Trump Declares Gun Stores Essential. Courts Spared Taking A Stand

Trump has declared gun stores and weapons manufacturers essential businesses. You can find the story at the American Thinker in a piece by Daniel John Sobieski entitled Trump Declares Second Amendment Essential. As a result, the Los Angeles County Sheriff, and the Governor of New Jersey have rescinded their closure orders for gun stores and ranges.

The declaration, published in a memo by DHS is both good and bad.  The good is that the declaration seems to be having the desired effect of preventing anti-gun politicians from using the Kung Flu for purposes of keeping the public defenseless.  The bad is that it short circuits the courts taking a stand on the Second Amendment.

I have noted before that much of the current reaction to the Wuhan Flu is probably Unconstitutional.  I have also noted that by the time the courts rule on it, it will be moot, and the politicians defense will be that,  Hey, it was an emergency.  We won't do it again."  That will be that.  But it is important that the courts put their foot down and say that the Constitutional rights of Americans should never be violated, even in an emergency. 

Thoughts On The Kung Flu Panic

I went to church services yesterday. The county order to shelter in place starts today, so I was fairly safe in doing so. Despite that, our congregation, that usually sports 150 or so souls at each of two services, was down to perhaps 20 or so. I didn't count. I am not telling you where this church is, or who the pastor is for his and their safety. But I wanted to make the point that he himself made about the virus: that Satan is laughing right now.  Satan loves chaos, and loves to stir up controversy and trouble for us.  I raised my hand and when called on, said an Amen.  Being Lutheran, that is not usual behavior, but then, these are not usual times.

The Catholic Diocese has shut down in person services, and is only doing services on line.  That is too bad.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America here has also gone to online services.  Not sure how they are distributing communion.  Again, too bad.  Or pastor has said that he is committed to maintaining services even if he has to schedule many services for 10 people at a time, or, and this was just making fun of the Governor, but since he can hold funerals of up to 50 attendees, have a memorial service for each of the saints of the church.  There are a lot of saints of the church:-)  Again, this was not to be taken seriously, but to point out the illogic of the Governor's statewide order.

People want to blame Trump for the virus.  But Trump has been doing exactly what a leader should be doing, so I don't blame him.  And while Democrats' reaction both to Trump and the virus have been despicable, I don't blame them for it either.  Viruses are an inherent risk of living in a fallen world.  Between you and me, I think it makes more sense to pray "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."  I can not change the virus.  I can modify, but not eliminate the risk.  And only the Living God knows everything, I only have my best judgement.

My daughter was quick to criticize me for endangering her, her children and her husband.  Of course, I do not think I am, but she is clearly in a panic, having listened to nonstop coverage of the Kung Flu on television.  She notes that hand sanitizer is largely sold out.  However, what is not sold out is isopropyl alcohol. which is the actual sanitizer in hand sanitizer.  Maybe you can't find Purell, but you can make your own with isopropyl alcohol.  Or, for that matter, use rum, or vodka.  Personally, I just use soap and water.  Part of your protection against invading viruses and bacteria is your own microbiome.  To stay healthy, you want to keep your microbiome as diverse and healthy as possible, which means using things like hand sanitizer lightly, but wash with water frequently. Note also that you can make a solution of 10% Clorox bleach in water as a sanitizer for surfaces such as kitchen counters and table tops. Clorox bleach is not sold out either.  Put it in a spray bottle and use it frequently to sanitize surfaces.  It will however, corrode door knobs and other metal surfaces, so use the isopropyl alcohol on these places.

My own personal take, and its just a gut feeling, is that the Wuhan Flu will turn out to be more deadly than the regular seasonal flu, but less deadly than SARS (remember that pandemic?)  SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) is also a coronavirus, and also jumped from an animal to humans.  But I think it is best expressed here by Stacey Myers at the American Thinker today in a blog post entitled Is This Real Life, Or Just A Bad Dream:

I don't think anyone denies that the coronavirus is a particularly ugly bug. Everyone I know wants to minimize its impact as best we can.

...snip...

