Main comment below: Watch how you interpret and use your narrative themes: Taking off from Michael Shellenberger’s point- “Beware fighting monsters- take care when battling monsters not to become one”, Wendell Krossa
The points of Nobel laureate John Clauser on climate are posted below in this opening section. “There is no climate crisis”. Thanks John.
Hope springs back with these courageous defenders of Classic Liberalism, liberal democracy.
“Argentina’s President Javier Milei Loves Being the Skunk at the Garden Party: A sit-down with the world’s first libertarian head of state”, Bari Weiss, June 6, 2024
https://www.thefp.com/p/bari-weiss-argentina-president-javier-milei
Contrary to endless media propaganda, global natural disasters are not increasing.
“Is the number of global natural disasters increasing?”, Gianluca Alimonti, Luigi Mariani, Aug. 2023
Quote from Abstract of their report:
“The above result sits in marked contradiction to earlier analyses by two UN bodies (FAO and UNDRR), which predicts an increasing number of natural disasters and impacts in concert with global warming. Our analyses strongly refute this assertion as well as extrapolations published by UNDRR based on this claim.”
See also from Global Warming Policy Foundation press release of June 6, 2024- “New study confirms GWPF reports on declining climate disasters”. These links were included in their press release:
https://ourworldindata.org/disaster-database-limitations
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2021/04/Extreme-Weather-2020.pdf
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/un-disasters-report-is-a-huge-blunder-and-embarrassment
Further update from Michael Shellenberger- the war on democracy
“Blind Fury Drives Anti-Democratic War on Trump: Beware fighting monsters”, Michael Shellenberger, June 2, 2024
https://public.substack.com/p/blind-fury-drives-anti-democratic
Quotes from Shellenberger:
“Ever since Donald Trump emerged as a presidential contender nine years ago, America’s most esteemed scholars and journalists have argued that he was violating democratic norms. Trump, they said, was ignoring the stabilizing, unwritten rules and values of American politics….
“But the Democrats’ relentless effort to imprison Trump has undermined the rule of law, faith in the criminal justice system, and democratic norms more than anything Trump has ever done….
“The case was so weak that both the Department of Justice and the former DA refused to prosecute it….
“Even CNN’s top legal scholar, Elie Honig, who is also a former colleague of Bragg, said the trial violated norms…. no state prosecutor— in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime against anyone for anything. None. Ever.”…
“Today, Democrats are pioneering new ways to weaponize the government. To a large extent, this is due to Trump Derangement Syndrome…. They see him as vulgar and unfit to be president and justify their abnormal, undemocratic, and often illegal behaviors as necessary to preserve democracy.
“But this derangement rests upon a self-conception among Democrats as children of the light battling children of darkness. Most religious and wisdom traditions include a warning against arrogance and hubris. Jesus taught that we should see the log in our own eye before pointing out the speck in the eye of others. Solzhenitsyn said the line separating good and evil runs through every human heart. And Nietzsche urged his readers to take care when battling monsters not to become one.” (End of Shellenberger comments)
This insightful analysis from Jordan Peterson, posted on Foxnews.com. This relates also to Shellenberger’s comments above on fighting monsters and my summary below of themes that validate such narratives of good versus evil.
This key part from the Flood/Hays article below:
“TDS is a psychological condition induced by the requirement to make of @realDonaldTrump a worse villain than even the worst imaginable villainies of @TheDemocrats. So that all the evil the left does and is planning can be justified by the constant insistence,” he wrote, noting that Trump critics believe “no matter how badly we behave Trump would be worse,” and “no matter what we do in the future Trump would do worse.”
“Trump now literally has to be Hitler,” Peterson wrote.
“Why? Because @TheDemocrats have now taken their ideological corruption so far that only such a comparison suffices to make their primary opponent a threat more dangerous than the one they themselves clearly pose,” he continued. “Trump Derangement Syndrome: Because no matter how horrible we are, he has to be worse.”
Full article: “Dr. Jordan Peterson talks about ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’, Jordan Peterson says he’s baffled by ‘degree of animosity’ toward Trump by ‘elitist leftist types’: ‘There’s something about it that’s very classist,’ the famed psychologist speculated”, reported by Brian Flood, Gabriel Hays, June 10, 2024
“Famed Canadian psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson is baffled by why so many Americans love to hate former President Trump.
“Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, is a polarizing figure. He is absolutely beloved by his base but passionately despised by many on the far-left. Peterson believes elitists throughout America are simply peeved that the brash businessman from Queens has been so successful.
“”The degree of animosity that people have for Trump is actually somewhat of a mystery to me. I can’t quite crack it. There’s a class thing there, I would say. Elitist people are annoyed that someone like Trump, or someone who they think Trump is, has dared to enter the upper echelons of the establishment,” Peterson told Fox News Digital.
“”So, there’s something about it that’s very classist… and Trump is a brash salesman-y sort of character, right? I mean, he ran ‘The Apprentice’ for years. He’s a huckster. And I don’t mean that in a denigrating way,” Peterson continued. “I mean, part of what’s made America great is its ability to sell, right? And the shadow side of the salesman is the huckster.”
“Peterson believes “Trump straddles the line between salesman and huckster,” which irritates liberals.
“”Especially anti-capitalist, elitist leftist types,” he said, noting that there have to be other reasons why the former president drives so many liberals insane.
“”Is it Trump’s rough edges? There’s that. Is it his proclivity to bully, with which he does it very effectively and sometimes very usefully? It’s that, he’s déclassé, you know,” Peterson added. “The elite types really hate that. They feel that he’s contaminating their domain… it’s very mysterious and there’s multiple levels to it.”” (end of Peterson article)
Watch how you interpret and use your narrative themes: Taking off from Shellenberger’s point above- “Beware fighting monsters- take care when battling monsters not to become one”, Wendell Krossa
Qualifier note: Over past centuries, increasing sensitivity has been a boon to humanity as we have become more sensitive to things that people once tolerated as normal, things that are now viewed as intolerable wrongs. Good for us in general.
Perhaps a criterion to evaluate good sensitivity from excessive and harmful sensitivity is where it leads- i.e. are the outcomes more compassion or hatred, divisiveness, and bullying as in the hypersensitivity noted below. Today’s hypersensitivity presents as “compassion for the oppressed” but that masks the underlying psychopathology of “left-wing totalitarianism” that has now been widely exposed.
We create narratives that provide a system of meaning for our lives, to help guide us through life, shaping how we think, influencing how we feel, to motivate us, and then to guide how we respond and act toward others. All fine and good except when we frame common narrative themes with deformed meaning and hence deform our minds and lives. The outcomes over history have too often been devastatingly destructive to many others.
The themes that we commonly draw on have long been deeply buried as archetypes in human subconscious. Hence, their repetitious use in human narratives across history and across cultures.
Some potentially deforming themes to watch for in our narratives or worldviews:
(1) Zoroastrian cosmic dualism- the theme of good versus bad, righteous versus evil. This theme has probably caused more deformity in human consciousness and more damage in life than any other theme because, subject to the tendency to exaggerate, it orients people to deluding themselves as the heroically good in contrast with differing others whom they frame as irredeemably evil.
The good/evil dualism theme has been used to validate endless iterations of tribal dualism among differing peoples, whether tribalism based on religious, political/social, ethnic/racial, national, gender, or other categories. The dualism theme also feeds into a deforming of the hero’s quest where people convince themselves that they are heroically fighting righteous battles to defeat satanic forces of evil. This is not to deny that life does present real situations of good versus evil. My point has to do with the distortions of this theme, as illustrated today by US Woke Progressives.
Dualism re-enforces the primitive belief that we must take part in a great righteous battle of good against evil forces with the hope and promise that our righteous side (i.e. the true religion, true belief system, right ideology, or noble crusade) will eventually triumph over, defeat, and exterminate the evil side- our differing enemies.
Misuse of this theme results in deformity when it leads those identifying as good to ignore or downplay their own faults because they contrast their failures with what they see as worse in others, differences that they exaggerate and demonize to make themselves feel better and validated as the righteous side of some issue.
Again, this is not to deny there is actual evil in life that has to be confronted and ended, such as the recent Hamas eruption of savagery, or the former Nazi and Marxist madness of the last century, etc. But the danger here is when this dualism is applied to more minor differences among members of the same society.
Add here the point that “men never do greater evil than when they do it in the name of God”. A recent illustration of how the tribal dualism theme deforms narratives in the most extreme manner- note the Hamas militants framing their narrative of good versus evil with Jews as the evil to be exterminated. Their narrative blinded them to the far greater evil that emanated from within themselves, as they repeatedly screamed “Allahu Akbar” (praise or glory to God) while raping and murdering innocents.
We counter tribal dualism with a clear understanding of the fundamental oneness of humanity whether based on our common descent from an East African “Mitochondrial Eve”, or the underlying reality of quantum entanglement, or from spiritual traditions like the NDE movement that affirms a metaphysical oneness of all things. We are one family of equals. We are not fundamentally separated by some metaphysical dualism where we are enemies to one another.
