In Venezuela, There Is No Disagreement About SOCIALISM

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, Political Economy, Socialism

This may come as news to the doctrinaire democrats (lower case “d”) who doggedly conflate the will of the people with liberty:

The Venezuelan mobs fighting against the forces of Nicolás Maduro are not fighting for “freedom,” as we classical liberals think of it; they are not fighting against socialism.

In Juan Guaidó, Venezuelans are simply looking for a better, kinder socialist.

Guaidó is a member of the Socialist International. Guaidó is a member of the Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party, which has been an official member of the Socialist International since 2014.

MORE.

You mean you didn’t know that the Guaidó the US wants to go to war for is a socialist?

AGAIN: The masses as a rule, in the US and abroad, want more stuff, not less of it. If we quit the Disneyfied view of the world’s quarrels; perhaps we Americans will be less inclined to intervene in battles not our own.

One can only hope.

UPDATED (9/23/020): Obesity

Free Will Vs. Determinism, Healthcare, Psychiatry

“Evolution has equipped people for a world very different from the one they now inhabit. They are obese because their appetites are adapted to scarcity, not superabundance.” (The Economist, Apr 13th 2019)

 

UPDATE (9/23/020): CDC dumbly and unscientifically  classifies obesity as a disease. Why not? Some psychiatrists consider not paying alimony a disease, so why not overeating?

What is true is that “obesity remains high across the USA.” CDC says ” twelve states now have an adult obesity prevalence at or above 35 percent,” but that seems too low. Everything on the CDC’s site is written is such vague, incoherent fashion.

What is true is that obesity is a comorbidity when it comes to COVID-19.

Obesity Worsens Outcomes from COVID-19

Adults with obesity are at even greater risk during the COVID-19 pandemic:

The President Is The Quintessential Pro Wrestler. Let The Games Begin.

Democrats, Donald Trump, Elections, IMMIGRATION

President Trump is the quintessential pro wrestler. He will eat alive those empty Democratic suits, in the lead-up to the 2020 showdown. Should be fun.

(The entertainment element of the primaries and the election should sweeten the bitter pill that is Trump’s abject failure on immigration. Or, as Ann Coulter puts it, “The country is over.”)

The kick-off. Some off-the-cuff Trump quips about the 2020 Democratic candidates:

* Joe Biden has been dubbed “Sleepy Joe” and “another low I.Q. individual.”
* Bernie sanders is “Crazy Bernie.”
* Elizabeth warren is better known as “Pocahontas,” thanks to POTUS.
* Beto O’Rourke is “a flake.”
* “Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is a total flunky for Chuck Schumer.”
* Kamala Harris was credited with “having a little better opening act than others,” but “a nasty wit.”
* “Mayor Pete is not going to make it.”

NEW COLUMN: Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya

Conservatism, Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Egalitarianism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality, Political Philosophy

NEW COLUMN, “Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya,” is now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

An excerpt:

BERNIE SANDERS, the senator from Vermont, said he thinks “everyone should have the right to vote—even the Boston Marathon bomber … 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,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”

Bernie is right about a “slippery slope.” But the befuddled Bernie is worried about the wrong slope.

Denying the vote to some and conferring it on others is not a “slippery slope.” It’s exercising good judgment.

Insisting that the vote in America belongs to everyone, irrespective: now that’s a slippery slope, down which the slide is well underway.

As it stands, there are almost no moral or ethical obligations attached to citizenship in our near-unfettered Democracy.

Multiculturalism means that you confer political privileges on many an individual whose illiberal practices run counter to, even undermine, the American political tradition.

Radical leaders across the U.S. quite seriously consider Illegal immigrants as candidates for the vote—and for every other financial benefit that comes from the work of American citizens.

The rights of all able-bodied idle individuals to an income derived from labor not their own: That, too, is a debate that has arisen in democracy, where the demos rules like a despot.

But then moral degeneracy is inherent in raw democracy. The best political thinkers, including America’s constitution-makers, warned a long time ago that mass, egalitarian society would thus degenerate.

What Bernie Sanders prescribes for the country—unconditional voting—is but an extension of “mass franchise,” which was feared by the greatest thinkers on Democracy. Prime Minister George Canning of Britain, for instance. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya,” is now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.