Category Archives: Morality

Bernie Sanders’ Degenerate Democracy

Crime, Democracy, Democrats, Egalitarianism, Ethics, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality

Killers who’ve conspired to kill, or have killed, “fellow” citizens forfeit their right to partake in the community they seek to destroy. If you think that statement is a given—you’re wrong.

Not according to Bernie Sanders’ degenerate democracy:

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said he thinks everyone should have the right to vote — even the Boston Marathon bomber.
Asked at a CNN town hall Monday night if he thought felons should be allowed to vote — even while they’re incarcerated, not just after they’re released — Sanders said the country needs more people to vote.
“This is a democracy and we have got to expand that democracy, and I believe every single person does have the right to vote,” he said.
Sanders started his answer by pointing out the low rate of voter turnout in the United States when compared to other major democracies around the world. He said one of the primary priorities of his campaign is to make the US a “vibrant” democracy with a much higher voter turnout.
And, Sanders said, enfranchising people like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — the US citizen who helped bomb the Boston Marathon in 2013, killing three and injuring hundreds of others — is a part of that.
“Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote. Well, that person did that. Not going to let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope,” Sanders said when asked by a student if sex offenders, the Boston Marathon bomber, terrorists and murderers should have voting rights.

Via CNN.

As it stands, today, there are almost no moral or ethical obligations attached to citizenship in a Democracy.

Illegal immigrants are seriously considered as candidates for the vote.

Their right to be shielded from telling the truth on the Census is solemnly debated. As is their right to “welfare”—benefits that come from the work of others—no longer disputed.

The rights of all individuals to an income derived from the labor of some: that too is a debate in democracy.

But then moral degeneracy is inherent in democracy. The best political thinkers warned a long time ago that mass, egalitarian society would so degenerate.

* Image via “The Right Nerve Place.”

 

UPDATED (3/21/019): Dethroning John McCain: One Of President Trump’s Great Achievements

Criminal Injustice, Donald Trump, History, John McCain, Morality, War

President Trump: “I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.”

One of the great things about Donald Trump is that he dethroned John McCain, who was certainly a mediocre man and not a very good man at that.

(See: “John McCain: Deeply Flawed, Unstable Man Of Limited Intelligence And Low Character.”)

What’s more, Trump’s sensibility is correct. There are plenty of principled reasons for which to dislike John McCain, other than his career warmongering.

Americans owe a debt of gratitude to a great and principled war reporter (also a war veteran) by the name of Sydney Schanberg.

Honor the late Mr. Schanberg, not John McCain, by reading his courageous, sadly futile, attempts at exposing the senator for his “POW cover-up.”

Yes, McCain was, it woudl appear, “the “war hero” and presidential candidate who “buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.”

READ “John McCain and the POW Cover-Up.”

UPDATED (3/21/019):

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NEW COLUMN: Kamala’s Collectivist Values Village

Argument, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality, The State

NEW COLUMN is “Kamala’s Collectivist Values Village.” It’s now on WND.COM, The Unz Review and Townhall.com.

An excerpt:

Sen. Kamala Harris talks a lot about “our American values.” Ditto the rest of the female candidates who’ve declared for president in the busy Democratic field. They all lecture us about “values.”

“Our American values are under attack,” Harris has tweeted. “Babies are being ripped from their parents at the border …”

As her own proud “know your values moment,” the Democrat from California pinpoints the U.S. Senate Supreme Court confirmation proceedings inflicted on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

To manipulate Americans, politicians have always used the values cudgel.

With respect to immigration, the idea is to impress upon gullible Americans that the world has a global Right of Return to the U.S. Fail to accept egalitarian immigration for all into America; and you are flouting the very essence of Americanism. (Or, to use liberal argumentation, you’re Hitler.)

When politicians pule about the importance of preserving “our values,” they mean their values: Barack Obama’s values, Hillary Clinton’s values, Angela Merkel’s values, Chucky Schumer’s values, Jeff Bezos’ values, the late John McMussolini’s values, Lindsey Graham’s values, and Jared and Ivanka’s values (but not Trump’s).

When a politician preaches about “the values that make our country great,” to quote Mrs. Clinton, chances are they mean multiculturalism, pluralism, wide-swung borders, Islam as peace, communities divided by diversity as a net positive, and the Constitution (it mandates all the above, just ask Ruth Bader Ginsburg) as a living, breathing, mutating philosophical malignancy.

For them, “protecting” the abstraction that is “our way of life” trumps the protection of real individual lives. “We must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are,” dissembled Obama in the waning weeks before he was gone. The empty phrase is meant to make the sovereign citizen—you—forget that government’s most important role, if not its only role, is to protect individual life.

In his last few addresses, Obama promised to speak up on “certain issues,” in times when he imagined “our core values may be at stake.” Likewise, in delivering her Control-Alt-Delete speech against the Deplorables, Clinton had asserted that “our country is great because we’re good. … Donald Trump disregards the values that make our country great.” The two’s groupthink, notwithstanding, only individuals can be virtuous, not collectives.

Self-government, and not imposed government, implies that society, and not The State, is to develop value systems. The State’s role is to protect citizens as they go about their business peacefully, living in accordance with their peaceful values. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Kamala’s Collectivist Values Village.” It’s now on WND.COM, The Unz Review and Townhall.com.

Why We In The West Care So For Animals (Or Should)

Argument, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Justice, Law, Morality, Reason, The West

Writes HENRY STEPHENSON, of O’Fallon, Illinois:

… Laws protecting animals are perfectly justifiable, not because [animals] have rights, but because we value their welfare and are repulsed by acts of cruelty against them. Upholding such laws does not require the cascade of nonsense that would ensue from pretending that animals have moral or legal standing.

HENRY STEPHENSON,
O’Fallon, Illinois

I would put it thus:

We care for animals and codify that care in law, not because animals have human rights, but because of our own humanity.

The Economist (Letters, Jan 12th 2019)

Or, as Schopenhauer mused: