Category: Blog

Differential Diagnosis
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Differential Diagnosis

Jun 20, 2022 by allanauthor 0 Comments ,

None of us live long enough to understand long history. Most of us are reactive rather than proactive. Every once in a while, as a direct result of not understanding history, we get our just comeuppance. If we are lucky, maybe we are only embarrassed or suffer a minor reversal for our hubris. Sometimes, we aren’t so lucky and things we love like the ideas, places, and people that are so important to us get injured or worse.

Let’s start with the premise that people and countries hold many of the same attributes in common. Like you and me, countries live and breathe. They have their histories, inclinations, proclivities, and tendencies. Countries aspire to be long-lived, successful and have their own traditions, morals, aspirations, and especially pride. Nations seek their place in the pantheon of the most admired or sadly, sometimes the most feared. Our own country is a relative newcomer to the game. We’ve gone so far, so fast. It’s difficult to be a patriot today and also still must be critical of that country you love so very much. But, here I am.

I feel this in my bones. Our nation has a terrible malaise that is slowly sapping its strength, vitality, and vigor. It feels almost like a biblical prophecy coming true. Despite over 10 trillion dollars of stimulus pumped into our country’s veins, you get the feeling that economic recovery is far from assured and that the sands of our hourglass or running through so very fast. Decisions of questionable value have been made that are at the root of our fiscal anxiety. Like the ancient Hades ferryman Charon, we may yet have to pay him yet again to get to the other side of the river one day. We are sick and the patient has been told he has cancer. Some of us are so entitled, that we think we can wish that away. If only, it was that easy. The real world has different answers for us!

In medicine, you hear the term Differential Diagnosis used when the best medical minds try to figure out the root cause of an ailment to be able to arrive at the correct treatment protocol. In cancer, frequently the best treatment is the radical approach of surgery. Let’s spend some time today discussing what ails our country and what our prognosis might be as surgery just might be in our future. Our lives continue to hang in the balance and we dare not make yet another mistake as we spend our precious capital that cannot be readily replaced. Capital is a country’s lifeblood. And, we are hemorrhaging that capital so fast, that a tourniquet is required or we will bleed to death before we can even get to a possible cure for our problems. In emergency medicine, triage is always the first concern. America is at that juncture as I write this. The patient does not know how close they are to a very bad outcome.

There are three possibilities facing us today:

1. The President’s course of action is correct and things will get better.
2. The President’s course of action is wrong and we become unstable or worse.
3. The populace loses confidence in our leadership and becomes freighted or angry enough to revolt.

In talking with people, I find a lot of folks are frequently ignorant of current events. While those that do know their history, people who are engaged but still don’t know what can be done to remedy where we are searching for answers. Did you know that Martial Law has been imposed at least 68 times in our country? Consider this Perfect Storm Scenario:

  • Inflation devalues your income and savings enough to where you are seriously impacted in your daily living and future prospects
  • Supply chain issues prevent you from living your normal lifestyle or worse, your family goes hungry or without essential items necessary for normal everyday living
  • Medical supplies are rationed and you can’t get antibiotics, infusion therapies, or other vital medicines including insulin
  • Gasoline and Diesel become so scarce that they become rationed
  • You find access to your bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and even credit cards are restricted

Our country is perilously close to one or more of these or other actions being taken. Think I’m crazy? If I told you pre-pandemic that baby formula would be hard to come by or that you might not be able to afford to put gas in your car; would you have believed me then? Occam’s Razor—the simplest explanation is normally correct. We are in trouble! Our trendline is moving downward. Need more proof? Did you know that more than $7 trillion has been lost in the stock market so far this year? While money is made and money is lost, what’s happening at the moment is something new. When added to so many other negative metrics, the smart money is beginning to think we are not in a normal economy. When you have Jamie Dimon and Elon Musk agreeing on the 2023 financial forecast…we may be in deep trouble!

  • Jamie Dimon says ‘brace yourself’ for an economic hurricane caused by the Fed and Ukraine war’
  • Elon Musk says ‘If history is any guide, not many will make it past the next recession’

Not comforting at all, I’d think you agree. There is an additional dynamic that injects the issue of uncertainty. People are simply tired of bad news. History teaches us that they will shoot the messenger that continually brings them that bad news. Arguably, there is no good news the administration can trumpet. When you cannot feed your baby, you realize that your children are going to school not to be educated, but indoctrinated, you can’t afford the gas to take the children to Disney World (forget that it is nearly ground zero for Wokeness) and government officials gleefully tell you that you don’t need your guns. All this is happening with the backdrop of stores all over our country being ransacked and at the same time shortages of everything are becoming everyday occurrences! In my view, our stability and anxiety are truly threatened.

Remember the 1976 movie Network? Do you recall the line ‘Go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ That my friends are where millions of us are today. The $64,000 question is what does “I’m not gonna take this anymore” mean? Is there something coming that we can’t see fully but gets many of us in motion like some frozen glacier that all of a sudden breaks free and starts moving? This is the danger.

This is where a Differential Diagnosis would be nice to have. We observe that the patient is both depressed and sometimes manic. The patient possesses Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt…FUD. At times, the patient is passive and unreactive. At other times, the patient is highly agitated and potentially dangerous. Based on observation, you believe the patient is at a breaking point and yet refuses to take his meds. The patient is non-compliant. What to do?

Bad things happen to non-compliant individuals under the care of a doctor. Why? The doctor wants to ensure the health and safety of both the patient and the people around the patient and seeks to establish a baseline of effective control. The patient is next diagnosed as anti-social. What does anti- social mean? One police department states “Antisocial behavior is defined as ‘behavior by a person which causes, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to persons not of the same household as the person.” That fits a large swath of us nervous nellies today. I know I distress a significant number of people I come in contact with! Thinking people should be highly agitated with the state of our country.

In Russia and China today, antisocial behavior will deliver you to the nearest mental asylum or prison. And, we are not exempt from extreme examples of how we treat our political prisoners either. Did you know that some non-violent prisoners from January 6th , have been held in solitary confinement while awaiting trial? Are we that far from how Russia and China in how we treat those that disagree with their governments? It’s only a question of perspective; isn’t it?

We are at a precipice at the moment. Civil disobedience is growing. The government splashes the title “White Supremacist on a wide swath of people today who are gob smacked at the assertion. And, the government considers many groups of white people a threat to society. Groups like:

  • Parents
  • Gun Owners and the NRA
  • Conservatives
  • Small Business Owners
  • Those who just happen to have a problem with the growth of government and its policies

The FBI, under the direction of the Justice Department, is surveilling these groups more and more. Democrats in Congress are demanding even more action. What are they afraid of? Isn’t it obvious? Our government is afraid of us and is using the rube of National Security to watch far too many of us. Citizens that want nothing more than to be left alone and live their lives as free citizens are frequently their target. The over-labeling of too many of us as white nationalists or white supremacists must stop. We are in the middle of what I believe is the criminalizing of thought. No one should be the government’s target simply because we actively resist popular narratives that we firmly believe are a direct threat to classic America’s existence.

Where will it end? That’s the question the Doctor is asking as he examines the patient. It is also something the government thinks about a lot! And, we must always remember that all governments exist to preserve their own power and influence.

God Bless America and especially Ukraine at this time of genocide and war that sees no end in sight.

Allan J. Feifer

Patriot

American Pie
Blog

Talking Heads, Sound Bites, and American Pie

Jun 13, 2022 by allanauthor 0 Comments , ,

Today we start with a classic riddle. What came first: the chicken or the egg? The answer? It depends! Today’s instant question is: How can America thrive in a world of contradictions? And, what will it take to create the conditions necessary to see us thrive once again?

We will largely stay away from politics and concentrate on the simple truths of living. Whether you live in the far artic as Inuit Indian tribes do, or are a Wyoming rancher, or a city dweller in New York City, we survive through the application of three basic institutional processes:

1. Institutional knowledge: Every organization develops over time a sense of what works and what doesn’t. Successful organizations recognize this and undertake a process for recording what works while avoiding what failed in the past.

2. Adherence to the societal rules of your organization: Let’s be realistic. You can’t be running around like a chicken with its head cut off and be successful. Your team must not work against each other or what is known to work. Organizations must reinforce successful actions and, avoid past mistakes while still encouraging innovation.

3. Support from the ground up for the organization’s leadership: There are few successful organizations that are constantly conducting internal warfare. All hierarchical organizations depend on great top-down leadership to set tone and goals that then allows for a successful buy-in by the rest of the organization. Throw away any false ideas you may harbor that everyone can do whatever they want and the organization will still achieve success.

Without these three prerequisites in play, chaos reigns. Assuming your organization (family, village, city, state, country, company) has successfully implemented these three essential tenants, you have a functioning entity that is in balance. Today, I want to talk about how organizations get off balance, specifically our country. I am reminded of my physics class in High School all so many years ago. Newton’s First Law of Motion states:

“An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”

The United States, right after the Second World War, was the undisputed and sole superpower in the world. We had the moral authority, the industrial might, the military power, diplomatic influence, the inventiveness, and were an economic dynamo that seemingly was unstoppable. And, then gradually, starting in the early 1970s, much like the famous song American Pie, the music gradually stopped playing throughout our great land, landing us where we are today.  I’m 65 years old. This is not the country I grew up in and that’s not a good thing. Nothing was impossible for my generation and preceding generations. We sent men to the moon more than 50 years ago. We built the Interstate Highway System, we created computers, the Internet, and the cell phone among thousands of innovations that enriched the entire world. Yes, we have our faults, but families were strong, economic opportunity was everywhere and the entire world saw all boats raised in our wake.

What went wrong? What force changed our direction? How did we lose our way? Why do we seek the destruction of our heritage, our heroes, and our country? Today, we are going to attempt to answer these key questions with the hope that we can see our mojo return before it’s too late and we completely abdicate the mantle of world leadership.

Contenders are waiting in the wings and they are not nearly as beneficent as we have been. China seeks to control its citizens like so many machines, where only the state matters. You can witness it in real- time as tens of millions of Chinese were restricted to their homes due to Covid, sometimes without food. You saw it as the government killing pets when the orders came to vacate homes by the thousands. The truly evil Chinese Social Credit System rules your life and limits your potential. You see it in the bullets to the back of the head for those that raise their voice against the oppressors. Taiwan sees China’s political ambitions, as almost all South China Sea nations also see this developing evil and are starting to band together against an ascendant China that seeks to replace the United States as the world’s leader, but not in such a benevolent manner. We dare not see that happen.

So, what exactly has so undercut our country to the point we are at today? Journalism today creates no more Huntley-Brinkley’s, no more Walter Cronkite’s, Edward R. Murrow, and others who told you the truth, even when it hurt. They were Patriotic individuals with no agenda, no slant, no desire to be thought leaders or something other than what they were supposed to be, i.e., to…deliver the news that was relevant and important to understand. We’ve lost that and, in the process, we’ve lost the trust of millions and millions of thinking individuals who are no longer able to make rational decisions based on nothing but the truth. The truth of conflicting “facts” that are anything but and, unreported but important stories has created a knowledge vacuum in our country that is an immense factor in where we are today. Talking Heads exist on all sides and deliver Sound Bite Journalism to a population that is both inpatient and untrusting (or believe everything they hear) of what they are told or read.