It seems that the collective "we" have lost our minds. Power-hungry local governments are competing to see who "cares more" by coming up with more restrictive laws than the next one over. Many of the edicts don't make common sense. Some are unenforceable because they are too vague or unconstitutional. But that doesn't help the business-owners or their employees now. Or the parent who hasn't been able to see his child because the other parent has unilaterally decided it is "best" to wait until this health crisis is over to exchange the child. Or the many other unanticipated consequences. Many businesses will never re-open their doors. You can't recapture time with your child. Americans must be trusted to do what is right for themselves and their families. If you don't trust others to do what you think is right, you are free to stay at home! Quarantine yourself, wear a mask, wash your hands. Do whatever you think is necessary to protect yourself and your family. That's what personal freedom and responsibility are about. Those who are at higher risk have the right and responsibility to protect and insulate themselves.

Indeed, most of these "shelter in place" orders are likely to be found Unconstitutional...later. What those who issue them are counting on is that by the time appeals work their way through the courts, they will be moot. But as Myers notes, Americans should be free to make their own decisions. My Pastor made the same point by pointing out that he makes no judgement about peoples decisions based on their own situations. Stay at home, or go to church, he will be there to minister to people.

In the time of the Chinese Flu, however, I would also note that It's Not Unreasonable To Want A Gun Right Now. As Cam Edwards notes at Bearing Arms:

Gun control advocates are losing the argument right now, and for a simple reason. They’re wrong. It’s not unreasonable to want a firearm to protect yourself and your family, and I’m not saying that because I’m part of the gun lobby, or I’m trying to stoke fear and panic in order to buy guns. The coronavirus is already having an impact on some police departments, and officers themselves are growing increasingly concerned about what the next few weeks could look like.

...snip...

Departments across the nation are already telling people that they aren’t responding in person to most non-violent crimes, and some non-violent criminals are being released early from their jail or prison stays. This has been done in an attempt to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus in the institutions, where social distancing is practically impossible, but we’re already starting to see outbreaks in county jails, state prisons, and federal penitentiaries. We’re not going to get to the point of releasing convicted killers and other violent criminals, but the corrections system is going to be just as stressed as law enforcement, and we could see more inmates in jail for non-violent crimes let out early, even if they have violent criminal histories in their past.

Remember that YOU are your own first responder, and you have always been that. The police are there to draw the chalk outlines and investigate the crime after it has occurred. Despite what TV and movies show, the police do not usually save individual lives. None of this is meant to disparage these brave men and women, who put their lives on the line for us. The presence of police no doubt helps to tamp down criminal activity. But they are not there to be your personal body guards. So, yes, it is not unreasonable to want a gun. But if it is your first gun, follow the advice here, and for heavens sake, stay safe.

Too late

Over at the website Jews For The Preservation of Firearm Ownership Rob Morse has a piece entitled Yes, You Need A Gun During The Virus Scare...And Afterwards that explains that if you don't already have a gun, holster, ammunition, and some training, it may be too late for you.

Sorry.  

The revolving door of injustice spun pretty fast after that. Last week, some cities let convicted thugs out of jail because of a flu virus. States closed gun shops and promise to arrest you if you leave your home. Police in some cities refuse to respond to theft in progress due to risk from public contact. Yes, you need a gun.. and a lot more.

These recent headlines highlight an obvious fact. These events let us see that we are on our own. If we’re attacked, the police arrive after we’ve gotten to safety, after we’ve made the call to 911, and if law enforcement has personnel available to help us. It is up to us to defend ourselves and those we love until the police arrive.

That realization changed last week, but only by a matter of degree. Now we’re in the middle of a virus scare and police may or may not respond to our calls. Today, law enforcement in many cities are refusing to come to the scene of the crime if the criminal threat is gone. As you’d expect, crime increases when criminals are not pursued, arrested, jailed, charged, and prosecuted.

Today, you are at a greater risk, but you were never completely safe. Many people wanted to believe that they’d be safer if they were unarmed. Our experience with armed citizens says otherwise, and so do the recent headlines. Many people who were only vaguely aware of self-defense now see the need for a personal firearm. I’m sorry, but for many of you it is too late to become armed defenders.

I hate to say it, but you were warned.

Culture Of Death On The Left

I continue to be skeptical that the Kung Flu is as dangerous as the media continually hawks it to be.  For one thing, the media's continuing focus on the Wuhan Flu is just too convenient for the Leftists.  Now, I don't totally discount that it may well be as described.  After all, even a stopped clock is correct twice a day.  Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.  Even...well...you get the idea.  But the odds are that the current suffering of the American people is just one more in a long line of trumped up panics run by Leftists and the propaganda wing of the Democrat party.