Another counter to tribal dualism narratives- We engage the safest route through life when we apply the good vs evil dualism to our personal struggle of the better impulses of our human nature against the real evil enemy of us all- i.e. our inner inheritance of animal drives to (1) small band thinking (i.e. insiders/outsiders, friends/enemies, good/bad), (2) the impulse to domination of differing others, and (3) the urge to punitive destruction of differing or enemy others. These base impulses are the real monster and enemy in life, the real evil, and they dwell inside each of us. This inner enemy/monster is where the real hero’s quest must be applied and engaged. It is by first conquering this inner evil, learning lessons from our personal struggle with inner evil, and thereby gaining insights, that we can then bring a boon/blessing to help others in their struggles.
The hero’s quest should not be deformed and framed primarily as “us against differing fellow humans”.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the real battle of good against evil that takes place inside us, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either- but right through every human heart- and through all human hearts.”
Joseph Campbell: “For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
It is a significant step toward human maturity when we acknowledge first and foremost our personal imperfection, failure, and need for growth before we start condemning and focusing on the imperfections of others. First recognize the evil within, honestly and with full awareness before comparing and contrasting with others you view as worse than you. For example, do you really think you would have responded differently than most of those “good Germans” if you had been raised in the same conditions they were propagandized under during the Weimar years?
(2) The Demonization/dehumanization of “enemies”. Taking off from the dualism of good versus evil, there is the tendency for those viewing themselves as the righteous ones on the side of unadulterated good, to excessively demonize differing others as some form of intolerable evil- even intolerable evil that must be exterminated. “Extermination”- Whether through milder forms of extermination as in censoring differing opinions/speech, silencing, banning from public discourse, cancelling, criminalizing, or in more severe forms of extermination that entail physical violence and harm.
Demonization of differing others becomes intensified when it is subjected to “concept creep”. This is associated with the growing hypersensitivity of a vocal minority, notably over the last decade, termed the “tyranny of the minority”. Our increasingly hypersensitive fellow citizens react with outrage to any difference that they do not like, even to the words of others that make them feel “uncomfortable”.
Hence, fueled with a sense of righteous intolerance, they demand that such “offensive speech” must be now included in the category of “hate speech”, a category that was previously limited to speech that “incites to immediate violence”, a necessary limit to protect the freedom of speech for all others. But this critical limit has now been violated by concept creep where the hypersensitive now demand the criminalization of more and more minor differences in opinion and speech. Here in Canada a politician tried to criminalize the expressions of skepticism over the validity of the supposed graves of residential school children (“residential school denialism”), subsequently found to have been a hysterically exaggerated alarm.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/should-residential-school-denialism-declared-hate-speech-1.6744100
The hypersensitivity of outraged minorities feeds the claim that the differing opinions and speech of others is “dangerous misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, even criminal speech, speech as violence, etc.”. Again, this is the exaggeration of the “evil” of differing others in the worst possible terms to create a stronger contrast with “our good, our righteousness”.
The broader psychology of this “tribal dualism and exaggerated demonization” mentality (i.e. posing oneself as heroically righteous in contrast with differing others as evil) has been analyzed by Christine Brophy, Jordan Peterson, and others.
https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1698025310124671313
https://public.substack.com/p/christine-brophy-narcissism-and-agreeableness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0qfE4_XzWU
Also this good advice from Historical Jesus– several versions of this…
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye? Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own?
Shifting the dualism theme from foreign to domestic
In the US, the good/evil contrast was previously applied more to traditional foreign enemies. But that contrast has now shifted and is applied more and more to fellow citizens who differ from governing elites. What was formerly directed at foreign ideological enemies in other areas of world is now being misapplied to political/social opponents today, in the same country and society. See Michael Shellenberger’s good reports on how the CIA and other agencies have shifted from a focus on foreign terrorism threats to damning fellow Americans as foreign agents and terrorists. Illustration: Even the parents who were concerned about their involvement in the education of their own children and protested school boards over what was being taught, they were designated as terrorists by the FBI.
Entire segments of the same populations (differing others) are now regularly framed with the worst possible demonization smears as “Nazis, fascists, Russian agents, racists, threats to democracy, far-right extremists (i.e. dog whistle for White Supremacist terrorists), etc.”. Once you reach for the Nazi smear you can descend no lower in terms of demonization. You have reached down for the ultimate dehumanizing smear. And you cannot pull back to sanity from that extreme. You have trapped yourself in a dangerous narrative space. And the outcomes will be ugly.
Today’s Woke Progressives, notably Democrats/liberals (see “bothsideism” note below), have excessively demonized their opponents, including fellow liberals/Democrats who are not as zealously extremist as the more enlightened Woke Progressives. That affirms the conclusion made by varied commentators that “the left inevitably turns on its own”.
The excessive demonization of differing others as “Nazis, Russian agents, far-right extremists” then demands pre-emptive action, framed as “noble cause, just war, righteous battle, etc.” to “save the world, to save democracy” or whatever else is framed as in desperate need of salvation. The logical conclusion of imperative to take extreme action to save something is built into the smear. You are righteously obligated to stop the evil that you have framed and to save the world that you claim is under existential threat or you are not fulfilling your fundamental duty to your society and to life.
Don’t you feel righteous, grand, even heroic?
Demonization of opponents as intolerable and irredeemably evil threats then also pushes people toward the potentially dangerous shift into the “exterminate or be exterminated” phase of activism. People become open to extreme measures as obligatory to save all that is good and eliminate all that they view as evil. Framing differing others as existential threats to all good then logically demands heroic response that involves “coercive purification” of the threat that is the evil enemy, just as the Allies had to act to destroy the Nazis in WW2 in a just war to save the democratic world. Some on the liberal side in the US have actually made this comparative argument- i.e. that our force/violence against our conservative opponents is righteous, just like the Allies, whereas their positions and policies are in the same class of evil as the Nazis and must be stopped, their opinions, speech, and policies exterminated.
What spirit is exhibited in this demonization of differing others? It is not human. It is not love or common decency. It exhibits nothing of the human spirit. It denies its own imperfections and fallibility. It appears to be more purely hate driven. It seeks endlessly to find some failure in a fellow human, going back decades to uncover some verbal slipup, careless word, even a bad joke. And then it rushes to harshly condemn in the strongest terms. And to demand the severest forms of punishment, whether censorship, banning, cancelling, or outright criminalization. It offers nothing of forgiveness or second chances. No mercy, no generosity, no restorative justice. Just outright damnation from the get-go. Hatred unleashed in its ugliest forms and it is too widely accepted as normal, even righteous, in our societies.
Further- Framing opponents as some form of apocalyptic-scale threat. This is the exaggeration of the threat from differing others that intensifies and validates the righteous obligation to battle, defeat, and eliminate such threat. Example: People skeptical of climate alarmism narratives are framed as threats to life itself, to humanity. This exaggeration of threat from differing others is common today in public narratives like climate alarmism that embraces the apocalyptic theme of an existential menace that threatens to destroy all good and bring on the end of life, the end of the world. This apocalyptic-scale exaggeration has also become common today in regard to political differences where alarmists claim that we are facing “the end of democracy” from differing others. “The constitution is in peril”, they claim.
The framing of difference in terms of apocalyptic-scale threat is most evident in regard to the climate alarmism fraud that dominates the left today. That introduces the element of fraud that distorts entirely the true state of life which is never as bad as the righteous alarmists claim in their narratives. The exaggeration of life situations to apocalyptic scale then pushes true believers to dangerous forms of extremism because it arouses and intensifies the primal survival impulse. Inciting the survival impulse in people has inflated concerns over normal climate changes to life-and-death intensity and hysteria.
Consequent to the exaggeration of threat, the heroic alarmists propose salvation schemes that are way out of proportion to the actual threat claimed. Note the “desperate measures” salvation scheme of decarbonization in response to the climate apocalyptic narrative. The cure has become far worse than the imagined disease. Net Zero decarbonization is destroying societies, all validated to “save the world”. Societies are now destroying their world to “save the world”.
Beware the shift toward embracing some form of “Exterminate or be exterminated”
During last century’s eruptions of Marxist and Nazi apocalyptic hysteria, alarmists shifted toward to the dangerous phase of outright extermination of their claimed threats to their world. The Marxists incited mass-death crusades (i.e. violent revolutions and wars, the destruction of capitalist civilization) to eliminate the claimed threat of capitalist society. They then followed with their unique scheme of “destroy the world to save the world” by installing coerced collectivization approaches.
The Nazis started a worldwide war to exterminate the Jewish Bolshevik threat. In total, billions suffered the destruction associated with those “salvation” crusades with their utopian visions and promises.
Extermination solutions run across a scale from the dehumanizing that results from demonizing differing others, to censoring, banning, silencing, criminalizing, removing differing others from public spaces… and then across to the worse extremes of actual violence to silence and completely remove the differing other. This is the outcome of framing your worldview in extremist terms of “it’s either them or us and there can be no mid-ground compromise”. There is no room for both of us.
