Wrecking Ball

Yesterday, with a loud thud, one of the major pegs in the house that FDR built came crashing down.

Yeah, I know. Abortion was not federalized under his watch, but it was federalized as everything else, in response to his habit of making everything federal. And creating an over-powerful and centralized federal system.

What both sides are ignoring in the fall of Roe versus Wade is that it’s not pro-or-anti abortion deciding the matter: It’s weather or not it makes any sense for that kind of divisive, profoundly difficult issue to be decided from on high, by as small a number of people as possible.

And, more importantly, the fact that it’s not American, it’s not CONSTITUTIONAL to make this a federal issue.

Taking down Roe v Wade did not — as it’s being bandied about by the insane left and their handmaidens in the press — make abortion “illegal”. It devolved the question to the states. Where solutions can be found, worked out and fumble fingered, and the results seen and considered, without its being nation-wide or mandatory the same everywhere. It gives a difficult matter the benefit of being decided by as many people as possible.

The truth is there was never a right to kill in the constitution. (Which is what abortion amounts to, sorry.) Except in self defense (which yes does take care of health of mother.) Now because abortion is not a straight-up murder for various and complex reasons (including difficulty of proof) and because it involves a lot of other things, it’s not clear and it gets morally and particularly emotionally complex. Which means–

Which means it’s better hammered out in the states, until an answer emerges. Or remaining divided if no answer emerges.

Let’s not forget one of the ways of making abortion rare (if not safe) is to make it inconvenient, which a trip to another state certainly achieves.

I have said, in the past, that I considered the Portuguese system better, in that it was illegal but easily procured through channels of acquaintance. It was rare because it was expensive, and safe because it involved a risk for the medical professional, should it be discovered (by the woman bleeding out, say.)

Some of you have mentioned that — as the Covidiocy proved — the American health establishment is more rule bound, partly because licensing has them by the b*lls. (And that too is something else that is part of over arching centralized structure, ridiculous in a country the size of ours. Yes, the license is through the states, but the AMA has untold power. As do similar organizations. And it’s time for those pegs of an overcentralized system to start shaking, too.) And you are right. Which is why the distributed state by state structure might achieve the same, at least for those not in a full-abortion state.

Even there, there might be advances in safety. I understand that Roe v. Wade distorted a state’s ability to regulate the safety and licensing of abortion clinics, thereby permitting the advent of horrors like Kermit Gosnell.

I will state right here, openly, that my only reason to hope for it to be fully illegal — knowing that it can’t be stopped, because it never is, and that there would be people who died by trying to perform abortions by strange means — would be to stop the loathsome trade in baby parts which amounts to cannibalism or perhaps black magic. But perhaps removing the federal regulation is enough to regulate and law-fare those perverse practitioners out of existence. One can at the very least hope. Because frankly the fact we are dealing in baby parts and slurry of human is something so horrifying it can’t be thought about for any time without horror and nausea. It is the sort of thing that, if anything, cries to the heavens for vengeance.

There has been — though I’m not fully knowledgeable to expound on it — a distortion in our practice of medicine, our lives, our health care, from this top down, oppressive, centralized decision with no basis in the constitution.

Which brings us to “the edifice that FDR built.” Having recently read Forgotten Man, I am very aware of how the drive for centralization and standardization was a primary push by FDR.

Some of it, perhaps, was useful. Certainly the standardization of certain tool sizes, and even furniture sizes is useful, but it would have come about anyway, through commerce, without a need for regulation.

At any rate, the “house that FDR built” are all the centralized extra-constitutional regulations, the myriad life-strangling rules, measurements, federal regulations, and federal decrees affecting all of our daily lives and proceeding, sometimes, from nothing more official than the pen of a single man.

That entire edifice was built for the mass-manufacturing, mass-communication era, (and wasn’t wonderful even then) and as such it’s creaking and cracking, and straining and falling apart under the impact of distributed manufacturing and communication.

To people — all of us — raised in the house that FDR built, or around it, or influenced by it (as all of the world is by America) it feels like the entire world or the entire American system is coming apart.

But it is not the American system. Except for very few, carefully specified powers, the Federal Government is designed to be a distant, authority of last resort, not the constant overseer of our days.

It is time to let difficult problems be solved by the states, or even cities. It’s time to let the laboratories of democracy flourish, until a “best solution” is discovered and emulated. Or not. And various answers are given to the same problem.

Now let’s get rid of every single other extra-constitutional rule and regulation. And abolish the department of education!

FDR built a crooked house. And it shall not stand.

559 thoughts on “Wrecking Ball

    1. Indeed. I have never been able to figure out why the rabid capital-F feminists decided that abortion was the hill to be defended at all costs.
      So – the Supremes kicked it back to the individual states to set standards for permitting … and this is what they are coming un-f__king glued about?

      1. Abortion is their sacrament, but Government is their idol.
        The bigger the government the more worthy of worship to them.
        Any govt that releases power or has it withheld is therefore heretical to them.

      2. The election of Donald Trump tore the mask of the pretense of objectivity off the major legacy media and exposed them as the claque of partisan shills they always were. Likewise, Jane’s Revenge and the calls for assassination of Supreme Court Justices are exposing the rabid capital-F eminists as the murderous bastages they always were at heart. “Women’s health” my left toenail.

        1. Groups like Jane’s Revenge are acting with the blessing and financial support of Democratic Party leadership and their oligarchical financiers. It is why the DOJ and FBI are so silent about explicit assassination threats against justices. Indeed, Democrats’ rhetoric about “rising up” and the open death threats being made on social media that are far more explicit and worse than anything any conservative has ever posted that resulted in bans are proof that the Democrats intend to engage in a coordinated campaign of violence to assert their will.

          Democratic Party leaders have engaged in rhetoric far more explicitly threatening than Trump said in the lead up to J6 and have crossed into explicit insurrectionist statements. Meanwhile nonviolent J6 protestors sit in prison for over a year and a half without trial while Democratic Party rioters have charges of violence against federal and state law enforcement dropped or plead down to minor offenses.

          If Democrats keep pushing, given how stressed the citizenry is over inflation and the rest of the leftist nonsense, they may find that they are going to get a lot more push-back than there ideologically blinded minds are able to contemplate. Those who can contemplate it I suspect want widespread partisan violence so that they can use it as a pretext for even greater power grabs.

          I anticipate within the next week or two for Team HarrisBiden to declare a “national emergency” and use that to impose the gun control and confiscation that they couldn’t get through even with help from the RINOs, will declare the Dobbs’ decision illegitimate and invalid and will use Federal resources including FBI and DOJ to go after states that enforce state abortion restrictions. I really think the Democrats are too fanatical and too blinded to not push this all the way to outright civil strife and civil war. I hope I am wrong, but the reaction from Democrats doesn’t provide any reason not to expect the worst at this point.

          1. I don’t know if they need a “National Emergency” yet. Everyone is skeptical about Monkey Pox and it’s mostly rave-slut attending victims. Climate Change and Gun Control don’t scare the normies like the so-called plague that was Covid.

            And with the RINO election corruption in NV, UT, and GA plus the 14 anti-2nd Amendment GOP Senators, I wouldn’t count on a “Red Wave” win in the mid-terms changing much. If the GOP wasn’t the “Gay Old Pediphiles” and not in the Epstein evidence, we would see mass impeachments in January 2023.

            There’s more poop in the stables to clean than people realize. Let’s hand out more shovels!

              1. And it’s falling on deaf ears because the media is reporting the demographics and behaviors of it’s victims. It’s a low grade repeat of the AIDS scare. If the population of the “victims” was a group higher on hierarchy, it might get more traction.

              2. Of course they are. They are looking for yet another pretext to impose mass fraud by mail under the rubric of “an emergency” so that it is far easier for them to manipulate election results in their favor. Given that international organizations are fully onboard with the neo-Marxists in the USA, expect WHO to declare an epidemic by August and a pandemic by late September/early October, with support of all the Eurocrats who just had a conniption over the Dobbs’ decision even though their own abortion laws are stricter than the one that was the subject of that case.

                The last thing the Eurocrats want is for Democrats to lose control of Congress in 2022, as it will limit HarrisBiden’s ability to cripple the USA under the rubric of “international agreements”.

          2. The Democrats certainly have lots of pleas from the usual suspects for their emergency de jure. So many in fact that they’ve lost their impact.

            Abortion-https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sens-warren-smith-urge-biden-declare-public-health-emergency-abortion-rcna35338
            Covid emergency abides-https://finance.yahoo.com/news/biden-administration-extends-covid-19-234635003.html
            Guns-https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jun/26/elizabeth-warren-guns-are-national-health-emergenc/

            And by the way-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_in_the_United_States

            1. And the Reader is pretty sure that there will be more calls for a climate emergency after the West Virginia vs EPA decision this week. The Reader worries about that one. The climate crazies have shown a previous willingness to destroy infrastructure.

                  1. “Hey, we’re having issues in places where police are only minutes away. Let’s go target places where police are an hour away…and would probably give advice to the guys we tried to murder.”

                    1. Note this brave soul won’t do it himself. Oh, no. He just wants other people to do it for him.
                      Dante really did create a special place in Hell for sowers of discord. Hope this guy pulls back before it’s too late.

                    2. I love how Sun Tzu here just assumes that the rural areas are “defenseless” without the police on hand. I haven’t actually looked at the stats, but who here wants to bet against them collectively having more guns and ammo than the military (and probably being better shots on average too)?

