The EU, Breitbart reports, is working quickly to assimilate the “Western Balkans” while issuing such stirring statements about a future imperium. “Enlargement policy is among the top three priorities of EU leaders,” EU Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Olivér Várhelyi said during a visit to Belgrade, Serbia, a few weeks back. “The only real long-term solution for peace, stability and prosperity is EU membership.”
As I recall, that is pretty much what Roman General Pompey told the Hebrews a bit over 2,000 years ago: he made it clear that Rome was done with the abuses and tyranny of the Seleucid dynasty which ruled the Levant from Antioch in modern Syria. The Judeans were promised that the SPQR – the Roman Empire – would provide for peace, prosperity and stability. And they did, for about 230 years – from about 165 BC to AD 65. At a considerable cost in blood and treasure and loss of liberty, freedom, and godliness. (That’s almost as long as the USA has been around, eh?)
The USA is a mess. Economically, socially, morally, politically.
Europe is worse.
In the last two months, we have seen things rapidly going downhill in the EU and the rest of Europe. Apparently only an unusually warm winter so far has kept calamity at bay. Calamity? Fuel shortages are resulting in roaring fuel costs. For the elite, it is business as usual, with the grand super meeting at Davos among other things resulting in a shortage of hookers to meet the lust of the bigwigs and their entourage of minions.
This recent story from KOTA talks about “Oyate Court” which is a bizarre, extra-legal “judicial” activity several counties in South Dakota are running. In it, enrolled members of federally-recognized tribes are not put through the normal South Dakota unified court system process when accused of crimes or when disputes arise between them.
This is, of course, not permitted to other American citizens, even those who enjoy dual citizenship with another “sovereign” but “foreign” nation. Like someone who is a citizen of both Montana and Alberta. Or Florida and Switzerland. No, this is only available for those who are both US Citizens and enrolled members (that is, citizens) of “dependent domestic nations” which still have sovereignty. Or so we are told. Those are, of course, the AmerInd Nations. More than 300 of whose reservations speckle a map of the Continental United States.
Dr. Leana Wen, reports the New York Post, has stated that COVID-19 (beer flu) deaths were “overcounted” by the medical community. That many people died “with COVID” and not “from COVID.”
This news comes as no surprise to us here at TPOL. We saw that happening from almost the very beginning. Some examples stick in our memories from Colorado. First, a “park ranger” in Cortez (that is, a vagrant who often slept under a picnic table in city parks near liquor stores) who was listed as dying from the dreaded flu when the autopsy (as conducted and confirmed by the County Coroner) determined he died from alcohol poisoning (in excess of 0.4%!). But the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) changed the death certificate to read as death from COVID-19. And the motorcyclist who was beheaded in the traffic accident which killed him also was listed as a COVID-19 death.
Around the world and here in the States, mainstream media is frequently a major group of enemies of liberty. The wokeness, political correctness, social justice warrior agenda and many other characteristics are obvious. Various reasons are postulated for this bias.
Why are the media this way? And how did that happen? It appears that the modern media is totally different than what existed in the first quarter of the last century. And even in the third quarter (1950-1975). What caused this?
All of us who remember the 1970s and the birth of the “environmental movement” back then may recall the infamous Paul Erlich, a biologist who published the doomsayer book “The Population Bomb” in 1968. warned of the perils of overpopulation: mass starvation, societal upheaval, and environmental deterioration. Now about 91, he is again being showcased by the mainstream media and the so-called green movement.
His book and his passionate advocacy for massive government control were key to the establishment of the environmental movement which has done so much damage in the last 55 years. And every one of his claims has proven to be, not just wrong, but incredibly off-base. In 1968, the world had an estimated population of 3.6 billion. That population, instead of having “hundreds of millions” starve to death, and collapsing civilization, doubled in about 40 years.
Though people think that Erlich is a relic of the past, and his ideas have been discredited and done little or no harm to the world, that isn’t the case. Erlich’s influence on the planet and most people has been significant – and deadly.
In the last 15 or so years, world population has climbed still more, to 8 billion. More than a third of them, by the way, are in China and India. Those are two of the locations who at least tried to carry out what Erlich preached.
Read what he wrote back then:
Not only that, he advocated for a massive totalitarian government, featuring propaganda, censorship, and population police:
This man enjoyed a very lucrative and successful career as a professor at Stanford University in California. Mainstream media found him there to use as part of the fearmongering that the media start every year with:
Connor Boyack (the publisher of the Tuttle Twins books) shared this and asked “Why is 60 Minutes promoting this guy’s evil ideas today?”
I think Connor is asking a rhetorical question, of course. It isn’t hard to figure out why the powers-that-be are continuing to spread his claims. Although Erlich was quickly proven wrong, he did have a massive following and many did believe him and acted on that. Perhaps the prime example is the People’s Republic of China, where the various programs of Mao and his successors did indeed put people in prison (or just kill them) because they had too many children. (In 2013, China reported that it had murdered 336 million unborn children in the last forty years. Today it is estimated that China aborts 19 million children each year.) The States’ bloody record cannot compare. (Just 60 million or so since 1973.)