Jeffery T. Brown has a powerful story at the American Thinker today entitled Death As A Political Tool. Brown takes us back to the abortion scandal in this country that results in between 800,000 and 1,000,000 deaths per year of innocent babies. The fact that the Left fights tooth and nail to keep abortion on demand legal in the United States, and accepts no limits on it whatsoever says much about who these people are.  By comparison, estimates of the number of people killed by COVID 19 are 80,000 people, who survived being killed by their own mothers.

But Leftists and their policies have killed more people than anything else since its founding during the French revolution. Indeed, Leftism seems to be a cult of death, or at least death to anyone but themselves.  And it continues in places like Venezuela, a formerly wealthy country brought low by socialist policies that have left bare shelves at grocery stores, the people scavenging dumpsters for anything remotely edible. But Brown is says it best:

If you've been paying attention for the last ten years or so in particular, you may have noticed in how many ways political leftists in this country love death. Not their own, but the deaths of otherwise anonymous American citizens whom they've never met, care nothing about, and clearly consider deserving of sacrifice for their policy objectives. These progressives, globalists, socialists, or any other synonym you wish to append to the ghouls who harvest souls for their own advancement think nothing of choosing who lives and who dies. They do it all the time, and that's just to seize power they don't have yet. Imagine what our country will look like if or when they are fully in control, as they thought they'd be in 2016 and hope to be again soon.

This week, we've been treated to the spectacle of Democrats in Congress using a national health catastrophe that is killing people daily, and bankrupting those who live, to extort political agenda items from the country while it suffers exponentially by the day. We've seen the Democrat governor of Nevada issue an executive order banning the use of a drug that is shown to cure people with COVID-19, apparently on the basis that President Trump identified it as a means of stopping the virus in its tracks, to the benefit of the country and its economy. They would rather exact petty victories and hide cures than defeat the illness and save American lives because the more people who die, the more they can blame Trump in November for a crisis he has responded to with every ounce of energy and determination. The more people suffer economically, the worse for Trump and the better for them.

Of course, this is a gun blog, right? So one should mention that one of the things all Leftists can agree on is that nobody but them should have a gun. Wasn't it Mao who said that power grows out of the barrel of a gun? People on the right are constantly accused of having blood on their hands because of support for the Second Amendment. Never mind that the problem is not guns per se, but those that misuse them. Oh, and the Left will never give up their weapons, no matter what the law may say. They don't feel a need to obey inconvenient laws:

Maybe you've noticed that not only do leftists love for children to be in schools deemed "gun-free zones," but they fight like hell to make sure that no one in those schools can prevent the deaths that become so useful to the advancement of their agenda. We are then offered the spectacle of the anti–Second Amendment politicians briefly leaving the protective cocoon of their armed security detail to tell us how unacceptable it would be for teachers and school administrators to be able to kill a gunman whose primary inducement in his choice of location is that no one will shoot back for a good, long time. Those aren't their children or grandchildren we're mourning. Those are expendable children. Perhaps it's sad, theoretically, that their lives were snuffed out by a triggered lunatic protected by laws passed by liberals that prevented the shooter's pre-emptive commitment to an institution, whether psychological or criminal, but their families have the comfort of knowing that their children died to eradicate the Second Amendment. They were offered up so that we can eventually be a nation of unarmed, subservient workers ruled by the politicians who willingly sacrificed those children so they can be the ones on top when the dust settles, sans bullet holes.

Please go read the whole article and remember that the current panic has nothing to do with the deaths that may result from the Chinese flu. The current panic is designed to damage President Trump. For perspective, the new estimate of the ultimate number of COVID 19 deaths in the US is around 80,000.  By comparison, the 2016 -2017 flu season killed 80,000.  Nobody was panicking then.