                    3. “Gun ownership is more common among men than women, and white men are particularly likely to be gun owners. Among those who live in rural areas, 46% say they are gun owners, compared with 28% of those who live in the suburbs and 19% in urban areas. ”
                      https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/

                      I suspect most of those rural gun owners own more than one gun, and plenty of ammo.
                      And that was 5 years ago. I’m pretty sure it is much higher now.

                    4. Willing to say they own, to a random call-up….

                      A lot of women I know will say they don’t own a gun, in that case.

                      ….total access to their husband’s, but not owning one. 😀

                  2. This strikes me as “glowie.” Possibly with a reversed polarity; possibly as a ploy to sacrifice useful idiots for the sake of producing bloody shirts to wave.

                    1. Quite possibly; it is a common technique; “Let’s you and him fight!” But he/she/it could also be a genuine moron (not that the two are mutually exclusive).

            2. The Democrats are terrified of losing their power. That’s the real National Emergency.
              ———————————
              The government has been rewarding stupidity and incompetence for more than 60 years, and now they are Shocked! to find out that’s what they’ve got.

              1. The latest scheme they are floating is to nationalize the oil industry; the idea was floated in DC insider publication The Hill, so it certainly has backing of Democratic Party leadership and oligarchs.

                1. nationalize the oil industry


                  Who is ready for gas lines?

                  California has already seen electric power station lines (funny how that dropped out to the news).

                  1. That must be interesting…

                    Gas line: Wait in line for each person ahead to fill their tanks, at ~5 minutes/fillup.

                    Electric line: Wait in line for each person ahead to recharge their batteries to 80%, at a minimum 30-45 minutes/charge (if using a “Tesla Supercharger” or “DC Fast Charging Station”. (Had to look this one up.) If the grid isn’t down.

                    What could possibly go wrong?

                    1. Well Costco already has gas lines, can run 9 (counting 3/line getting fuel)/line x 5 lines. More like 3 fueling/3 waiting per line, when not busy. But when they are busy, they are snarled. Note, I’m in Oregon, so no self fueling. But if stupid (sorry to insult stupid, but …) get his way to nationalize the fuel industry … We’ll be in line to maybe get fuel, like in the ’70s. We will see “no fuel” available and limited hours. I do not want to be correct.

        2. Calling abortion health care always bothered me. Pregnant women aren’t sick because they are pregnant, and abortion doesn’t make them well unless there’s a legitimate problem with the pregnancy.

          Likewise, if the abortion lobby really wanted choice, they’d agree it’s in everyone’s best interest that the choice be well-informed. They don’t want that because the money is in the body count not in serving the women best. So we get Kermit Gosnell’s Little House of Horrors, and the trial is completely erased from national consciousness.

      3. The ability to kill children is, historically, very important to toxic female leaders.

        There’s probably also a lot of pain among those who NEED it to be “OK,” or they did something horrible.

        1. Think of gang initiations. If you can get the kid to do a crime that is horrific, he can’t get away.

          I think a lot of women would be less bothered or bound by killing a random fellow adult than by killing a child or baby. But yep, persuade the girl to drink, take drugs, have sex, perform humiliating acts for the group, and then persuade her to kill her baby. She’s not the same person anymore.

          1. I had a course in “business ethics,” going for my Masters. I put it that way because the instructor was a well-known defense lawyer and he inevitably wound up talking criminal law. He emphasized how quickly you could change your life for the worse and his example was an honors student who yearned with all his heart to be part of the Cool Guy’s crowd. Problem being, the Cool Guy was a sociopath. He ordered the honors student to shoot another member if the group who had fallen out of favor and despite a female member of the group taking him outside and begging him to leave, he did it. In front of the entire group. Lots of witnesses.
            His life is now…doing life.

            1. Gah.

              I’d remarked on that as a pattern in Star Wars (including some favorite older EU/Legends/whatever they’re calling it these days) but I guess I had balked at thinking about its application in real life.

      4. “…and this is what they are coming un-f__king glued about?”

        I believe that it’s because they know, or strongly suspect, that if it’s left to elected officials in the states who are answerable to the populations of those states it will be either banned or severely restricted in most. As it should be.

        For all the Dem rhetoric of “our democracy”, democracy, even representative democracy as practiced here in a constitutional republic, is anathema to them. And they’re making it plain that they want no part of it.

        1. To them, ‘Democracy!!’ means absolute rule by the Democrat party. I mean, they don’t call it ‘Republicancy’ do they? 😛
          ———————————
          The Democrats trust violent criminals and terrorists with guns more than they trust you.

          1. It isn’t a matter of ‘trusting’ violent criminals and terrorists. They simply don’t feel threatened by the criminals and terrorists, while they DO feel threatened by the average citizen who doesn’t toe the line.

        2. My husband was getting a variety of “F– you,” replies on Facebook for pointing out this left decisions to the states. From what he said, the responders came across to me as spoiled children throwing a tantrum.

        3. Via Insty today:

          Democrats are outraged that an unelected court left decisions on something not addressed by the Constitution to voters and elected officials, i.e., the democratic process. So much for believing in democracy.

          1. The Elites have NEVER believed in anything more than “We should be running things”. They have put forward various theories as to WHY, and they have defended those explanations, but only the dimmer members of the Elite have believed that.

      5. Because for them, it’s a hill worth dying on. Just like how for us, the ability to buy an object which costs hundreds or thousands of dollars and has no practical use except in a situation that most of us will never face – a gun for home and self-defense – is a hill worth dying on.

        I know a lot of pro-choice people. Some of them are lunatics, yes. But most of them are decent people. Most of them seem to believe that opposition to Roe is 100% a thing of the Christian fundamentalist religious right, and losing Roe means those fanatics are back in control – as they were in much of the country when Roe was first decided. They’re terrified that losing Roe means losing everything else that women have accomplished over the last hundred years, every last micron of the progress they’ve made toward becoming truly equal members of society. And by extension, losing everything that every other “not-straight-white-male” group has made toward becoming truly equal members of society.

        I think that they’re all wrong in that – society is not what it was fifty years ago, and the religious right doesn’t have anywhere near the power it had then. But they believe it. And yes, that makes Roe a hill worth dying on for them.

          1. Something that’s come into sharp relief for me is the “whatever is not forbidden is compulsory” nature of the Left. I’ve watched it come into sharp relief whenever someone brings up the notion of letting teachers with CCW permits actually CC in school as a deterrent to shooters. “Oh, so you want ALL teachers to be FORCED to carry a gun and FIGHT?” And I’m sitting there wondering what part of “volunteer” they don’t understand…?

            I’ve seen the same thing with the recent insanity. “States decide” immediately gets turned into “no abortions EVAR get out the red dresses REEEEE!” I am, as always, unimpressed with the Masters of Nuance.

            1. I think that many of them, on some level, are aware that for several decades they have behaved so badly that, left to the States. Abortion is going to be broadly outlawed except in deep Blue territory…and they don’t like what that will make explicit.

          2. Many of them are delusional. Some, however, are showing strong indications of never having given up on Eugenics, even after The Despicable Austrian put the stink on it. I found it VERy telling that some ‘Pro-Choice’ spokes-idiot defended their failure to shut down Gosnell’s abattoir on the grounds that ‘ensuring that poor women have access to abortion services’ was too important. More important, in other words, than making sure that they didn’t DIE from those services.

            From a practical political POV, their reaction to the Gosnell revelations SHOULD have been to conduct a headlong and VERY public audit of all abortion clinics in the country. That they didn’t makes me wonder just how many more horror shows they know about and haven’t shut down.

            1. Especially since Gosnell lost custom in treating STDs– from at least one city agent– exactly because the guy noticed that girls he sent there, came back with STDs they hadn’t had before.

              Tried the right routes to fix it.

              When that didn’t happen, he made sure that nobody in his office was sending girls there for treatment.

                1. Not really. Not Gosnell. He’s nothing special; an incompetent quack. There have been millions like him. The special place in hell is reserved for the people who should have shut him down and didn’t, because he was a Black doctor, and an Abortion Provider, and such are above criticism.

            2. When I was pro-choice, it was on the grounds that women foolish enough to get pregnant and willing to kill the fetus to solve the problem were the very last people who ought to have custody of a child, even in utero.

              The only thing that changed when I became pro-life is that I don’t think the baby should die because it crapped out on its egg donor.

                1. +10 on that. It’s always struck me as insane that anyone who produces a baby the usual way has no need to show either competence or ability to support it (and no, I don’t advocate “qual tests” for parenthood; yuck), but a demonstrated desire to adopt requires years of proof of fitness and many thousands of dollars before approval by some bureaucrat. And except for the possible issue of “selling babies”, what business has the State in any of that?

                  1. And except for the possible issue of “selling babies”, what business has the State in any of that?

                    You would have to go pretty far down the selling babies road to get something as bad as what we have now.

          3. Delusional, drloss? No, they’re scared. Go read Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs, and consider how it looks to a liberal, even a moderate one. He calls for eliminating the “substantive due process” doctrine and throwing out any decision that depends on it, specifically including the Griswold (access to contraceptives), Lawrence (on anti-sodomy laws), and Obergefell (gay marriage) rulings. I happen to agree with Justice Thomas that “substantive due process” is a horrible concept and belongs on the legal trash heap, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing that his list of targeted rulings reads like a wish list for the John Birch Society. If I was a liberal reading that, I’d be scared too.

            1. If any of those things are a fraction as popularly supported as they claim to believe– to the point that opposing any of them, openly, is to be treated as less than human– why are they so afraid?

              Or, as with abortion, is the claimed overwhelming support– less than is claimed?

              Without forcing some of the most extreme abortion laws on earth on to the nation, can they not get any support?