Negativism has become a firestorm in our country and is a cancer that is at the root of many of the problems we live with today. If we can’t trust the information we are given, not only do we birth even more mistrust, but we also create the lunatic fringes that make up their own truth in the absence of generally accepted truth. We did this to ourselves. Therefore, it is incumbent on us to fix the problems we created.

I have no idea how we can quickly return our country to a well-informed, patriotic, family-oriented, God- fearing, hard-working society. Millions and millions missed out on belonging to a traditional family unit and a society that understood what was required of them, understood implicitly how they fit in, and, trusted and even lionized their leaders. We live in an anti-truth environment that has turned how we think about ourselves on our heads. Are we ripe for a revolution? Maybe so. Like a storm that continues unabated until balance is restored, we need a great national leader to help us restore balance, direction, and trust in our country. We need this leader to guide us peacefully back on course and to forestall the possibility of a new Civil War that is closer than many of us might believe.

Just a few days ago I was bowled over by Matthew McConaughey’s speech delivered at the White House. If you haven’t heard it, you owe it to yourself to listen closely to see how a great communicator delivers sage advice and positive and reasonable reconciliation ideas on a tough subject. I don’t have to agree with everything someone says when I listen to a person who speaks authentic truth. I wish we had more communicators like him.

I wish I knew who that next leader, that healer might be. I maintain hope that regardless of the dearth of leadership today, it will happen, soon or later. We can’t lose the greatest country on earth, the greatest force for good on our planet and that bright beacon of hope so much of the world has depended on without going down fighting. For the time being, stay engaged and do what you can to live a good, uplifted life!

A famous line from Gone with the Wind delivered by Scarlett O’Hara was, “Tomorrow is Another Day.” Friends, every new day presents us with possibilities. I see small embers that only need us to fan them into the kind of fire we all need to warm and nurture our society. I believe that we are building a critical mass of heretofore unknown leaders that will lead us back to the Promised Land that so many of us ache to return to. Let’s be ready when that next great leader reveals an uplifting and doable message, a future we so desperately seek!

God Bless America and especially Ukraine at this time of genocide and war that sees no end in sight.

Allan J. Feifer

Patriot

There be Monsters
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There be Monsters

Jun 6, 2022 by allanauthor 0 Comments ,

Hello Fellow Patriots:

Uvalde Texas and Robb Elementary School. Two more names were added to an ever-longer list of schools and places where senseless mass shootings of our children occurred. Add the four below and together you have the five worst mass shootings of children in the past 20 years:

  • Sandy Hook in Newton, Connecticut
  • Margery Stoneman in Parkland, Florida
  • Santa Fe High school in Santa Fe, Texas
  • West Nickel Mine School in Bart Township, Pennsylvania

I adhere to a policy of not mentioning the names of the animals that massacre children. The new left espouses that these children were victims of an immoral America. The crazies come out immediately after every tragedy to gain political advantage. I want to punch people like that in the nose who are spring-loaded to spout that kind of vitriol and misdirection on command for political benefit. These children were innocents, how dare anyone make political hay off their cold dead bodies. There is no logic, there is no God’s plan, and there is seemingly nothing that can change the pure unadulterated evil in the hearts of these killers. No, they are not men. Men do not do these unspeakable acts. They are Monsters and it’s high time the Monsters fear us, rather than we fear them.

We created these Monsters with concepts like toxic male masculinity and the death of community, family, and the lack of a strict moral code. These boys and their victims are casualties of a raging social war being played out each day in our country. The underlying societal problems will not be fixed anytime soon.

We are a country that wants quick fixes without pain. Mass rhetoric like “take guns away” are great sound bites, but will never happen and would not fix the problems we have if we tried. The fix needed here is going to hurt and we must have the fortitude to do what’s required. Even with the best of intentions and actions, you will never eliminate all the Monsters. But we can find and remove many of them. It will take will. It will take effort and it must include a non-political judgment by both sides that this is different, and that we must come together to keep our schools safer. It can’t be about politics, gotcha’s, and told you so’s. All problems are solvable. It takes will, a crisis that most people agree needs to be addressed, and a staunch belief that acceptable solutions can be found.

Let’s get past the most significant problem at bar: This is not about guns. It’s specifically a question of who should not have access to guns. We are a country with guns very much at our cultural center. Yes, white people have traditionally been the gun owners, but more and more, guns protect all people regardless of race. Protection that is needed in a society that has forgotten the importance of both individual and property rights. A country that cannot depend on the police to protect them when it matters the most. Guns are widely held by most of us and that is a fact that no free country will be able to change by government edict. That’s how revolutions commence!

Beyond the issue of gun ownership alone, are the detractors that think the look, as much as the function of a firearm is somehow important to the debate. Whether you are shot with a 9mm handgun round to the head or a .223 AR-15 round to the body, you are going to be just as dead or injured. So-called Assault Weapons are not some kind of all-powerful weapon that is more lethal than other firearms. That’s just the hype the detractors want those that possess little or no knowledge of firearms want you to believe.

Monsters can be barred from legal ownership of guns but will find either guns or other weapons elsewhere. With that in mind, let’s go all-in on identifying these people before they do harm and isolate them from society. It is easier to do than you might suspect. Let’s examine the facts.

Of the five Monsters who perpetrated the killings mentioned above, 4 out of 5 were under 21 and of course, all-male. They were also white. Finally, each of the five had previously been identified either by one or more of their parents, school officials, law enforcement, mental health professionals, friends, social media, or even by the individual himself seeking help for their issues. Every one of them made a pre-violence outcry for help through some observable means, even if they did not understand it themselves. Let’s stop right here and discuss the ramifications of individuals with a suspected propensity for violence and how we ignore it. Why are we not all over that? Here’s why:

In 1967 Reagan signs the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act and ends the practice of institutionalizing patients against their will. This was a triumph for people that believed that mental illness was exactly like any other illness such as a fever, cold, or even heart disease. But it was ultimately devastating to tens of millions of people euphemistically slated to become mainstreamed going forward. These individuals make up the bulk of homeless in the US today and an astronomically high number of those that commit petty crimes and thefts and even more heartbreaking; are addicted to drugs. A huge segment of this population is largely hopeless and not likely to find a better path forward as we walk past them like so many zombies each day. Tragic.

The foregoing has had a profound effect on how we treat dangerous and even potentially murderous individuals. We have imbued them with artificial rights that effectively serve to dimmish the rights of others not to be victimized by the squeegee man or through aggressive panhandling on the street. Entire streets and communities are all too similar to third-world barrios with defecation everywhere, needles, trash, and filth. We do little to nothing to fix this obvious problem because we have given a superior right to the mentally diminished to live off the greater world through charity, government support, and worse, too often abandoned to their fate amid the squalor of American cities and more and more often; clean American subdivision streets. You can point to the “success” of mainstreaming only if you are a heartless individual that simply can’t see the squalor, sickness, crime, hopelessness, and worse that is part and parcel of our way of looking at these troubled but legally empowered individuals. They produce nothing as nothing is expected for society’s largess, consuming resources instead of real attempts to redeem these troubled souls. It amounts to a game played by do-gooders. And, I am not shy about calling out what should be easily seen as a national tragedy and should be seen as such, as we move on to the problem of how to deal with our Monsters. Our breeding ground for our Monsters is the privacy protections and other “rights” we give dangerous individuals.

The US supports hundreds of thousands of people engaged in servicing these people through charity, government services, NGOs, sanitation services, medical services, jails, legal aid societies, and the various other services and people required to keep dysfunctional individuals alive. “They have rights”, I can hear you say. But, what of the rights of their victims? When did the rights of those who break our laws or who choose not to be functioning members of society somehow become superior to those everyday citizens? You see it everywhere, that should no longer be in dispute. Can you see how our cities have devolved to where we are today? The absence of a functioning moral compass is an important hurdle we need to come to grips with if we are going to change things.

The issue of how we deal with mental illness is a question that must be grappled with before we can fix our problem with our Monsters. The actual process of identifying our Monsters is relatively easy. As stated earlier, we can identify those most likely to cause the kinds of actions we are trying to interdict. Profiling is an essential tool that is highly effective regardless of what libs would have you believe. The behaviors, affect, and social media presence, among several other indicators, could fairly easily help us to identify the relatively small number of potential Monsters.

We must profile those males under 21 and prioritize them for further evaluation, observation, and even removal depending on the severity of what is uncovered. We must include an appeal process and other protections, but the result must be that we are on top of who those people likely to create tomorrow’s headline and adopt an effective method of keeping them away from children, teachers, school personnel, and others. And, oh by the way, properly medicated and counseled, we might be able to eventually reintroduce healthy citizens back into society. That should be the goal and that’s an admirable one.

It is not only doable but essential that our country begin to deal with things as they are, rather than what we desire them to be. Wokeism permeates the entire social services arena. What is obvious to you and me is couched by them in some mumbo-jumbo language that deflects from the reality of a situation. Participants in the pantheon of the mental health industry may well vigorously attempt to prevent any actions they believe will stigmatize those selected for review who is ultimately considered to be a threat. It’s a question of what you value more; safety for the vast majority or protection of some theoretical rights of someone hell-bent on killing a child, or their teachers.

There is no other way to get a handle on a problem that threatens how we as a country will exist going forward. I am repulsed by solutions that attempt to deal with problems by punishing or restricting the rights of the 99.99% of us that are not potential suicidal or maniacal, instead of focusing on the Monsters in our midst that fantasize about how they will go out in a blaze of glorified evil. Our nation’s fear of calling out evil for what it is has become our new normal as we repudiate concepts of morality and religion. A nation that acts as if all our differences, no matter how deviant, are to be celebrated has gone off the rails and lost touch of reality and truth. Many things in life are demonstrably destructive to a healthy society’s goals and aspirations. Too many of our young live destructive lives that no one should accept or encourage as just another admirable facet of diversity. Yet, here we are. The quirkier, the better it seems. Oddballs are encouraged while conformity is somehow thought of as a leftover remnant of white privilege. Something to be ostracized, something to get away from as we continue to overhaul the most successful society in history. Who will stop the madness? It must be you and I. No one else will step up and stand in the breach of a society locked into a death spiral.

Evil is evil. Step one is for all of us; especially those in power to wake up and demand that we screen the crazies that would do us and society as a whole, harm. I fear that common sense has become passe in this country in favor of a 1984-style society mindset rapidly seeing the best of us going down the tubes cheered on by loser fanatics and their supporters. Today, all they want from the old guard is our successes; our assets, our property, and even our lives. Nothing that threatens their march to the sea that has as its objective, redistribution of wealth and an end to our Judeo-Christian traditions. This is what is at stake. A worthy discussion we must have before it is too late.

