The New Clarion

Sen. Paul Joins ABC’s “This Week”: 97% of political scientists agree that the election was fair and free. Don’t be an election denier.

Biden’s First Foreign Policy Blunder Could Be on Iran: so much of Biden’s public actions seem like a continuation of Obama’s policies. It doesn’t surprise me at all that his diplomacy would follow.

Principles of Grammar: this was published last month and I remember Peikoff’s lecture version of this quite fondly. Let’s see how it comes out in written form.

Florida bank says it has closed Trump’s accounts: it’s a private corporation and it can do whatever it desires with its property—people are free to boycott the company for its shunning. And it’s conceivable that every bank could similarly refuse to do business with him but he’d still have the option of cash. Every ISP could refuse to provide him Internet service; every grocery store and restaurant could refuse his patronage; and every auto manufacturer dealer could decline to sell him vehicles. All fine, right? But doesn’t that seem un-American? Even if the various levels of government didn’t “un-person” him (or you or me), it’s no longer the America I love.

The Washington Post Memory-Holed Kamala Harris’ Bad Joke About Inmates Begging for Food and Water: that crosses a bright line between “newspaper” and “mouthpiece.” It’s a private entity so it can sabotage its integrity as much as it wants but that’s an excuse to withhold judgement. Judgement is absolutely required; a robust culture of freedom and free speech requires no less.

The Iowahawk Sequence: this is trenchant historical analysis dressed up in comedy.

Cardin, Murkowski, Speier, Reed Announce Bipartisan Resolution to Affirm Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment: umm, the Amendment’s ratification deadline expired in 1979 and was extended—perhaps unconstitutionally—through 1982—so there is no such thing as an ERA to ratify. The linked press release refers to “the law” repeatedly, and one marvels at the incompetence of legislators who grandly showcase their ignorance of it.

Executive Order on Supporting the Reopening and Continuing Operation of Schools and Early Childhood Education Providers: from today’s batch of executive orders. If you’ve got one tool in your tool belt, you use it for everything. They’re going to say that COVID-19 is racist!

direct the Department of Education’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights to deliver a report as soon as practicable on the disparate impacts of COVID-19 on students in elementary, secondary, and higher education, including those attending historically black colleges and universities, Tribal colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and other minority-serving institutions

A National Day of Unity: it begins. Inauguration day saw a flood of orders, proclamations, and revocations. It evinced an energy belied by the campaign and took on a very progressive cast. Lowlights include:

• Rejoining the Paris Accords
• Revoking the Keystone XL pipeline’s permit and a bunch of executive orders that expedite environmental reviews; defining stakeholders as “State local, Tribal, and territorial officials, scientists, labor unions, environmental advocates, and environmental justice organizations;” requiring cost/benefit analysis of all environmental regulations—oh, but the costs analyzed are the “social costs” of carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide; and generally treating global warming as the existential crisis it isn’t
• Rolling back any deregulatory or reformist tendencies that the Trump administration had
• Enacting regulatory reform that “promotes policies that reflect new developments in scientific and economic understanding, fully accounts for regulatory benefits that are difficult or impossible to quantify, and does not have harmful anti-regulatory or deregulatory effects” and “propose[s] procedures that take into account the distributional consequences of regulations, including as part of any quantitative or qualitative analysis of the costs and benefits of regulations, to ensure that regulatory initiatives appropriately benefit and do not inappropriately burden disadvantaged, vulnerable, or marginalized communities.” Further: “[t]hese recommendations should provide concrete suggestions on how the regulatory review process can promote public health and safety, economic growth, social welfare, racial justice, environmental stewardship, human dignity, equity, and the interests of future generations. The recommendations should also include proposals that would ensure that regulatory review serves as a tool to affirmatively promote regulations that advance these values.”
• Embedding racism in every executive decision and program, both explicitly by promoting “equity” at every turn and implicitly by revoking Executive Order 13950—possibly the most effective federal anti-racism (in the good sense) program in the modern era. The likely worst part of this EO in the long-term is the disaggregating of datasets “by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, income, veteran status, or other key demographic variables.” This will foster “disparate impact” lawsuits and actions with wide-ranging effects.

This is going to be a long ordeal.

A Mexican Hospital, an American Surgeon, and a $5,000 Check (Yes, a Check): this is a stunning indictment and proof that the health care industry is not operating under market forces. What specific distortions and historical forces got us here are up for discussion, of course, but this has to implode or change. {via}

China, Capitalism, and the New Cold War: thought-provoking review of a book that seems to defend capitalism on pragmatic grounds, only to cede the argument in the end with leftist solutions to its perceived defects. The review does a credible job of laying out the nascent battle for dominance and is replete with links to other treatments.

Rand Paul on His Book The Case Against Socialism on The View: sorry for another Rand Paul item so soon but this clip has it all: presentation of true facts, allegations of “mansplaining,” “no true Scotsman,” false reliance on the wisdom of crowds, and literal shutting down of conversation.

Rand Paul – Pulling US Troops From Syria ‘May Be The Best Thing That Ever Happened To The Kurds’: intriguing perspective that I haven’t heard anywhere else. We shouldn’t be in the business of “homeland building” for sure; I’m not sure we should be in the middle of anything in the area.

Turkey & the Kurds – Defending Trump’s Decision to Remove Syria Troops: Andy McCarthy splashes some cold water on the fevered concerns about the abandonment of our “ally” in Syria. His recommendation that Congress decide on military action in Syria after we exit the region. In other words, leave and don’t come back since there’s really no American interest there. I agree.

Impeachment Town Hall: Saturday Night Live skewers the Democratic candidates and does so funnily. TNC only found this clip humorous and does not recommend watching an entire episode.

So Who Is John Galt, Anyway? – A Reader’s Guide to Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”: a new book by Robert Tracinski. It looks like it mostly comes from blog entries but, seeing as how those are behind a paywall, it’ll be new to you. I’ve found his writing to be cogent and I just recently finished Atlas Shrugged so I might give this a look.

My Gift to Climate Alarmists: this is a succinct overview of the fraud perpetrated by the alarmists. It focuses on the mechanics of the fraud rather than the philosophical aspects. For that, I’d recommend Alex Epstein’s PragerU video.

St. Greta Spreads the Climate Gospel: this reflects my experience with climate alarmists. Their faith and fervor is identical to any born-again fundamentalist. The scary part is that the rest of the culture agrees with them and is only minimally hesitant about their goals.

European Union – A Massive Expansion of Top-down Powers: thus insuring that the 21st century will not be the European Century.

The Price I’ve Paid for Opposing Donald Trump: this is one of my many misgivings about possibly voting for Trump. These cretins don’t need any access to political power.