              1. Well, since they make bogus claims of 90% support for strict gun control and 81+ million votes for the FICUS, and a whole raft of other leftist wet-dream issues with “overwhelming support”, what do you think? Of course they’re scared. And they should be. And to paraphrase Mencken, they deserve to get it good and hard. BOHICA needs to get them for a change. Repeatedly. (End rant)

        1. It’s plausible. But what instantly come to my mind is, “So, you believe you are so weak, so helpless, that you need a powerful guardian to protect you. In other words, ladies, you need husbands.”

          1. The resulting REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! would rupture eardrums for miles around… 😉

            1. And also drive off any man with even half the normal level of testosterone in his blood. Only soi-bois and other Karens would not be repulsed by such a reaction.
              Brilliant!

        2. I know several people who think the same way, even if they’re conservative, or generally agree with conservatives and libertarians, on other issues like guns and economics and I’m worried that this’ll scare them to fighting for the left myself.

            1. In the short term, sure. In the medium to long term? That’s where I’m worried. If the pro-life movement can, to somewhat build on MCA Hogarth said elsewhere, realize that a lot of these people are coming from a place of fear and address the root of those fears smartly and – importantly in this case – with empathy, then they might make some progress. But if they can’t, and the screamers, mean girls, and “B-B-But what do you mean my argument isn’t obvious?!” types take over the debate then these same people will view them as an existential threat and fight back accordingly. And as things stand now I expect that they’re going to blow it.

              1. The pro-life movement has been addressing where people are coming from.

                That’s why pregnancy clinics also have baby clothes, food aid, and other Crisis support.

                That’s why the post-abortion support that does exist has been from pro life groups.

                The screamers have been falsely representing pro-life as otherwise– it’s getting to the point where most people are at plausible deniability being a very big reach.

                1. And I hope you’re right. I just can’t help but remain skeptical given what I’ve seen.

                  1. Can’t change someone’s mind against their will.

                    Blaming the folks telling the truth won’t change that. Correctly identifying if a group is doing what you say they should is important.

                  2. I’m plugged in local and national pro-life groups. One of the steady patterns I’ve seen over the last several years is that when a mother in crisis stops to talk to the right people, they immediately get to work, finding everything from food, clothes, and diapers to money to pay the rent and the power bill, to give the mother the help she needs. (I say “the right people” because while there are probably still some angry protestors who think yelling is persuasion, those are the sort I follow or support.) When an abortion worker wants out, they help them get out. Some places offer parenting classes and sewing lessons and other sorts of practical, skill-based help to empower parents in crisis to keep their babies and improve their lives. Many folks come to an abortion clinic out of sheer desperation. They may not even want to go through with it, but if they are already living out of their cars, or out of work, or already have several kids to feed, they may feel they can’t have another baby and have no other choice.
                    What pro-life groups offer is real hope, and ironically enough, a choice worth making. The Death Cult can’t stand that, which is why they’re attacking pregnancy centers. They hate anything that turns people away from abortion. They’ll actively hurt pregnant women in crisis just to deter them from choosing life.

        3. To be fair, many of those who support on-demand abortion think of it as a process removing some ‘blob’ of cells, totally unrecognizable as a human being. They continue to hold that thought in their heads, despite clear evidence available to them, should they but look for it.
          Some of them had an abortion in the past. The only way they can live with themselves is to refuse to think of “it” as human.
          And, in fact, the only way that the abortion industry can be profitable is to continue the practice of late-term abortions. It’s the selling of body parts that makes their employment possible. So, facilities have an incentive to perform them as late as they can, in a manner that will preserve as much of the body as intact as possible.

          1. To be fair, many of those who support on-demand abortion think of it as a process removing some ‘blob’ of cells, totally unrecognizable as a human being. They continue to hold that thought in their heads, despite clear evidence available to them, should they but look for it.

            Which is why the younger someone is for their demographic (sex, race, income, marriage status), the more likely they are to be pro-life.

            Today’s 20-somethings have a good chance of having grown up with baby pictures on the fridge that are from before the baby was born.

            1. In our day, they legitimately told us it was just a clump of cells. IN SCHOOL.
              Also, FYI this is why they claim ultrasounds are rape. Even though they must be done DURING abortions, often.

              1. It is technically true.

                All complex organisms are “a clump of cells.”

                What they try to screw around with– just like with the “unborn isn’t human” thing– is contrasting cells with organism.

              2. I graduated before it was an issue (’63), so we never got into that “clump of cells” garbage. But… “ultrasounds are rape”? I never heard that particular idiocy, either; it sounds remarkably like a tribesman’s belief that the camera is stealing his soul. Oy…

          2. This and also there is no forgiveness, repentance, or grace in the leftist religion. So if they admit the horror of abortion, there’s no hope for them. Denial is all they have.

        4. Yes, but historically, stamping out abortion (and other infanticide) was one of the first causes championed by women’s rights groups, back even before the Civil War. That’s why all sorts of helps were provided to pregnant girls by such groups, and why they prosecuted doctors and midwives who did abortions.

          Of course, it’s taboo now to say such things.

          1. Susan B. Anthony group is the only one I can think of that points out that first-wave feminists recognized that abortion enabled abuse.

          2. The Progressive Establishment REALLY doesn’t want people looking into the history of the various movements they’ve absorbed. There’s far too much dirt and slime, too many 180 degree about faces, and so on. Far too many of their icons turn out, on examination, to be revolting vermin. Woodrow Wilson, the vicious racist xenophobic bastard springs to mind.

        5. Men identifying/transitioning as women. Eliminating “woman” as a valid gender. Both are more damaging to women in general than repealing Roe VS Wade.

    2. The original Roe decision was a legal abomination since there was no “case or controversy” as required by the Constitution–Roe had already given birth…Roe created a judicial tyranny abhorrent to US law…..The Court merely corrected that abuse of power, and sent that back to the States…If people don’t like their local laws, and as an attorney I don’t like a lot of them, they can travel or move to another State…That’s America…

      1. “…they can travel or move to another State…”

        For now. But we’ll put an end to that abuse, Comrade! 😦

        Or so they think…they’re already implementing internal passpoorts, or trying to.

  1. Too much power is invested in too few people. Maybe it is time to re-think why 218 people in Congress, plus 51 to 60 in the Senate, plus 5 of 9 in SCOTUS, and 1 or 2 in the White House—at max, a total of 285—are entitled to control every single aspect of the lives of another 335,000,000 Americans.

    We should be thinking along thf lines of much less centralized ruling bodies.

    1. It’s not even most of the politicians. It’s the executive and judicial. Most legislation is so poorly defined that it’s basically giving the executive and judicial branches free reign. And this isn’t just the handpuppet at the resolute desk but the tens if not hundreds of thousands of executive branch minions as well as the states.

      It’s not kamala or Joe or Cortez that’s going to be harming you. It’s boxticker Karen, special agent jackpotJohn, and so on. Agencies make the laws, determine upon who they shall be enforced, and how to enact punishment.

      1. “Most legislation is so poorly defined that it’s basically giving the executive and judicial branches free reign.” That’s by intent. The administrative state, beholden to no one, unelected and unable to be voted away, was and is an integral part of FDR’s system. Until that’s torn down and done away with, things will stay largely as they are.

        1. Washington’s government jobs used to be kinda temporary and unimportant, because everybody knew they were handouts for members of your party who were kinda hapless and needed help.

            1. I’m certain that it was a TERRIBLE idea. The spoils system caused a lot of turnover in government work, which made it much less feasible to build empires within the bureaucracy.

        2. My fervent wish is that West Virginia v. EPA will accomplish that an impose some kind of Congressional involvement in Executive Branch rule-making, at least when it comes to things that carry penalties when violated, what a saner society would call laws.

      2. Case in point, the latest gun-control bill Creepy Joe signed. That kind of legislation should have had every point carefully considered and worded over the period of years, not hours and days.

    2. Part of the issue is that the number of Congressmen has been limited by mistake. 1 representative for every 771,000 makes it impossible for them to actually represent the will of their constituents way to difficult. At most, it should be one representative for every 200,000. I would prefer one for every 10,000 people. Will this make Congress ponderous and slow? Yes. Is this a bad thing? I think not.

      1. It would result in most Congressmen becoming ciphers, people who show up and vote the way their faction leader tells them to. Real decisions would be made by the handful of faction leaders. Arguably the House has already crossed that threshold.

        Bureaucracy exists for a reason, it’s impossible for truly large groups of people to come to any kind of decision. Bigger problems need to be broken down and handed to smaller groups.

        1. The problem is there would be so many representatives that they would essentially non-functional, giving even more power to the party leadership and administrative apparatus.

        2. At some point, though, I imagine you get so many Representatives that they can’t all practically meet in once place or give everyone who wants to speak time to do so. The logistics for a session of the House would have to change somehow.

          1. That’s absolutely no problem in these days of electronic communication. Read L. Neil Smith’s “The Probability Broach” for how this could be done in a TRULY representative fashion. Note: That book was published in 1980.

    3. The Reader has thought that we should go back to something like the original sizing for the House in the Constitution. Something like 1 representative / 100,000 population would give us about 3500 representatives, each far closer to his / her constituency, and provide a structure not so subject to pure part discipline. At the same time repeal the 17th Amendment and send the choosing of senators back to the states.

      1. None of which will happen via amendments proposed by Congress. It would have to be by a state-called amending convention, if it were to ever happen. Which I agree, it should!

        1. Bollocks.

          Point one: adding “we really, really mean it” adds nothing to the Bill of Rights.
          The federal government is not ignorant of the structural limitations on its power, it is just unwilling to obey them.