God Bless America and especially Ukraine at this time of genocide and war that sees no end in sight.

Allan J. Feifer

Patriot

Violation of Trust
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Violation of Trust—Where America Finds Itself Today

May 30, 2022 by allanauthor 0 Comments ,

Hello Fellow Patriots:

It occurred to me (probably you as well) that there is more turmoil in our country today than ever before; at least as far as our lifetime is concerned. If it were just a question of the sheer quantity of issues facing our country, that might be something we could fix over time, knocking off one issue after another. But there is something else going on that is far more pernicious and for which we don’t seem to have an answer; what to do to correct the ever-steeper downward trajectory that is shaking our country to its core.

The issue at play now is that the majority of Americans have lost trust in the ability of our leaders to govern and even more insidious, whether we can depend on those leaders to tell us the truth. I fear we are simply being handled or manipulated like so much cattle. Here are a few examples that are emblematic of the breadth and depth of the issues of trust we face today:

  • The Supreme Court Leaker: let’s not deal with the leak itself, just the fact that the sanctity of the court was broken. No one seems to have any interest in prioritizing this profound breach of trust and the likely negative effect it will have on future deliberations and decisions. Why has this traitor not been outed? I say traitor because the individual wants to effectively substitute his/her opinion over that of a constitutionally constituted Supreme Court. Think about that for a moment. Doesn’t this rise to the level of Treason in its damage to our systems of trust? My understanding is that the list of suspects is only about 40 individuals long. More than four weeks in and the usurper has not been identified. That person must be found and outed. The Supreme Court cannot stand if we, as a country lose faith in the constitutionally mandated deliberative process, which is foundational to the proper and effective functioning of our country. That’s really what’s on the line, friends.
  • Baby Formula: The closing of the Abbott facility was completely botched. Everyone and I mean everyone in the government immediately recognized that 40% of the formula produced in the US came from a single plant and what the effects on the baby formula supply chain would be. I might be able to forgive the failure of forethought in not diversifying our supply years ago. But what I can’t forgive is the complete breakdown of responsibility by our FDA and the President (through his staff) for not having raised the alarm as week by week, the problems grew worse four months before the plant’s actual closing. Now, we are three months post closure. That’s a total of seven wasted months. Made worse by the fact that there was a heads-up that this might happen back in September of 2021. It would have been reasonable and appropriate to commence planning for a shortage of baby formula right then. Prioritizing the reopening of this critical plant simply wasn’t a high priority to government functionaries until the blowback happened and that was entirely predictable on day one. Hungry babies in America are a new low for our country. And it comes on the heels of one crisis after another, all of which share the same traits and commonality and are indicative of the same breakdown of leadership, analysis, and trust.
  • The War in Ukraine: Intelligence experts claim they warned the administration that Russia was going to attack in April of 2021. We rewarded every minor withdrawal, promises of a withdrawal, or supposed diminishment of tensions in the runup to the actual invasion with a Presidential pat on Putin’s back for being a good world citizen. Russian strategy was effective in keeping the US and its allies sleeping for far too long. Instead of sending lethal weapons in quantity early, we sent mostly non-lethal aid to Ukraine before the war’s commencement. We were fearful to place sanctions on Russia that could very well have signaled the US’s resolve and that might have headed off the utter destruction, death, and injuries that followed. Policies of appeasement were on full display for all the world to see and the inevitable result was an emboldened Russia. We continually validated Russia’s prewar assumptions. Even after Ukraine was brutally attacked in a massive Combined Arms Invasion, we sent mixed messages to the Russians who believed we lacked the resolve to do what it takes to deter the bear. This kind of ambiguity is how World Wars start. This highlighted a massive breach in the trust we place in our leaders to prevent exactly the kind of genocide now on display and in how the entire world perceives the lack of effectiveness of our President. Developing as we speak is the issue of world famine. Russia is effectively blockading wheat and other agribusiness items from reaching the mostly poor and developing nations that depend on the Ukrainian breadbasket. Wait till people start starving for our next kneejerk reaction. Watch the hand wringing and moralistic statements. This should have been factored in before the war started. Talking heads are just beginning to react to this slow-moving Tsunami that threatens to see thousands slowly die of starvation. This again is partially on us for continued failures of leadership.
  • The sky-high cost of energy: Why do we have a shortage of energy and why aren’t we being told the truth? The salient question every American should ask is are we being deceived by the President? Old “circle back” Psaki was asked endlessly why we are producing less energy, even today? Pre-Pandemic, under Trump, the US was producing a record 13 million barrels of oil per day and we even had a surplus to export. Production fell by 3 million BPD due to slackened demand during the Pandemic amid new Presidential policies. Production is now back up to 11.6 BPD but is having difficulty accelerating. Why? There has been plenty of warning time. To this very day, there is no plan in place to supply additional energy quickly. What happens after the million barrel a day drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve stops after 6 months that the President ordered a couple of months ago? I would assume they’ll blame the greedy oil companies once again. Failures of leadership are once again on display!  Could the underlying reason be the simple truth that Biden articulated in 2019 “I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel.”Is he just keeping his promise and lying to us all? My take is simple; he desires high prices and cares not about the damage to American families and our position in the world, all to support his Green New Deal initiatives. Biden is all-in on electric vehicles and solar power in general. In a classic carrot and stick approach, Biden simply is turning that axiom upside-down. He’s punishing our population first and promising them better days ahead. His promises ring hollow.  It may be hard for you to understand but producing oil is capital intensive. Oil company executives are ready, willing, and able to dramatically up oil production, but there is a problem. Biden may allow companies to explore for and produce new oil and undertake the required investment today. But oil companies are scared to death that after the political crisis abates, the President will kick the supports out from under the industry and leave oil companies holding the bag. That’s exactly what happened when he took office. What is it people say…” fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?” So far, the petroleum industry is not taking the bait. We’ll have a lot more to say about this in a future article.

There are so many basic issues that are just as important as the above and yes, just as disheartening and demoralizing; immigration, woke policies, education, Covid response, and even the massive issue of race-based policies setting races against each other. We could go on seemingly endlessly. Is it no wonder we don’t trust our government, its leaders, policies, and even its well-intended intentions any longer?

Fundamentally, my examination of President Biden is that he either believes in what he says or is being manipulated by his puppet masters. Historically, Biden was not known for his intelligence. It’s a fact that you can readily research to verify for yourself in many articles. Biden is a verified plagiarizer who finished college near the bottom of his class. That Biden is a documented prevaricator is easy to discover in many documents. That’s a problem for the leader of the free world and also a point that can and is being exploited by our enemies. The leader of our country must necessarily be above reproach. He represents the best of us. He cannot be either mediocre or of questionable character and integrity. How have we lost that understanding? Why are the people running for President so imperfect that we have to frequently hold our noses as we pull the lever in polling booths?

Any discussion of the deep loss of trust between America’s population and its leaders must inevitably touch upon the many statements about Biden’s purported corruption in office. In over 40 years in the Senate and now as our President, Biden has deflected, denied, laughed at, and otherwise, run away from the many allegations of wrongdoing of the purported Biden Crime Family. One of my best friends, The Queen who thankfully edits my diatribes, will frequently call “foul” on some of my sources. And, that’s the point. There are dozens of claims, allegations, and more that point to a substantial ongoing conspiracy that permeates the Biden family. But, like Hillary, the Justice Department, FBI, and other investigators and other sworn individuals perpetually give the likes of Biden a pass. Hillary was just called out for what could easily be called a criminal conspiracy by her former Campaign Manager Robby Mook. I am still waiting to hear that the FBI is not only investigating, but actually charging those that manipulated Presidential elections with false narratives they conspired to create and spread widely. God, we need to clean house. But who’s going to do it?

We have arrived at a point that I believe was intended by Biden and his acolytes, that is, an ability to traipse around substantive issues with impunity. Impunity is conferred by a legal system that is no longer even-handed and a media that simply do not report stories they don’t agree with politically. The utter disregard for breaking those sacred bonds of trust closely held between ordinary Americans and their leadership, a required sense of fealty to the principles and practices of a nation that has stood for good, stood for a better tomorrow, and been that beacon of hope to the entire world is now in doubt. That is a tragedy. And, it is entirely self-inflicted but still not challenged by rank-and-file Americans that are either disinterested or worse, have given up trying to make sense of what’s going on.

A dumbed-down electorate has effectively collapsed or just given up hope for leadership we can all trust; falling for the kind of tripe that our enemies will see and take advantage of.

May God somehow help us to undo the harm that the destroyers have wrought upon this nation before it is too late.

God Bless America and especially Ukraine at this time of genocide and war that sees no end in sight.

Allan J. Feifer

Patriot

Buffalo Shootings
Blog

The Buffalo Shootings – The Story Behind the Story

May 23, 2022 by allanauthor 0 Comments ,

Hello Fellow Patriots:

Saturday’s mass shooting event is a tragedy. The even greater tragedy was that it was both foreseeable and preventable; but not in the manner you might think. I’ve been searching for a pithy comment that embodies the senseless war we have created in this country to no avail. That war serves a political interest for some, I suggest, in particular, the Democratic Party.

First, let’s start with what we know about Saturday’s events:

1. An 18-year-old shot and killed black people that he targeted
2. The individual (we won’t use his name so as not to empower him) was the subject of a mental
health investigation last year while in high school and was on a “watch list”
3. We don’t know what radicalized him, but we do know he was very active on social media
4. We can also reasonably assume that this individual’s perception of reality was guided by
confusing and emotional arguments dealing with the European idea of “Replacement Theory”
even if he did not know it originated in Europe.

Check this Out – Where Have All the Workers Gone?

These are the facts. But they don’t tell the story. You have to ask yourself, you have to wonder, how is it our society is creating so many “defective” individuals that somehow think they are heroes for taking other people’s lives? What empowers them? What allows them to not only exist but to thrive in today’s America. We’ll attempt to answer that question and others in this post.

Let’s deal right off the bat with something that highlights how absurd we’ve gotten, and in the process how we create the kind of societal pressures and reactions that we should abhor. Black Pride, Gay Pride, Hispanic Pride, White Pride, pick which of these four statements is largely considered hate speech by the left? Unless you are in LaLa land, White Pride is a guaranteed pick. The narrative is that whites should possess white guilt and are implicitly racist. Therefore, how can they have pride in their race? Balderdash! All races, religions, and people from other nations can and should have pride in who they are and where they are from. What moron wants to stand there and tell me that all whites should be tarred with the same brush? How many whites are white nationalists or white supremacists? Nobody knows. The left would like you to believe the number could be 50 million. Another says everyone who voted for Donald Trump. Another says 78% of all the murders in the US are by white supremacists. The problem I see is that those groups that make these preposterous claims want the numbers to be high to support their views, but it’s a huge lie. Yes, there are a few thousand (or even tens of thousands) that belong to extremist groups, with many of those in prisons. It is neither a huge number nor a rapidly growing number relative to our population. If you think I am wrong; quote a reliable unbiased source. So, go ahead white people. You have just as much right to be prideful as any other group, maybe more, at least here in America. Because it is a fact not in dispute, that predominantly white people, through their will, courage, and creativity, created the greatest nation on earth. Can anyone with half a brain really disagree? Yup, warts and all, this is/was a country that created the concept and fact of opportunity for all.