Joe Biden At His Elitist Best

Roger Katz has a piece at Ammoland entitled Biden The Half Wit Dares To Lecture The Public On The 2nd Amendment:

Politicians, especially those on the Radical Left and new Progressive Left of the political spectrum, proceed along their merry way, seemingly having not a care in the world, either oblivious to the fact, or, perhaps, all too mindful of it, that the actions they take as legislators, compromising the citizenry's most sacred rights and liberties, diminishes them as Americans, undermines the Constitution, and creates a hell for the rest of us to live in. Yet, there is no compromise (in the sense of negotiation), on a fundamental, immutable, unalienable, natural right; nor can there be compromise. The word ‘compromise,’ here, denotes outright capitulation. That, of course, is what the Democrats want, and the Detroit autoworker, Jerry Wayne, was doing the public a favor in bringing to light the irrationality of Biden’s remarks on the Second Amendment. Biden obviously wasn’t able to respond effectively to the irrationality of his own position. How could he? His position is self-contradictory.

...snip...

Sincerity was never Biden’s long suit; nor is controlling his anger. Biden’s obvious disinclination to engage the public, despite his efforts to demonstrate the contrary, comes across plainly and painfully. His rancor and deceit, irascibility and dissembling, along with an inability or lack of desire to even try to control his temper should not be lost on anyone.

With his daily Wuhan virus updates, one suspect Cuomo may be auditioning for the presidency, because heaven knows, even the reduced field is just awful. But I understand from someone who knew him at HUD that Cuomo is no better. I start to believe that William F. Buckley, Jr. had the right idea:  he'd rather be governed by someone picked at random from the Boston phone book.  (Note for those too young to remember what a phone book was, it was a printed database of all the people and businesses in the area with their addresses and telephone numbers.)

Wake, North Carolina Sheriff Refuses To Process Pistol Permits

From Tom Knighton over at Bearing Arms comes NC Sheriff Suspends Pistol Permits, Faces Immediate Backlash. Knighton is, of course, talking about our own Sheriff Baker of Wake County. Of course Baker is a Democrat, and naturally he is anti gun. Baker is the one who tried to shut down the only public range in Wake County earlier.

The current issue is the Wuhan Flu, but it could be any manufactured panic.  North Carolina has a Jim Crow law on the books that requires an individual to obtain a Pistol Permit in order to buy a handgun.  The Pistol Permit requires a person's fingerprints and a background check.  It is an obsolete law that should have been struck down years ago.  But it is a revenue stream, so many Sheriffs are loathe to get rid of it.

Indeed, it can be argued that by setting up a permit system, the NC State government has turned a right into a privilege  Time indeed to get rid of it.

If you are in NC, please call and inundate the Sheriff's office with pushback.

Update:  Grass Roots North Carolina, along with Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition are suing Sheriff Baker.  The press release is here. You can read it at the link. Thank you Paul Valone, President of GRNC.

Killing The Victim To Stop The Disease

I continue to believe that the current measures being taken by our "leaders" are worse than the disease we are trying to fight. And I believe it is also true that long after we have supposedly "defeated" COVID 19, it will still be with us, endemic as is SARS and the seasonal flu.

Martin Thau has an excellent piece at the American Thinker today entitled COVID 19 Probably Won't Destroy Society, But The Government's Reaction Might that encapsulates the problem very well. He starts by reminding us of the many many panics that have been whipped up by the media, only to be proven false.

The Washington Post recently touted "an alarming new scientific model" that warns that treating COVID-19 like a somewhat more severe strain of flu won't cut it. The model predicts over a million U.S fatalities unless we shut down all non-essential mingling until a vaccine is developed, "which could take 12 to 18 months at best." Pretty bleak stuff. In fact, that's about the bleakest take on COVID-19 you'll find. Let's run with it.

...snip...

We'll also entirely ignore the media's generally appalling track record concerning "expert" projections of hypothetical disasters. In fact, we'll ignore their altogether abysmal record of spreading misinformation when it matters most. Pretend they never created a completely unjustified panic over the prospect of massive Y2K technology failures. Nor remember they've been serially predicting we have only ten years 'til the Earth becomes uninhabitable from environmental damage for at least the last 50.

And he goes on like this for paragraph after paragraph.  Panic after panic, raised to the highest level of urgency not because these panics were real, but because they serve an agenda.  Remember peak oil?  The world was running out, until we discovered that the U.S. alone had enough oil to keep us running for perhaps 200 or more years.

Then he points out that what our "leaders" have prescribed is utter madness. 