          Point two: For a constitutional convention to cause more good than harm, we would need honorable, responsible, and wise political representatives.
          If we had those, there would be no purpose for the convention in the first place.
          Without those, a convention is certain to limit our rights instead of the power of the federal government.

          1. You’re entirely missing my point. All I said was that the only way TheReader’s changes would ever be proposed would be by an amending convention, not by Congress. And no, a convention wouldn’t be any more likely to limit our rights than the Congress is. And would arguably be less likely. And any proposed amendments would still have to be ratified by the same procedure used since the Constitution was adopted.

            1. I understand the alleged point.
              I also understand that wishful thinking is not a point.

              The people the state parties would choose to send to a convention of states, are people who would serve the interests of the parties.
              The interests of the parties significantly diverge from the interests of the citizenry. This is at the core of many of our problems.
              Do you remember how the Contract With America was widely popular, and obviously in the interests of the citizenry?
              Do you remember how Bob Dole refused to let most of the provisions come up for a vote?
              How the political establishment rewarded him with a virtually uncontested Presidential candidacy?
              And how Gingrich was quickly defenestrated in favor of a pedophile?
              Because I do.

              Do you recall how the GOPe actively sabotaged the Tea Party? Encouraged Obama’s administration to illegally target adherents? And then overturned over a decade’s worth of work at the state and local levels out of pure petulant spite?
              Because I do.

              Do you recall how all of Dizzy City targeted Trump, and by extension, us?
              It’s still ongoing, if you hadn’t noticed.

              The convention presents the amendment to strike “congress shall make no law”. Strike “shall not be infringed”. Strike the 9th and 10th entirely.
              The proposal is presented to Congress for ratification.
              How many senators are you confident will vote against? Because I can’t even count five that I’d trust that much.

              1. Ratification of Amendments, whether proposed by Congress or by a convention of the states, requires ratification by 3/4 of the states. The Senate isn’t involved.

                Supposedly Congress, in the legislation calling for the convention, can decide whether ratification is by the legislatures or by conventions in the states.

                Nothing in Article V says anything about the composition of such a convention.

              2. If you think Congress ratifies proposed amendments, you understand the system so little that your opinion is meaningless.

    4. “We should be thinking along th[e] lines of much less centralized ruling bodies.”

      Indeed we should, since that’s how the Republic was set up; check the 10th Amendment. And it worked pretty well until the “central control” bastiches were able to get the 16th and 17th Amendments rammed through. And FDR, the Supreme Bastich in Chief, took full advantage of them, may he rot in warm places.

    5. No, we should be thinking along the lines of a State that keeps its authority within Constitutional bounds. If the goddamned government didn’t overreach into so much that it should leave alone, the structure of the ruling bodies wouldn’t matter much.

      And we already HAVE a document that limits the authority of the State, we just have to insist that the State obey it. Try to change the structure of the ruling bodies with the present Political Class the way they are and the odds of not making it WORSE?….playing the lottery would be a sure thing by comparison.

    6. You forgot to take in account the lobbyists, special interest groups, industries and billionaires. And the Federal Reserve.

      Example: Big Pharma captured the elected, the government, and the media.

  2. The risk is that that house is covered in lead paint, manufactured from cadmium,polonium and mercury and its not going to neatly collapse into its own footprint. It will land on the farm next door, the mfg across the street and the termites infesting it will simply move on to them, although they already have sizable colonies of their own.

    And it’s not a structure, but rather a shoddy, uninspired building code. The poor legal reasoning in wade is widely used for all the other decisions that are relied upon in modern society. And since we have a whole modern ecosystem built on that it will take out almost everything we know. I just suspect we’re well into one of those phases of “bad luck” that’ll outlive all of us and won’t hit bottom for years if not decades.

  3. When I was young and foolish, I thought that such a profound impact to society as the advent of reliable birth control would take 4 generations to work out across our culture.

    I’m now iffy that it can be done in 8 generations, and certainly the mass crash of population that is already here in post-WWII generations but easily overlooked by the rise in technology is one of the symptoms – and it is going to take generations to work out, as well.

    I believe that people are now going to be having the conversations about the impact to individuals, families, communities, and society that we should have been having 50 years ago. And maybe, finally, instead of drawing extremist battle lines on the far edges of positions that don’t allow for all the complicated messiness of what humans are instead of what people believe they should be, we can start addressing the great messy middle, and the complications.

    Beyond that? I celebrate that miserably bad case law that was so outrageously activist and shaky that none of the “right to privacy” cases would even touch its “penumbras” with a footnote… is now gone! Something better can now grow without being smothered by the terrible decision!

  4. I would greatly appreciate seeing more and more cases attacking federal law under the 9th and 10th Amendments, a well as a literal as-written application of every other portion of the Constitution.
    Clean up what we have and pare it down to what is actually permitted the Fed, and then return senatorial elections to the state legislatures. If MA wants an open election, great. If Texas wants gubernatorial selection of senators, more power to them. If Tennessee decides to draw straws from their state house as to who looses and has to go to DC, it’s up to them. But give the state legislatures back their say in the political game that affects them regardless.

    1. To that end, I’ve been a supporter of the Convention of States movement for some time. I’m sure most people here know, but there are two ways to propose amendments to the US Constitution for ratification by the states. One is for both houses of Congress to propose amendments by a 2/3s vote, which is how it’s been done every time up until now. The other is for 2/3s of the state legislatures to call for a convention for proposing amendments, which convention would be made up of representatives selected by the state legislatures. Amendments proposed by such a convention would have to be ratified by the states in exactly the same manner as Congressionally proposed amendments.

      So far, I think 19 states have called for such a convention, of the 34 that would be needed. I’d love to see this succeed, as it’s much more likely for amendments proposed by such a convention to rein in the federal government than any proposed by the feds themselves. Personally, I’d lobby my state’s convention representatives to propose an amendment that would require any executive agency other than those specifically mentioned in the Constitution that was proposed for creation show where its authority was specifically given to the federal government by the Constitution, and such claim of authority would automatically be ruled upon by the Supreme Court before the agency could be created. Additionally, all existing agencies would have to show claims for their constitutionality for Supreme Court review within one year of the amendment’s ratification, and any agency not doing so would automatically be declared unconstitutional and be removed.

      Could it happen? I don’t know, but the odds look better now than they have in a long time.

        1. If the Congressional Republicans are smart the next time there’s a Republican in the White House they’ll bring two bills to the floor, one of them will be to add 6 justices to the Supreme Court and the other will send an amendment to the states to set the number of justices at 9. Then they can run against anyone who votes against the amendment on the grounds that they’re in favor of packing the Supreme Court (a rather unpopular idea) but only when a Democrat is in the White House.

        2. I do not trust the political class to be able to have a convention of the states that wouldn’t give us a worse document.

          And you know it would the professional political class that would fill most of the seats. The few sane people that got in would be ignored.

      1. I’m not quite so sanguine about a modern Convention being likely to result in more individual liberty, given the last two years and the four or so decades of the Marxist infiltration of the public education system.

        I fear that it will be like the original convention in 1789, which was called to merely amend the Articles of Confederation but instead tossed them completely and created the current US Constitution, only the “founding fathers” will be the Karens and other nose-counters who have been brought up thinking that centralized government control is a good thing, and more of it would be even better.

        1. Understand that a modern convention would be strictly limited (Constitutionally) to proposing amendments to the existing Constitution, which would then need to be ratified by 38 states to be added to the Constitution. There is no possibility of a runaway convention as you believe the original convention was (there’s some dispute that it overstepped its intention).

          1. You’re looking at the wrong convention.

            Look at the one in Montgomery, Alabama. Toombs and the noble aspirations of the proposed Confederacy got rolled.
            Unprincipled bleepards backed by moneyed interests dominate when it comes to political infighting.
            Every.
            Single.
            Time.

            Note also how the states who sent representatives for the explicit purpose of protecting states rights knuckled under, approving Davis, Alexander, and the unprecedented centralization of power. And doing so by acclamation.

            If you think “this time, it’ll be different”, you’re straight up delusional.

            1. You’ve already demonstrated your misunderstanding of how the system works. Nothing you say appears to be worth consideration.

              1. You dismissed his opinion as being unsupported by evidence. Then when he presented evidence, you dismissed it without considering it because he “[had] already demonstrated [his] misunderstanding of how the system works” — based, as far as I can tell, on one sentence he wrote that’s incorrect. Congress doesn’t ratify proposed amendments, true. But it proposes “one or the other Mode of Ratification” (either the state legislatures, or conventions in all the states), which means there’s ample opportunity for congressmen to make mischief by picking the ratification method they think will be most likely to fail. So his main point, that the political establishment cannot be trusted, is unaffected by this mistake.

                Which means that you’re dismissing his evidence without considering it, based on a mistake that didn’t even affect the main thrust of his point. I’m growing more and more convinced that you’re unwilling to listen to contrary opinion on the question of constitutional conventions. You have your argument and you’re going to stick to it, ignoring any reasoning or evidence against it. In which case, I’m not inclined to listen to you on this point anymore, because I prefer to listen to people who can argue rationally for their cause, and you’re reaching the point where your arguments appear to be far more based on emotion than on reason.

              1. And that dismissal of evidence against your position, without even giving the appearance of considering it, persuaded me that your position is wrong. Just so you know.