There is real anger in this country. America has become a Race Centered Society. Republicans, by our nature, don’t see things through a lens of race; Democrats do. Their litmus test of fairness is the equality of results. Keep in mind that Republicans freed the slaves and Democrats (individuals, not the Democratic Party) founded the KKK. That is true history that Dems don’t want you to know and understand. Democrat policies encourage race-baiting. Democrats historically discriminated against people of color for more than 150 years while screaming at the top of their lungs how much they love minorities.

Look at the stillborn product of their efforts. After embracing black people and essentially adopting them through the Great Society Programs created in the 60s and ever more supercharged today, blacks are economically, socially, and criminally still on the bottom rung of the ladder. Black families used to enjoy the same intact families that whites did. Now intact black families are far too rare. We reap what we sow.

Check this Out – A Divided Nation and the Brite White Line of Truth

Mass Immigration is exacerbating racial frictions and will hurt those on the bottom more than at the top; at least for the short term. Eventually, the burden of caring for untold millions of illegals will break our country financially or just weaken us to the point where we will collapse economically or militarily. It is easy to see what is happening right now. Instead of putting troops on the border to repel the millions coming here, we put out the welcome mat. Guess what! People come in droves while our feckless leaders make-believe all is well. This is more than just an irritant to those that go out and work each day and pay their taxes. Many see this as another reason they feel that they are under attack. Frustrations have been rising for a long time, my friends. It’s no wonder that a few crazies do the unthinkable.

America’s focus on race is a cancer. As I state over and over, America can’t guarantee success, but it can and should guarantee an equal start. But this can only be realized if we are race-neutral in our thinking. With trillions of dollars spent on programs designed to equalize results, the opposite has happened. A neutral outside observer would have to conclude that the vast majority of government programs only created a society of dependent individuals, black, brown, and now, increasingly white. Was that their intent from the start? The Replacement Debate is an obvious result of extreme nervousness on the part of our population that is without a doubt, under attack, i.e., white people. We could write an entire book on the subject and not settle it. It is an undeniable fact that unchecked immigration, of a kind never seen before, is changing the racial makeup of our country. That’s another fact that will see you accused of being racist if you simply want to have a debate on the subject. And, that’s one of our central themes today.

The left seeks to suppress free speech. That’s my problem with moderation (censorship) on social media platforms and verbal and written speech everywhere else. We never had taboo subjects as we have now. People are uncomfortable with being forced to accept views, laws, and policies that are more like enforced directives. It flies in the face of free people who are used to arguing their points in a libertarian manner. Free speech today is a function of the domain you are in and their particular political leanings. That’s scary. Free speech should be just that, free speech. Yes, free speech can be troubling at times, but there is no alternative. Either speech is free or it is not. I sure hope we come to our senses before it is too late. My free speech trumps your need for safe spaces every time!

The Story Behind the Story:

If there is evil in men’s hearts, then I think that politicians in general and many ostensibly devoted civil servants are the Devil’s Handmaidens. After the end of the Second World War in interviews with soldiers, bureaucrats, and most of the captured leaders of the Third Reich, two things were consistent: first, everyone was just following orders and second, nobody saw anything untoward at the time. I’m Jewish so I maintain there is a special place in Hell for those guilty not only of mass murder, but the millions of minions, for which if not for them, nothing like that could have happened. Yet, even with the knowledge not so far back in time of the Holocaust, I could see it happen all over again. And, nobody would step forward and say “enough.” Exhibit A is Ukraine right now. Hitler has a new name…Putin. But, enough of that for today.

Government is awful at social engineering and has been the actual culprit that has completely divided us. They accomplish this all by themselves. If their failure is so obvious, then why is the Democrat Party continually doubling down on this tactic? The saddest fact of all is that the shooting that occurred in Buffalo has become another exploitable event. See Biden going to Buffalo to “heal people” and to use this crisis de jour to advance other agendas, like increasing his standing and that of Democratic candidates. Rahm Emanuel with his statement about “never waste a crisis” would be proud

Check this Out – Symbolism and the Democratic Party

The most horrible message of all, communicated to young impressionable minds, both black and white, is that who they are is largely determined by the color of their skin. What a horrible statement that is. While seldom stated out loud, it is painfully obvious that the government is communicating clearly to minorities, “You can’t make it on your own, you need us to pave the way and reserve for you a special place in line because you can’t be successful on your own.” I can’t imagine the irreparable harm this message does to the psyche of black people. The messaging directed at white people is just as bad. They are led to believe they are potential slave owners themselves, irredeemably white. Thus, their misplaced anger is once in a while unleashed by some crazy impressionable individual on innocent people of color. A direct consequence of the government manipulating people’s minds at a very basic level. We have identified the enemy.

Instead of yelling “My Body, My Choice” or like so many other slogans, perhaps the message that should be screamed the loudest by people should be “Leave us alone to succeed or fail on our own.” Government needs to stay out of people’s lives. Sloganism, frequently prompted by government dabbling in Social Engineering is utterly divisive. An all too frequent focus on that sloganism is race.

The instant question is “Can we be truly free when so many decisions are made on a basis of race?” Can the farming of Black people by the Democratic party be an effective strategy going forward? I think not. Those leaders who perpetuate racial conflict, are the real villains that have the blood of the Buffalo victims on their hands. They must be stopped.

God Bless America and especially Ukraine at this time of genocide.

Allan J. Feifer

Patriot

workers gone
Blog

Where Have All the Workers Gone?

May 16, 2022 by allanauthor 0 Comments , ,

Hello Fellow Patriots:

Welcome back! Today, I am going to focus on four main concepts that together could explain how our chickens have indeed come home to roost:

1. Through the adoption of Globalism, which is as much about socialism as it is about economics, we have changed who we are at our very core, introducing socialism and the expansion of government into everything.

2. And, oh by the way…we’ve stopped producing things! Who thought that would be a good decision? Baby formula anyone?

3. How government, at all levels, but especially through its overarching hand in manipulating how and what we teach in schools from Pre-K to University has truly sent us down the rabbit hole of Wokeism with children who graduate functionally illiterate. As completely crazy as it seems, the more we spend, the dumber our kids become. Our country spends more than anybody in the world, yet we rank 11th in science and 33 rd in Math. What we teach does not work. And, it is far worse for minorities and the poor. It’s a national tragedy.

4. What has happened to our youth? Ambition, drive, and taking risks has been replaced by having fun with friends, living off Mom and Dad, and retreating into an online world of Live Action Play constructs where more and more of our young people functionally live.

Check Out Our Blog A Divided Nation and the Brite White Line of Truth

In the past, we’ve discussed Globalism as more or less a standalone issue. Today we are going to pull together disparate concepts, that individually were pushed by this or that political action faction but just like nuclear fission, are now self-sustaining in a manner that no one likely contemplated. This deserves some more understanding before we move on. There is no doubt in my mind that America has enemies that manipulate individual groups for devious ends. The success of those actions runs the gamut from duds to profound successes. The American Communist Party has advocated for decades for…Communism. This has resulted in complete failure. Same for groups like the violent “The Weathermen” or “Students for a Democratic Society, a.k.a. SDS; all flashes in the pan that made news, injured or killed people but failed in their primary thrust of significantly changing our county. There have been and are dozens of groups that I could name that sought to overthrow our country and failed.

But their collective failure paved the way for what faces us at the moment. Much more sophisticated people and organizations learned from the failure of previous anti-democratic organizations and moved on to what was next. Who are some of those organizations and people?

  • George Soros through his $32 billion donations to his “Open Society Foundations” manipulates over 100 other organizations and state, local, and the Federal government through targeted contributions, free or grant paid consulting, all designed to deliver Soros approved messaging and insidious change everywhere.
  • In every American neighborhood are the many schools that have become completely co-opted by liberal, quasi-political, neo-racist, anti-family, anti-capitalistic organizations that together, seek to undermine free speech and individualism in favor of groupthink and Marxist thought.
  • Hundreds of Civil Rights, Advocacy, and Social Justice organizations have, as their central goal, fundamental change to what America has historically stood for frequently without a crystal-clear picture of what they would replace it with. https://startguide.org/orgs/orgs00.html
  • Tech firms with their various platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, and Snapchat, among others, have more influence over people, especially the young, than parents, schools, and all other media outlets combined.

Together all of the above relentlessly grinds away at both the many uneducated and suggestive minds and those that think “fairness” is something that can be legislated or manifested out of thin air. The result is now a self-sustaining mishmash of neo thought that collectively just stands for the denigration and destruction of America and its would-be replacement with something different, whatever that is. Far too many of us respond to intensive sloganism as a substitute for rational thought which has gone either out the window or just out of style. Sloganism is their new religion. It is the rule and not the exception, that when pollsters, journalists, or social scientists ask those rioting, demonstrating, and shouting slogans at the top of their lungs what they are their issues, or why they are protesting; they have a complete inability to explain themselves rationally. It’s obvious to anyone listening to their failure to explain themselves that largely, you are seeing the personification of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” actually implemented in life. https://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/05/12/watch-confused-trump-protesters-say-they-miss-obama-but-cant-really-explain-why or https://www.usasupreme.com/epic-clueless-anti-trump-protesters-dont-know-potus/

Check Out Our Blog Symbolism and the Democratic Party

Here’s the million-dollar question that nobody can quite answer. Three years ago, we had a booming economy, full employment, and practically none of the many thorny issues we are facing now. I know some of you will say, well we had Trump and then Covid. All true. Trump was great for the economy and Biden has not been able to replicate Trump’s polling numbers on how positively people feel about the economy or the future. Trump had to deal with Covid and that reason alone lost him the election without any additional help from the contrived Russiagate or several other made-up attack themes. Government policies forced many businesses to close that never reopened, especially small businesses. The economy was flooded with cash by both Trump and then Biden. But the truth is that we got the Great Resignation that only began with Biden’s Inauguration and hasn’t slowed down since. Why did the public’s perception of a negative direction for the company come to be? The” Quit Rate” jumped 28% when Biden entered office, a record. Here are a few key takeaways: https://innerjoin.bit.io/resignations-have-increased-every-year-since-2010-2b88b53c7f32

A. The highest rate of checking out is in the 30-45 age group

B. Turnover is at record highs for young people

C. For those age 55 or greater, the Quit Rate is actually lower…. hmm, what’s going on?

D. The Quit Rate for women is much higher than for men.

I find no definitive information to support a conclusive statement. Therefore, I am left to use my knowledge, intelligence, and ability to see patterns, (I’m always self-effacing and humble) that are obvious to me. Here’s my take on what has happened.

