will be declared over and normal life will resume. Even well-intentioned individuals have difficulty surrendering power once they have had a taste. Nothing about the actions of leaders such as Governors Cuomo, Whitmer and Newsom, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, ought to lead people to believe that life will ever be the same unless we refuse to accept this erosion of our civil rights and liberties.

Each day, I hope that my friends on the liberal-left will wake up and see what is happening before their eyes, before it is too late.

*****

This article first appeared January 9, 2021 and is reproduced with permission by AIER,  American Institute for Economic Research

At 10 Years Old, the Affordable Care Act Is Aging Badly

Another open season has come and gone in which eligible Americans could choose from a narrow array of federally subsidized health care plans under the Affordable Care Act.

Despite the ACA’s manifest gaps and failures, a recent poll from the left-leaning Kaiser Family Foundation found that a solid majority – 55% – of respondents have a favorable perception of the law. That result may be due in part to a feature of the law most have heard about and support: its ban on private insurers denying coverage for preexisting conditions.

The ACA is much more than that provision, however. By almost any measure, the law has fallen short of its objectives. It included features that proved unpopular or unsustainable, led to a decade-long court battle with—of all groups—an order of Catholic nuns devoted to the poor and it subsidized elective abortion without subscribers’ knowledge in violation of what the law plainly requires.

The ACA was modeled in part on a Massachusetts health plan that created a statewide exchange, or marketplace, offering a menu of plans individuals and families could choose from, with gradations of coverage and cost. The ACA contained a mandate, since nullified by Congress, that each individual and family have a plan in force year-round.

But a withering report earlier this year from The Heritage Foundation underscores just how far short the law has fallen.

The promise of the ACA was better coverage at lower cost. Everyone remembers President Barack Obama’s sober pledge that American families would enjoy $2,500 in annual savings on their premiums and be able to keep their doctors. The Heritage report shows, instead, that in just five years, from 2013 to 2018, the average monthly premium paid by an individual rose from $244 to $550 a month, a more than 125% increase.

At the same time, the mid-tier quality plan on the federal exchange saw its annual deductible rise by more than $1,000. Provider networks, in turn, typically shrank.

Putative innovations under the ACA fared no better. The year 2020 saw the end of multi-state plans. These were private plans sold on the marketplace by insurance companies under contract with the federal government that were supposed to attract more subscribers while lowering costs.

In addition, the federal Multi-State Plan Program was required to guarantee individuals and families both a pro-life option and an elective abortion option in the states where they existed.

But multi-state plans proved unpopular with insurance companies, as became embarrassingly apparent when the number of multi-state plans was reduced from 203 to two between 2017 and 2019, and finally nonexistent this year. Co-op plans seem headed for the same fate.

Today, most U.S. counties have only one or two exchange plans. These are the plans for which federal premium tax credits are available.

The tax credits mean that abortion coverage is being subsidized with tax dollars in many instances. Just how often this occurs has been a regular focus of Charlotte Lozier Institute and Family Research Council—this year joined by The Heritage Foundation.

What we found for the 2021 plan year continues to be disturbing.

There are 24 states, plus the District of Columbia, that allow elective abortion coverage. In total, these states offer 1,296 plans, and a full 69% of them—892 plans—cover elective abortion. Eight states fail to offer a single pro-life alternative insurance plan on the ACA marketplace, several of them due to state legislative mandates.

Fortunately, 26 states have exercised their option under the ACA to bar from their exchanges any plans that cover abortion beyond the limited exceptions under the Hyde Amendment—that is, in cases where the life of the mother is at risk, rape, or incest.

Now 10 years old, the Affordable Care Act needs to be revisited. It covers fewer than half the estimated 24 million people its authors estimated would be helped.

Rather than chase the Little Sisters of the Poor with mandates to provide no-cost coverage of contraceptives and abortifacients for their employees, Congress should apply the Hyde Amendment permanently and pursue support for patient-centered, life-affirming plans. These plans should meet the needs of subscribers at all stages of life.

Congress should also ensure that every health care plan has full transparency, so purchasers are aware of any controversial practices the plan covers. The ACA’s requirement that abortion premiums be paid separately—now enjoined by a federal court—should be enforced.

Conscience is a key element of a free and robust society in every sector, but especially health care. A decade on from enactment of the Affordable Care Act, the need for patient- and family-centered alternatives in health care is more acute than ever.

*****

This article first appeared in The Daily Signal on December 18, 2020 and is reproduced with permission.

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