        2. There are a couple of reasons that would be unlikely to happen. The biggest one is that everyone going into the Constitutional Convention knew that the Articles were broken and in pretty fundamental ways. They may have talking about amending the Articles, but once they got to Philadelphia the went into building a new government pretty much right away. The other major reason is that the Articles of Confederation had no real mechanism for amendment, so the Convention was already outside the box. A Convention of the States, on the other hand, is a Constitutional entity with specific powers. It can only propose amendments, it can’t rewrite the entire Constitution.

          But let’s say that the worst happens and someone proposes a new constitution that’s a Marxist wet dream. There’s no way the red states are going to ratify it and, unlike the holdouts in the 18th century, they’ll be economically self-sufficient enough that they can resist bullying from the states that do sign on. Presto-chango, we have a national divorce, largely without bloodshed (though there will be a war between the two nations as Blutopia continues to succumb to late-stage Leftism).

          Since the most likely outcome is the convention fails to agree on any amendments to send to the states, the second-most likely outcome is a set of amendments that fail to meet the ratification requirements, and the worst-case outcome is the red and blue states going their separate ways for a couple of generations, I see no reason to oppose a Convention of the States.

        3. The Convention of 1787 did not overthrow anything, nor impose anything. It proposed a new Constitution.

          Proposed.

          The States, willingly, ratified and accepted it.

          1. The Reader notes in passing that the Articles of Confederation required unanimity of the states for changes. When the Convention sent the Constitution to the states for ratification, it was sent with a requirement that it would go into effect when 3/4ths of the states ratified it. The Federalists Papers are properly read as intelligent propaganda to convince the states to ratify the Constitution.

      2. It’s a trap, and an obvious one.
        Just say NO to Constitutional conventions.

        Were one to be held with our current political class, you could kiss your rights goodbye.
        All of them.

        And it is flatly impossible not to realize this

        1. What you are saying here us just your personal opinion, not backed by anything remotely like evidence. Sorry, your opinion isn’t worth any more than mine, son.

          1. Eight minutes after you posted this, Luke provided evidence in another part of the comment thread, at 10:43 PM. Just wanted to point that out in case you missed it.

          2. Do I have any evidence that corrupt people corrupt political processes?

            Well, yeah.
            I can only come up with a handful of times it didn’t happen, some of which may well have been mythical.

            It is not opinion that the sun will come up in the East tomorrow.
            It is not speculation that a self-dealing and corrupt political class which will necessarily be overrepresented in any political assembly, will successfully turn the assembly to its own ends.

            1. They can indeed turn the convention to any ends they wish. But there’s this minor detail of requiring 3/4ths of the states to approve any amendments, including a complete rewrite. And I frankly don’t see that happening; the 2020 results showed only 27 blue states, even if the red-turned-blue (nudge, wink) such as AZ are counted as blue. And after 2020 you can bet that those procedures will be watched very closely.

            2. You know, your arguments are exactly what those lusting for overwhelming federal power over all aspects of American life use to try to keep an amending convention from happening. I don’t believe you are arguing honestly, I suspect you are just greatly fearful that circumventing Washington in proposing amendments would have a chance to actually return us to the federation we’re supposed to be.

          3. Have you watched “2000 Mules”? Because anyone who doesn’t think the ratification process can be gamed the same way believes FICUS got 81 million honest votes.

            At the bare minimum, the red states will have to a) pass laws that stop the capability to inject fraudulent ballots, b) have those laws upheld at SCOTUS, and c) require vetted observation of every step of the process fully documented in every blue controlled jurisdiction, because the way the Left works is to simply ignore any laws that get in the way of power for them. Then it might be worth considering.

      3. The problem is that you assume people like you would control the convention. That is what the Annapolis Convention believed as well when they called for a convention in Philadelphia.

  5. For many of us it’s intensely personal.

    I cried off and on all day yesterday. Which surprised me.

  6. as I posted to some moroney’s comment elsewhere:
    [bit of a paraphrase]”Show me where in the Constitution it says you have a Right to an Abortion . . .
    No not there.
    not there either.
    It does not say it.
    And, as the ruling states, because it is NOT covered in the COTUS, it is covered in that part that say’s “If we don’t cover it here, it is for each State to decide, as long as it doesn’t abrogate any Rights listed herein”
    So get to work passing the laws you want”

    Also, gotta love France’s input whining about it when their law is “more severe” than the Mississippi law that this case came from. MS was being sued for going with a 15 week limit to abortion, and France has a 14 week limit.

    1. Most Europeans, while sneering at those unsophisticated Americans and their debates about abortion, have no idea what the abortion laws actually ARE in America.

      I can’t blame them too much, though, when most Americans who say that they supported Roe vs. Wade had no idea exactly what Roe vs. Wade enshrined.

      1. You could have simply said “Most Europeans know almost nothing about the US”. Of course, most US citizens know almost nothing about any part of Europe, so… 😦

      2. Frankly, from the sounds of it, most of the ‘sophisticated’ Euroweenies sneering at the US have very little grasp of what their OWN abortion laws are. I my be off base, but my understanding is that throughout the EU, abortion is a great deal more restricted than it is in the US…at least up to now.

          1. “They think…”

            I believe you’ve made an assertion for which evidence is lacking…. 😉

      3. Europeans are the biggest hypocrites.

        They brag about their “enlightened” employment laws while treating their foreign subsidiaries employees like crap. They complain “US is racist!” while being just as racist against nationalities that match their skin color. Not to mention their current economic meltdown due to stupid energy policies.

        1. Ah yes, the great employment laws that keep their own youth unemployed. Buncha morons, the lot of em.

    2. There may have been a weak claim based on the 9th Amendment – The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” I say week because, as the Tenth notes, the proper sphere for discussion of those rights, given the Tenth Amendment, is the STATE governments. This decision recognizes both – it does ban abortion by rejecting Roe, because it cannot under the Ninth even though it is not an enumerated right, but rather leaves it to the STATEs under the Tenth Amendment to decide whether or not it is covered under their particular constitutions and laws.

      1. The problem is that the basic right to not be killed is involved– and the failure to ensure equal protection under laws is getting really obvious, too.

      2. “…it does ban abortion by rejecting Roe…”

        Ummm, no, it doesn’t; that’s the error (if it is an error, and not a lie, carefully-crafted to inflame the ignorant) about 99% of the rioting whiners are making. It simply points out the there is no Constitutional right to abortion, and sends it back to the states where it belongs. “Penumbras of emanations” simply don’t cut it as Constitutional law.

        I suspect that was what you meant, but I feel it needs to be clear.

    3. Eh, they have the “mental health of the woman” exception. Easily abused just as it is for the trans movements.

        1. Yeah, bit when you plan suicide because of the political vitriol, threats, and so forth its expected that you are supposed to retreat. And something because of unchangeable factors, like pregnancy or this godawful economy and its destruction of a future, well you just gotta endure it. Or just not swerve away from the bridge this time.

          You must accommodate and support what the left champions and be shunned otherwise.

          1. Thing is, more and more of us are just fine with being shuned by those crazies. It’s no longer much of a threat.

            1. They used to be able to make people believe that they were representative of society, so being shunned by them meant being completely alone, AKA a tasty morsel for a saber-toothed cat. One of the reasons they’re so frustrated right now is that we know we aren’t alone, so their old tools aren’t working.

    4. IF a fetus isn’t a person with all the basic rights, then a law against abortion would violate the privileges and immunities protected by the 14th Amendment.

      IF a fetus is a person then abortion is murder.

      This is why the abortion debate is so unproductive, everyone makes assumptions about the personhood of the fetus but never actually argue that point. Largely because we don’t have a rigorous definition of “person.”
      So one side yells “Barefoot and pregnant” and their opponents while the other yells “Baby killer” right back and nobody actually bothers to listen.

      Roe did not grant women the right to an abortion, it declared that a non-viable fetus wasn’t a person. It took a difficult and fundamental philosophical problem and imposed a solution across the nation by the fiat of 5 unelected people (at least, I’m pretty sure they were people).

        1. At least they aren’t claiming there’s something magical about passing through the birth canal. I have to give them credit for being consistent, but not very much.

          1. My nephews would fail that magic. Both were C-sections. Other than a propensity for crawling out the window, they seem normal . . .

              1. Sis is A: 4′ 11″And A Half!” and B: was run over by a car at 14 thus had her pelvis broken.
                First kid was “We’ll wait for labor to start, then will likely have to go get him” the second was “What day is good for you?”

                1. I’ve heard of that happening. First was emergency, subsequent pregnancy, doctors schedule the c-section. Used to be, once a c-section, all following pregnancies were c-sections. Not true anymore unless clear and compelling reason.

                  My son’s case, near the doctors could tell was the chord was between his head and my pelvis. As long as not pushing, baby was fine. Push and his heart rate flat lined. Chord was not wrapped around his neck when they pulled him. SIL, a pediatric specialist nurse said we were lucky. Odds a natural birth would have meant life long complications due to the oxygen deprivation during a natural birth, if he lived. Never had a chance to discover what a subsequent pregnancy would have brought. A healthy baby was our goal. If that meant c-section birth, fantastic.

                  In my case, once the complication came up, the emergency surgery happened quickly. I was out of it (“awake”, but …) But mom (grandma) said, and records concur, 10 minutes from “go”, to baby born. Dad (hubby) didn’t get to hold him immediately because there were other complications requiring pediatric intervention to insure his lungs were clear. But once that was done. Dad got to hold him. I was conscious, but kind of out of it. Hubby was in surgery with me. Mom didn’t get to go that far.

                  1. Yeah, Sis knew the first was going to be a 99.9% likelihood of being a c-section, the Doc just waited for labor before making the final decision, to her discomfort.