A. The government screwed the pooch (an aviation term) and scared the crap out of everyone unnecessarily with generalized statements and actions that cost us trillions of dollars, our position in the world, and exploded the suicide rate among our young women by 51%! More young women died from suicide than Covid!

B. Millions of people stopped paying student debt, home mortgages, rent payments, and other forms of debt and/or expenses. This was trillions and trillions of dollars of financial relief. Millions more have not begun to either pay back the accumulated debt or even pay current debts. They are waiting for the next bailout.

C. The government gave several trillion dollars of cash in hand money to people indiscriminately, regardless of whether they had a need or not. Heck, they paid hundreds of millions directly to incarcerated individuals! Fraud is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. This is how you create inflation, and they did. This is how you train people not to work; how to become dependent.

D. Now, with the downgrading of Covid to just another kind of flu…https://patrioticneighbor.com/2022/05/09/fda-now-ready-to-admit-covid-is-just-the-new-flu/ the reality of how badly the government reacted to Covid is starkly evident. 85% of all deaths occurred in people over 60. Why couldn’t they figure that out earlier, as Israel did, and not do all the follow- on damage their decisions caused? And, they are not ready to admit their failures yet.

E. At the end of today, Americans are confused, scared, and no longer able to trust their leaders in a way not found in our history. There is so much going wrong today, that a dysfunctional government is only the tip of their concerns. Add in inflation, Wokeness, oil prices, the war in Ukraine, violent crime, open borders, and the headlong effort by democrats to socialize our country and it’s no wonder people are frightened out of their wits.

You Reap What You Sow:

All behavior is essentially learned. Yes, we have innate behavior as well, but genes only “lean on” our life experiences to modify some of those behaviors. https://www.nu.edu/resources/ask-an-expert-is-human-behavior-genetic-or-learned/ The concept of Operant Behavior was developed in the 1920s by Dr. Burrhus Skinner. His work with chickens proved to be extensible to human beings as well. Trying to explain a lifetime of work in a sentence is hard. Essentially what Dr. Skinner found was that encouraging or discouraging behaviors threw the use of punishment or reward overrode many natural tendencies. It is in that way that our society has changed natural behaviors that were thought to be innate in us all. Natural tendencies like working, forming families, contributing to society, and leading moral lives are innately embedded in us. However, that innate behavior has been overwritten through rewards for conformity and punishments for those traveling a more traditional path. https://healthresearchfunding.org/bf-skinner-behaviorism-theory-explained/

Think I’m nuts? Let’s see if you recognize any of the following as being true. Instead of working the first job for money, or, if your school gives out grades on a sliding scale, or if your social group does not engage in current events, or, you are taught in school that your self-image need not be comprised of accomplishment, just your own belief, or, you get checks from the government to attend school without having to work, or, your image of self comes from your smart device…maybe you live in an artificial construct and not the real world? Ladies and Gentlemen…we have arrived at our own Brave New World and it’s not very pretty.

And, it is not just the young whose lives have been coopted, either. Adults, particularly those under 60 are reevaluating life in general. Uncertainty is a condition that only the strong thrive in. Years and years of negative conditioning, conflicting messaging, and the abject failures of leadership on display have dispirited many and led to the Uncertainty that is now driving many of us to the exits. A nation that faces uncertainty can do one of two things:

A. It pulls together to overcome the uncertainty
B. It begins to disintegrate as the rats escape a perceived sinking ship

This is where we are today and explains so much of what is happening to us. It’s as if scientists told us that an earth extinction event was going to happen on a date certain; what would people do? Those that could deal with the inevitable would go about their daily lives, while those unable to cope would rearrange their lives to cope with the time remaining. They would check out of their normal day-to-day activities and that’s what we are seeing now.

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What Could Change Our Trajectory?

What would change that trajectory is exactly what we are trying to destroy as a society. It boils down to two things:

  • A belief in the individual over the collective. “I am responsible for myself and all that entails. There is no societal enlightenment that can change this Essential Truth.
  • Government exists for two purposes only. First, to defend our nation against both internal and
    external threats that threaten individual liberty. Second, to create the conditions that allow
    individuals to prosper and thrive.

Everything else is extraneous to these two Tennents. One of my favorite rules is that understanding what’s important is easy. It’s keeping a light touch on what you try so as not to violate the very few Essential Truths. Never overcomplicate an issue. Unfortunately, that is exactly how government works!

Who would make a good President? Is it a creature of the swamp like President Biden? Is Trump, a businessman, a good model? How about a Constitutional Scholar like Mark Levin? Would General Norman Schwarzkopf have been the right leader? Maybe, but probably not. All would be imperfect and perhaps that’s the point. Great leaders are also fallible. Each has its plusses and minuses. All you can hope for is that they extend the kind of successful leadership that we have been blessed with in the past and is appropriate for their time. Frankly, I believe that it may be divine providence when we get the right leader at that right time. That’s not always been true. I hope that the correct individual steps up now and is more than just another symbolic representation of what this country needs to get back to where it belongs. We are way past the tipping point. It’s going to take an extraordinary leader to bring us back to our promise and potential. I hope you agree.

God Bless America and especially Ukraine at this time of genocide.

Allan J. Feifer
Patriot

A Divided Nation
Blog

A Divided Nation and the Brite White Line of Truth

May 9, 2022 by allanauthor 0 Comments , , , ,

Hello Fellow Patriots:

America leads the world in both good and bad ways. American freedom, culture, literature, work ethics, technology, altruism, democracy, and other attributes do set the tone for the rest of the free world. Arrayed against us are several anti-democratic countries that find American values and power their existential threat and have become our natural enemies. I’d like to start with some statements of truth that some will argue are incorrect or at least debatable. Nevertheless, these truths do exist and are the bedrock that will see us through this turbulent time once more. Here we go:

1. The United States is the most powerful force for good in the world
2. The cohesiveness of our country is under threat through immigration dilution
3. Our traditional social mores are under attack
4. Our leaders are no longer stateman
5. Media and communications, in general, have become a massive threat to our society

These five issues/truths (I am sure you could add more to the list.) are:

The United States is the most powerful force for good in the world:

It seems almost obvious to me that there is no other nation as generous, admired, free, industrious, or pick your own metric and we either are number one or very close to the top. It’s no accident either! What makes a country great is its people and institutions. Pick your segment and we’re likely in the top five except for education. That’s a topic we’ve spoken about in the past and we’ll revisit it again at some future date.

If it is our people and institutions that keep us at the top, you could ask why that is so? Forget the detractors who might see it differently; our country attracts the best and brightest in large numbers. Except for China (and you might wonder about their propensity for theft of intellectual property), we issue more patents than any other country. In fact, if you look at Basic Patents, defined as a patent granted for an invention recognized as pioneering, unexpected, and unprecedented by the scientific community or industry, we are number one by far. All but 2 or 3 of the 15 basic patents that changed the world were American in origin. https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/design/g20051677/patents-changed-the-world/ And, American generosity is unmatched, with America giving the majority of charity in the world. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2019-12-20/the-worlds-most-generous-countries With all our faults and warts, a world without us would be much darker.

The cohesiveness of our country is under threat through immigration dilution:

If what makes a great country is its people and institutions, how does immigration fit in? Is it a plus or minus? Are all immigrants equal? It is an important and largely undiscussed series of questions that a sane nation needs to talk about. Leadership, to be discussed later in this article has completely failed us here. Have you wondered why there is no national discourse on the consequences of massive immigration and open borders? I have as well. The Biden administration states they have “complete control of the border.” Who believes that? Here’s one undeniable truth: “We are inviting the third world in against our national interest.”

Here’s my Power Statement of the Week: The roughly 50 million migrants in the country today have massively changed our country for the worse. To be clear, not everyone who comes here is an issue. Many of those individuals want the American dream, have the skillsets we need, and want to assimilate. However, many are not traditional immigrants.

Facing the truth, overwhelming, Mexico is the top origin country of the U.S. immigrant population. In 2018, roughly 11.2 million immigrants living in the U.S. were from there, accounting for 25% of all U.S. immigrants. This figure is now over 15 million. Lump in other Central and South American immigrants and that number climbs to over 40%. Many from these countries choose not to assimilate. That’s the problem and the challenge. How to encourage the right kind of immigration that benefits our country and curtail the rest.

From Pew Research: The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 44.8 million in 2018. Since 1965, when U.S. immigration laws replaced a national quota system, the number of immigrants living in the U.S. has more than quadrupled. Immigrants today account for 13.7% of the U.S. population, nearly triple the share (4.8%) in 1970. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/

There is no right, by law or by God that says anyone who wants to, should be able to come and live here. Eventually, our country will simply be overwhelmed with the social welfare demands of an ever-increasing invasion. How can we not see that? This is the Alinsky model writ large. https://bolenreport.com/saul-alinskys-12-rules-radicals/

Our traditional social mores are under attack

Whether through design or happenstance, our nation has accelerated a helter-skelter devolution of the traditions we held for our first 200 years. Are we better for it? It may strike most of our readers as a fact, not in dispute. But, millions of people think new liberal social mores make us a better country than we were previously. By what objective standard? That’s exactly the problem. Liberalism thrives on emotional arguments. I had a dear friend say to me today that when I asked by what objective standard, she thought something was right. Her clever answer was…because I am the Queen, that’s why! Unfortunately, when we throw out objectivity, we ultimately throw out personal freedom as well. Here are several bullets to become objective. From INC—I found the following:

A. Acknowledge and Compensate for Your Biases
B. Use Pro and Con Lists
C. Imagine Counseling a Friend
D. Strip Down Your Deciding Factors
E. Experiment By Reversing Your Line of Thinking
F. Create a Scoring System
G. Make a Decision and Live with It

The takeaway is simple. All of us have biases that tend to hold sway when we should strive to be objective in our thinking. If we want a nation of mamby pambies, we are well on the way. But, if we want solid, standup citizens that are honest, thrifty, and productive; there is a line to toe. It may be easier to go with the flow, but often that flow is going right over a waterfall. Strive to do what is moral and correct personally, and hold others to that same standard. Yes, we can. Realize that nothing in life is free and generosity can’t be standard, it must be available for the occasional situation, lest we create dependencies. Human beings, being who they are, can be conditioned to be weak and needy. Not the best aspirational standard for our population.

Finally on this subject…we have plenty of enemies that feed the current victim narrative so widely popular today. We can’t all be victims, can we? Ultimately, many of us, especially the young must be harnessed into productive work that benefits us all. Anything that works against our most cherished traditions is not only suspect, it’s likely to be an IUD directed at undercutting or even destroying our country. According to Federal Labor Participation Rate reporting, only about 52% of adults who could be working, are. This is startling low. In 2000 the rate was 64%. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate This rate, if to be believed, is even worse than it appears. During this period, the US experienced the highest rate of immigration in over 100 years. Think about that. This trend portends nothing good for the long-term stability of our senior citizens and the country as a whole. I have included this topic in our discussion of Social Mores because, at its core, the choice not to work is also a choice to game our system for its many benefits. I blame politicians, the media, and the school system for creating a bunch of entitled crybabies that have made ‘handouts’ standard operating procedures. This must end. Ethical individuals should not tolerate society destroying conduct. All of us must take a stand.

