DeSantis Hits Campaign Trail Rallying Support for Trump-Endorsed Candidates

‘Unite and Win!’


Another great move by America’s governor. Governor DeSantis is the future of the Republican Party. He is a future POTUS. #DeSantis2028!

Trump will pick DeSantis to be his running mate in 2024.

“DeSantis will travel to New Mexico, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Ohio this month in support of GOP candidates, including Ohio Republican candidate for Senate JD Vance, Pennsylvania’s GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, Arizona Republican candidate for Senate Blake Masters and GOP nominee for governor Kari Lake.”

DeSantis to hit campaign trail to rally support for Trump-endorsed candidates: ‘Unite and win’

By Fox News, August 8, 2022

EXCLUSIVE: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is hitting the campaign trail this month to headline Turning Point Action’s “Unite and Win” rallies in support of Trump-endorsed candidates.

DeSantis will travel to New Mexico, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Ohio this month in support of GOP candidates, including Ohio Republican candidate for Senate JD Vance, Pennsylvania’s GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, Arizona Republican candidate for Senate Blake Masters and GOP nominee for governor Kari Lake.

Turning Point Action is hosting, and organizing the rallies with DeSantis in an effort to “unite” the Republican Party.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLE: Crowds Arrive at Mar-a-Lago In Support For President Trump After News Broke of FBI’s Raid On Him

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Admin Run By Former Registered Foreign Agents

More than a dozen high-ranking members of the Biden administration previously worked as registered foreign agents, according to a new report obtained exclusively by The Federalist. The report was published by the Biden administration watchdog “Inside Biden’s Basement,” itself a project of the nonprofit Transparency Action Fund, the Federalist reports.

Titled, “Foreign Agents Lurking Inside Biden’s Basement,” the group’s new report outlines the networks of at least 13 officials under President Joe Biden who were once paid to represent foreign interests and registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Their prior clients range from Iran and Kazakhstan to Canada and Mexico.

Report Shows Biden Admin Run By Former Registered Foreign Agents

More than a dozen high-ranking members of the Biden administration were previously registered foreign agents.

By: Tristan Justice, The Federalist, August 05, 2022:

More than a dozen high-ranking members of the Biden administration previously worked as registered foreign agents, according to a new report obtained exclusively by The Federalist. The report was published by the Biden administration watchdog “Inside Biden’s Basement,” itself a project of the nonprofit Transparency Action Fund.

Titled, “Foreign Agents Lurking Inside Biden’s Basement,” the group’s new report outlines the networks of at least 13 officials under President Joe Biden who were once paid to represent foreign interests and registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Their prior clients range from Iran and Kazakhstan to Canada and Mexico.

FARA records show White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su’s law firm paid out $30,000 a month to Mercury Public Affairs on behalf of the government of Kazakhstan in 2018. Biden Special Assistant Erin Pelton was employed with Mercury in the same year and worked on behalf of both Kazakhstan and Qatar, according to public government documents.

In 2006, Biden’s U.S. Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski’s public affairs firm, McGuireWoods Consulting, was paid nearly $140,000 over a six-month period by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO).

“As Americans experience one Biden-era crisis pile on top of another, the President’s Cabinet, spokesmen, and aides behind the scenes seem to put America last,” said Derrick Hollie, the communications director for Inside Biden’s Basement. “It is instructive for Americans watching their needs take a back seat to know which of those officials Inside Biden’s Basement have represented nations other than our own yet now have tremendous power over their lives.” Hollie worked previously in Trump’s Department of Transportation.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLES:

Gestapo-Style FBI ‘Raided and Occupied’ Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort and Home, Broke Into Safe

Crowds Arrive at Mar-a-Lago In Support For President Trump After News Broke of FBI’s Raid On Him

Biden Democrat Regime To Send ANOTHER 4.5 Billion More to Ukraine

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Tea Party Patriots Action Calls for Biden Impeachment After Raid of Trump Residence

In an email Jenny Beth Martin the Honorary Chairman, Tea Party Patriots Action issued the following statement:

Joe Biden must be impeached. The raid on President Trump’s home should have never happened. It is beyond wrong. It is obviously part of the ongoing witch hunt that began before President Trump ever took office, and which continues to this day.

President Obama’s IRS unlawfully targeted citizen groups that dared to oppose Obama policies. Now President Biden’s FBI and DOJ have continued the tradition of politicizing federal agencies and have upped the ante by attacking a former president.

We are supposed to be a constitutional republic not a banana republic. This madness must be stopped.

Anyone and everyone who cares about the future of our constitutional republic must get out to vote in record numbers in the fall elections. We must elect a Congress that will use its constitutional oversight and power of the purse to rein in an out-of-control executive and return power to the people.

In liberty,

Jenny Beth Martin
Honorary Chairman, Tea Party Patriots Action

President Donald J. Trump issued the following statement on the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago:

These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After I working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe! What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.

“The political persecution of President Donald J. Trump has been going on for years, with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax 11, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends, it is political targeting at the highest level!

Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 E-mails AFTER they were subpoenaed by Congress. Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable. She even took antique furniture, and other items from the White House.

I stood up to America’s bureaucratic corruption, I restored power to the people, and truly delivered for our Country, like we have never seen before. The establishment hated it. Now, as they watch my endorsed candidates win big victories, and see my dominance in all polls, they are trying to stop me, and the Republican Party, once more. The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped.

I will continue to fight for the Great American People!

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Mir-a-Lago after FBI raided Trump home.

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Trump Vows to “Take Back the White House”

Crowds Arrive at Mar-a-Lago In Support For President Trump After News Broke of FBI’s Raid On Him

Gestapo-Style FBI ‘Raided and Occupied’ Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort and Home, Broke Into Safe

Shocking Report Shows Biden Admin Run By Former Registered Foreign Agents

Why The Covid Emergency When the Number of Cases and Deaths Are Down–Way Down

We have noted that the Biden administration is not looking at the data when it comes to dealing with Covid and the negative effects of getting vaccinated.

We decided to do a simple search for the latest data on Covid cases and deaths and came across the WorldOMeter website.

