It's a shame that our political and media class is so childish, neurotic, and politically blinkered that it can't accept Barr's entirely accurate point without dissolving into a puddle of quivering goo. ZOMG HE COMPARED LOCKDOWNS TO SLAVERY!
It's not Barr's fault that he's talking to an audience of miseducated, hyper-politicized reporters who are still essentially teenagers in their mental and emotional development. He could have factored that in, but how else to make the absolutely true point he was making?
Yes, lockdowns absolutely ARE the biggest intrusion into American civil liberties short of slavery. Barr did NOT say they are morally EQUIVALENT to slavery, nor did he say slavery was only a smidgen worse. How can anyone look at the wreckage from lockdowns and deny it?
One can try to argue the lockdowns were necessary, while bearing in mind that a great many people disagree and have considerable evidence on their side. But necessity doesn't mitigate the magnitude of the imposition on civil liberties.
We're supposed to rationally BALANCE those things. There are crises that may require tremendous impositions on civil liberties for brief periods of time. We ought to be very soberly considering the magnitude of what government, at any level, demands in those situations.
We're less than 20 years removed from the Left and civil libertarians howling that far less severe impositions on civil liberties to combat terrorism after 9/11 were utterly unacceptable. Has everyone forgotten that already?
And if there's some kind of Godwin's Law that quietly went into effect and made all comparisons to slavery, and the legal regime that enabled it, absolutely forbidden, then someone had better inform Hollywood and left-wing pundits, because they do it ALL THE TIME.
Are we supposed to think malevolent intent is the only reason to oppose massive intrusions upon our liberties? As long as the people shredding our liberties mean well, it's all good? That's how authoritarianism and fascism get voted into control of a democratic society.
Are we supposed to think any degree of imposition upon our civil liberties is okay provided the political class thinks it's a really big emergency and promise abandon their new powers as soon as it's safe? You realize they justify EVERYTHING they want as an existential crisis?
By the way, get ready to hear the Left CONSTANTLY bleating that every liberty-shredding demand on its agenda is justified by The Worst Crisis Since the Rona. "Gun deaths in this country are even worse than the pandemic! Why are Republicans opposing common-sense gun control?"
You'll hear that rhetoric for YEARS to come, from many of the same people currently shrieking "How DARE he!" over Barr's remarks. None of those people will be castigated for daring to compare their pet issue to the coronavirus pandemic.
We're constantly told the Left is allowed to engage in such rhetoric because it's important to be "provocative" and "raise awareness" of their sacred issues. Republicans, on the other hand, are absolutely forbidden to raise awareness or make provocative statements.
Barr's statement was indeed provocative. He wanted to provoke a serious discussion about panicky government overreactions and the high cost to our civil liberties. He forgot he was talking to a deeply unserious audience. /end
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Among the strangest features of GOP internal battles - be it NeverTrump, or conservatives displeased with nominees like McCain or Romney - is this notion that it would be better to throw an election to the Dems and hope a better Republican nominee comes along next time.
How can anyone still seriously think that way, especially after Obama's "Pen and Phone" dictatorship and Biden wiping his posterior with the Constitution to plow ahead with his student loan vote-buying scheme? No, guys, it is NEVER safe to just toss a few wins to the Dems.
Maybe it's a form of projection, a stubborn illusion that the Dem candidate might be relatively harmless and inert in office, as GOP leaders sometimes are. Those illusions should have been utterly shattered by now.
When pundits wrote a decade or two ago that corruption would become the big story around the world, I was skeptical. People love to COMPLAIN about corruption, sure, but few electorates are prepared to take decisive action against it.
Corruption is absolutely inherent to Big Government. Repeat after me, and teach your children: THERE ARE NO CLEAN BIG GOVERNMENTS. Amassing huge amounts of power and money in a central State is like dropping sugar cubes amid anthills.
One reason Big Governments never get clean is they have so many weapons at their disposal to distract the public from anti-corruption initiatives. Key segments of the electorate get paid off, too. Big Media is easily drawn into the cesspool and made comfortable.
It is difficult to combat totalitarianism through electoral politics because the whole point of totalitarianism is to seize control of elections. They terrorize and propagandize people for years, then hold a "vote" to find out if their techniques were at least 51% effective.
Defeating totalitarianism requires spirited resistance and good humor. Mock them and make them look ridiculous. They can't stand it, because they are driven by self-righteousness. Totalitarians are small people who need to feel large by joining herds and crushing outsiders.
Defy them at every turn. Go where you aren't supposed to go, say what you're not supposed to say, and do it all with a smile. Exhaust their resources while refusing to become demoralized. Raise the price of totalitarianism by bankrupting its corporate partners when possible.
The greatest threat to democracy at present is the deliberate effort to erase nationhood and citizenship through mass migration, against the express wishes of citizens.
You don't have much of a "democracy," much less a constitutional republic, if the ruling elite can ignore voters to erase the border and shower benefits and privileges on foreign nationals. It's an explicit rejection of national sovereignty.
You don't have any kind of "democracy" if the Ruling Class can use mass migration to create a new electorate that votes the way it wants. Votes have little power if the rulers can dilute them at will.
The Democrat Party grows increasingly less interested in pretending it cares about American citizens, or feels any sense of duty toward America as a nation. The Party was never really good at this, but at least it used to make some modest efforts.
As I've written previously, every Democrat thinks their Sacred Agenda is far more important than any vestigial sense of duty they might feel toward the American people. There is no "American people" to them, just groups of favored constituents and despised enemies.
America isn't really a legitimate nation under Dem ideology, which frees them of feeling any sense of responsibility to the country as a whole, or any weight of tradition that might interfere with their quest for power. They see not one nation under God, but the Balkans.
This once again has me thinking about how everything went nuts in American youth culture during the Great Anti-Bullying Crusade, which was really more about the Left studying and adopting classic bully tactics to impose its ideology on vulnerable young people.
One element of the growing social discontent in America today is that you have an entirely feminized Mean Girls ruling class wielding increasing levels of compulsive force to impose its ideology on an essentially masculine middle and lower class.
It's like those Middle Eastern countries where a Shiite minority rules over a restless Sunni population, or vice versa. Centralized power has grown to totalitarian levels, and it's concentrated in the hands of a political elite that shares nothing of the majority's worldview.