Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect. - Jonathan Swift

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

H. G. Wells

In light of the recent wave of Democratic Socialists, the Green Movement, and Islamization in the United States, (Red Pill, Green Pill, Black Pill), It is worth examining reason, rational thought, and education. It appears that Critical Thought is lost and has been replaced by Critical Theory. The essence of critical theory is to identify victims and perpetrators e.g. 

Critical disability theory  

Critical legal studies

Immigration studies

Critical finance studies

Critical management studies

Critical international relations theory

Critical race theory

Critical pedagogy

Critical consciousness

Critical university studies

Critical psychology

Critical criminology

Critical animal studies

Critical social work

Critical ethnography

Critical data studies

Critical environmental justice

"Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion."
Jonathan Swift

Democracy

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken,

City Journal’s Stu Smith wrote an excellent piece about the recently updated DSA platform. It’s as extreme as one would suspect of a group that still believes that true socialism has yet to be tried.

Smith wrote that its radicalism “gives a glimpse into how the equivalent of the DSA’s board of directors—some of whom have appeared to moderate—actually think about politics.”

They explicitly want to overthrow the Constitution to create what they call “real democracy.”

This isn’t the old “free and fair regular elections” democracy that most Americans have grown fond of, it’s more of the “two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner” type democracy that the Founders fretted about.

To summarize, the platform called for replacement of “the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress,” the abolition of prisons, the Department of War, the Electoral College, and amnesty for all illegal aliens.

The Democratic Socialists of America Just Adopted a Radical New Platform

The Sanity Clause

There were Two Primary Races, in Maine and Texas... 

Both feature vulnerable Republicans, dowdy Susan Collins in Maine and the phenomenally dreadful—morally and politically—Ken Paxton in Texas. They might be easy pickings if the Democratic Party were a sentient political entity, but no—the candidates Dems offer are defective and downright weird.

Authenticity should involve a couple of qualities that have nothing to do with aesthetics. Two should be mandatory: courage and honesty. An authentic politician tells us something true that we don’t want to hear.

Joe Klein

There ain't no sanity clause

Marx Brothers

The Marx Brothers - A Night at the Opera - The Contract

Doubt is the origin of wisdom

Doubt is the origin of wisdom

Augustine of Hippo

I made a comment to someone after reading how Christianity saved civilization  I had finished reading the book (How Christianity Saved Civilization... And Must Do So Again: Mike Aquilina, James L. Papandrea: 9781622827190: Amazon.com: Books). The immediate response was, in a sarcastic, dismissive tone, "how many people died in the Crusades?".

That started a journey into the Crusades, Christianity, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and history.  

Nothing is as it seems.

For those that know me, I don't take things at face value.  Take any news story and even if I agree based on my knowledge, I examine it closely. I look at different points of view.  We as a whole have lost the critical thinking. Think critically, question assumptions and beliefs. Take away the propaganda and look for the truth, and maybe I'll wipe away the education of a Second Grader (or worse) and start on the path to wisdom.

Maybe I'll start documenting the learning over the past six months.

In case you want to know - Estimated to be 1 to 1.5 million casualties and deaths.  Of course, it is way more complicated.

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.Mark Twain

Every day watching or reading the news, especially during this political season...My brain keeps repeating:

When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.

GK Chesterton

More here: When Man Ceases to Worship God

Hi!

Quotefish was retired & bobbing around (for awhile).  Now that I have the time available and I'm back on land. Tied up at the dock, Maybe, I can post now and again.  

We'll see....

Endless lockdown

8 weeks in lockdown.  Some sanity from Illinois Judge McHaney’s recent ruling:

Since the inception of this insanity, the following regulations, rules or consequences have occurred: I won’t get COVID if I get an abortion but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy. Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a family-owned business is not. Pot wasn’t even legal and pot dispensaries didn’t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.

A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will. We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are cancelled. Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will. If I go to Walmart, I won’t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will. Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.
These are just a few of examples of rules, regulations and consequences that are arbitrary, capricious, and completely devoid of anything even remotely approaching common sense.

The defendant in this case orders you to stay home and pronounces that, if you leave the state, you are putting people in danger, but his family members traveled to Florida and Wisconsin because he deems such travel essential. One initial rationale why the rules don’t apply to him is that his family farm had animals that needed [to be] fed. Try selling that argument to farmers who have had to slaughter their herds because of disruption in the supply chain.
When laws do not apply to those who make them, people are not being governed, they are being ruled. Make no mistake, these executive orders are not laws. They are royal decrees. Illinois citizens are not being governed, they are being ruled. The last time I checked Illinois citizens are also Americans and Americans don’t get ruled. The last time a monarch tried to rule Americans, a shot was fired that was heard around the world. That day led to the birth of a nation consensually governed based upon a document which ensures that on this day in this, [or] any American courtroom tyrannical despotism will always lose and liberty, freedom and the Constitution will always win.

The eyes of all future generations are upon you

Greta Thunberg

From Jim Rickards:

Climate Change Alarmists Show Real Agenda

Before we turn to this article, let’s state a few things for the record. Climate change is a real phenomenon. I lived for 10 years on Long Island Sound. It has a rocky coast because it used to be a glacier, frozen solid from Orient Point to New York City. It melted. That’s climate change. The problem is that this happened 20,000 years ago and took thousands of years to play out. And that’s the point. Climate change is real, but it’s slow, complex and unpredictable. What about today? Here are some facts: CO2 levels are rising, but there’s no evidence that CO2 causes warming. The evidence points the other way, that warming causes CO2 to be released from permafrost and the oceans. Sea levels are rising, but the pace is about seven inches in 100 years. That minimal rise will not inundate the New York subways or drown island nations. The rise that is occurring will likely be reversed due to feedback loops long before any seven-inch increase. By the way, sea levels have risen 400 feet since the last ice age and people adapted just fine. Remember Al Gore’s polar bear extinction scare? He hopes you don’t because the evidence is that polar bear populations are thriving. Slight actual global warming stopped in the late 1990s. (Recent claims of “record temperatures” are rounded from hundredths of degrees and are within the margin of error; satellite imaging tells a cooling story in contrast to land-based thermometers placed by ideological “scientists” on the U.N. payroll.) If that’s the case, what are the climate alarmists up to? Their hidden agenda is given away by the article. Propagandist Greta Thunberg writes, “The climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice and of political will. Colonial, racist and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all.” There you have it. So-called “climate change” is really about a progressive, socialist ideology using climate as a way to gain international support for the agenda. Unfortunately, investors cannot simply ignore this con job, because the activists are coming after energy companies, transportation companies and the entire free-market system. Climate activists may be frauds, but their agenda threatens your portfolio to the core. It’s time to push back, call them out and, above all, diversify.

Enough is Enough

CBS Pittsburgh