Add the “immanence” element to your claimed threat. Set actual dates for the end of life and the world. When you add the feature of “immanent apocalypse” (common to climate alarmism and its endless setting of soon-to-arrive dates for the end of days) you intensify even further the feeling of existential crisis that demands immediate and aggressive “defensive” action, even violence (“coercive purification”) to save the world. Consequent to this aroused hysteria, democracy “obviously” has to be set aside, abandoned, and totalitarian coercion must be accepted because the crisis is too great to permit the dangerous, even “criminal hesitancy” of debate, discussion, free speech, and other liberal democracy principles. Note how such arguments are regularly used by climate alarmists today.
Added notes:
Demonization of others that is over-the-top smearing of others as evil threats to life, along with apocalyptic panic-mongering, incites the survival impulse that deforms people’s consciousness, emotions, motivations, and incites to dangerous responses. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how deforming narratives with tribal dualism, excessive demonization, and apocalyptic exaggeration (your very survival is threatened) can incite fringe nuts to do crazy things like assassinate opponents. Note, for example, the death threats to public figures like J. K. Rowling after she had been roundly demonized by bullying trans activists as a dangerous “transphobe”. And the left claims the excessive language of the right poses a threat to their activists. So who’s really your inciters to violence today?
Add that when you demonize differing others excessively, that tends to be followed with the criminalization of more and more things that were not previously considered criminal. The hypersensitivity of the tyrannical minority also feeds this. The hypersensitive minority exhibits a refusal to be tolerant of human imperfection and failure, a refusal to tolerate diversity of opinion and speech, a rejection of the equality of differing others. What sick trend is this? It smacks of a spirit of excessively zealous rush to condemnation, harsh judgment, and lust for punitive destruction of imperfect others.
Another note:
Any narrative that affirms the evil triad of tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction of others will ruin classic liberalism, liberal democracy. And we are seeing this now in the US and elsewhere.
There is no more important set of principles to understand and affirm now than Classic liberalism, or liberal democracy, to counter the totalitarianism that is surging across Western societies.
Key principles of authentic liberalism: The equality of all individuals under representative government and common law systems, the protected property rights and private contract rights of all equally, protected individual freedom- freedom of speech, protected due process (from arbitrary charges and imprisonment), protection from excessive taxation and regulation by state governments at all levels, and more…
Further example of intensified tribalism and excessive demonization of differing others:
While we generally want to maintain a fair bothsideism on most issues, today there is a significant imbalance of threat to democracy from the left, the formerly “liberal” side of society. Those most publicly pushing the tribal, demonizing, apocalyptic narrative announce their deformed narrative through mainstream media daily. US Democrats, in great displays of “projection”, daily frame their opponents- i.e. conservatives/Republicans- as the great evil threat to all good today. They have, over recent years, claimed that Republicans are an “existential threat to democracy”, a threat to all good, because, for example, they oppose Net Zero salvation schemes and continue to support the use of “life-threatening” fossil fuels.
A now extremist Woke minority on the left have unleashed an insanely irrational level of outraged hypersensitivity, hand in hand with concept creep, and are a leading edge in the new totalitarianism that has been forcing itself across societies- through all levels of education, assisted by intelligence agencies, lodging itself within state agencies and bureaucracies, even within state militaries. The Woke Progressivism in the mix has tried to push its way in through the back door to dominate the business world (ESG). It has effectively cowed social media to its censorship projects, and it controls news media, thereby forcing groupthink dogmatism on the public, trying to control people’s opinions and expressions/words in order to control the thinking of populations. Extreme leftist Democratic Woke Progressivism is trying to push itself to ideological and policy domination across Western societies.
This crusade has been exposed for (1) using intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI to pressure social media giants to censor opponents (i.e. Twitter Files), (2) for using lawfare to go after opponents, (3) for exaggerating and criminalizing the Jan.6 protests as an “insurrection”, while very likely subjected to incitement by FBI “agents provocateurs” similarly to the Michigan plot to kidnap the governor, (4) for the Covid lockdowns that were more severe and totalitarian in Democratic cities and states, (5) for the manipulation of elections as in fabricating the “Russian disinformation” scam to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story with help of intelligence agencies, and (6) for the fascist-like coercion of corporations to do their bidding (again, notably the censorship projects re Facebook, Twitter).
Once again, who’s your real threat to democracy today? Projection, anyone?
Insert: And in the interests of fair “bothsideism”, those on the right also frame distorting narratives in terms of tribal divisiveness, excessive smearing/demonization of opponents, exaggerated claims of apocalyptic-scale threats from the other side, and calls for the severest punitive treatment of opponent’s failures.
We don’t want either side dominating our societies and dehumanizing, dominating, or destroying opponents. We want the protective institutions and laws that disperse power away from all state elites and bureaucrats and ensure that power remains with the people, the commoners, the populists. We want openness throughout all government agencies and institutions, full access for citizens to information on all issues, and accountability. Classic Liberal principles, with their focus on the protection of individual rights and freedoms, do best to protect all citizens equally.
Example: The threat to democracy from the right:
Back to the Democrats for a moment: They have whipped themselves into such a hysterical frenzy over opponents who differ, especially convincing themselves that Trump is “the end of democracy”, a fascist dictator, a Nazi, even Hitler himself, and will “end the constitution”. Chris Matthews recently stated on MSNBC that if Trump wins and enacts the Republican program and policies, he will be a “dictator”. But if Biden wins and enacts Democratic programs and policies, all will be well. Democracy saved.
Democrats, along with many conservatives, convinced that climate change means “the end of the world”, have also continued to coercively push Net Zero decarbonization madness through state mandates. They have now talked themselves into a corner where they have to enact desperate measures to save all from the looming apocalypse that they have preached over past decades. Decarbonization has been essential to the alarmist crusade to destroy civilization in order to “save the world”. The latest version of the Marxist collectivization approaches to overthrow democratic liberal societies.
Today’s leftists been framed their crusade as being about the necessity to destroy democracy in order to save it and they are doing exactly that as the Twitter Files exposed, coercing social media to censor opponents, calling differing free speech “misinformation/disinformation/hate speech”, resurrecting a McCarthyism beyond 1950s McCarthyism to demonize their opponent’s speech as “Russian disinformation”. Again, irresponsibly framing and smearing of differing others with extremist terms. This has all been dangerous incitement to the hysteria and madness that we are observing all across our societies. Chicken Little has gone societal scale.
In their embrace of extreme leftist Woke Progressive, Western liberals have embraced a resurrected Marxism that is entirely against the Classic Liberalism that they once (recently) supported. Their Woke Progressivism has become inseparable from the new Marxism with its varied fronts such as DEI- a new collectivism that is defined by racial categories (all whites oppressors, all brown/black people oppressed), ESG, etc. This is the most dangerous threat to democracy today and many Democrats/liberals seem entirely blinded to the narrative they have embraced, to what they are doing and the consequences to liberal democracies.
Such is the dangerously delusional thinking that we lock ourselves into when we frame our narratives with black and white tribal dualism, when we engage excessive demonization of differing others (using extremist smears to define the other), and then claim that our opponents pose apocalyptic-scale threats to all good. We then push ourselves to embrace dangerous forms of response and we become the very threat to democracy and to all good, threat that we are projecting onto our opponents.
So yes Michael, “beware creating and fighting monsters- take care when battling your monsters not to become one”.
As a wise sage offered: “Let’s all calm the fuck down, eh”. Life is actually doing quite well. See for example, Humanprogress.org.
Another note:
Someone noted long ago the childish nature of comparisons with the failures of others to make ourselves feel better. As this person said, some people can only feel good about themselves if they can put someone else down in contrast, as worse than themselves.
Another:
We all need to stand back at big picture survey distance to wonder at how so many of our fellow citizens do not appear to understand just what they are doing in rejecting fundamental democracy to, in their words, “save democracy”. Similarly, we see many fellow citizens rejecting rational science and good evidence because they believe they are in a righteous crusade to “save the world” from apocalypse.
Arthur Herman details this reaction to rational science, as it emerged over past centuries, and preference for a return to a more mythically-based view of life (“re-connection with and re-enchantment of nature”) in his excellent study- “The Idea of Decline in Western History”.
Do you want to go right to the root of these “tribalism/demonization of enemies/apocalyptic” issues? Quickly, potently, efficiently?
Then go to fundamental beliefs and the emotions attached to such beliefs, and the ethical outcomes of this. How do we most effectively counter the pathological emotion of hate that drives so much tribal demonization of differing others. A hatred that is validated by bad narrative themes that masquerade it as “compassion”. The solution below offers a radical 180-degree reorientation of human consciousness to the best of love, the best of being human, the highest reach of heroic human achievement. And it allows me to post again the most profound insight in history from the wisdom sage Historical Jesus…
Here’s a reposting of my previous commentary re the Jesus core theme… (Yes, I will take any reason to post again and again this single most profound statement ever of behavior based on belief or ethic based on theology. This takes us to the absolute highest reach of love, of what it means to be human or humane.)
Disarming the tribal impulse with its associated impulse to punitive destruction of differing others, Wendell Krossa
How do we defuse the intensified tribalism of today with its unleashed hatred of differing others, quickness to demonize and dehumanize the different other, to render harsh judgment and condemnation of differing opinions and speech, and then to mercilessly call for censorship, banning from public, cancellation, and even criminalization of differing others. The lack of compassion in all this today is disturbing. What are we allowing to happen to us?