Our leaders are no longer statemen

Be it Biden or Trump, neither fits the statesmen mold as far as I am concerned. John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and even Franklin Roosevelt (I don’t have to like his politics to appreciate his presentation and presence) all wore the mantle of Statesmen. Statemen change the world. Politicians like we have today all lack the authenticity of the foregoing individuals. This does not infer that Trump, for instance, did not serve a great purpose. He changed the trajectory of our nation and should be appreciated for that alone. But he was not and is not a Stateman in the classical sense.

We need utterly great, charismatic, powerful, and effective statemen at least once in a generation or at other critical times (like now) in our nation’s history. We’ve been lucky that so many great men (and the occasional woman) stood that line against tyranny or other disasters, be it financial, social, or political. As far as I can see, I see no one standing in line to be that next great statesman and I am very circumspect of the real thing stepping up in the near future. I wonder why it’s been so long since we’ve seen the strength of backbone, purpose, and vision that a country as large as ours should possess.

What have we done as a country that seems to discourage the best of us from working in government? Far too often we see photogenic and well-spoken individuals in government who don’t know squat, rather than the Henry Kissinger types of cerebral and honest individuals that our country requires. Our press and political machines function sequentially as either cheerleaders or meatgrinders depending on which party is in power. How does anyone expect the largest and most complex government in history to function well with mediocre functionaries or dullard leaders? It simply can’t happen. God give us good leadership, please!

Media and communications, in general, have become a massive threat to our society:

As a follow on to our previous topic; now that we have bitten into the apple from the Garden of Eden, how do we reform and redeem ourselves? History is not comforting. In doing research for this article, I found that only truly earth-shaking events like war, revolution, or other major societal disruptions allowed for a major change in established systems.

Government is so grossly inefficient and unresponsive in responding to actual vs. perceived needs that I don’t see a way back. Just this morning I needed to speak to a department of the Federal Government. I called right on the dot when they opened and then again 15 minutes later only to receive the message that they were exceedingly busy right now and try again the next day. Did you know that up to 20% of Federal workers are still at home due to Covid! https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/susan-jones/rep-mccarthy-wants-answers-how-many-federal-workers-including We aren’t talking about telecommuting either; many simply are being paid to stay home. There’s just no imperative impetus to get value for the public’s money.

Why are there no media stories to expose this utter waste of our money? Why do we tolerate our elected officials, government employees, and contractors raking citizens over the coals financially? The answer is that we have become too detached from our government. We have an incredible ability to communicate the messages we want to send, but a horrible ability to message critical subjects. The reason is all too simple. Both a dummied down citizenry and imperial government at all levels are no longer responsive to the needs of its citizens, replaced by the new game of governmental war played out every day. This game is about power, longevity (theirs, not ours), and standing. Will it really require an actual war of some kind or a horrible natural disaster to reset the clock? Only time will tell.

Wrap-up:

I have painted a dire picture of what once was a shining star. Incrementalism got us to where we are today. If not some kind of societal dislocation; what would it take to reset our clock and achieve cooperative and effective government? Frankly, I don’t have that answer in hand. However, as Rahm Emanuel once stated while Mayor of Chicago…” Never waste a crisis.” Perhaps the next crisis can be one that does not benefit one political group or the other, but benefits all our citizens of what is still, warts and all, the greatest nation on Earth. Let’s hope so.

God Bless America and especially Ukraine at this time of extreme suffering.

Allan J. Feifer
Patriot

Tune in to your favorite news channel and the first thing you will notice is the slant. I marvel at how most networks, newspapers, and social media outlets report with either conservative or liberal bias.
Blog

Symbolism and the Democratic Party

May 2, 2022 by allanauthor 0 Comments , ,

Hello Fellow Patriots:

Tune in to your favorite news channel and the first thing you will notice is the slant. I marvel at how most networks, newspapers, and social media outlets report with either conservative or liberal bias. Few, if any, are truly even-handed. They don’t even report on the same stories. Why is that so? I guess it winds up being human nature to take sides. Heck, even our judges can’t seem to view what should be strictly legal questions without injecting their personal belief systems into their deliberations. It should not be that way. What is the determiner that makes people fall into one camp or another? I think it is useful to understand how people may change their stance over time to explain this. It is widely accepted that as people age, they tend to become more conservative and less liberal. Why? We’ll discuss this important topic and attempt to expose major holes in Democratic dogma, communication, and constituencies in the process. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/14/political-views-change-over-time

Justice. Democrats’s highest symbolism is their high jacking of the Justice moniker as if they are the only ones interested in fairness. Sucking up all the oxygen today are their contrived calls for justice. Rarely does anyone explain in detail what the end result of these demands might be; here are just a few of the many kinds of justice being demanded loudly and uncompromisingly.

Racial Justice—From USC Berkley, “To move forward, we as Americans have to dismantle these violent systems — systems that enforce inequality with a brutal efficiency — and build more just, equitable systems.”

Gender Justice—From the Global Fund for Woman, “Our feminism is rooted in intersectionality. We recognize that women are not a monolith and experience multiple, overlapping sources of oppression. The struggle for women’s rights is deeply impacted by and connected to the struggles for racial justice, queer justice, immigration justice, climate justice, and so many more.”

Economic or Distributive Justice—from Harvard University School of Law, “Economic justice is a concept in which the economic policies must result in the equal distribution of benefits to all.”

Procedural Justice—Department of Education Lesson outline, “Procedural justice affects how decisions are made and policies are established. It is based on the premise that the fairest and most respectful decision will be made. Procedural justice is also concerned with creating policies and procedures that take all perspectives and concerns into consideration equally to arrive at Equity.”

Restorative Justice—from the Department of Labor, “At the heart of restorative justice is the idea that everyone is inherently worthy and that our connection to one another is what matters most. Punishment is not an answer.”

Equity Justice—from Stanford University, “In operational terms, and for measurement, equity can be defined as the absence of disparities in everyday life (and in its key social determinants) that are systematically associated with social advantage/disadvantage.” https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/types_of_justice/

Climate Justice—From World Economic Forum, “Often the people on the front lines of climate change have contributed least to the causes of the climate crisis. This is an injustice that can only be rectified by swift and ambitious climate action, including reducing emissions to zero as rapidly as possible. We must ensure that the transition to a zero-carbon economy is just and that it enables all people to realize their right to development. This requires that the global community acts in solidarity and ensures that the necessary resources are available to allow all countries and people to make the transition to clean, renewable energy on the same timescale.” https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/what-is-climate-justice/

Resident in these seven (there are many more) contrived calls for justice you will find a central thread that explains everything. That single thread is the abolition of the individual and the empowerment of the masses, espoused as some kind of global authority with the power to set wrongs right. They won’t say that; but that is the only way you can attempt to make everyone equal in all ways, financial, social, politically, and in safety. You cut off the top and bottom, throw what remains into a blender, and pour yourself a human smoothie. That’s a patently false concept.

In using their vernacular, Justice hates capitalism, because capitalism only exists as a consequence of one man’s (or woman’s) desire to better themselves through personal effort and risk. This is the essence of modern humanism. Both of these prerequisites are anathema to the kinds of justice that Democrats describe, even as they can’t figure out exactly how to get there. One of my favorite rules is that we only “possess a right to fail, not to succeed.” Why? Because without effort and risk, failure is assured; where with effort and risk, success is possible but not assured.

Democrats also miss another foundational issue. Governments are horrible at regulating finite resources. You get them picking winners and losers as they did with Solyndra under Obama, losing half a billion dollars in a clean energy scheme that made zero sense except to a government bureaucrat. One of Obama’s favorite quotes was “You didn’t build that” in describing how entrepreneurs don’t really build or create anything. That is, except without government as a de facto partner, which explains how little he knows about business. This is generally true about Democrats as a whole, at least in politics and economics. Another little-known nugget. Most small businesses are conservative, while big businesses tend to be liberal. Could it be that small business owners are at financial risk, while big business employees are not? “A recent survey by the National Small Business Association found that 39 percent of small-business owners are affiliated with the Republican Party and 22 percent with the Democratic Party, while 29 percent consider themselves independents. (Smaller slices—5 percent, said they are associated with the Republican-linked Tea Party and 3 percent with the Libertarian Party.)” https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/which-political-party-do-small-business-owners-identify-with-the-most/ That leaves only 22 percent of business owners or less potentially liberal. While in big business, large companies thrive largely in liberal areas, invariably high-cost cities with significant social problems as compared to more conservative states.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/1/28/2012619/-Large-Successful-Companies-Tend-Have-HQs-in-Very-Liberal-Places

I think this correlation is important to our understanding of the support systems that have allowed big companies to apply their liberalism with many of the employees they hire with no financial risk. This is changing as more and more companies leave traditionally Blue states for Red states to receive the benefits of pro-business policies.

Take Corporate taxation as a prime example of absurd symbolism. Democrat talking heads love to talk about the “free ride” corporations get with paying lower rates of taxation than individuals. I shake my head as they don’t understand that corporations pay taxes that are 100% passed on to their customers; that’s you! If they don’t, they then take it away from their shareholders, or they take it away from R & D or CAPEX. That ultimately destroys their competitiveness. Corporate taxes are just another tax on consumers. It’s that simple. How many Democratic politicians are screaming for greater taxes on corporations? Some corporations will depart the country for friendlier policies. Dems answer? Forbid them to do so or financially hurt them so much, they’ll not be able to. On and on, the anti-business rhetoric is non-stop and has created the most complicated tax system the world has ever known as politicians punish enemies and reward friends through their use of the tax code. Keep in mind that taxes are not always passed by both parties; a great example is Obamacare, which was passed without a single Republican vote! There are many other examples.

Where should we go look next? How about the Defense Department Symbolism? Might we need to fight some future war where our very existence is on the line? Dems are tinkering with recruitment, training, duties, and even warfighting doctrine to achieve social goals. Have you heard that climate Czar Kerry is pushing the DOD to create battery-powered and hybrid tanks? Are they all crazy? https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2022/2/4/military-wants-its–vehicles-to-go-electricwith-detroits-help Do you think they understand how wars are fought? Are social warriors violating basic precepts such as “you fight for the buddy next to you in the foxhole”? Reducing or destroying unit cohesion by requiring race training and the admission of Trans individuals that has, as its crowning objective, to blame white people for the historical oppression of others. What are the long-term consequences of fostering a kind of social promotion scheme like exists in schools today? Individuals, some without effort or success, actively tearing down and eliminating the essence of what makes warriors? These people and their staffs live in the shadow of those who have given their blood to protect our country, too often sacrificing their very lives so that these destroyers can continue to look down on those that stand post protecting us. What hubris, what contempt they must possess.

I promised our readers that I would delve into how Democrats pander to their base. They do so in two distinct and very different manners:

1. They set one group upon another. Democrats feed on artificial passion. They pander to what young people want; they play up the fears of our seniors. And, they isolate us from each other through their false prophet of Identity Politics.
2. They tell obvious lies that have, as their singular virtue, the ability to either boost their standing with voters or to destroy the lives of people, companies, and the entire country through the application of political expediency.

Let’s talk about how Democrats stir the pot with passionate rhetoric that demonizes us by splitting us up like so much lunch meat. Democrats (and I’m sure Republicans at times) hire people to figure out how to fracture us along our political lines. Once split, a tailored, focus group tested message like “Putin’s Inflation” can be shouted over and over by hundreds of coordinated talking heads who parrot today’s message. Tomorrow, a new message for a different group “we only have eleven years left to fix the earth!” all accompanied by video of desperate-looking polar bears foraging for the last time. Always some truth, but overall, a very large helping of tripe. Remember, that political ad showing Republicans rolling grandmother’s wheelchair over a cliff? Highly effective to the suggestable individual who just is afraid of life in general and what will happen to him/her if that means the other side gets in.

Constituency Politics. Is as old as mother’s milk. It exists whether you grew up in Chicago, where the political machine ran everything, or live in San Francisco which would appear to an outside viewer as actually promoting drug use, homelessness, criminality, or just vagrancy over hard work and personal success; constituency politics is the guiding principle. Portland, New York, Atlanta; I could pick a dozen other Democratic cities that are similarly run. The one commonality between them all is high cost of living, massive crime, corruption, and death. Be it putting infected people in nursing homes to infect your grandma or unaccountable spending on everything that is designed to make people feel good, it is bad government on display for all to see. The mirror never lies and it need not be that way. It is a choice.

What’s different now is that Constituency Politics is being replaced by the Democratic Party with Marxist Doctrine. Democratic leaders believe there is a window of opportunity open at present that they must exploit or lose. They know time is short for them, money is running out and they will likely be out of power all too soon. With our credit lines depleted, and inflation exploding, they understand they can only succeed by granting “free things” to people and catering to their lowest desires. That’s the definition of pandering. The suspension of disbelief that Democratic policies have delivered for the last 40 years is now demanding a reckoning. Democrats have no way to overcome what is coming. Their only hope is to make everyone equally poor and dependent on the government. That is what Marxism delivers. By appealing to our lowest desires, by focusing on the rich as somehow boogeymen that can explain away all the Dems bad outcomes, past and present, they continue to seek to deflect a much- needed reckoning. This time is going to be different. Why? Because a majority of people see us devolving as a society in an Atlas Shrugged kind of way, we know is unsustainable and undesirable.

Become more circumspect and conservative. Play our own game and realize the hired help (politicians) requires quite a lot more scrutiny and oversight than we exercised in the past. People are no longer quite as gullible or as liberal as Dems might like. Symbols of division are just that; they are not a way forward; they don’t represent the truth. Biden represents a failure to adjust to current conditions. He’s largely staying the course on almost every failed action he’s instituted. Dems are dropping out of Congress in big numbers. They are also distancing themselves from a sitting President to save themselves. There remains a core group of Dems who believe if we only double down some more on these policies we can pull the wool over their eyes one more time.

Don’t give them that chance. It’s high time the adults ran the asylum and right the ship before it’s too late.

God Bless America and especially at this time of extreme suffering; pray for victory in Ukraine.

Allan J. Feifer
Patriot

The Supreme Court
Blog

The Supreme Court

Apr 25, 2022 by allanauthor 0 Comments , , , , ,

Hello Fellow Patriots:

A philosophy student was given the assignment to determine the meaning of truth. He decided to ask a
mathematician, a priest, and a statistician the meaning of the simplest truth he could think of. What is
the meaning of two plus two equals four?

The mathematician said, “This encapsulates the certain bedrock of our system of calculating.”
The priest said, “Here is the clear hand of God’s guidance.”
The statistician said, “What do you want it to mean?”

I began by considering the question, “What is the meaning of a five-to-four Supreme Court decision?”
When nine of the presumably best legal scholars read the same Constitution, review the same past
precedents, and hear the same oral arguments but four come to the opposite conclusion of the other
five, what should we make of this? If it were a question on a law school exam instead of a Supreme
Court case would the minority of four fail the class? Is there something about the law they just don’t
understand?

First, the nine justices of the Supreme Court are not our best legal scholars. They are political
appointees who were chosen because they shared the same political ideology as the appointing
president. Conservative presidents appoint conservative judges and liberal presidents appoint liberal
judges. No one can imagine Donald Trump appointing the liberal Kagan, Sotomayor, or Jackson to the
Supreme Court. And no one can imagine Barack Obama or Joe Biden appointing the conservative
Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, or Coney Barrett. Despite the claim of Chief Justice Roberts, that there are no
Obama justices and no Trump justices, clearly there are.

Worse, presidents choose appointees in order to secure the support of certain groups of voters, e.g.,
Blacks, Hispanics, women, Right-to-Lifers, gun advocates, etc. Winning a second term is very important
to presidents and appeasing the right special interest groups by appointing one of their members to the
high court can buy many votes. Still, we hope that despite these unworthy considerations, the chosen
one has at least a better than average knowledge of the law, perhaps he or she is even in the top 20%
percent of those with legal training.

Second, the Constitution, which is the ultimate justification for their decisions, is terribly vague and says
very little. There is no mention of abortion, stem cell research, the powers of regulatory agencies, the
scope of presidential immunity, or many of the issues decided by the Court. Even the Supreme Court’s
ability to declare a law, presidential directive, or a regulatory agency’s decision to be “unconstitutional”
is not in the Constitution. The Supreme Court merely declared it had this power in 1803 in the Marbury
vs. Madison case.  No one has challenged this presumption of judicial power.

To be fair, the founding fathers wrote the Constitution to be relevant to the world of 1789.   If James
Madison had any idea that one day there would be fully automatic assault rifles, or that drug gangs with
handguns would terrorize our inner cities, or that Baltimore would see 350 murders each year, he might
have been clearer about the “keep and bear arms” of the second amendment. It is unfair to expect that
a few revolutionaries should, in a few pages, give us ALL THE ANSWERS to ALL QUESTIONS for ALL
TIME. The Constitution was not written to absolve us from solving our own 21st-century problems.  The
framers of the Constitution never dreamed of a world with computers, corporate monopolies, organized
crime, or instant worldwide communications. We need to solve our problems without imagining what
Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, or John Adams would say about issues beyond their wildest dreams.
Unfortunately, the decisions of the Supreme Court are highly dependent upon exactly these imaginings
of the intent of the founding fathers. This leaves room for large differences in interpretation of the
Constitution.

In short, the justices (just like the statistician) can make the Constitution say anything that suits their
own political, social, or religious beliefs. The real question is whether this is a good or bad situation?
Do the justices, with their basket of biases, represent the will of America? In a country that claims to
believe in majority rule, is a five-to-four decision good enough to determine the law of the land? Does
an evenly split court represent the American will on abortion or gun ownership in the year 2022 better
than the founding father’s last will and directive?

If the justices of the Supreme Court are appointed not in spite of their biases but because of them, what
should we make of the five-to-four decision? The answer is deceptively simple. Whatever the majority
decides is the law of the land. Period. But this does raise a further question. What if a member of the
majority dies and is replaced by a justice who agrees with the original dissenting four making the
minority four the new majority? Then those who were the minority and therefore were wrong, are now
the majority and they determine the law of the land. This new opinion might change a previous opinion
that a woman DOES have a constitutional right to an abortion, to a new ruling that a woman DOES NOT
have a constitutional right to an abortion. Or an old opinion that a municipality CANNOT ban the
ownership of handguns, to a new ruling that a municipality CAN ban the ownership of handguns.   In
either case, the meaning of the Constitution and the law of the land changes to its exact opposite
without the change of a single word of the Constitution. What we want the Constitution to say or what
we believe the Constitution says is irrelevant. The Supreme Court has the last word.

Whether this is good or bad depends completely on whether the court agrees with our own opinion on
the issue. Since the country is roughly evenly divided on the big issues, each court decision will make
half the country happy and feel justified, and leave the other half claiming the decision is
“unconstitutional”. The happy half of the country will decide that the justices defended freedom,
morality, and the American way. The unhappy half will decide they understand the Constitution and
the law better than the Supreme Court, which is possible but not likely and certainly not relevant.  We
do not live in 1789, and in 2022 the Supreme Court has the last word.

In the end, someone has to have the last word, i.e., there must be a Judiciary. The founding fathers got
that right. The question is, what form should the Supreme Court take to make the law work as well as
possible for as many as possible? What will best ensure our freedoms within the framework of our
American traditions?  Perhaps the Court should be larger than the current nine, making it less
dependent on a single swing vote. Perhaps it should gradually be expanded to 15 or 19 justices with no
president allowed to appoint more than two of the new positions. Perhaps decisions that don’t have a
consensus of at least seven of nine votes should be invalid, forcing compromise and less dependence on
personal biases. Perhaps if a clear consensus can’t be reached the issue should go back to congress for
the enactment of new and clearer law.

Or perhaps the less than perfect court that we have is the best we can get, and five votes beats four
votes.

Larry Ames

God Bless America and especially at this time of extreme suffering; Ukraine.
Allan J. Feifer
Patriot

Turning Back America’s Clock
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Turning Back America’s Clock

Apr 18, 2022 by allanauthor 0 Comments , , ,

Hello Fellow Patriots:

I am 65 years old. Your age is an important determiner of what decade(s) you might have a particular
hankering to return to. For me, it was the 70s and 80s. By no means were these perfect decades. There
was the winddown of Vietnam, race riots, and much negativism you could easily point to. But it was also
a time of opportunity, family was still central to our values, people believed in God and our economy
was revving up as it does from time to time in a never-ending cycle that represents the normal ebb and
flow of ups and downs, but until lately, always trending upwards.

A lot has changed in how we view our special place. Let me ask you something. Have you ever looked at
the same picture filtered in numerous different ways? Same subject, but entirely different perspective.
It is the same way with America. Some see it as the promised land, while others see it as the devil’s
construct. We each have our own set of filters derived from our upbringing, life experiences, and where
we live, among many factors that helped us create the filters that allow different people to view the
same subject but with entirely different takeaways.