We're now in a position to observe a remarkable fact. The restrictions and spur-of-the-moment peremptory government abridgment of our most basic rights to which we've acquiesced are still completely unjustified. The idea that we're considering extending them indicates that we've completely lost our collective mind.

...snip...

Even the worst-case scenarios presented by our dishonest, fear-mongering media don't present some kind of unique catastrophe the likes of which no human society has ever faced and for which it's impossible to predict the long-term damage or even if we'll ever recover.

The same, however, can't be said for the insane idea of an extended period of time living under draconian government-enforced social and economic sanctions. Virtually every single brick-and-mortar business in America could wind up out of business, and unheard-of levels of unemployment are guaranteed.

Thau also points out, as did I, that so called "social distancing" while being of dubious effectiveness against the virus, will no doubt increase depression and suicide. And for those who are suffering from the virus itself, they will be forced to go it alone. But man is a social creature. He needs companionship, and he needs to have contact with others. And while technology can help to keep us in contact, there is no substitute for face to face meeting with others. Even an introverted individual needs some contact with others. It is our nature as humans.

Further, I question whether the government, at any level, has the right or authority to order us to stay at home, or to enforce such orders.  We are too meekly submitting to this tyranny, and we too readily accept that it is good for us.  As I said before, those of us who are at most risk need to protect ourselves as we see fit.  But young people and those with families and mortages should not have to participate.  Dr. Nicole Saphier, MD, let the cat out of the bag yesterday when she confirmed that by next year COVID 19 will be part of the flu season in the U.S.

Go read the whole article, and several others on American Thinker Update: Please also read Enough: The COVID-19 Panic Is Insane And Destroying Our Way Of Life:

No, this rage column is for you sane people who think this entire “crisis” is stupid and have from the start. You are not alone. It’s one thing to practice basic hygiene which we all should anyway. It’s another thing to shut down the world. What gives me faith is having met so many of you who also see the problem with this pandemic. The sane — those who don’t fall in line with the herd — are, as it turns out, some of the best people I’ve met. Jovial, kind, fun and independent. Rock on, my rebels, I raise my toilet paper in your honor.

Yes, this entire “crisis” is stupid. You are not the only one who thinks so. You are not a terrible person for feeling sad or angry to see your life disintegrating before you while virtue signaling plebes hop on social media to say they’re fine with sacrificing in order to flatten the curve.

Getting a perspective on the Coronapanic

I may sound perhaps insensitive to the suffering that other may be going through. I am not, however. I just got a call from our company "human resource" department that everyone is furloughed until further notice. That means at least two weeks. Meanwhile, it has been rainy here for days on end, so getting outside to do some yard work at least has been iffy. So, put me in the same boat as everyone else.

But, in times like these, it is well to remember that Jesus walks beside us through all the times of both joy and suffering. At The Federalist Michael Salemink has a piece entitled 10 Positive Ways To Celebrate Life In The Shadow Of Coronavirus. Please read through his ten ways and meditate on each. It is easy to get wrapped around the axle over small things, and forget others. You still can reach out to others even if you are confined.

At our church we are making changes to our services, such as having the ushers place bulletins on a stand and pointing them out, rather than handing one to each person, but we have not cut out services.  I agree that cutting services is a bridge to far, and a gift to Satan and the Left.  Don't go there.

If you don't now, maybe it's a good time to start each morning with Martin Luther's morning prayer:

I thank you my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ Your dear Son,that you have kept me this night from all harm and danger; and that you would keep me this day also from sin and every evil, my doings and life may please You. For into your hands I commend myself, my body and soul and all things. Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me. Amen

Stay safe, gentle reader.

States and communities getting push back from citizens on gun store shut downs

Anti-gun politicians have used the COVID 19 pandemic as an excuse to shut down gun stores as nonessential.  Andrea Widburg has the story at the American Thinker entitled States and local communities are using coronavirus to shut down gun stores. I would note though that a number of governors and sheriffs have had their ears pinned back since that story was written. For instance, Los Angeles County Sheriff

Alex Villanueva reversed course early Wednesday morning and now says his office is suspending attempts to force firearm retailers to lock their doors.

Villaneuva announced the move on social media, saying it will be up to Gov. Gavin Newsom to determine what is, and isn’t, an essential business.

And Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has been slapped by the Supreme Court and forced to back track on his order to close gun stores. Widburg notes that:

For this reason, the first ten amendments to the Constitution do not define government power; they limit it. And more importantly, they limit it, not by having the government graciously extend a few privileges to America’s citizens, privileges that the government can as easily revoke, but instead by stating rights that individuals automatically possess without regard to the government’s powers.

The second of these amendments – one of only two amendments dedicated exclusively to a single principle – refers to every citizen’s inherent (not government-granted, but inherent) right to possess arms:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

If the Second Amendment were written in modern English, the Founders might have phrased it this way:

The only way citizens can defend themselves against a tyrannical government is to create their own army (which, obviously, is separate from the government’s army). The people, therefore, have an overarching and innate right to have guns, and the government may not interfere with that right.

Our right to arms for defense of our selves and our families is never more important than at a time when things can rapidly turn ugly. Widburg correctly notes that the right to arms is an inherent right, not a government grant, and that the right may not be revoked at the stroke of a pen. The anti-federalists were right to insist on putting this into the Constitution as a price for their acquiescence to it, because it makes it much easier to defend.

It Feels Like The Jack Boot Is On Our Collective Necks

First it was Russia, Russia, Russia constantly blaring from the media.  We were assured that the evidence was there, but we had to wait for the Mueller report.  When that fell through, it was Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine.  Every night on the nightly news we were assured that even though we could read the transcript for ourselves, and see there was nothing to it, there was evidence that the President had made a quid pro quo demand.  When that failed, along comes the corona virus, COVID 19.  Reports of corona virus take up 90 - 95% of the nightly news.  Now, I am not an expert on viruses, nor am I a medical doctor, but forgive me for thinking that all the hoopla is making much out of little.

The media has whipped up a panic that threatens to overwhelm the effects of the disease itself.  As Trump has said, we don't need the cure to be worse than the disease.  Now, I am 68 years old, and have been through a number of panics in my time.  As a youth, the Russians were coming with nuclear bombs to bomb us into oblivion any day.  We were all doomed!  Doomed, I tell you.  Then there was Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," followed closely by Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb."  These tombs told us that we were polluting the environment beyond the earth's capacity to clean it up, and we were using the earth's resources such that they would all run out.  Oh, and then it was global cooling...er...global warming...oops...global climate change. In between we had the ozone hole, mass extinction, etc. etc. All were and are either complete hoaxes, or extremely over blown. The goal of each was to extract money from you and me, and give more power to those in power, while decreasing our own liberty and freedoms.

In an article by Jack Cashill at the American Thinker entitled Reflections On A Century Of Junk Science, the author takes the reader through these hoaxes and compares reality:

During the last few weeks, I had made a point of not watching or following the news. I trusted none of it. A TV at the pizza place, however, was tuned to CNN. It showed the Coronavirus death toll: 12,000-plus worldwide and 285 in the United States.

The numbers stunned me. Not following the news closely, I presumed, based on the hysteria in the air, that the numbers had to be at least ten times that high both nationally and internationally.

285? According to the Centers for Disease Control 185 Americans died of drug overdoses every day in 2018. According to the CDC, 315 people died of the flu every day during the six-month 2018-2019 flu season. And if protecting life is the goal, we could save about 400 young lives every work hour by shutting down America’s abortion clinics.

Cashill is, of course, correct. When compared to these and other statistics, the corona virus looks pretty tame. Of course, I believe we should be concerned and pay attention to it, but to destroy the economy, lay off millions of workers, and interrupting social functions and supply lines, seems a gross over reaction. Being 68, I am in the cohort of those who are most vulnerable to it, yet doesn't it make more sense to have those who are vulnerable protect themselves?

Frankly, I can't help but believe that this is both an attempt to make Trump look as bad as possible, while normalizing progressive agenda items like restricting guns, or even outright banning the sale and transfer of guns and ammunition. And once such emergency measures are in place, anti-gun politicians will be reluctant to return to normal.  Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress want to add the green new deal to economic relief legislation. And I am not really in favor of such legislation, let alone adding "Christmas Tree" items like the green new deal.

As the media has whipped up a frenzy, panic buying by people at grocery stores has taken hold.  Toilet paper has been in especially short supply.  The other day the store was all out of onions and sweet potatoes.  Flour was also completely out, though cake mixes were fully stocked.  I commented to a woman standing in line that the stores were beginning to look like Venezuela.  But she had no idea what I was talking about.  And she votes!