We learned that:

  1. As of August 6th, 2022 the world reported 657,245 daily cases of Covid. Down from the peak of 3,730,625 daily cases on January 19th, 2022.
  2. As of August 5th, 2022 the world reported 2,224 daily deaths. Down from the peak of 16,885 daily deaths on January 21st, 2021.

NOTE: The WorldOMeter data (below) does not reflect those, like Biden who has been both vaccinated and received booster shots, who have been caught Covid again or died from Covid due to being vaccinated.

On February 23rd, 2022 the John Hopkins Center for Commination Programs reported,

Economic downturns in 129 of the world’s low- and middle-income countries due to COVID-19-related lockdowns, border closings and more may have killed hundreds of thousands of children under the age of five in the first year of the pandemic.

The findings, published today in the journal PLOS One, shine light on a hidden COVID-19 death toll – young children who die not from the disease, but from the disruptions in food and medicine deliveries, closed health clinics and delays in childhood immunizations that have resulted from precautions taken to reduce the spread of the virus. Nearly half of the excess deaths of children are estimated to have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa.

[ … ]

The model created by the researchers looked at additional deaths in 2020 to be expected in children under 5 with a range of recession rates: a 5 percent, 10 percent and 15 percent reduction in a country’s gross domestic product (GDP). In the most conservative case, a GDP per capita reduction of 5 percent, the researchers estimated that between 279,000 and 286,000 additional lives of children under 5 were lost due to indirect effects of COVID-related recessions in 2020. That translates to an additional 43,000 deaths in India and an extra 22,000 deaths in Nigeria compared to an average year.

At 10 percent and 15 percent, recessions would lead to higher losses of lives in children under 5, increasing to 585,802 and 911,026 additional deaths, respectively.

Townhall’s Sarah Arnold on August 06th, 2022 wrote,

UCLA Geffen School of Medicine Doctor Joseph Lapado and Yale School of Public Health Doctor Harvey Risch are sounding the alarm that there may be serious underestimated risks involved with the side effects of the Wuhan Coronavirus vaccine.

This comes as an independent pollster found that a significant number of Americans regret receiving the vaccine in the first place.

[ … ]

The top conditions people reported were blood clots, disrupted menstrual cycles, heart attacks, strokes, lung clots and liver damage. 10 percent of these conditions among people who took the vaccine were severe.

Bono believes the government should have warned Americans that the mRNA vaccine technology is new, thus naturally have no long-term data that shows how the jab will effect people’s health years down the road.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: MRNA ‘VACCINE’ GENOCIDE 2021-2022: TESTIMONIES FROM THE VICTIMS AND MEDICAL STAFF

RELATED ARTICLE: Jabbed Athletes Die Suddenly

July 2022: 18 Illegal Aliens = 62 Child Rape/Child Sexual Assault Charges in North Carolina

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”  Edward R. Morrow


The July issue of the Monthly Child Rapes by Illegal Aliens in North Carolina Report is up and the carnage continues.

For the month of July 2022, we were able to document 18 illegal aliens who committed 62 separate acts of child rape/child sexual assault.


The latest report can be found here.


All of our monthly reports can be found on our website

Many of these attacks occurred in the seven sanctuary city counties we currently have in North Carolina.

Thank goodness Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker was defeated in his re-election campaign, however, we still do not know where the man who defeated him, Willie Rowe (D), stands on cooperation with ICE officials. We have repeatedly asked his campaign for a response and have been ignored.

It would be helpful, to everyone in NC, if you would contact him and ask as well. Let’s force him to answer the question: “Will you cooperate with ICE officials as it pertains to ICE detainers?Here is the link to his contact form.

We DO know where the Republican challenger, former Wake Sheriff Donnie Harrison stands. He stands for equal enforcement of the law for everyone!

I’m sure when the November 2022 midterm election comes, you will choose appropriately.

Copyright © 2022 NCFIRE, All rights reserved.

FBI BULLETIN: Ashli Babbitt, Betsy Ross Flag, and Liberty Tree Tied to Violent Extremism

The FBI is irretrievably broken. Enemy of the people.

Ashli Babbitt, Betsy Ross Flag, and Liberty Tree Tied to Violent Extremism in Leaked FBI Bulletin

By Joseph M. Hanneman, The Epoch TimesAugust 3, 2022 Updated: August 3, 2022

A leaked FBI internal bulletin on domestic terrorism lists U.S. Capitol shooting victim Ashli Babbitt as someone considered a “martyr” by militia violent extremists (MVE) and the Second Amendment as how militias “justify their existence” because of a reference to a “well-regulated Militia” and the right to bear arms.

The “Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide” was leaked to Project Veritas, which released images of the bulletin on its website and social media on Aug. 2. It includes such common images as the Gadsden flag, the Betsy Ross flag, and the Liberty Tree.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW A portion of a leaked internal FBI bulletin on domestic terrorism released by Project Veritas.

The document includes terms and symbols that are very familiar in conservative, law enforcement, and military circles. In the introduction, the FBI stressed that simply using the terms or symbols is not evidence of wrongdoing.

“The use or sharing of these symbols alone should not independently be considered evidence of MVE presence or affiliation, or serve as an indicator of illegal activity, as many individuals use these symbols for their original historic meaning or other non-violent purposes,” the bulletin reads.

Many on the right, however, are likely to see the bulletin as further evidence of federal government acrimony for conservatives in the wake of Jan. 6 unrest at the Capitol.

“Widespread use of symbols and quotes from American history, especially the Revolutionary War, exists within MVE networks,” the bulletin says. “Historic and contemporary military themes are common for MVE symbols.”

The document is marked “unclassified/law enforcement sensitive” and “for internal use only.”

An ‘MVE Martyr?’

Babbitt’s name is included on a list of five people that “MVEs consider … to be Martyrs,” the document said. Others include Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum, shot to death by Oregon state police in 2016; Vicki Weaver, killed by a federal sniper in the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge; and Marvin Heemeyer, a disgruntled muffler shop owner who used an armored “killdozer” to raze a section of Granby, Colo., in 2004.

Ashli Babbitt’s husband, Aaron Babbitt of San Diego, offered a one-word reaction about her name on the list when contacted by The Epoch Times: “Laughable.”