Here again is the ancient advice that goes to the root of the problem. My view of this historical person leans toward the tradition of “Historical Jesus research” that views this person as someone notably different from the Christian version, someone who is entirely contrary to Paul’s myth of “Jesus Christ” that dominates the New Testament.
Here is the main message of the Historical Jesus:
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.
“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
This can be summarized in this single statement that gets the essence of this most profoundly human insight in all history: “Love your enemy because God does”.
Example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31. The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and freely loving the wasteful son.
The intention of this Jesus message is to point us toward the highest reach of love- how to tower in stature as maturely human, how to become the hero of our personal quest or story, how to defeat the real enemy and monster in life- i.e. the inherited animal drives inside us where the real battle of good against evil takes place.
The most prominent features of the inherited animal in us- (1) the impulse to tribalism, (2) to domination of others, and (3) to punitive destruction of differing others. These constitute the real enemy and monster that we must confront, subdue, and overcome. Then we will have achieved heroic status in our story.
And that is what true liberation is really about. To be freed in the depths of our spirit and consciousness from the worst form of enslavement, the enslavement to the residual, inherited animal impulses of our primitive past. It is the freedom to become truly human.
Note: As always, see qualifiers in sections below. Any understanding of love must embrace the primary responsibility to protect the innocent, meaning the responsibility to restrain violent people- i.e. incarceration, rehabilitation, restitution- as critical to human development. The human ideal of love is not to be equated with dogmatic pacifism as in “turn the other cheek”.
We are suffering a generational eruption of hyper-sensitivity that feeds what psychological professionals should term “spoilt brat fits” where a minority demand that all others cater (give the knee, kowtow) to their hyper-sensitive sensibilities validated by their dogmatic Woke leftist/progressive ideological preferences. Phew, now I’m verklempt… so discuss amongst yourselves. Wendell Krossa
Usually when a brat throws a fit in public, most others embarrassedly look away till a parent intervenes and takes the child out of the situation (remove control/power) to enable the child to calm down. But today’s brats, emotionally and mentally malformed, even while in adult bodies, have turned totalitarian and demand entire societies must adjust to their demands. They form one of the latest versions of a “tyranny of the minority”. And they scream the loudest- shaming, threatening, and kowtowing fearful majorities by decibels.
They refuse to tolerate diversity, refuse to include the opinions and speech of differing others that they claim makes them feel uncomfortable. They refuse to include diverse others as equals. They claim to feel threatened, triggered, subjected to violence (“speech as violence”), hence, even traumatized by the differing opinions and speech of others. This intolerant hypersensitivity of a small minority has even been applied to comedy.
The outcome of their intolerance of diversity, inclusion, and equality (note- not “equity”) has led to consequent calls to censor the speech of others, to ban, silence, cancel, even criminalize the differing others. This is the ugly totalitarian impulse and spirit and, repetitiously across history, it has resulted in excessive control over majorities by these tyrannies of elite minorities. They pose a direct assault on the freedom and rights of many others, an attack on liberal democracy.
Part of the mix here is the pathology of “concept creep” where former hate speech definitions (only “speech that incites immediate violence”) have been expanded, and politicized, to now include the speech of opponents that “triggers and upsets” the hyper-sensitive minority that demand censorship, even criminalizing of their opponents.
Also validating their crusade against fuzzily and hazily defined “hate speech” are the increasing agencies that frame the disagreeing opinions and speech of opponents as “dangerous misinformation/disinformation/mal-information” that should be censored, banned, even criminalized.
Additionally, in the broader background and contributing to these crusades is the growing sensitivity and excessively harsh reaction of some people to things that, even just a decade ago, were not considered offensive or worth the effort to respond to in any way.
Note this comment of Walter Kirn:
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-may-d02
“Walter Kirn: And also, sensibilities evolve. Three quarters of what these kids are offended by or made to feel unsafe by or triggered by is stuff that just passes right by me. In other words, it seems that every year that passes makes these nervous systems more sensitive. And what’s hate speech today was just people talking in my youth. So it’s not just that the laws tend to become more general, it’s that people for a while now have become more and more sensitive. And between those two trends, the range of permissible speech would become narrower and narrower mathematically every year….” (end of Kirn quote)
I would place this growing hypersensitivity and intolerance of diversity of opinion and speech, symptomatic of growing totalitarian spirit, in the larger context of people becoming more risk averse. Having conquered many of the big threats to past life, modern humans have become more focused on tinier and tinier issues considered threats, and with doses of exaggeration of the nature of threats, hence distortion of the true nature of any threat, we suffer endless panic-mongering over all sorts of things…
On a related note…. Patrick Moore notes this phenomenon of increasing hypersensitivity and consequent risk aversion in the title of his latest book- “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom”
The Amazon blurb for Moore’s book:
“Here is Dr. Patrick Moore’s description of his unique thesis as presented in Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom. “It dawned on me one day that most of the scare stories in the media today are based on things that are invisible, like CO2 and radiation, or very remote, like polar bears and coral reefs. Thus, the average person cannot observe and verify the truth of these claims for themselves. They must rely on activists, the media, politicians, and scientists – all of whom have a huge financial and/or political interest in the subject – to tell them the truth.
“This is my effort, after 50 years as a scientist and environmental activist, to expose the misinformation and outright lies used to scare us and our children about the future of the Earth. Direct observation is the very basis of science. Without verified observation it is not possible to know the truth. That is the sharp focus of this book.
“The book contains 98 color photographs, illustrations, and charts. A key target audience is parents who do not approve of the “progressive” school curriculum and its alarmism about the future of civilization and the natural world. Dr. Moore hopes these parents will read his book and pass it on to their high-school and older children to give them an alternative to the bleak future predicted by the merchants of doom.
“Many other audiences will also find the book informative and convincing. In 11 chapters the reader is clearly shown that citizens are being misinformed by so many environmental doomsday prophesies, ones they cannot verify for themselves. We are told that nuclear energy is very dangerous when the numbers prove it is one of the safest technologies. We are told polar bears will go extinct soon when their population has been growing steadily for nearly 50 years. We are told that there is something harmful in genetically modified food crops when it is invisible, has no name and no chemical formula.
“We are told severe forest fires are caused by climate change when they are actually caused by poor management of fuel load (dead wood) in the forest. We are told that all the coral reefs will die by 2100 when in fact the most diverse coral reefs are found in the warmest oceans in the world. And of course, we are told that invisible CO2 from using fossil fuels, accounting for more than 80 percent of our energy supply, will make the Earth too hot for life.
“All of these scare stories, and many more, are simply not true. And this book will convince you, your family, and your colleagues of that. There is no substitute for the truth. Dr. Patrick Moore was one of the co-founders of Greenpeace and sailed on the first Greenpeace campaign against US H-bomb tests in Alaska. Upon receiving his PhD in ecology, he spent 15 years in the top committee of Greenpeace and led many of its environmental campaigns.
“Greenpeace began as a group of volunteers with noble intentions. Over the years it became very successful with campaigns to save the whales, stop the mass slaughter of baby seals, prevent toxic dumping into the air, water and earth, and many more. Greenpeace found itself in the early 1980s with more than $100 million coming in annually and close to 1,000 people on the payroll. It had become a business and fundraising moved to the top of the priority list.
“New campaigns were more about using sensationalism, misinformation and fear to attract donations. Dr. Moore said good-bye in 1986 as Greenpeace was turning into a racket peddling junk science. Since then, he has strived to be a sensible environmentalist, basing his beliefs on sound science and logical thinking. This book is the culmination of 50 years of learning during Dr. Moore’s multi-faceted quest for the truth about environmental issues (an historical account of Dr. Moore’s 15 years with Greenpeace and his analysis of environmental subjects are in his previous book, “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout – The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist, also on Amazon).
(End of Amazon blurb on Moore’s book.)
When you solve the big problems of life, then many people turn to obsessing over smaller and smaller issues, creating ever new threats to worry over…Again, the increasing hypersensitivity of newer generations that have benefitted from past and continuing progress in improving life for all.
And this on a great voice for Libertarianism–
“David Boaz, leading voice of libertarianism, dies at 70: As a writer and scholar, he labored for decades to move libertarianism from the margins to the mainstream of American politics”, Emily Langer, June 7, 2024
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/06/07/david-boaz-libertarian-cato-dead/
“David Boaz, a writer and scholar who for nearly half a century was a leading voice of libertarianism, a political philosophy that he labored to move from the margins to the mainstream of American politics…
“Libertarianism does not fit tidily into categorizations such as “liberal” or “conservative,” but Mr. Boaz did have a tidy summary of the cause to which he devoted nearly his entire professional life. Libertarianism, he said, stands for the idea that “each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.”
“In practical policy terms, that means small government, low taxes, free enterprise and school choice, among other positions associated with the political right. It also means robust civil liberties, the legalization of same-sex marriage, the repeal of bans on drugs and prostitution, and the rejection of censorship, among stances traditionally taken by the left.