My totally uninformed opinion?  We may be able to slow the spread of covid 19, but it will none the less become endemic eventually.  We really can not stop it.  Of course, wash your hands frequently.  If you are a older person with compromised immune system, isolate yourself.  If you have the symptoms of covid 19, of course isolate yourself and contact your doctor.  But otherwise, people should live their lives.  People are social animals, and isolation is not good for their mental health.  Indeed, it is used as a form of punishment.  It certainly feels like the jack boot is on our necks.

History Doesn't Repeat, But It Rhymes...

If you ever wondered why I was so opposed to Communism, which is nothing more than the international version of Socialism or Fascism,  it is because of history.  I have been virulently opposed to all its forms for as long as I have been aware of its history of death and destruction.  The collectivist ideology, known as Marxism, Leninism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, and here in America as Progressivism, has attracted ruthless people to it since its inception.  None were more ruthless than Joseph Stalin, and his edict to drive the Kulaks off their land demonstrates that.

At the American Thinker today, Yaacov ben Moshe tells the story of Stalin's forcing of the Kulaks off the land by starvation, and murder, in order to achieve his version of "'Utopia" by collectivizing farms. The story, entitled Kulak is the Russian Word for 'Deplorable' can be found at the link. But ben Moshe doesn't tell the story for historical purposes, but to show what we face if we elect one of the Democrat candidates. In the process, he makes the same point that I have made ever since I read Marx's Communist Manifesto at age 16 and reported on it to my classmates. Communism violates human nature and God's laws.

The atrocity of the de-kulakization -- the heartless butchery and wanton waste of life, the inhumane genocide of a culture, the destruction of the productive economic heart of Russia -- seems a brutal insanity unless you understand the real motivation behind it. As Stephen Kotkin has revealed in his biography of the man, Stalin was tough and cold, but he was not a madman. He did what he did, as Kotkin, proves, not out of murderous insanity but, even more chillingly, simply because he was a communist.

Stalin had studied and subscribed to Marxist theory and would now apply that theory, by force, to the entire Russian Empire. He saw with clarity, more so than any of his Soviet contemporaries, that the farmers as a class within Russian society were the most formidable obstacle (both economic and cultural) to his efforts to "build socialism" and pave the way to the communist utopia he believed in. Stalin was right; their interests, their traditions, their hearts and their independence were bulwarks against socialism and collectivization.

Their knowledge of how to farm the land seemed to guarantee them exemption from collectivization. Stalin’s answer was brutal and direct. His goal was communism, so the kulaks had to go no matter the cost.

The only thing Stalin was mistaken about was that he did not understand that the kulaks were not just a stubborn problem, they were the embodiment of human nature in its immutable unsuitability for socialism. He could not see that even though he could murder them he could not change human nature and that he and the socialist/communist project was (and is!) destined always to fail. It must fail because its promise of utopian equality of results is not just opposed to human nature, it defies the laws of nature and God. The tens of millions of people tortured, lives wasted, and the vast suffering were a great, horrible futility.

Why do I dwell on this now? Because it has become clear to me that the project of globalization by the Progressive administrative/political/intellectual elite, is, if not a twin brother, at least a blood relation to the Stalinist project. Globalization is a collectivist ideological movement, as is communism. It manifests itself as incremental (we might as well say progressive) socialism. Solzhenitsyn, who saw it first hand, said this about socialism: “Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death..” Still, various national and international elites have been pushing it along for several decades. It is the goal for most of the powerful, intellectual and political leaders in the world. It is the raison d'être for the European Union and the underlying rationale behind multiculturalism, the rise of pan-national corporations and open borders. Like Stalinism it is a secular ideology callous to the well-being, liberty, and even, when necessary, the life of anyone who stands in its way.

Might I add that it is also the reason for the Progressive (read Democrat) push for gun control. They won't say it, but they fully understand that at some point, the American people will not stand for the policies they are pushing, therefor they must separate us from our guns. Remember, it was Obama communications director Anita Dunn who quoted Mao Tse Tung as saying that power grows out of the barrel of a gun. And power is what these people crave for themselves and their families. But they couldn't care less about the Kulaks, or you.

It is said that history repeats.  History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.