AUTHOR

RELATED VIDEO: Democrat Perversion of the Constitution

RELATED ARTICLES:

Farage Warns: If America Falls To Marxists, Western Civilization Will Follow

The FBI And DOJ Criminalizing Opposition To The Regime Is How The Republic Ends

Biden Regime Planning to Extend Covid Emergency Declaration

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

COLORADO: Dominion Voting Machines Fail Logic and Accuracy Tests Prior to Recount

Paper ballots. Why are the good people of Colorado putting up with this treachery?

Dominion machines fail accuracy test prior to Colorado recount: report

By RSBN Network, August 7, 2022:

Dominion Voting Systems voting machines reportedly failed a logic and accuracy test last week in El Paso County, Colorado, as counties across the state prepare for recounts of several June 28 primary races, according to The Gateway Pundit.

Republican candidate for El Paso County Clerk, Peter Lupia, who was present for the testing, reported that the exact number of ballots tested was 4,216, of which 2,266 were sent to adjudication.

Lupia, who has formally requested a recount of his race, claimed that the ballots used during the testing were “fake” computer-generated ballots and that the parameters for adjudication were broader than those used during the election.

“When they ran these ballots through the system back before the primary, in the last week of May, they only were finding about six to seven errors per batch that went to adjudication,” he said. “Because of those expanded parameters, now they had 2,266 ballots that now qualify to go through adjudication.”

Per The Gateway Pundit, two Dominion employees were also reported to be on-site for the testing, and teams of judges reviewed the ballots as part of the adjudication process.

Earlier this week, Colorado secretary of state candidate Tina Peters also requested a recount of her primary race, which she allegedly lost to fellow Republican Pam Anderson.

Per The Denver Post, Peters released a statement calling the recount an “absolute disaster” following Friday’s shocking testing results.

“Today, the machine tabulated recount ordered by Secretary of State Jena Griswold failed the Logic and Accuracy Test (LAT), with Dominion employees present, in a spectacular fashion with over a 50% error rate out of the 4,000+ ballots tested,” Peters reportedly said. “These voting machines are unacceptable for use in Colorado elections.”

Since the 2020 election, voting machines have come under scrutiny for what many experts have described as a concerning lack of security.

On July 21, one such expert, CyFIR CEO and Founder Ben Cotton, testified in federal court that he was “shocked” by the Dominion voting machines’ lack of cybersecurity during his forensic analysis of them for the Arizona Senate audit, stating that “the average home computer” would be more secure.

The hearing was held in response to a lawsuit filed by Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, who are seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the use of electronic voting machines in the state’s upcoming elections.

“Election voting machines cannot be deemed reliably secure and do not meet the constitutional and statutory mandates to guarantee a free and fair election,” their complaint reads. “The use of untested and unverified election voting machines violates the rights of the plaintiffs and their fellow voters and office seekers, and it undermines public confidence in the validity of election results.”

As questions and concerns continue to be raised about the security of voting machines, those with suspicions will undoubtedly be watching closely as this year’s competitive races play out.

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden-Era USPS Chief in Mail-In Ballot Unit Arrested After Trying To Meet Teen Boy For Sex

“I’m A Pedophile” — Russell Rappel-Schmid


Democrat Washington is literally Sodom and Gomorrah. These degenerates must be purged.

‘I’m A Pedophile’: Biden-Era USPS Chief in Mail-In Ballot Unit Arrested After Trying To Meet Teen Boy For Sex

By Natalie Winters, The National Pulse,

A high-level U.S. Postal Service official appointed under President Joe Biden was caught during a child sex sting, admitting “I’m a pedophile” on camera.

Russell Rappel-Schmid, the Chief Data Officer for the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), was caught in San Diego, California attempting to meet a 14-year-old boy for sex.

The PRC is responsible for overseeing the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) – which deals with mail-in ballots during election season – and Rappel-Schmid was tasked with running the commission’s data management and compliance with the OPEN Government Data Act.

While federal authorities have not yet confirmed the man in the video is Rappel-Schmid, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department announced that Rappel-Schmid was released from the city’s Central Jail early Tuesday morning after being arrested on Monday. His felony arraignment is set for next Monday.

Rappel-Schmid was reportedly in San Diego for a business conference when he allegedly tried to meet what he thought was a 14-year-old boy for sex. The People vs Predators group filmed the encounter, and Rappel-Schmid can be seen admitting “I’m a pedophile.”

In response to the video and criminal charges, the PRC terminated Rappel-Schmid from his position.

“The Postal Regulatory Commission has become aware of the recent arrest of one of our employees. Upon becoming aware of this information, the Commission has terminated this employee effective immediately. The Commission is shocked and horrified at these serious allegations and maintains a steadfast commitment to promptly deal with any claims of employee misconduct.”

MUST READ:  Post Pandemic, a Strong Majority of Americans Favor a Constitutional Amendment That Further Limits Federal Govt Spending and Control.

Rappel-Schmid’s profile has been removed from the agency’s website.

He joined the oversight body under President Joe Biden in May and previously served as the State of Alaska’s first chief data officer. Rappel-Schmid also worked at the USPS Office of Inspector General (USPS OIG) on the data analytics team and as an audit manager.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLES:

Russell Rappel-Schmid Named Postal Regulatory Commission Chief Data Officer

Democrats need to stop screwing kids

Hundreds of K-12 educators charged with child sex crimes in first half of 2022

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Parents File ‘Blockbuster Lawsuit’ for ‘Moral Corruption of Children’ Against Virginia’s Loudoun County Schools

Bravo! Save the children from the depraved Democrats.

Parents file ‘blockbuster lawsuit’ against Loudoun County Schools for ‘moral corruption of children’

‘Today we bring that fight to the court to vindicate the rights of parents, not just here, but everywhere.’

Loudoun County parents at the June 22, 2021 school board meeting. Parents protested transgender policies and propaganda in schools as well as critical race theory Twitter video / John Cooper

According to the conservative group, “The delusion that public school bureaucrats – not parents – have the right, the authority, and the power to decide what’s best for a child is a sickness that has spread across the country to schools in all states.”