    5. I suppose, if you stretch it, that an abortion could be considered a 1st Amendment right of assembly. i.e. you can choose not to associate with that fetus, it being an unwanted occupier of your intimate self that parasitizes you for 9 months, and puts your health and safety at risk. Such a condition in your own home, even for an occupier you may have first invited in, allows the use of lethal force in self defense. Like I said, it’s a stretch.

      1. Ummm…it’s a bit more than a stretch. I’d advise you to not apply lethal force to an occupier of your home, invited-in or not, who is not actively threatening you. You might get to meet Bubba “up close and personal”… 😉

        1. Also, if you are responsible for a person’s need for rescue, you have, under the law, a duty to rescue.

          1. While I understand, and agree with, your comment as it applies to unborn children, I believe it’s not generally applicable, depending on the interpretation of “responsible”. As a private citizen you have, as an example, no legal obligation to dive into a river to rescue someone, or, as I understand it, no such obligation to perform any act which puts you in danger. Note: That’s a legal obligation, not a moral or ethical one, which are usually felt by civilized adults regardless of legalities.

            1. Irrelevant because not the case I stated. If you pushed someone into the river, you must dive in to rescue him or be a murderer.

            2. The kid isn’t going to die from you not taking action.

              But, procuring an abortion– does make you responsible for the kid being in the position to die.

              1. Hmmm… OK. But doesn’t the father have at least some responsibility, under the stated legal requirements (“if you are responsible for a person’s need for rescue, you have, under the law, a duty to rescue”), to prevent the abortion? After all, he is responsible for the pregnancy, and thus for putting the baby in danger. I’m referring, of course, to a rational world; probably not relevant at the moment. I suspect this has descended too far into philosophy to be profitable… 😉

                1. By that logic, the parents of all killed humans would be responsible for preventing the killing.

                  Rather than the person who is procuring the killing.

                  Parents do have an inherent obligation to their offspring; it has absolutely nothing to do with being responsible if someone else kills the kid without their involvement.

                  1. Oh, I agree, and that’s why I said that it was getting into the non-productive area of philosophy. The whole idea of “responsibility” for anyone not a direct participant is a can of worms better left alone; I just like to play “what-if”, the “iffier” the better. Think of late-Saturday-night dorm (or in my case, “barracks”) bull sessions… 🙂

  7. Watching the conflicting balderdash about this Roe decision and the previous gun decision being hurled from all sides is quite a show. I’m up in Canada, thinking that you guys are pretty lucky to be afforded this opportunity to thrash this stuff out in public.

    We in Canada have what the DemocRats want. A nice, strong, centralized federal government that makes all the decisions that matter either at the bureaucratic level or inside the closed doors of the Prime Minister’s Office. The Canadian media slavishly regurgitates what the PMO tells them to say, and everything is just lovely.

    It has not -quite- been openly declared illegal to object to government policy. But clearly, if you object in a way that they notice they’re going to smack you down hard, and the media will never say your name without spitting.

    That’s as long as the Liberal Party is in the PM’s Office. If there’s a CPC prime minister, then all decisions are made by bureaucrats and the PMO spends all it’s time fending off the rabid media dogs trying to bite out their throats.

    Now, morality and etc. aside, regarding the Roe decision, as with the shall-issue gun permit decision, the opportunity has arrived for Americans to decide if government should even have a role in the issue, and what that role, if any, should be. The nice thing about a constitutional republic is that there are some things that the government simply is not allowed to decide. Maybe these issues should be included among those things.

    Here in Canada, we don’t get to have the discussion. Our betters have already decided how it is going to be, and they are damn well not going to take any shit from the likes of us. One need only peruse the pronouncements of the Shiny Pony regarding the Covid vax/guns/Roe to see the truly Orwellian spew of self-refuting balderdash this government is based on. Mandatory vax good. But my body my choice! on abortion. But thou shalt not kill! on self defense. The triangle of stupidity this week.

    Welcome to Canada. Better not say anything or the cops will trample you under a horse.

    That’s what they want for -you- guys. I think you should fight them before they sneak it by you in the dead of night.

    1. It doesn’t matter what they sneak by in the dead of night if they don’t confiscate 600 million guns first. They believe they can do it a few guns at a time without triggering significant resistance. They believe a lot of other stuff that ain’t so, too.
      ———————————
      ‘Progressives’ believe everybody else is even stupider than they are. This explains a lot.

      1. The Progressive Establishment not only believe that everybody else is dumber than they are, they believe – on VERY little evidence – that they are objectively smart. That is the basis of their ‘We are entitled to rule’ delusion, and it is no more based in reality than the ‘divine right of Kings’ argument.

          1. It’s worse than that, really. Their ‘evidence’ is really that if they AREN’T smarter than the common run, they oiled have to face that they are severely inconsequential people…and that would break their tiny minds.

    2. “Maybe these issues should be included among those things.”

      On paper (actually parchment, IIRC) they are, and quite clearly for anyone not an overeducated moron. The current a-holes simply ignore the law.

    3. @ The Phantom > “I think you should fight them before they sneak it by you in the dead of night.

      Like this?
      https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/23/yes-biden-is-hiding-his-plan-to-rig-the-2022-midterm-elections/
      “The White House is refusing to share details about its coordinated efforts to engage in a federal takeover of election administration.”

      Or maybe this?
      https://www.dailywire.com/news/aircraft-records-reveal-secret-migrant-flights-across-u-s
      “The federal government has been ferrying illegal immigrants nabbed at the southern border throughout the country, using a secret itinerary dependent on chartered flights and small regional airports, a Daily Wire investigation has revealed.”

  8. It’s instructive — and also see above post from The Phantom — to “compare and contrast” the reaction (or semi-incoherent screechings) from the Deep Blue side on the Dobbs case (abortion) and the N.Y. State Rifle and Pistol Assoc. case (2nd Amendment). Where the first made their cherished inroads into “the right to keep and bear arms” overtly unconstitutional (and thus, illegal), they vow to ignore the Court and the Constitution and press on making and enforcing invalid law, because of some governmental “right” to enact and enforce whatever gun restrictions they please (see N.Y.’s “Governor Oopsie” for example). Where the second case did absolutely nothing whatsoever to impair or obstruct their broad endorsement and encouragement of abortion within their own Blue Zone, they scream that it’s a huge infringement on the “right to abortion” — that according to this ruling (also) does not exist.

    Roe vs. Wade was always, objectively and from the very start, one of the worst-constructed rulings in the history of the Supreme Court — basically concoting a wholly new set of rights out of “emanations” from the vague “penumbras” of actual Constitutional parts and pieces — and as such was always an unexploded bomb lying there waiting for someone (in an exalted-enough robe) to formally notice the nonsense, light the ready fuse, and blow it all up. It’s actually pretty amazing this didn’t happen years or decades ago — never minding public sentiment or public policy or anything else besides pure law itself.

    But Constitutionally, those reactions are entirely consistent — where we have a directly enumerated right to keep and bear arms (note “the unorganized militia” means everybody with a gun), they ignore it, even after it’s been (at last!) recognized at the highest court level; where they’ve been having a playground of worse and worse depravity (trade in “parts” and the indefensible abomination that is “post-birth abortion”) based on that judicial house of cards, they cherish and celebrate it as some kind of “fundamental” right. Merrily and blithely and never mind admonishment by the highest courts of law. Don’t like the law? Make up something else!

    “Rule of law” vs. “rule by men” — anybody still wondering why the Founders warned us?

    1. Okay, obviously swap the order of the two rulings in the first sentence — can’t even blame Wille Pete for that one…

    2. The reason Roe v. Wade didn’t get demolished before now was the difficulty of getting both a court with a solid conservative majority, and overcoming the inertia that a ruling acquires the longer it sits unmolested. Roberts demonstrated the latter in this instance. Even with a solid majority in favor of overturning Roe, he still only concurred with the basic verdict – i.e. not overturning the law that triggered the original case. His concurrence stated that overturning Roe – which has existed for decades – was too disruptive.

      1. Note of course that leftist judges have no problem overturning precedents that get in the way of advancing leftist doctrine; thus the ever ratcheting leftwards of the case law. Democrats of course believe that anything other than such constant leftward ratcheting is illegitimate.

        1. Yep. As soon as dems get back 5-4, heller and Macdonald are done. There will be confiscation, most people will follow, and those that don’t will be executed in raids and televised as examples. It’s already happened. And the vast majority of fleas, city cops, and military grunts will snap to and follow orders.

              1. Well, overturning Heller and Citizens United are firm litmus tests for the Democrats who openly proclaim that they will appoint justices who will overrule those cases.

                1. They really don’t like people making documentaries about Hillary, do they?

          1. Oh for the love of Holy Bob. No, most people won’t follow. MOST PEOPLE HAVEN’T where they’ve tried it.
            It’s a fun movie in your head, but they’re going door to door. Through the country? TO ARMED PEOPLE?
            Are you actually for real?

            1. We just went thru scads of the nation shutting down, wearing face diapers, and getting injected with an experimental shot, that when it failed to work lined up for more. Historically they have not really enforced the fines or actually tried for snitches. Once proving (not just attesting) that you don’t own the rifle there is record of you purchasing (iirc 4473 are stored by shop indefinitely and provided to atf when closed) is required to avoid you getting a massive tax, effectively negating all your income will that remain the case?

              Sorry, I just have a massively pessimistic view of people today since the only thing I’ve seen not on right wing sites has been deification of roe

              1. We just went thru scads of the nation shutting down, wearing face diapers, and getting injected with an experimental shot, that when it failed to work lined up for more.