Let’s jump in and explore these eight filters in more detail:

 

Globalism

Of all the factors we present to you today, Globalism is one of the big three. Books are written on this
single subject, so we can only skim one or two high points. Globalism in America for our first 200 years
or so constituted two recurring themes.

a. Protection of American Commerce throughout the world
b. Becoming the dominant political force throughout the globe by promoting our theories of
democracy and capitalism

We largely accomplished these two imperatives. Our country entered this world in a fiery baptism but
emerged as more than just a new country, we set a tone for the entire world. An interlocking set of
beliefs set down in a largely new concept…our Constitution facilitated that. It was not long before our
fledgling nation set a small fleet of ships to Tripoli to fight the Barbary Pirates and in the process wound
up with a twofer…it both stopped the piracy for a long time and started a process that showed the world
what standing up to tyranny looked like. It was our debut as a kind of policeman to the world.

With two oceans protecting our shores we felt safe and secure. War would not come to our shores
(except for war with Great Britain in 1812 and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii) ever again. We now fought wars
preemptively to ensure commerce continued unfettered and to spread our ideals preventing fighting
adversaries on our beaches. This calculus all changed in 1957 when Russia tested its first ICBM and we
no longer could depend on a war warning to build up our forces. This changed us in many profound
ways and set us on the course we are on today, with engagement around the world necessary to ensure
we would not face a nuclear Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, Globalism has led to many other
consequences, many of them counter to America’s interests. This is the natural lead into our next
subject.

 

America’s Role in the World

Think of the world as a crockpot with each nation contributing various ingredients. What results is
something distinctly different from any single ingredient in the pot. Sometimes it tastes good and
sometimes not so much. Good cooks and bad cooks. America has frequently been a good cook! We have
saved the world from despots, given the most comfort and support during times of natural and
unnatural disaster, flood the world with our innovations, medicines, and culture. I have traveled
throughout the world. One of the most memorable moments I experienced was when I was working
deep in the interior of Senegal on a construction project when I observed a dust cloud coming down the
road. When it passed me, I recognized the familiar logo of the Coca-Cola Company! America is truly
everywhere. Thinking back, that encapsulated, in a single moment the realization of the power of
American commerce, social acclimatization, and more. Anywhere you go in the world are American hats,

T-shirts, and music. People want to be Americans. Not all, but very many. It’s important to accept that.
For everyone who hates us, a hundred love us, aspire to be like us, or come here. We have, as a country
been the most successful force for good the world has ever seen! We must continue to engage and
encourage others who might aspire to be like us in their own country. That is both the message and the
imperative that we must never lose focus on.

The United States continues to be the most consequential arbiter of what’s good in the world. It’s only
in the last 40 years or so that our role has begun to change. Maybe we’ve been too successful. Perhaps
we gave away our moral mantle a bit at a time. But there continues to be an incredibly important need
for American leadership. There are only a couple of bullies that could realistically challenge our moral
leadership. We give up that role at our peril.

 

Family

There are tight-knit families throughout the world. It is the natural order of things to have loving parents
who commit to putting their children ahead of their own needs. Do I have to explain to my audience the
implicit benefits of a two-parent (male and female mind you) home? I despise anyone that promotes
non-nuclear families as equal to or even superior to the traditional family unit. It’s taken a generation
for that nonsense to somehow take hold and become at least partially accepted. The hubris in believing
that the foundational concept and implementation of what created the entire human race is somehow
wrong. More than hubris, the destruction, subversion, and promotion of alternative lifestyles has
undermined our entire belief system that now screams…no judgment, do your thing, marry a dolphin (as
someone did in France), just do whatever you feel like doing at the moment. Our government,
institutions, and too many dimwitted individuals now parrot the same nonsense without any
introspection or sense of history. Gender fluidity? Are you kidding me? You can’t allow yourself to be
sucked into a belief system that is fundamentally at odds with logic and evolution.

Family is everything! It is the Alpha and Omega. Yes, add God to that shortlist, but if you want to raise
smart, healthy, and productive children, give them a grounding that makes sense. Don’t create an
artificial construct that has no natural place in nature and defend it, as if you’re saying something is true,
makes it true. 1plus1equals2 is the fundamental logic that defines all things in life; including what
constitutes a family.

 

Patriotism

Many nations are patriotic. Nations that lose their patriotism are generally in decline. Patriotism and
Nationalism are closely linked. Globalism is the antithesis of Patriotism and the beginning of a one-world
government. Globalism seeks the extermination of Patriotism and Nationalism as not only being
redundant but in opposition to itself.

There are two forms of Patriotism. Natural and Fundamental. Natural patriotism is the type of
patriotism you get like rooting for your home team. Your team may not be the best in the world, but it is
your team. It works the same way in countries. Many, if not most people are loyal to where they were
born. That’s why some immigrants (we’ll talk about that later) come here but don’t ever choose to
assimilate; they never become patriotic, they’re here for the goodies. The other kind, what I term
fundamental patriotism is more like a religion, based on a series of truths, layered one upon the other.

American patriotism is that kind. Our beliefs in freedom, the equality of man, and that the fruits of our
labor should belong to no one except ourselves are the essence of being an American.
We are rightfully patriots, and we must be patriotic to defend our ideals and place in the world. Without
patriotism, we will slowly wither on the vine as we become less sure of who we are and why it is
essential not to stray too far from our foundational beliefs as we have begun to. Let’s amplify that a bit.
No one has anything coming to them. What was true in the past is not guaranteed in the future as our
government now “guarantees” more and more rights to people without requiring a countervailing set of
efforts and success from these very same people. The government has now institutionalized the concept
of “Big Brother.” There is no “Big Brother, it is a fantasy that only seeks to justify the taking of
somebody’s wealth to give to another and is antipatriotic at its core.

 

Big Government

God help us! Our Founding Fathers understood it. Conservative thinkers understand it. Humanists
understand it. Big Government is the greatest threat to our continued way of life and survival. Through
policy actions, the government creates the conditions for our success or failure. To the extent that policy
decisions are made for partisan reasons, we are condemning ourselves to not just mediocrity, but
extinction. Just look at issues like education, race, civil rights, immigration, climate change, and more
than not just can, but will change the world we live in ways that people never voted on, and are
powerless to effectively oppose.

We have allowed Governmental inertia, an entrenched politicized bureaucracy, and politicians whose
sole goal is to keep their seat at the table no matter what it takes, to contrive and cajole to maintain and
increase their power, regardless of the long-term effects on the people they ostensibly serve. Long
sentence to describe an insidious and unrestrained central government that exists largely for its own
purposes and is at odds with what is the correct strategy to maintain our position in the world and
promote our citizen's health and welfare. I continually say, “We get the government we deserve.” With
more and more people voting to take from those that have to transfer to those that demand, we are in a
continuous graveyard spiral. I don’t know what we can do to change this course without a revolution.

 

Technology

Let’s begin with the statement that technology is a double-edged sword. So many wonderful
technological breakthroughs have made our lives easier, fun, safer, and more productive. Ok. Now that
we got that out of the way…technology is strangling us in a manner that no one ever dreamt of. For
example:

a. I know of five-year-olds with smartphones. Why does a five-year-old need a cell phone? They should not be off on their own and there is just too much bad material on the internet. It is a parent’s job to teach their children foundational truths, not the internet. If you change that age from 5 to 12 I would say the same thing. A smartphone or other device in the hands of squishy little minds is an invitation to no good. Is your child mature enough to handle the awesome responsibility that having the entire internet as your babysitter implies? How does a parent’s role change when he/she is the last to know or be asked?

b. Social Media—if your child has access to a computer or a smart device, they more than likely
already have multiple Social Media accounts. Not only do they get to interact with other children, but they also get to interact with grown-ups acting as children for nefarious purposes. Add to that the psychological trauma many kids experience through online bullying, peer pressure, and shaming and you understand the profound effect social media has on your child. It is a direct line from people you don’t know into the brain of the child you love so much. The risk is unfathomable.

c. Remote Learning—here’s an oxymoron. Remote Learning is the greatest failure in American Education since the introduction of New Math. The vast majority of kids who were taught in this manner fell backward and did not advance in knowledge. https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-panel-pummels-failure-remote-learning-wisdom

d. Work from home has had a huge effect on our productivity and creativity. Services like Zoom and others have made a fortune but are we really doing better as a people? I don’t see it. Only a minority of us are self-actualized. Most of us need to be around others and need bosses to review, observe and instruct us. Teams work better when you see each other eyeball to eyeball. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/08/working-from-home-is-a-failed-experiment

These four categories of technology will have long-lasting negative effects on our children. It’s not in our
scope today to discuss solutions; just awareness and a bit of fear if you have a child and had not
recognized this threat, both to your parental control and your child’s development.

 

Social Mores

It’s not difficult for anyone who regularly follows the news to realize that there is a huge societal push to
redefine what is moral and correct. Whether you are discussing gender, race, economic equality,
religion, clean energy, incarceration, climate change, or myriad other topics that we have latched onto
as “the” most important imperative. All of the above and more infer your duty to comply with what
amounts to a quasi-religious adherence to the tenets and edicts of this or that orthodoxy.

Reminds me a lot of the Inquisition. All other cherished values are secondary to these demands to
acquiesce. Parents are virtually warned not to interfere with State and Federal Education mandates and
if they do, there are considered terrorists. How did we let this happen?

 

Immigration

Immigration has become a kind of Social More unto itself. But it is so huge, so diabolical in its
implementation, it’s just monstrous on its face. Does anyone care to give me the logical reasons as to
why open borders and mass migration of mostly uneducated, frequently violent, or frequently
unproductive individuals is a good thing for America? It isn’t. But what it does accomplish is three things:

1. It convinces more and more Americans that they have a government that is out of touch with
their wishes and that they are powerless to challenge.

2. Its sole function is the dilution of the current American population. There are currently more
than 22 million illegal aliens in the United States costing us more than $150 Billion. There will
likely be more than 30 million by the end of Biden’s first term.
https://www.fairus.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/Total%20Number%20of%20Illegal%20Aliens_2021.pdf
(Numbers revised upward by the author to account for the passage of time and new
information.)

3. American lives are lost through criminal activity, smuggled drugs that would not make it into the
country if not for lax border controls, vehicular accidents caused by both the interdiction of
illegals coming into the country and driving in our country without being legal to do so.

Add your favorite to the above list. There are other reasons as well. The major takeaway is that rampant
immigration was a choice, a decision by the current administration and Democrats. Heck, they want to
make it easier to come here, not harder.

If we want our country to be a reflection of how we were in the past that made us unique, special, and
happy; we must revisit what we did to so profoundly change who we are. There’s always a way back. It
takes guts and determination to buck authorities who see you only as some kind of nuisance or terrorist.
Too many of our leaders and those in the bureaucracy are not your friends and do not represent your
interests honestly and fairly. They work for what makes them more powerful and like some tick, they
burrow into our skin and suck our blood.

I love America as you do. Rather than give up or accede to Big Brother’s edicts on how you are to live
your life, don’t negotiate (that’s their way to keep you occupied.) Instead, do what they do not expect;
fight them everywhere and at every level. Set the terms of the debate and give no ground. We are
fighting for our very existence. I hope you believe it and take that to heart!

God Bless America and especially at this time of extreme suffering; Ukraine.

Allan J. Feifer
Patriot