Loudoun County, Virginia became a major political and cultural flashpoint last year after parents raised the alarm about the school board’s implementation of radical gender ideology. Policies enacted by the school board permit boys who identify as girls to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms, and force children to use the preferred gender identity “pronouns” of peers.

Last year, Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak broke an exclusive story showing that the school board had tried to cover up an incident in which a boy wearing a skirt raped a female student in a school bathroom.

Many outraged parents responded to the controversy by flocking to school board meetings to denounce the radical policies, helping to spark a nationwide parents movement.

The mobilization of American parents against radical agendas in the classroom gave rise to a bevy of Republican-led initiatives to expand parental rights, ban LGBT-promoting curricula in the classroom, and require students to only use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their biological sex.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLES:

Public School Teachers Told to Indoctrinate Kids as Young as Three in Radical LGBT Theory

California Pubilc Ed Teacher Training Includes Pansexuality and a Semen Exercise

22 States SUE Biden Regime Over Plans to Stop Free Lunches Unless Schools Comply With Sexualizing Children, ‘Gender Identity’ Policies

FOIA request reveals school district hid library database that has pornographic material

Florida school board member demands ‘disciplinary action’ over pornographic books in schools: ‘I’m disgusted’

Principal Promotes Book About Trans Kids To Kindergarteners

When Is Enough Enough? Depraved Pennsylvania Gay Pride Event Features Shirtless “Instructor” Teaching Children To Pole Dance

“Queer Mathematics” in Public Schools

The Clinical Steps To Grooming Kids Match Exactly What They’re Being Taught In Schools

Public Schools Teach Students Queer Theory As Young as Kindergarten

Virginia School District Prohibits Teachers From Contacting Parents When Children Change Gender

NYC Mayor Says ‘Drag’ Performances at Schools Advance ‘Love and Literacy’

Oregon School District Books Contain Pornographic Imagery Of Sex Acts

Philadelphia School District Advised Teachers To Attend Transgender Conference On “Kink,” “BDSM,” “Trans Sex,” “Bigger Dick Energy,” “Banging Beyond Binaries.”

Math Worksheet Sexual Abuse And Grooming

Wisconsin school district says parents ‘not entitled’ to know child’s sexuality

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Nobody can tell me what to do with my life, right?

No one argues that the good of autonomy should allow running red lights.


The strongest argument for euthanasia and assisted suicide may be “autonomy”. In its crudest form, this means: “who are you to tell me what to do with my life?” Bioethicist Xavier Symons argues that autonomy is completely inadequate as a key to assessing the “right to die”.


MercatorNet: In a nutshell, what’s wrong with the argument “nobody can tell me what to do with my life”?

Xavier Symons: Liberal democratic societies already place quite significant limits on the exercise of autonomy (limits that any reasonable person ought to be able to accept). No one argues that the good of autonomy should allow child abuse, for example. Nor do people protest public decency standards or traffic regulations, save for exceptional circumstances.

Current social circumstances demonstrate, therefore, that the argument “my body my choice” is crude and not accepted in many spheres outside of healthcare. Indeed, it is not at all clear that it holds in healthcare either, if we consider the strict public health measures that have been introduced across the globe in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The notion that the logical conclusion of upholding the good of autonomy necessarily means legalising practices like euthanasia is inherently flawed. Autonomy is a value that is important but also is the subject of appropriate limits that protect the common good.

Indeed, an adequate conception of autonomy ought to be set against the backdrop of an objective moral order and situated in the context of the common good. Autonomy ought to be conceived of as part of a matrix of social conditions that taken together are conducive to the realisation of basic human goods. Autonomy is one condition, but not the only condition, for human flourishing.

Or, as Daniel Sulmasy has written, “free choice is the context of morality, not the content of morality”. Autonomous choices should be aimed at basic goods – or, at least, not be in violation of basic goods – for such choices to be considered authentic exercises of autonomy.

The exercise of authentic autonomy is enabled by virtue of the human communities to which one belongs. Indeed, there is a very real sense in which “your life is not your own”, at least with respect to your identity as a practical reasoner. Human beings become mature practical reasoners through education and life experience, and both these come from the communities of which one is a part – the family, friendships, neighbourhoods, educational institutions, intellectual communities, clubs and societies, religious tradition(s), and so forth.

Ironically, respect for autonomy requires that we seek to preserve and sustain the community norms and relationships that support and sustain the practical reason. I feel like the whole “it’s my life” mentality misses this point completely.

Autonomy is the ideology of political liberalism – which has come under fire in the wake of Black Lives Matter and the rise of critical race theory. Are there philosophical critics of autonomy nowadays?

Philosophers have engaged in extensive debate about the nature of autonomy in recent decades. Communitarian critics of autonomy argue that a liberal conception of autonomy – a view that conceptualizes the individual as self-sufficient and existing in isolation from other members of society – ignores the fact that human beings are situated within communities and ought to focus first of all on the ethical norms that arise from one’s membership of communities.

Similarly, feminist critics of autonomy argue that liberal political theorists overlook the relational dimensions of autonomy, and, in particular, the fact that autonomy can be enhanced or diminished based on the social conditions and network of relationships in which one is embedded.

It seems that recent social criticism of liberalism focuses on the meritocratic dimension of liberal political philosophy. There is a widespread view that it is not sufficient to simply provide equality of opportunity in society. We need to take affirmative steps to redress structural inequalities (e.g. structural racism) that can leave people at a disadvantage even where ostensibly we have created a level playing field.

The effects upon relatives and friends are a major issue when we mention suicide. Why do people privilege “autonomy” and ignore the collateral damage when we debate assisted suicide?

The broader cultural effect of legalised euthanasia is something that has been largely ignored in public debate. We should realise that euthanasia contains within it a philosophical position on the value of life. As Albert Camus once wrote, “judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy”.

Euthanasia represents the view that human existence only has conditional value or worth; the value or worth of life can be lost if one’s quality of life is sufficiently poor. This conditional approach to the fundamental question of human existence creates a world in which there are two categories of life – lives that are worth living and lives that are not.

Make no mistake: this is a departure from the view that human life has value by default precisely because it is human life. Indeed, we are entering an era where practices like rational suicide are becoming much more difficult to resist and suicide prevention is becoming harder to rationally defend. This is because we have debased the ethical foundation for our opposition to suicide. Human life is no longer viewed as having intrinsic and inalienable moral status. The ethics of suicide is reducible to a question of consent and autonomy if one can alienate or waive their own right to life.