““There are only a few rules: You can’t hit other people and you can’t take their stuff,” Mr. Boaz once quipped to The Washington Post. “After that, you have to make the important decisions for yourself.”…
“But Mr. Boaz saw anti-drug laws as a violation of civil liberties and the right to privacy. He compared them to Prohibition, which officially banned but failed to actually stop the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States from 1920 to 1933. He argued that alcohol and tobacco — both legal — accounted for many more deaths per year than illegal drugs did….
“Mr. Boaz counted another victory in the expansion of rights for same-sex couples — most notably the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2015 finding a constitutional right for gay couples to marry, a cause that he had worked toward for decades….
“But mainstream American politics, on both sides of the ideological spectrum, remained, in his view, woefully distant from foundational notions of liberty.
“He criticized Democrats for seeking to raise taxes and Republicans for attempting to censor books and television. Liberals who oppose school vouchers, as he interpreted their position, would deny parents the right to send their children to the schools of their choice, while conservatives opposed to gay rights would constrain an individual’s right to marry and build a family….
““Millions and millions of Americans, if you ask them, ‘What do you think about drug laws; what do you think about Social Security; what do you think about taxes?’ they’re going to come out in a libertarian direction,” he said. “But they’re not going to call themselves libertarians, because libertarianism really is the basic theme of America.”…
‘Mr. Boaz did not join the Libertarian Party, telling NPR in 2002 that he preferred to think of himself as an independent.”
A sampling of books, sites, and quotes on Classic Liberalism. Three good sources on the emergence, historical development, and basic principles and institutions of Classic liberalism are Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”, “Libertarianism” by David Boaz, and William Bernstein’s “The Birth of Plenty”.
From Wikipedia:
“What are the basic principles of liberal?
“Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech.
“Classic Liberals believe in equality and individual liberty, support private property and individual rights, support the idea of limited constitutional government, recognize the importance of related values such as pluralism, toleration, autonomy, bodily integrity, and consent.
“What is the rule of law for classical liberals?
“The rule of law: Classical liberals insist that the law should apply equally to everyone, regardless of gender, race, religion, language, family or any other irrelevant characteristics. It should apply to government officers just as much as to ordinary people; nobody should be ‘above the law’.”
A sample of sites on Classic Liberalism:
https://mises.org/mises-daily/what-classical-liberalism
https://medium.com/@YeIndividualist/the-six-principles-of-classical-liberalism-97acf8ab9135
https://www.liberalstudies.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ILS-Classical-Liberalism-PDF.pdf
Most fundamentally, Classic Liberalism and its protection of the primacy of individual freedom, is best understood in contrast with the subjection of individuals to collectives that are run by “enlightened elites” who believe that they know what is best for all others. In approaches oriented to individual rights and freedoms, power is dispersed among competing individuals, companies, and state agencies. In approaches oriented to the supremacy of collectives, power is centralized/concentrated with governing elites and state bureaucracies.
Protecting individual rights and freedoms, with power dispersed among citizens, has unleashed human motivation and creativity to produce the best time ever to be alive, in the modern world. Where, in contrast, repeated collectivism experiments (i.e. the latest example being Venezuela) continue to show that depriving individuals of their rights and freedoms undermines human motivation and creative endeavor, and reduces living standards to primitive levels.
A post to a discussion group on the collectivism versus free individual debate: Wendell Krossa
Another on politician qualifications (previously commented on in a section below):
“Long ago, I came to the conclusion that the single most important qualification in a politician running to become leader of a major country/economy was business experience, especially with a framework of Classic Liberal principles. Embracing the knowledge of Classic Liberal institutions and principles would suffice as qualification, without the business experience.
“The Classic Liberal principles? Notably, the equal freedom and rights of all individuals, as in private or personal property rights, a legal system protecting private contract rights, freedom of assembly and travel, and protected “due process” as in Common Law. The best of Classic Liberal law will protect all citizens from the threat of state intervention and appropriation of personal property, and other forms of state intervention in the personal lives of citizens. This protection from state interference is especially critical today because of the threat to individual freedom from the threat of censorship posed by Canada’s “Online Harms” bill.
“Look at how one person, devoid of Classic Liberal or liberal democracy understanding, can ruin a country. Yes, I am talking about our “most incompetent Prime Minister ever” (Kevin O’Leary’s evaluation of Justin Trudeau). Former high school drama teacher, snowboard instructor, serial blackface advocate, WEF collectivist fanboy, and anti-CO2 zealot. One person with no business understanding can ruin the lives of millions, or more in the case of the US political elite now possessed of Woke Progressivism erupting with a re-emerging push toward collectivism.
“Note this from https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/trudeau-might-have-saved-his-marriage-by-quitting-and-other-revelations-from-new-book
Quote from link above: “Stephen Maher interviewed Trudeau and more than 200 political insiders for his new book “The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau”, described as chronicling the Liberal leader’s “triumphs and failures,” out this week.
“Here are some of the book’s more surprising and interesting revelations… (notably, Trudeau’s) unusual aversion to business people” (End of quote from link above).
“Other red flags re Trudeau’s anti-business, anti-commerce positions: i.e. his statement- “I don’t think about monetary policy”. Or his earlier statement that of all governments in the world, he most admired the Chinese dictatorship because they know how to get things done quickly, as in coercively pushing through Net Zero decarbonization to ruin a society.
“Add here, for further illustration of common sense in relation to business, the “wise wokeness” of the leader of the Communist faction in Mitterrand’s 1980 coalition of socialists and communists. After doing what all socialist-types do- i.e. nationalize sectors of the economy (the inevitable approach of “enlightened vanguard elites” who believe that they alone know what is best for all others)- the French economy tanked within their first year in power.
“Surprisingly, and contrary to the usual Socialist reaction to failure by defensively doubling down, Mitterrand’s coalition then had the sense to back off, and the leader of the Communist faction in the coalition made this stunningly insightful statement of true wokeness after realization that their collectivist approach had produced a typically disastrous outcome. He said, “We must respect business as the creator of wealth in society”. (From former socialist Joshua Muravchik’s excellent history of Socialism- “Heaven On Earth”.)
“Well, hallelujah. True enlightenment. True wokeness.
“My suggestion: Leave business alone, whether its the one-person basement or garage operation, on up to mid-sized and giant corporate businesses. As wise sage Ben Carson used to say, government should get out of the way and exist only to create and protect an environment for business to flourish, meaning low taxation, low regulation. And who did that best during his recent past administration? So, if you have to, make the distinction between personality and policy and do what is best for all (Milton Freidman’s guiding criterion of what will produce “the most good for the most people”).
“(Note: We are all involved in business, meaning all involved in commerce as either creators, sellers, or buyers.)
“It is not the role of government to create jobs or manage the business world. State bureaucrats and elites are too often profoundly ignorant of common business needs for success and hence clog up the freedom and ability for business to function properly with their obsession to regulate and control things. Their meddling more often derails business functioning and flourishing.
“The protection of individual self-determination, notably protecting private property and private contract rights, unleashes/incentivizes human motivation to work hard, to create things, to prosper, as “commoners” are assured that they will receive the results of their efforts. That leads to furthering/increasing wealth creation in societies and that enhances the common or greater good of all.
“Over two centuries of evidence affirm this greater good in the billions lifted out of poverty and the majority of humanity now attaining middle class status with poverty continuing to decline. This is not equality of outcome as in collectivist “equity” that disincentivizes people and has a record of ruining societies and their environments. Contrary to equity of outcome, equality is about improving the status of all humanity in all classes. Letting the creative entrepreneurs create companies that provide jobs for many others.
“See, for example, Humanprogress.org for detailed studies and data on these issues. Note that after Classic liberal institutions and laws were gradually put in place in 18th Century England, and the effects were being felt among common people, then the wealth creation explosion of the modern world began to take off around 1820. GDP began rising after millennia of being flat.
“Also, furthering wealth creation, as the consequence of protected individual rights and freedoms, then results in improved environmental conditions. See Simon Kuznets’ “Environmental Kuznets Curve”, now stated as the “Environmental Transition” (Indur Goklany- The Improving State of the World).” (End of my post to discussion group)
Further notes (Wendell Krossa):
“Justin Trudeau, with his “world-savior” complex, intensified by extremely religious eco-zealotry, reminds me of C. S. Lewis’s warning in relation to the moralizing busybodies who believe that they alone know what is right and best for all others and will seek to coerce and control others to submit to their visions of utopian collectivist societies:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven yet at the same time make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals” (C.S. Lewis).
“The personal safeguard to the self-delusion of being solely right and possessing a salvation scheme for all others, and the delusion of being heroically engaged in a righteous battle against intolerable evil that must be coercively purged- Hold fast to Classic Liberal principles re the protection of individual rights and freedoms, as against the ever-creeping totalitarianism of collectivist approaches that subject individuals to some claimed “greater good or common good” that has to be managed by “enlightened elites” who believe that they alone know what is best for all other and will use coercion to control others.”
And here is an interesting analysis of the myth of successful Scandinavian Socialism.