                So because some of the big cities are insane and/or stupid, it’s all over?

                Nevermind that a lot of places started out with a shot requirement– and then dropped it, because they found out how few people would go along with it.

                You really need to move from wherever you’re living. It’s too high of a proportion of progressives.

                Things people will do for something like a disease is radically different from what they’ll put up with for something like gun confiscation.

                1. Also, look at the motivations – the propaganda went “you are doing this to protect others”. The bastards weaponized niceness against us. That simply does not apply to guns.

                  1. Inversely so, even– disarming folks is demanding putting the most vulnerable at risk to protect large, physically fit predators from “gun violence.”

              2. That was local. And no, most of the nation wasn’t seriously shut down, as I found when I went on a cross country drive in 2020. BUT that’s different (and works only once) since it worked on people’s fear of disease and things they couldn’t verify.
                Coming and confiscating guns is NOT THE SAME CATEGORY, dude. If you don’t recognize that, you really need to get your head straight.

                1. Coming and confiscating guns is NOT THE SAME CATEGORY, dude. If you don’t recognize that, you really need to get your head straight.

                  It isn’t like this is something the entire country has been expecting and waiting for for decades.

                  In contrast to COVID, which blindsided everyone, and early on they were busy enough denying that anything was wrong that the iconoclast position was to be worried.

                    1. Princess Diamond was the perfect study environment for the CCP Virus, its spread, and impact, and demonstrably showed it was not nearly as bad as very early fears. Needless to say because the facts of what happened on the ship were inconvenient to those who planned to use the virus as a pretext to grab power, they did their very best to bury those facts and silence those who made mention of them, setting a pattern for the entirety of their conduct in silencing anything which challenged the narrative.

                    2. I published an analysis based on the Diamond Princess and neighborhood testing in South Korea that calculated an age-adjusted IFR back in March 2020. Those of us like myself, Bhattacharya, Ionnadis, etc. who DID use real data and found it was as lethal – but no more – than the 1968 influenza pandemic (it was bad enough I spent 2 weeks in a PICU, but not as bad as was being claimed about COVID in 3/20) were pilloried.

                      The public health apparatus SHOULD have recognized that the raw IFRs they were batting around were incorrect because of an easily recognized form of ascertainment biases – we could count deaths, but the count of cases was based on reports from healthcare providers, meaning latent or low-severity infections that did not see a doc or trigger a doc’s index of suspicion were not counted. Since the IFR is the deaths/cases, this vastly inflated the estimates of the IFRs. This was not rocket science – it is covered in EVERY introductory epidemiology class everywhere.

                2. Yep. We spent the summer on the road, mostly in the Midwest, and aside from the People’s Republic of Illinois (only drove through but spooky) the worst restrictions were generally wearing a mask. A few places we had to get takeout.
                  Spending time in IL later this summer, am curious to see how they are now.
                  Now, I’m having a harder time with sticker shock.

                1. Cowardice ‘in the face of the enemy.’ That means, “during battle,” or when similarly guarding directly against the enemy. Generally it means refusing to obey orders to attack, or that sort of thing.

                  You can be scared all you want, the rest of the time. You can talk about it, too.

                  Now, subversion and similar charges are different.

                  1. Cowardice ‘in the face of the enemy.’ That means, “during battle,” or when similarly guarding directly against the enemy.

                    Precisely.

            2. Yup The number of boating accidents in Canada and Australia are such that the Australian Salt water Crocs are probably better armed then the Belgian Army.

                1. imagines a big saltie with four arms and two legs, and pump shotgun Um, no, thanks, really. Even a kaiju might hesitate to go after that one.

            1. No, but I’m familiar with Texas and Idaho and the amount the govt cares about its subjects. And the sheer pervasiveness of the mask laws and required enforcement, even haphazardly, because of lawyer fears reiterates that the govt has a lot of levers to beat society down with.

              So it’ll be like moonshine. Know the right people you got a chance. But that also means they have power over you.

              1. You REALLY haven’t been in Tennessee, that’s clear. None of what you fear would happen, folks wouldn’t stand for it.

              2. If you’re familiar with Idaho, then you know perfectly darn well that most cities and counties had no mandates whatsoever, and that Chicken Little wasn’t brave enough to do anything about that except squawk.

              3. You don’t know most of Texas either. No cops, even in the blue cities, are going to risk their lives going after citizens firearms. They aren’t that f***ing stupid. (Some won’t risk their lives to save kids…)

                Dallas lost five officers to one BLM sniper. Can you imagine what groups of patriots could do? Do you know how many combat vets live in the state, not to mention hunters and gun enthusiasts?

                1. Imagine 5 or 6 guys who knew what they were doing in any given city.

          2. Most people will not follow. One of the New England states – it might have been Connecticut – implemented a new gun registration program several years ago. Compliance with the program was less than ten percent, and might have even been less than five percent. The citizenry completely ignored it.

            1. But so did the constabulary. It’s never charged. Start seeing folks losing livelihoods over an old plinking rifle, these unregistered rifles being identified after ranges are required to verify sn by state law or their insurance, or really any attempt at enforcement that’ll change. Most people aren’t at the f you, I’ve got mine stage of career where they can walk away out of principle

              1. And then bad things start happening to cops. Not shooting them, at least not right away. But more cold shoulders. More hostile stares. Sheriffs who get voted out of office, etc… And it will escalate.

                Further, what if the cops try to arrest someone over this, and he or she says, “No”? So they surround the house with the SWAT team, hit it at 4 am, of course. And now the cops have protestors (some of whom are increasingly violent) outside their stations and jail every single day. And every day it gets a little worse and a little more rowdy.

                BLMtifa has been giving the cops in places like Portland a hard time. BLMtifa doesn’t really have all that many people. A real riot that had the common citizenry involved would wash over the cops like the high tide over a sand castle.

                1. In Portland they aren’t allowed to push back. We’ve already had cases of executions of right wing protestors either not charged in some cases, and lauded in others. Don’t mistake the ROE that the brownshirts get for what would be used against protestors against the state.

                  As for quantity, people will cow at displays of force. Just listen to how many have decided post rittenhouse and j6 over carrying or protesting.

                    1. Byrd for one, there was another that claimed self defense (on video he appeared to pull first), da didn’t prosecute. Nevermind the raw disparity between force used on right vs left, ever since the the start of covid and the black lives superior vs the anti lockdown protests and then the travesty of j6. Sry, I’ve learned to assume the worst because then only negatively surprised half the time.

                    2. So your formation of normal is the woman who was in the line of fire when a known AntiFa operative was laying down his absolute last card to try to get a riot going inside of the Capitol?

                      The Portland protests shooter claimed self-defense, too; again, though, he wasn’t charged because Reinoehl fled before he could be arrested and was shot when they they tried to arrest him.
                      Ngo covered it pretty well.
                      https://nypost.com/2021/01/30/how-a-portland-radical-murdered-a-trump-supporter/

                  1. It doesn’t matter if they’re allowed to push back if enough of the community is demonstrating. Antifa’s really only been out in small numbers. Counter-protestors have only been out in small numbers. If the community ever gets out in large enough numbers to really scare the cops, then Antifa will matter even less.

                    You’re talking about the progs escalating things. But what you’re ignoring is that their target can escalate things too.

                    Further, there’s another very important aspect that you’re overlooking – i.e. the sheer number of gun owners. Let’s say that Connecticut decides to go after the over ninety percent of gun owners who didn’t comply, and arrest them all. How long will it take to arrest them? Where are they going to put all of the people they’ve arrested? How are the gun owners who realize their own turn is coming going to react? According to you, they’re going to sit waiting as they get arrested one by one, not reacting in any way. The fact that there’s a good chance that one hundred thousand angry gun owners suddenly show up outside the precinct that made the arrest doesn’t seem to occur to you. Nor does the fact that Antifa terror antics would likely only get the offenders badly beaten enough that no Antifa member would be willing to try it again.

              2. Actually, the cops just use that law to pile on charges when they run into someone who’s already broken the law in some other way. It’s all part of the multiple felonies a day condition, allowing them to convict a ham sandwich.

            2. Always remember, the point for Democrats is not general enforcement; the purpose is selective enforcement to punish higher-profile leaders.

          3. Dude, most people don’t follow gun registration laws in blue states.

            The Blackpilled are the only people who give Progressives a run for their money in the stupidity department.

            1. No carrot, no stick, status quo wins. Make it a condition of employment, send the first guy who didn’t register to rikers for decades after his ex wife dimes him out in a custody hearing, force a registration check as a mandatory safety measure at any licensed gun range with enough sticks and enforcement that it’s followed.

              Sorry, but I cannot be an optimist. Throughout my life it has been one ratchet after another. We accept all of the intrusion of the tsa, with bottles and nail clippers and so on. We accept that the government will provide subsidy in twilight years. That it can force the purchase of a product through the use of exactly this type of carrot and stick approach. That the usg can spy on any citizen and sweep up data as long as they pinky swear promise not to look. That media can drive political decision making to a massive degree. And that as long as the people who count the ballots say they are clean, they don’t need any indepth review.

              Irish democracy worked for the same reason Ghandi did. The overlord faced pressure from other nations and did not want to get rid of that populace. This is more a religious war than an imperialist.

              1. Actually, I DON’T accept TSA intrusion. I chose to travel by other means and screw the airlines and TSA. Are there costs to that? Of course. But the maintenance of Liberty always involves a price.