Does a radical position on autonomy threaten our society’s commitment to human equality?

Yes. A crude ethic of autonomy threatens our society’s commitment to protect and promote human dignity. We outlaw all sorts of things – like dwarf tossing, for example – on the grounds that they are an affront to human dignity. Consent is not sufficient to override our fundamental commitment to respect in this case. In 1995, France’s highest court rejected a lawsuit by a man with achondroplasia to overturn the country’s ban on dwarf tossing. The court concluded that dwarf tossing was an “affront to human dignity”.

A crude ethic of autonomy rejects this reasoning and leads to a situation in which choice trumps human dignity. This is a perilous situation and can undermine our commitment to human dignity altogether. A universal prohibition on the taking of human life, for example, ought to function as a limiting principle on individual autonomy – a red line that ought not be crossed. Yet if we say that autonomy overrides the right to life then an individual agent can choose to “‘waive’ their right to life”.

Fundamental human equality presupposes the inalienability of the right to life of the human person and is a necessary ethical foundation of any civilised society. Aside from ensuring the maintenance of social order, fundamental human equality ensures that members of society who might otherwise be subject to discrimination – people living with disabilities, people with chronic health conditions, older members of the community, and so forth – are treated with dignity rather than derision, and respect rather than repugnance.

The treatment of care home residents in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic is one example of a worrying erosion of the principle of human equality in Western societies. As Charles Camosy warns, “if we continue on our current path […] the idea of fundamental human equality may simply die out”.

But how can euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS) possibly harm other people? They are not being forced to get a lethal injection or even to agree.

We routinely ignore the effects that our choices have on other people. This is a regrettable fact of our pathologically individualistic culture. The reality is that one agent’s exercise of autonomy can lead to a diminution of the autonomy of other agents. Indeed, the very existence of options or choices can harm people.

This idea is compellingly explained in the bioethical papers of American philosopher David Velleman. Regardless of the ostensible public support that exists in favour of euthanasia and assisted suicide, there will always be vulnerable members of the community who do not want to have to confront the question of whether they should avail themselves of a legal option to end their own life. Many people may not want to have this choice available, because, in the words of Velleman, “to offer the option of dying may be to give people new reasons for dying”.

In a world where so many dwell in a rational space where the value of continued existence is in constant question, the option of EAS could alter the personal existential calculus of vulnerable individuals in catastrophic ways. This is one clear autonomy-based argument against the legalisation of EAS.

Can people who are at the end of their lives really make autonomous decisions to end it all? Is there something special about those last days?

People nearing the end of life often have diminished autonomy and it thus becomes difficult to justify giving terminally ill patients total autonomy to decide whether they will end their own lives. Crucially, agency – understood as the human capacity to freely choose one’s thoughts, motivations and actions without undue internal or external influences – comes apart from a crude conception of autonomy in morally important ways. One can meet Tom Beauchamp and James Childress’s criteria for autonomy, namely, intentionality, understanding and control, while still experiencing diminished agency.

Factors that diminish agency include a loss of meaning and purpose in life, a bleak and pessimistic outlook on the future and a distorted perception of one’s own prognosis. A desire for death or a loss of the will to live would ordinarily be seen as a factor that impairs one’s capacity for rational judgement.

Yet in the case of EAS, this sentiment becomes the very context for decision-making. EAS thus distorts conventional conceptions of agency and leads to the adoption of a crude conception of autonomy whereby one only requires the ability to understand information and the absence of overt forms of coercion.

This dimension of decision-making about EAS is particularly insidious. EAS challenges the traditional constraints that we put on decision-making in situations of severe depression or demoralisation, leading instead to a scenario in which these factors provide legitimacy and rational justification for one’s decision.

Your recent paper suggested that genuine respect for autonomy is actually a good argument against assisted suicide. Can you explain that?

The excessive emphasis on autonomy in recent decades draws attention to the dangers of conceiving of this value in a moral vacuum. We ought to instead theorise autonomy within the context of other values that are of fundamental social importance. In particular, we ought to acknowledge the symbiotic relationship between autonomy and human dependence, and the role that autonomy plays in the flourishing of human communities.

Autonomy is a portmanteau word  formed from two Greek words, namely, αὐτος (autos; ‘self’) and νομος (nomos; ‘law’). Autonomy, thus, is concerned with self-legislation or self-governance. The autonomous individual is one who is capable of moral self-determination and who is free from external and internal constraints on their motivations, thoughts, decisions and actions. The concept need not be cashed out in terms of an atomistic, liberal conception of the self and society.

Even on that worldview, one can still argue for limitations on autonomy, such as traffic regulations. Otherwise, one could not drive anywhere for fear of other drivers being on the wrong side of the road. Rather, autonomy can be understood within the context of an integral vision of human communities. Two considerations are particularly relevant here: the role that autonomy plays in the realisation of basic goods; and the role that communities play in facilitating authentic exercises of autonomy.

First, autonomy can be conceived of as part of a matrix of social conditions that taken together are conducive to the realisation of basic human goods. In their recent book The Way of Medicine, Curlin and Tollefsen identify two functions that illustrate the importance of autonomy in human flourishing. First, some goods are only realised if people make commitments (e.g., marriage, friendship, religion). That is to say, some goods come into being via certain commitments made by persons. Marriage, for example, is a contract (or covenant) between two individuals (a man and a woman, on the traditional conception). Second, commitments also help human beings in community to realise goods to a greater degree, in themselves and one another. If society were governed in a totalitarian manner whereby people of working age were merely assigned to professional roles rather than voluntarily choosing to occupy such roles, we would probably end up with a workforce that is less dynamic and cohesive than one which is made up by free actors.

Such a workforce would be less efficacious in their pursuit of the basic goods constitutive of the flourishing of society.

Second, the exercise of authentic autonomy is enabled by virtue of the human communities to which one belongs. Indeed, the self that is at the heart of any plausible conception of autonomy is a self that is shaped and formed through communities such as the family, friendships, neighbourhoods, educational institutions, intellectual communities, clubs and societies, religious tradition(s), and so forth. The circumstances of one’s life can vary remarkably with respect to the communities to which one belongs.