“Policy Brief: Debunking the Scandinavian Socialism Myth: An Evaluation of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden”, Christopher Talgo, Justin Haskins, December 2019.
“In recent years, self-identified “democratic socialists” such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have touted socialism as the solution for all of America’s economic and social problems. Although they have not articulated exactly what democratic socialism entails, they have on countless occasions pointed to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden as thriving “socialist” paradises—despite the fact an abundance of evidence shows these countries absolutely are not socialist utopias.
“For example, during a 60 Minutes interview in 2019, host Anderson Cooper asked Ocasio-Cortez, “When people hear the word socialism, they think Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela. Is that what you have in mind?”
““Of course not,” Ocasio-Cortez replied. “What we have in mind—and what of my—and my policies most closely resemble are what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden.”
“Based on Ocasio-Cortez’s comments (and similar remarks from other democratic socialists), many have assumed Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are thriving Marxist socialist paradises and that Scandinavians are much better off than Americans because of their countries’ socialist policies. However, both these assumptions are false. The relatively high standard of living enjoyed by the citizens of these countries is a direct result of the free-market elements of their economies, not high taxes or expansive social welfare programs. This reality is particularly problematic for socialists such as Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, who view capitalism as “irredeemable” and have hired campaign advisors who believe Hugo Chavez’s socialist reign in Venezuela was an “economic miracle.”
“This paper seeks to establish, beyond any doubt, that Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have not embraced Marxist principles throughout much of their economies and are thus not “socialist” nations. Although these countries have, without question, socialized a relatively small number of their industries, such as health care and higher education, most of their economies benefit from strong private property rights protections and numerous free-market elements, including comparatively low regulatory requirements and largely flat tax systems.”
Another from Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, “America This Week: episode 91, June 1, 2024
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-with-efd
These guys are always good on how mainstream media have been corrupted as partisan mouthpieces for state elites- as basically propagandists for power, not holding power to account anymore (their original mandate as the “Fourth estate”). Interesting points on how mainstream media corrupted their mandate and now show signs that they are trying to reclaim the high ground in defending “free speech” when they are guilty of ruining things in the first place, and intentionally. Kirn says they are not redeemable now as they refuse to admit their role in the mess that is today’s news media…
They do good commentary on the De Niro thing in New York, and the media conundrum in reporting that lunacy after putting themselves on one side of the political divide…
These are always good discussions of current issues in our societies. Some quotes from below…
“Walter Kirn: Well, I’m going to say something. I’m going to speak from first principles here and get myself in a lot of trouble. I don’t think presidential candidates for major parties who are ahead in the polls should be on trial in the spring of an election year for things that aren’t really, really serious.
“Matt Taibbi: I agree with you.
“Walter Kirn: Because everything flows in a democracy from our choice of a chief executive, and the choice should be as free as possible and other parts of government, and not parts of the federal government either, state governments, like the one that is carrying out this prosecution should lay their hands off the choice of the American people as to how they’re going to run world affairs, domestic affairs, their economy and so on. But we don’t have that privilege this year, this thing’s happening….
“Matt Taibbi: For people who haven’t read the indictment, this case is a bizarre Frankensteinian legal construction where they’re asserting something that basically isn’t illegal. You are allowed to pay off a mistress to be quiet. But what they’ve done is they’ve essentially said, well, they committed a business records offense by registering that payment as, I forget what it is, legal fees or whatever it is, as opposed to pay off. And then in addition, we’re going to take this state records offense and convert it and tie it to a federal conspiracy to commit a federal elections crime by suppressing information.
“But there is no federal elections crime here. You would need the underlying state offense to be first. There’s a reason why they declined to bring this case for a long time because it’s not really against the law that you have to create the idea behind it in order to go forward with it. But you see the way they report it as if there is a catch and kill agreement and he did approve it, then he’s guilty, which again, I don’t think that’s actually true, but whatever. That’s where we are.
“Walter Kirn: Why do they call it catch and kill, by the way? They love the ominous language of that.
“Matt Taibbi: The idea is that you’re buying up a story so that it will not be reported, which is exactly, by the way, and you brought up the Aspen Institute, that’s exactly what they did at the Aspen Institute. They got together and had a tabletop exercise on how to not cover the Hunter Biden story. If that isn’t catch and kill, I don’t know what is. And you could maybe make an argument that there was some offense there, but nobody’s arguing that the suppression of that story, which really was suppressed, was illegal, even though that certainly had an impact on the 2020 election.
“Walter Kirn: No, no, we wouldn’t have, because last year it was still considered likely that with this great slate of legal problems ahead of him, Donald Trump would be way down in the polls right now. And I think the resilience of the American populist movement, whether it’s behind RFK Junior or Donald Trump or whatever, has shocked these people to a certain extent. They’re losing audience, they’re losing credibility. They have been wrong on so many fronts because they have basically been mouthpieces for the bureaucracies and the expert class and so on. They screwed up COVID, they screwed up Russiagate, they screwed up… Probably are looking at Ukraine as a likely disappointment quite soon, and they’re going, “Where are we going to be in a year? What would be the state of our business, our newspaper, our network? Are we going to be out here as the spokespeople for an out-of-power establishment?” It’s quite possible.
“Matt Taibbi: There was that weird… During the Trump years, essentially the press was an organ of a government in exile-
“Walter Kirn: Come on, that’s the most disingenuous thing I’ve seen. Everything in the last few years has been about making people say things and criticizing them if they fail to say things voluntarily. In other words, we’ve got more complex speech codes than ever in my lifetime, and we’ve got penalties attached to failing to live up to them, sometimes legal penalties, but certainly institutional and social penalties all over the board. Compelled speech has been the name of the game as much as censorship and disinformation patrolling has been the other side of it.”
Added comments:
A central point in my musing on classic liberalism is that love and freedom are inseparable to truly human existence. Where there is no authentic freedom, there is no authentic love.
This site is an exploration of- What it means to be truly human. The single most important question that we all have to answer in our lives. What features define us as human and shape the meaning of our life stories? What especially, in the mix, does love mean, our highest ideal and the singularly most defining feature of truly human life? The ideal that gives meaning to everything. The highest accomplishment of any life- to understand, to express and experience love from others, to enjoy and to continue to improve in the back and forth of love in human relationships.
I suggest, for one, that Classic Liberal principles and institutions best embody the ideals, promote the institutions and laws, and protect all equally in a truly human society with healthy human functioning and relating. Classic liberalism best gets the relationship of love with freedom and how to express this in a human society.
Once when interviewed on a stage somewhere, the host put up a huge photo of Justin Trudeau just behind where guest Jordan Peterson was sitting. Peterson turned to look at the photo then turned back to face the audience again with a look of disgust on his face. “He is such a fraud”, said Peterson. “He has never said anything authentic”. I felt the same when Peterson said that. A virtue-signaling pretender who runs ahead of crowds looking back to see which way others are moving and then running in front, with backward looks, to see if he is still in front. Add eco-zealotry lunacy to the mix and you get this “most incompetent prime minister ever”.
As a collectivist member of the dominating elite, of course he is worried about “individualism” as in not tolerating dissent from the populist masses who think for themselves and want the freedom for self-determination.
“First Reading: Scorned by Canada, Trudeau pitches his agenda to the Americans:
FIRST READING: Scorned by Canada, Trudeau pitches his agenda to the Americans: In two U.S. podcast appearances, he expressed his hope that misguided Canadians would come to their senses and re-elect him”, Tristan Hopper, April 30, 2024
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/trudeau-pitches-agenda-to-americans-after-being-scorned-by-canada
Quotes from article:
“In the wake of a 2024 “fairness” budget that has largely failed to salvage his plummeting poll numbers, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s post-budget media tour has taken the unusual step of pitching his agenda to Americans.
“Last week, Trudeau was the featured guest on two U.S. podcasts: Vox’s Today, Explained and Freakonomics Radio, where he outlined his plans to bring “fairness” to the Canadian economy and hold the line against what he framed as a populist uprising….
“Trudeau also described Canada as being seized by a focus on “individualism that I think is counterproductive to the kind of world we need to build.”…
“He frames opposition to his government as a form of mass hysteria… Trudeau described his citizenry as being in the grip of a worldwide trend towards irrational populism, and expressed his hope that Canadians would ultimately come to their senses…
“Absolutely nothing wrong is his fault
“‘This is a theme that Trudeau has similarly pursued in his domestic interviews: That every decision of his government has been correct and necessary, and that any perceived failure of his leadership is due to external factors beyond his control… there is not a single acknowledgement in either interview that he has ever made a mistake or had to alter course.”
And another post to a discussion group: Wendell Krossa
“Bob you recently mentioned in a post about the “Plandemic” and what is going on. Now the tide is turning and we are finding out how badly we were lied to, indoctrinated/propagandized… RFK’s book, for example, exposed Fauci and his endless lying. Even Chris Cuomo, formerly of CNN, who trashed Joe Rogan re the Ivermectin thing and his challenging the lockdowns and vaccines, now Cuomo admitting on a Patrick Bet-David podcast that Rogan was right, even though he and they (CNN) will never admit they were wrong.