As part of the environist movement he helped develop, population growth in much of the developed world has dropped precipitously. Particularly when combined with socio-economic changes, not because of starvation and want, but because of prosperity. When you take away immigration, every part of Europe is now declining in population: they are not breeding!
That is not enough for Erlich, the Gaea-worshipers, and the regressives, of course. Even though they didn’t need the FCC to order them to do so, the media has indeed condemned large families, while at the same time strongly promoting birth control, homosexuality, and abortion. Erlich is not the only, or even primary, cause of the massive changes since 1968. But his influence is still strong. And his influence in the 1970s shaped the worldview of many people now in power today.
Yet all this does not seem to be doing anything about the growing world population, apparently.
And of all the nations of the world, it is the two that seem to be following his recommendations that are closest to collapse: China and Russia.
So Erlich has doubled down. He is actually claiming that 500-800 million people have died in the last half-century from starvation (due to overpopulation, just as he predicted). As with the numbers you hear from the hoplophobes and hoploclasts about gun violence, I suspect they are bogus. Yes, undoubtedly many people have died of starvation in the last half-century, but the fault lies with government, greed, and disruptions of society, not a lack of food production. (And the environists work against themselves, of course: looking at billions of tons of food and millions of acres of cropland diverted to produce fuel (biodiesel and ethanol) to reduce the use of evil fossil fuels.) Erlich at least seems to recognize this: we are accused of not sharing enough. (Does that sound like wealth redistribution to you?)
Like the liars about global warming, guns, and “the benefits of a planned political economy” we must not believe Erlich’s lies from a half-century ago or today. But we must also be prepared to answer them.
Local government in these States is, at best, a failure. 2022 demonstrated that once more. Indeed, it is far, far worse than the vicious horror that was State and Federal government in 2021 (and again in 2022). And those levels of government are less and less tolerable for their stupidity, cupidity, quality (lack thereof), and harm caused to people in society.
But it can be argued that local government is declining even faster. And its negative impact even worse.
Actually, I’m basing this on how county governments behave in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. (What I hear from other States seems to match, however.) What I find is, seriously, dozens of “solutions” looking for problems to solve. And a bunch of nannies and do-gooders and “conservatives” who think because they are all for “God and country” and “free enterprise” they are on the side of the angels.
“There are lies, d*** lies, and statistics.” Mark Twain attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli.
It is a fundamental principle of government. Consider the BATFE or ATF. And consider one of the BATFE’s allies in their effort to disarm Americans, a useful idiot named Samuel Stebbins of a “financial publication” called 24-7 Wall St.
Stubbins writes that BATFE data claims that in every state, there is at least one city that appears to account for a disproportionate share of crimes involving a firearm.
This does indeed seem to be true. Look at our home State.
If you had any real hope of Congress doing something that is good for you, your family, or society, this week shows what foolishness that was.
It isn’t even providing good entertainment! Just doing the same thing over and over, proving that a House of Representatives controlled one old party (the GOP) will be no change from control by the other old party.
The best thing that we can say here at TPOL about this stupid little game is that millions of Americans are again seeing that Congress and its members have no honor and no principles. That their true commitment is not to those they supposedly represent, but to power, prestige, and above all, business as usual.
In so many words, Congress is worthless. It has no redeeming value. Its corruption has reached a nadir.
But in that worthlessness, what does it do? It reflects the electorate. Not just the people that voted them in, but the people who allowed the system to deteriorate to the degree it has, and who refuse to get off their rear ends to do anything to fix it. The society has declined sufficiently that the old system – the Constitution and the remnants of republican government – is no longer capable of functioning, let alone improving matters.
And they did it to themselves, together with the voters and businesses: they abandoned fundamental principles of liberty, of freedom, of responsibility, of accountability.
Of course, the situation will appear to have been overcome, or at least Congress will seem to have sidestepped the mess, at least in the near term. Congress – and the American people as a whole – will pretend that they can have business as usual. But the damage is almost certainly irreparable.
In a recent commentary, Dan Sanchez (originally published in his Substack publication “Letters on Liberty) briefly examined two competing libertarian ideas on how the state (government) began. (He provided a postscript here.) Let us delve a bit deeper into the topic here at TPOL.
The first, Dan explains, had it modern origins with the esteemed John Locke. It is the idea shared by other great libertarians like Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Leonard Read, Frederic Bastiat, and in general, modern minarchists. Like us here at TPOL, Dan is a free-market anarchist, and he supports the competing view, tracing it to Herbert Spencer and Franz Oppenheimer, and advocated by Albert Jay Nock, among others.
Fear spreading through Europe, not just States
The USA is a mess. Economically, socially, morally, politically.
Europe is worse.
In the last two months, we have seen things rapidly going downhill in the EU and the rest of Europe. Apparently only an unusually warm winter so far has kept calamity at bay. Calamity? Fuel shortages are resulting in roaring fuel costs. For the elite, it is business as usual, with the grand super meeting at Davos among other things resulting in a shortage of hookers to meet the lust of the bigwigs and their entourage of minions.
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