Yet one fact is undeniable: from childhood to old age, from times of health to times of illness and disability, human beings are constantly dependent on each other to know themselves and the world and to make decisions that are conducive to their wellbeing. Most relevant for our purposes, an individual’s reliance on the help, support and encouragement of other human beings is typically most acute in one’s final days and hours.

Vaccine mandates around the globe were widely accepted during the Covid pandemic while refuseniks were ridiculed. Is this relevant to the debate over assisted suicide?

I think there are aspects of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic that lend support to the anti-euthanasia case. For example, scholars have argued that the rigid focus on saving lives in the pandemic – which was used as a justification for lockdowns and various other restrictions on social and economic activity during the pandemic – actually makes it harder to justify the legalisation of euthanasia.

If there is a possibility of even one wrongful death from euthanasia legislation (and this is quite a plausible contention) then it seems that there is a good case for restricting people’s end of life liberties to protect that one life that could be wrongfully taken if we legalised euthanasia.

AUTHOR

Xavier Symons is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Plunkett Centre for Ethics, The Australian Catholic University and St Vincent’s Health Australia. More by Xavier Symons.

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Watch as Rep. Boebert Promises CPAC: Democrats ‘Will Pay The Price For Silencing Americans’

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado let loose a torrent of ridicule and recrimination against Democrat officials when she took the stage Saturday in the lead-up to President Trump’s speech in front of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

After riling up the packed Dallas crowd by stating that if Republicans retake Congress in the upcoming midterms she intends to lead a charge to prosecute National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Dr. Anthony Fauci and impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, she elicited roars and cheers when she tweeted from the stage, “when Republicans retake the majority, you will pay the price for silencing Americans.”

Boebert and two other leading conservative women, the Republican nominees for the Michigan and Arizona governorships Tudor Dixon and Kari Lake, spoke with ever-increasing enthusiasm and defiance, setting a tone that continued with former President Trump’s own speech.

When Trump finally took the stage, he called for “a crippling defeat” of Democrats in order to save the country. “We want to be populist,” he continued, “because we love our country.”

Trump’s explicit endorsement of populism mirrored the opening day speech of Hungary’s populist president Viktor Orban, which itself provoked a reaction from establishment media outlets. The conference’s notable populist theme continued with a speech from Brexit engineer and British politician Nigel Farage.

AUTHOR

ANDREW AFIFIAN

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE:

Jury Orders Alex Jones To Pay Additional $45.2 Million In Punitive Damages To Sandy Hook Family

Democrats Are Staging What Experts Say Is An Illegal Federal Takeover Of Elections

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

CDC: One-In-Five Gay Men Who Got Monkeypox Had Sex With 10 Or More People Before Getting Infected

Nearly 20% of gay men who are contracting monkeypox in the U.S. reported having 10 or more partners in the three weeks before symptom onset, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report.

Virtually all monkeypox cases in the U.S. which have data available, 99%, are in men, the report also found, and 94% are in men who have sex with other men. The overwhelming majority had multiple sexual partners in the weeks leading up to their symptoms.

In addition to the 19% of men who said they had 10 or more partners over the three weeks preceding symptoms, 40% reported having two to four partners and 14% reported five to nine partners. 38% reported having group sex at a festival, group sex event or sex party.

The data was pulled from a sample of 358 men who contracted monkeypox for which data was available on recent sexual behaviors. That represents about 12% of all confirmed monkeypox cases in the U.S. between May 17 and July 22, the time period which the report covers. Age and gender identity data was available for 41% of all cases nationwide.

Of the 334 cases for which HIV status was known, 41% of patients were HIV-positive. Only 8% of patients were hospitalized, and there were no reported deaths. There remain zero confirmed deaths caused by monkeypox in the United States or Europe in 2022.

The Biden administration declared a public health emergency due to monkeypox last week, after the World Health Organization had already done so in July. Critics have accused the administration of not acting fast enough to respond to the outbreak, particularly as it regards vaccine procurement and distribution.

Data from the CDC, as well as the WHO and European health authorities, have increasingly shown that the virus is almost exclusively spreading within the homosexual male community, with some outlier cases within other demographics. Still, health authorities are engaged in intense debate over how to target messaging on the risks associated with monkeypox due to fears of directing stigma toward gay and bisexual men.

In its latest report, released Friday, the CDC admits “public health efforts should prioritize gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men.” However, the agency still does not recommend that gay and bisexual men have fewer sexual partners in its guidance on safe sex during the monkeypox outbreak. The WHO made that recommendation last month.

AUTHOR

DYLAN HOUSMAN

Healthcare reporter. Follow Dylan on Twitter

RELATED ARTICLE: Area Man Shocked To Have Contracted Monkeypox After 20-Man Birthday Orgy

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The 33 States Where Our Tax Dollars Go To Support The Non-Working Class

The Cato Institute released an updated 2016 study showing that welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job in 33 American states, and the District of Columbia.

Even worse, welfare pays more than $15 per hour to stay home in 13 states.

According to the study, welfare benefits have increased faster than minimum wage. It’s now more profitable to sit at home and watch TV than it is to earn an honest day’s pay.

Hawaii is the biggest offender, where welfare recipients earn $29.13per hour, or a $60,590 yearly salary for doing nothing.

Here is the list of the states where the pre-tax equivalent “salary” that welfare recipients receive is higher than having a job:

  1. Hawaii : $60,590
  2. District of Columbia :$50,820
  3. Massachusetts : $50,540
  4. Connecticut : $44,370
  5. New York : $43,700
  6. New Jersey : $43,450
  7. Rhode Island : $43,330
  8. Vermont : $42,350
  9. New Hampshire:39,750
  10. Maryland : $38,160
  11. California : $37,160
  12. Oregon : $34,300
  13. Wyoming : $32,620
  14. Nevada : $29,820
  15. Minnesota : $29,350
  16. Delaware : $29,220
  17. Washington : $28,840
  18. North Dakota : $28,830
  19. Pennsylvania : $28,670
  20. New Mexico : $27,900
  21. Montana : $26,930
  22. South Dakota : $26,610
  23. Kansas: $26,490
  24. Michigan : $26,430
  25. Alaska : $26,400
  26. Ohio : $26,200
  27. North Carolina : $25,760
  28. West Virginia : $24,900
  29. Alabama : $23,310
  30. Indiana : $22,900
  31. Missouri : $22,800
  32. Oklahoma : $22,480
  33. Louisiana : $22,250
  34. South Carolina : $21,910

Hawaii, D.C. and Massachusetts pay more in welfare than the average wage their taxpaying citizens earn there.