“Jimmy Dore (link below) notes how Cuomo is now defensively claiming that he was lied to (not able yet to fully reembrace his responsibility in the lying). But Dore reminds listeners how Cuomo smeared and slandered people giving good information, like Rogan, while Cuomo was presenting lies to the public. Dore also adds that RFK predicted exactly what Fauci would do in the Plandemic.
“This is the repeated pattern that Glen Greenwald, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and others keep warning us about. How we are fed endless doses of disinformation presented under guise of “fighting disinformation… fighting hate speech or Russian disinformation” only to find out later that what media present to the public is propaganda and lies. And we all keep falling for this, whether with medicines or wars (Tonkin Gulf, WMDs in Iraq) or whatever the issue is.
“Here in the link below Jimmy Dore interviews Mikki Willis who has put out a series of documentaries on the theme of “Plandemic” and now a movie on this theme. This guy details how Fauci formerly pushed some med (AZT?) that killed his brother and hundreds of thousands of men decades ago.
“Good on how the big Pharma companies and media demonized Nobel-winning drugs like Ivermectin (given safely to billions of people, a wonder drug like penicillin and on WHO’s best drugs list, etc.) as “Horse medicine”, even censoring, trying to cancel and criminalize any who defended such medicines, and what was behind all this.
“Its beyond mindboggling that these people made decisions against the bans on “gain-of-function” research, funding a lab with poor safety protocols, and that resulted in 6 million deaths around the world, including the father of my wife, who died alone in emergency as no one was allowed to visit him. And none of the main actors will be held responsible for that mass-death from the corrupt decisions that they made. Add the outcomes of a world-wide lockdown and how that caused immense damage to billions- schooling setbacks for children, failed businesses, etc. Fauci lied to Congress about funding the gain of function at Wuhan and now the NIH has admitted that they did fund that.
“To me, these endless exposes just affirm more and more what people like Dr. Drew concluded on a Gutfeld show- “I do not believe anything media tell me or anything government tells me, anymore”. Also Dore- “We are the most propagandized people in the world and we don’t know it”. Thank God for the Greenwalds, Shellenbergers, Taibbi and Kirns, and so many more courageously speaking out against the state and media lying/propaganda and in defense of freedom today. Who knew that the greatest threat to our liberal democracies and to our freedom would come from within our very societies, the “worst form of totalitarianism ever” according to Shellenberger- control of language that aims to control the thinking of populations.
“And yes, Bob I share the hope that the pushback, the turning of the tide or worm, is now happening with populism movements, even though these movements have been demonized and smeared as “right wing, far right, fascist, Nazi, racist,…” and much more.
“Another interesting note- Willis says that he noticed a change in Facebook’s page buttons to “Like” and how this fed self-censorship and people began to tie their identity to the likes they received for what they posted, meaning, in his view, that psychological manipulation was going on. Also good on why so many comedians have become the best news sources today via the podcast movement- because “laughter lets in what otherwise might be blocked” as distasteful or too contrary. Excellent point by Willis.
“Comedians- you have your mandate.
“Here is the Jimmy Dore interview of Willis…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENNZUDJfXYQ
Added note to discussion group post above: “These amazing researchers, journalists, and most critical- defenders of Classic Liberal freedom, continue to expose the new totalitarianism in all its devious workings behind the scenes, especially it’s use of terms that include harmful elements- “disinformation” but then are subjected to “concept creep” that becomes the censorship of opposing views and speech and that is unleashing the totalitarian impulse… “Disinformation/Misinformation” now means views and speech that governing elites don’t like, according to Democrat Party dogma.
“This is the sad state of our “liberal democracies” today. The behind-the-scenes manipulation to censor any opinions or speech that refuse to affirm the narrative of extremist leftist Woke Progressivism that dominates politics, universities, intelligence agencies, and so much of state bureaucracies… the new totalitarianism spreading across our societies.
“The former Twitter safety officer, Yoel Roth, a zealous Trump hater, and hence, not expected to reveal anything that might help Trump, had the decency/integrity to state that the Hamilton 68 dashboard was “bullshit”. Unfortunately, he was overruled by a superior at Twitter (before Musk bought it) and told to keep quiet about the dashboard. More lying to the public… and MSNBC went on to use the dashboard, as its evidence and source around, a 100 times. Taibbi long ago published a list of all those times MCNBC referred to it (dates, comments).”
The bigger picture on freedom Wendell Krossa
Free speech is “the fundamental freedom”. The war on free speech is a war on freedom in general. It is also a war on the Classic Liberal principle of equality. Example: Denying some the right to free speech is not affirmation of protecting and promoting the same rights and freedoms for all. Denying some the same free speech rights as others is also then a war on universal inclusion, a war on diversity, a war on all human good and progress. And as a war on freedom, it is then also a war on love, the fundamental characteristic of authentic humanity. Bob Brinsmead- “Where there is no authentic freedom there is no authentic love”.
In this war on free speech, each one of us needs to consider the Dutch police supervisor’s statement to new recruits serving under the Nazis (in the movie “Will”)- “You will stand by silently and observe”… or (hint, hint) maybe not. The war on freedom impacts all of us. What will we do to protect freedom? Will we just stand by silently and observe? Just as so many “good Germans” did under the Nazis? Illustrating Hannah Arendt’s “Banality of evil”, also known as the “sin of omission” where “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing”.
This war on freedom, detailed by Shellenberger below, has revived the 1950s McCarthyism hysteria over Russian influence. But this time, in a great Switcheroo, it is the liberals/Democrats using McCarthyite tactics against their opponents. And as Matt Taibbi said, Joe McCarthy would be astounded at how today’s Democrats have gone beyond anything he would have dreamed of, with the “Russia, Russia, Russia” hysteria and smearing of disagreeing others as Russian agents.
Shellenberger also notes below, this latest war on freedom is very much an elite crackdown on commoners, elites fearing the spreading populist revolts, revolts they smear as “far right, right wing”. And yes, while today’s populism is generally coming from the right of center, it also appears true that conservatives are now doing more to protect and promote Classic Liberal values.
Keep clear that the pejoratives “disinformation/misinformation”, similar to “hate speech”, have been subjected to “concept creep” that includes “harmful online content” but has been extended and used to silence opponent’s speech- speech that makes some uncomfortable, triggered, offended….
This latest from Michael Shellenberger. See graphs of leader’s popularity ratings in the full article at the link below.
https://public.substack.com/p/france-joins-world-war-on-free-speech
“France Joins World War On Free Speech: Block on TikTok in Pacific Island territory of New Caledonia represents a dangerous new escalation of global censorship — what’s happening?”, Michael Shellenberger, May 20, 2024
“President Emmanuel Macron spent many years developing a reputation as a defender of France’s famed Enlightenment values, as embodied in the national slogan, “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”…
“Last Thursday, Macron switched sides in that fight…. His government entirely blocked the TikTok social media platform from operating in France’s Pacific Island territory of New Caledonia….
“This is entirely inconsistent with free expression norms and what we would expect in a democracy.”…
“France’s decision comes on the heels of increasingly extreme demands for censorship around the world. Brazil’s top censor demanded that social media platforms ban independent journalists and politicians. Australia’s “e-Safety” czar ordered a worldwide ban on content, not just in Australia. And Ireland, Scotland, Canada, and the EU are putting in place draconian laws including life in prison for new speech crime offenses….
“And what can be done to stop governments in their accelerating drive for totalitarianism?…
“Global elites have prioritized greater social media censorship since Brexit and Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States in 2016, which they blamed on misinformation and hate speech on Facebook and Twitter. A whistleblower told Public and Racket that a “former” British intelligence analyst was “in the room” at the Obama White House in 2017 when she received instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a “repeat of 2016.”
“Current and “former” government officials from the CIA, Defense Department, and FBI all participated in disinformation operations from 2017 to 2020. One disinformation operation, “Hamilton 68” created large quantities of mainstream news coverage in the US that falsely labeled American and British Twitter users as “Russian bots.”…
“Those various “information operations,” as militaries call them, appear to have been aimed at undermining the populist appeal of Trump and Brexit by defining their supporters as foreigners, not nationalists….
“But there is evidence of forces separate from the politicians who are pushing for censorship, including militaries, intelligence agencies, the news media, and the philanthropies of George Soros and Pierre Omidyar…. a more accurate statement might be that intelligence services are using politicians….
“Past reporting by Public has documented” that governments use a very small number of narratives, messages, or interpretive “frames” to define and denigrate their opponents. Their focus is heavily focused on Russia, hate speech, and conspiracy theories….
“The ACLU used to defend free speech but now seeks censorship of disfavored authors….
“The problem for pro-censorship politicians and journalists is that there is little to no evidence of Russian influence over the media or voters in Europe or the United States, and even less so since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The same goes for hate speech, which exists on both sides of the political spectrum and is an inherently subjective category.”
More on Javier Vinos’ “Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis”
“The Battle of The climate Hypotheses: The Green-House Gas Forcer vs. The Winter Gatekeeper Round 1”, Gabriel Oxenstierna, May 21, 2024
See full article, graphs, and references at link above.