Is it any wonder that they stay home rather than look for a job. Time for a drastic change. Americans are not stupid.

Note that California is $18.50 an hour. Are we Nuts or what? How do we undo this type of stupidity

Politicians on the Gravy Train

Now if you think paying the unemployed more than the employed s bad, check out these salaries:

  • Salary of retired United States Presidents $180,000 FOR LIFE Salary of House/Senate—$174,000 FOR LIFE.
  • Salary of Speaker of the House $223,500 FOR LIFE!
  • Salary of Majority/Minority Leader $193,400 FOR LIFE!

NOTE: The average Salary of a teacher—$40,065; Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN AFGHANISTAN—$38,000.

Nancy Pelosi will retire as a Congress Person at $174,000 Dollars a year for LIFE. She will retire as SPEAKER at $223,500 a year Plus she will receive an additional $193,400 a year for when she was Minority Leader, the fact that she has become rich while in office notwithstanding. That’s $803,700 Dollars a year for LIFE including FREE medical which is not available to us, the taxpayers.

She is just one of the hundreds of Senators and Congresspersons that float in and out of Congress every year!

I think we found where the cuts should be made! From the state houses to the White House.

If you agree please share this column with your friends and on your social media sites.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: States Where Welfare Recipients Are Paid More Than Minimum Wage

Poll: Majority of Americans Regret Taking Covid Vaccine

Documentary: Uninformed Consent

This is a PDF of government data sources

All the statistics can be found here at this link.


Common sense prevails. What a price to pay.

Poll: Majority Americans Regret Taking Covid Vaccine

By: Sarah Arnold, Townhall, Aug 06, 2022:

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, UCLA Geffen School of Medicine Doctor Joseph Lapado and Yale School of Public Health Doctor Harvey Risch are sounding the alarm that there may be serious underestimated risks involved with the side effects of the Wuhan Coronavirus vaccine.

This comes as an independent pollster found that a significant number of Americans regret receiving the vaccine in the first place.

10 percent of those vaccinated said they wish they hadn’t done so, while 15 percent of adults said they have been diagnosed with a new condition by a medical practitioner weeks or months after the first dose.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) authorized the poll two years after the first vaccine was rolled out.

“The fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports more than 232 million Americans ages 18–65 have taken at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and 15 percent of those surveyed report a newly diagnosed condition is concerning and needs further study,” Laura Bono, CHD’s executive director said.

The top conditions people reported were blood clots, disrupted menstrual cycles, heart attacks, strokes, lung clots and liver damage. 10 percent of these conditions among people who took the vaccine were severe.

Bono believes the government should have warned Americans that the mRNA vaccine technology is new, thus naturally have no long-term data that shows how the jab will effect people’s health years down the road.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Winter of Death’ 2.0? Dr. Fauci Just Threatened 70% of Americans

RNA Vaccine Doctor And Biochemist: 29,790 Official Deaths Linked to Vaccine in VAERS Likely A Tiny Fraction of True Number

9-Year-Old Dies Two Weeks After Taking COVID-19 Vaccine: VAERS

FIFTH Young Doctor, Triathlete, 27, DIES SUDDENLY

THREE DOCTORS From the Same Hospital “Die Suddenly” in the Same Week After Hospital Mandates Another COVID Shot

D.C. Plans to EXPEL CHILDREN From School If They Don’t Get The Covid Vaccine

Data Proves ‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome’ Fiction Is Death by Covid Vaccination

Most vaxxed country in Europe now has its worst COVID outcomes

New UK government data shows the COVID vaccines kill more people than they save

MIT: COVID Vaccines ‘Significantly Associated’ with Spike in Heart Attacks in Young People

Survey: More Than 750,000 Dead, 30 Million Injured Because of Covid Vax

Sweden Refuses Covid Vaccines For Children 5 – 11

Long-term disability claims are soaring among pilots

Leading Pathologist Speaks Out About Dangerous COVID Vaccine Effects

Shocking New Studies On The Dangers and Serious Side Effects Of Covid Vaccine

Antibodies From Vaccines Interfering Instead of Neutralizing Because of Spike Protein Changes: Dr. Risch

Vaccines Are Destroying People’s Immunity Through ‘Immune Imprinting’: Dr. Robert Malone [Part 1]

Shocking New Studies On The Dangers and Serious Side Effects Of Covid Vaccine\

COVID Vaccines Increase Menstrual Irregularities Thousandfold, Fetal Abnormalities Hundredfold: Doctors’ VAERS Analysis

75% Of Vaccinated Women Have Miscarriages In The First Trimester

Here’s Why Officials Are Desperate to Get COVID Vaccine on Childhood Schedule Before ‘Emergency’ Ends

CDC Caught Using False Data To Recommend Kids’ COVID Vaccine

Vaccines for 6-Month-Olds ‘Makes Absolutely No Sense’: Dr. Jeffrey Barke

Publix Publicly Announced Its Refusal To Offer Vaccinations For Children Under 5

MIT: COVID Vaccines ‘Significantly Associated’ with Spike in Heart Attacks in Young People

Data Proves ‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome’ Fiction Is Death by Covid Vaccination

FDA Authorizes Emergency Use COVID Vaccine Boosters for Children Ages 5 -11

3-year-old girl dies of heart attack one day after taking COVID vaccine

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

The Bureaucracy’s Democrat Majority Made America a One-Party Government

Six out of ten federal employees supported Biden.

When former President Trump, Gov. DeSantis, and Senator Ted Cruz, among others, endorsed rolling back the power of bureaucrats and their administrative state, Democrats panicked.

Senator Dianne Feinstein and Hillary’s former running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, introduced a countermeasure which they called, “Preventing a Patronage System Act” according to Kaine, to “protect the merit-based hiring system for our federal workforce”.

Media editorialists claimed that making it easier to get rid of federal employees would bring back patronage or the spoils system. The problem is that patronage never left.

We have spent generations living under a permanent patronage system. The spoils system, as bad as it was, kept one party from permanently packing its supporters into the government. Removing it just meant that the Democrats have permanently packed the federal bureaucracy.

That’s how America became a one-party government at the federal level in Washington D.C.  Politicians of both parties come and go, but it’s the Democrat bureaucrats who call the shots.

The same media outlets now fussing about “patronage” were gleefully reporting how a “resistance” was operating within the federal bureaucracy to undermine President Trump. That same “resistance”, without the public posturing, has quietly sabotaged every Republican administration and any conservative piece of legislation that gets through the process.

Before the 2016 election, one in four federal employees claimed that they would leave if Trump won. Six out of ten federal employees supported Biden. Only 28% backed Trump.

In the 2022 cycle, the American Federation of Government Employees has doled out over a million dollars. 94% of that money has gone to Democrats.

Not only does the federal workforce tilt leftward, but the number of Republicans fell from a third to a quarter over the last generation. The federal machine that controls the lives of most Americans has limited representation for one of the country’s two major political factions.

But even that’s misleading.

The men and women who actually run things are mostly Democrats. 63% of the senior executives, the highest officials within the bureaucracy, are Democrats, while the number of Republicans drops into the low 20s. A National Bureau of Economic Research paper notes that the “the overrepresentation of Democrats increases as we move up the hierarchy”.

“Among employees in grades 1-12 of the GS, we find about 50% of Democrats (30% of Republicans and 20% of independents), which rises to approximately 56% at the top of the GS (grades 13-15), and to 63% among career SES,” the research showed.

This is what a slow-motion coup looks like.

Apologists for the bureaucracy might claim that this reflects a lack of qualifications by Republicans, but the share of independents similarly drops. Only the share of Democrats steadily rises. If we were looking at a similar breakdown of racial groups in which the share of every racial group declined as it moved up the ranks, except one, it would be evidence of bias.

And a political coup is far more corrosive and dangerous to a government than racial bias.

Democrats want us to believe that the consolidation of the civil service by one political faction is somehow a natural occurrence which does not reflect a calculated strategy or patronage.

In between political tests like diversity and equity, the insistence on concentrating federal leadership in Democrat areas, and providing special entryways and promotions to members of identity politics groups more likely to vote for their party, Democrats claim that it’s all “merit”.

After fighting to eliminate merit in college admissions, the military, and federal contracts, they want us to believe that they not only believe in merit, but want to protect it in the civil service.

Democrats created an independent bureaucracy that provides its own patronage. That corrupt system has led to everything from massive theft to IRS investigations of political opponents. And the result is much worse than the rotten spoils system ever was because it’s immune to change.

The modern civil service owes its existence to a crooked bargain between President Grover Cleveland, the first post-Civil War Democrat to occupy the White House, and one of the most personally and politically corrupt men to hold that office in the century, and the Mugwumps, the Never Trumpers of the era. The federal workforce massively exploded from 5,837 before the Civil War to 15,344 after the Civil War to millions over the next century. The civil service “reforms” were a key ingredient in what became a permanent patronage system built to benefit the Democrats and the liberal Republicans who were instrumental in imposing it on Americans.

Where before individuals had traded on their political support and campaign activities to win a few hundred offices during the spoils system, urban political machines packed the civil service with tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of their supporters in the next century.

The liberal promises of Wilson, FDR and JFK required a symbiotic growth in government. The government programs never delivered a better life, except by providing government jobs for Democrats. The spoils system was corrupt, but permanent patronage has not only rewarded members of one party with jobs, especially senior roles, to the tune of billions, but it also shifted power away from the voters and elected officials, and to partisan bureaucrats.

The solution to patronage isn’t professionalism, it’s smaller government. Government is not a meritocracy and there’s no point in keeping up the pretense that any part of it is merit based. The most fundamental virtue of our constitutional government is that the public has supreme power over the government. The civil service system has effectively eliminated that power.

Firing federal employees is a long difficult process. The Merit Systems Protection Board has repeatedly intervened to protect even the worst abuses by workers including outright criminal behavior. Americans can lose their jobs, but they can’t do anything about the bureaucrats who control their lives. Politicians come and go, but the Democrat administrative state abides.

A smaller government begins with a much smaller bureaucracy. President Trump’s commitment to wielding Schedule F is important, as are other ideas by conservative politicians. Schedule F would be crucial in rolling back the power of key policy-making bureaucrats, but it’s only the beginning. The Founding Fathers understood that government is innately oppressive. And government, like any parasitic infection, naturally grows unless it’s shrunk or it kills the host.

Apologists for the bureaucracy claim that eliminating the permanent patronage of the civil service would erode “public trust in our government” and “undermine the role of civil servants as stewards of the public good”.

The public has no trust in the government. The one thing most of the country, across political and racial lines, can agree on is not trusting the government. Currently only about 29% of Democrats and 9% of Republicans trust the government. How much more trust is there to lose?

Civil servants are not “stewards of the public good”. The American people are. Monarchies and tyrannies have stewards of the public good. The only true constitutional and democratic virtue of a civil service is that it is easy to fire. A bureaucracy that can’t be gotten rid of isn’t serving the people, it’s mastering them, and that is what the administrative state has long since become.

With the national debt rising, instead of reducing the size of the bureaucracy, Senator Manchin and Democrats have cooked up a plan to direct $80 billion to the IRS to audit the middle class.

Even the Baron of Nottingham had more shame.

The only reason Democrats are panicking over permanent patronage reform is because the ranks and especially the senior management of the federal bureaucracy are full of their people. There’s nothing democratic or merit-based about letting a corrupt partisan faction control the administrative state and the lives of hundreds of millions of people with no recourse.

The next president who isn’t beholden to the administrative state should provide that recourse.

AUTHOR

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

RELATED ARTICLE: Russian Spies Were Behind Black Nationalist Protest Groups

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.