Some quotes:
“What drives climate change? Is it the anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases [GHG], as the established climate science and the IPCC claims with its GHG forcer hypothesis?
“Or is it the natural variations in heat transport to the polar regions during winter, as the new “Winter Gate-keeper hypothesis” [WGH] claims?
“The WGH asserts to be a general hypothesis for climate change, fully capable of explaining historical climate change, as well as current changes, and with explicit forecasts for our future climate….
“The WGH introduces a novel climate-forcing mechanism by proposing that changes in poleward heat transport can strongly influence climate….
“Of specific significance is the regulation of the heat transport into the Arctic….
“The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis proposes that changes in the heat and moisture that reach the polar regions during winter, particularly the Arctic, play a major role in climate change…. leads to an effective loss of energy to space through outgoing infrared radiation….
“The climate is constantly striving for a basic energy balance: the solar energy coming in must be balanced by an (approximately) equal amount of thermal energy radiating out – globally: Watts in must correspond to watts out….
“The Sun irradiates so much into the tropics that it cannot all be efficiently radiated back to space. The energy is therefore transported away – advected – to the regions where it more easily can radiate to space…. The resulting polewards transport of energy is achieved by advection of heat and moisture via atmospheric weather systems, and to a smaller degree by ocean currents…
“Some of the absorbed heat is converted into kinetic energy in weather systems. These do the job of moving the heat from the tropics to the polar regions.”
This link and article from Bari Weiss’s Free Press
“The Revenge of the Normies: In the great global battle for power, the elites are losing. Why?”, Martin Gurri, May 20, 2024
Quotes from article:
“A fierce political conflict is raging over much of the democratic world. On one side we find the normies: ordinary people who defend, naively, the historic principles of democracy such as freedom of speech and assembly, the separation of powers, etc. On the other side stand the elites, masters of the great institutions of wealth, knowledge, and power, who insist that extraordinary measures must be taken to save a depraved and self-destructive society from its own history and its own people—that is to say, from the normies.
“The elites are driven entirely by the impulse to control. They detest democracy, which keeps getting in their way, and much prefer a golden ideal they possessively call “Our Democracy”—their own rule in perpetuity. Individual rights are unfortunate legacies from a simpler era….
“The normies want to get on with life. They want to work, get married, have children—boring stuff. That’s what normal means.
“The elites, for their part, wish to change everything: sex, the climate, our history, your automobile, your diet, even the straws with which you slurp your smoothie.”
Terrorizing children with apocalyptic
“Public schools push ‘climate crisis’ narrative, as skeptics try to offer other perspectives”, Just the News, May 29, 2024
Quotes:
“Paul Tice, senior fellow for the National Center for Energy Analytics, took the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal to criticize the climate change curriculum in New Jersey public schools.
“The educational materials, Tice explained, are not just found in sections of science courses, but in all school subjects. Districts are encouraged to insert lessons on climate change into English language arts and mathematics….
“To support the state’s climate curriculum, the New Jersey Department of Education points educators toward resources that provide on positive views of the potential of wind and solar to replace fossil fuels. “New Jersey’s climate curriculum is pure indoctrination,” Trice wrote….
““It’s all got climate alarm built into it. It doesn’t question the idea that humans are causing catastrophic climate change, despite the fact that that’s not supported by the data or the evidence,” Sterling Burnett said….
“Other attempts to provide kids with different perspectives on climate change and energy have also been rebuked. In April 2023, the CO2 Coalition, whose members include a Nobel laureate, purchased a booth at the National Science Teaching Association’s annual convention in Atlanta….
“The association found the materials so offensive that they kicked the CO2 Coalition out of the convention….
“Messaging fails
“While most states are keeping educational materials in schools uniformly in support of a climate crisis perspective, polls are showing that young people are becoming less inclined to accept it.”
This from The Daily Sceptic by Russell David, May 20, 2024 “Twelve Reasons Why I Don’t Believe There’s a Climate Emergency”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/05/20/twelve-reasons-why-i-dont-believe-theres-a-climate-emergency/
Sample quotes (see full 12 reasons at link above):
“I’m not a scientist. But I have reasons why I don’t fully trust the ‘climate emergency’ narrative. Here they are:
“I have listened to some top scientists who say CO2 does not drive global warming; that CO2 in the atmosphere is a good or vital thing; that many other things, like the Sun and the clouds and the oceans, are more responsible for the Earth’s temperature….
“I have looked into the implications of Net Zero. It is incredibly expensive. It will vastly reduce living standards and hinder economic growth….
‘Net Zero will also lead to significant diminishment of personal freedom, and it even threatens democracy, as people are told they must do certain things and they must not do other things, and they may even be restricted in speaking out on climate matters….
“I like sunshine. I prefer being warm to being cold. It makes me feel better. It’s more fun. It saves on heating bills. It saves on clothes. It makes people happier. Far few people die of the heat than they do the cold.”
Insert note to Elon Musk on his new AI project. Elon, why not program it with Classic Liberal ideas and principles that protect the rights and freedoms of all equally? Huh?
This good summary of Nobel laureate John Clauser’s recent research by Ken Haapala of Science and Environmental Policy Project, “The Week That Was: 2024-06-08”
Read the full report at Haapala’s newsletter above. And, Bjorn Lomborg, having recently suggested support for geoengineering solutions, pay attention to what Clauser says here…
“The Clauser Presentation:
See the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpc…
Main points in Clauser report:
“John Clauser III: Clauser’s main assertion: The cloud thermostat is the dominant climate controlling mechanism….
“I show that the cloud-thermostat mechanism involves the dominant (73%) use of sunlight energy by the planet.
“I show that when the cloud-thermostat mechanism is viewed as a form of climate stabilizing negative feedback, it is by far the most powerful of any such mechanism heretofore considered….
“Further, Clauser assertion is consistent with Le Chatelier’s principle that if a dynamic system is disturbed by changing conditions, the system shifts to counteract the disturbance. It dampens, reduces, the impact….
“Clouds reflect dramatically more sunlight than the rest of the planet does!…
“Temperature control of the Earth’s surface by this mechanism works exactly the same way as does a common home thermostat. A thermostat automatically corrects a structure’s temperature in the presence of varying modest heat leaks. For earth, the presence of significant CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere, manmade or not, provides, in fact, a very small heat leak (at most, about 2 W/m2)…
“How does the cloud thermostat work? When the Earth’s cloud-cover fraction is too high, then the earth’s surface temperature is too low. Why? Clouds produce shadows. Cloudy days are cooler than sunny days. A high cloud-cover fraction equals a highly shadowed area. With reduced sunlight reaching the ocean’s surface and lower temperature, the evaporation rate of seawater is reduced. The cloud production rate over ocean (70% of the earth) is low because sunlight is needed to evaporate seawater. The earth’s too-high cloud-cover fraction obediently starts to decrease. Very quickly, cloud-cover fraction decreases, the temperature increases. The Earth’s cloud-cover fraction is no longer too high. Equilibrium cloud cover and temperature are restored.
“When the Earth’s cloud-cover fraction is too low, the surface temperature is then too high, then the reverse process occurs. With low cloud cover, lots of sunlight reaches the ocean surface. Increased sunlit area then evaporates more seawater. The cloud-production rate obediently increases, and the cloud cover is no longer too low. Equilibrium cloud cover and temperature are again restored.
“Depending on one’s assumption regarding cloud reflectivity (albedo), the cloud thermostat mechanism has anywhere between 18 and 55 W/m2 power available from cloud-fraction variability to overcome a wimpy 0.7 W/m2 heat leak (allegedly blamed on greenhouse gasses) and to stabilize the Earth’s temperature no matter what the greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration is!…
“Given huge observed fluctuation in Outgoing power, the Earth obviously maintains a surprising stable long-term temperature. Why?…
““I have introduced here the cloud-thermostat mechanism. It is clearly the overwhelmingly dominant climate controlling feedback mechanism that controls, stabilizes, the Earth’s climate and temperature. It thereby prevents global warming and climate change….
““There is no climate crisis! There is, however, a very real problems with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s now enormous population. There is indeed an energy shortage crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect science, and by the government’s associated incorrect muddled response to it.
“Government and business are currently needlessly spending trillions of dollars on efforts to limit the greenhouse gases, CO2 and CH4 [methane], in the Earth’s atmosphere.
“CO2 and CH4 are not pollutants. They must be removed from every list of defined pollutants. The have a negligible effect on the climate. Trillions of dollars can be saved by this one simple measure alone! Additionally, the CO2 Coalition points out that atmospheric CO2 is actually beneficial.
“I recommend that all efforts to limit environmental carbon should be terminated immediately! Trillions of dollars can be saved by eliminating carbon caps, carbon credits, carbon sequestration, carbon footprints, zero-carbon targets, carbon taxes, anti-carbon policies and fossil-fuel limits, in energy policy and elsewhere.
“Government requirements and subsidies for electric vehicles, all electric power, solar and wind power, etc. should all be eliminated.
“Geoengineering programs to reduce global warming should be cancelled.”