                1. Sobriety checkpoints? Interstate agriculture stops, cbp checks? We’ve already accepted they are fine. Chp already well known for doing inspection stops if you’re seen buying ammo out of state, same as mass and VT used to do for fireworks (I haven’t lived there in a decade).

                  Nvm that the entire design of that car is constrained by DC and California. Just choose your poison.

                  1. You will not persuade a single person here that the enemy is victorious.

                    Not one.

                    We know it may be ugly and difficult. We accept that. But we won’t quit.

                    Thus we win, and you lose.

                    1. The hell’s an “interstate agriculture stop” anyway? Are the feds arresting people for transporting carrots across state lines or something?

                      I guess on a certain level I wouldn’t be surprised if they were these days, but honestly, this doesn’t even sound like a thing that actually happens.

                    2. When you drive into California, they ask you if you’ve got produce from pest or disease prone areas; if it’s stuff that hasn’t been inspected, you can’t take it in.

                      It generally consists of “any fruit and vegetables?”
                      “Yes.”
                      “Home grown apples or oranges?”
                      “No.”
                      “Have a great day.”

                      Anyone with a hint of familiarity with agriculture should remember stuff that starts with someone “brought in an infected fruit,” and ends with “and the entire [crop] network was almost entirely wiped out.”

                    3. I can remember when the second half wasn’t “Any homegrown fruits or vegetables”. “Homegrown” wasn’t included. It was “any fruits or vegetables” period. When we take the back way into Yosemite the highway weaves in/out of California and Nevada. Have to stop every time it weaves back into California. Very irritating when hauling a RV. FYI. The answer is always “No”, and be sure it isn’t visible. (In our case “true”. Just not always store purchased, might be farm purchased.

                    4. It depends on the guy running the point, too- unsurprisingly, some of them are, ah, taking the least difficult route.

                    1. > “Yes, but I don’t think many people here still read National Review.”

                      Zing! 😛

              2. Sure, make it a condition of employment. And then watch as suddenly massive numbers of job openings go unfilled.

                One thing that you keep demonstrating is that you have no concept of the number of gun owners in the US

                1. :points at healthcare:

                  Like that?

                  Just heard of another hospital having to shut down their cafeteria program, because they simply can’t get the bodies to feed the patients and anybody else.

                  Reduce options, order in already prepared stuff, etc.

                2. Full disclosure. I’m retired. So doesn’t apply to me. But “Do you own guns?” at on a Job Interview or Application, is answered “No”. Not a discussion that will occur at work. If it does, don’t participate, or grin and announce taking pro-gun as the devil advocate … This is private information. Not like they can do the equivalent of a drug test. A home invasion as precondition of employment? Nice interviewing. You say “but everything purchased went through gun purchase checks”. Um, everything lost in the canoe accident was inherited, one, is/was over 100 years old (early 1900’s at minimum).

              3. > “Throughout my life it has been one ratchet after another.”

                [sigh]

                Dude, how many states went constitutional carry over the last few decades? Even before Trump and (to be fair) McConnell shifted the SCOTUS in our favor we were winning on gun rights. The ratchet can be – and HAS been, in some areas – pushed back with enough effort.

            2. The Blackpilled are the only people who give Progressives a run for their money in the stupidity department.

              That is because they are at best the hollowed out mind zombies of the progressives. Deserving of some pity, but the person who used to be there isn’t anymore.

              At worst they are active traitors, to be treated as such.

              1. I think New York State did a similar thing in about the same time period and it was equally effective. Outside the blue conclaves of the cities the upstate folks pretty much ignored it.

  9. My understanding re: Gosnell is that his house of horrors survived as long as it did for political reasons. The state he was in had laws on the books that legally obligated inspectors to come take a look at the place every so often, but Gosnell’s clinic didn’t get inspected. And supposedly the reason why it didn’t get inspected was because everyone knew exactly what was going on there, and what an inspection would turn up. And having an inspection turn those horrors up would give ammunition to those who are opposed to abortion.

    So Gosnell’s clinic was quietly ignored by the health officials who were legally obligated to inspect it. Better that a minority woman die every now and again (the people thinking this way likely didn’t care that many of his “abortions” were actually infanticide), than abortion be made to look bad.

    And then law enforcement got a tip that he was illegally selling prescription drugs, and raided the place. I’ve seen it suggested – and it wouldn’t surprise me if true – that law enforcement likely also knew, and was looking for an excuse to shut him down.

    1. I had a student in my last health policy seminar try to look at, for her class paper, whether laws passed around that time to regulate abortion clinics were passed to shut them down. She was surprised when she found, by comparing abortion clinic regulation to the regulation of other ambulatory surgery centers (which is what an abortion clinic really is) that all the laws did was raise the standards for the abortion clinics to the minimum expected for ASCs. In other words, states had been favoring abortion facilities by not requiring them to meet health and safety standards required of ASCs. She (and this student began the paper as a radical neutral – a devout Catholic and libertarian – torn on the issue) was shocked to find that those complaining about the new laws were NOT concerned about women’s health and safety, or at least more concerned about aborting babies than the health and safety of the woman carrying the child.

    1. Not really.

      The Real Trouble started in the Progressive Era much later than Lincoln

      Note, Sarah doesn’t like discussions of the American Civil War here and any discussion of Lincoln’s Presidency involves the American Civil War.

  10. Thank you for this. Roe v Wade was bad law and bad policy. The whole debate never really moved on from 1973 because all debate was suppressed. Now, 50 years later, we can have the debate and politicians will have to defend it al in detail. Here in NJ we’ll still have North Korean abortion laws, NY will have outright infanticide. Still, the politicians, especially the Republicans, will now have skin in the decision. Skin in the game changes things and this will reveal much.

    The wife’s question is why so many seem to be celebrating the baby killing. Some have said that the state is their god, I think they’re in rebellion against God or, if one doesn’t believe in God, against the universe. “Howling mighty curses” to quote one of Marx’s poems. They’re mad people, and bad people.

    1. I’m pretty sure a big reason the Left is freaking out right now is that the largely conservative Pro-life movement just got a huge enthusiasm boost and a really good reason to get interested in state politics. I expect a lot of blue states to get significantly less blue in the coming years.

        1. Yep. Republicans have to put up or shut up now. Maybe it’ll cut down on the RINO’s. On the other hand, it seems that abortion is way down the rating scale. For me, it is THE issue, but it doesn’t seem to get that much enthusiasm otherwise.

        2. I, for one, am immensely cheered. I couldn’t stop smiling on Friday and that wasn’t just because my youngest sister had her first child. A very auspicious day for him to be born.

      1. The Left is losing its mind because their whole “inevitability” just sunk, and they absolutely cannot stand us knowing Victory is achievable. For their -only- hope is to persuade us to give up, to quit.

        That was “Midway” folks.

        We just demonstrated that the Left can be -defeated-.

        If we just refuse to quit, and stick to our beliefs, and actively plan and fight for the Victory of Liberty,

        We win. They lose.

            1. “overreach and the consequences”


              Wasn’t that the point of the movie “The Patriot” (Mel Gibson)? A farmer with a large family whose goal was to stay out of the war. But with the murder of his young son he chose differently. Fiction? Yes. Extreme example? Yes. OTOH anymore extreme than requisitioning every scrap of food in the area? Or appropriating the farmstead house and out buildings for the troops, putting entire communities out into the winter weather? Both of which happened. Old rules of engagement in “enemy territory”. Problem is, technically the British troops weren’t In enemy territory. What is the old joke? “What happens if we are late?” (Death) “Well folks, we’re late!” Dammed if we Do. Dammed if we Don’t. They screwed up.

              1. The movie “Friendly Persuasion” did a similar thing– much gentler form, but … the goose scene.

                You push the locals too much, you got more enemies.

                The Laws of War are for the protection of the soldiers, as well as the civilians.

                1. \? “You push the locals too much, you got more enemies.”

                  That also applies if you want to avoid STARTIG a war in the first place. Sticking with movie examples, I’m thinking of the scene in “V for Vendetta” where the little girl gets shot.

    2. There are also a lot of people who think that the sympathetic edge cases (ape/incest) are common.

        1. I have literally seen one call them “rapist babies.” Even though she backed down at once, I suspect she accidentally said what she meant.

        2. That won’t work in my situation, alas.

          The ones I know scare me with how they would like to deal with rapists, and I favour Roman methods of execution for them.

      1. > “ape”

        [raised eyebrow]

        Um, you’re gonna have to explain that one, because if apes and humans could interbreed I’m pretty sure I’d have heard of it by now.

          1. [smacks forehead]

            Right, I should have realized that straight off. Thanks.

            In my partial defense, I’m tired and winding down for bed.

            1. Also the typo is hilarious.
              BTW we’ve heard of enough offspring from species as related as us and the great apes, that sometimes I wonder.
              I mean, there’s rumors and legends, but…. SHUDDER.

  11. One disturbing thing I saw was a group of GOP Congressmen wanting to announce a bill to nationally ban abortion – which in fact totally ignores the fact that the Court EXPLICITLY noted that the issue was not one of the national, but state sphere.

    The real significance of Dobbs is not that the decision overturned Roe itself and eliminated a specific right to an abortion, but that it did so on Tenth Amendment grounds, restoring an element of the Constitutional order that, like Sarah notes, has been under assault since the New Deal. From a political and policy standpoint, the long-term implications of THAT decision, as Thomas hinted at in his concurrence, are far more important than its impact on abortion itself. Some states will allow it, some restrict it -and under the ruling the federal government can not, despite the mistaken beliefs of the GOP Congressmen who want a national ban or the Democrats pushing for a bill to establish a national right to abortion, interfere with the state decision. Likewise, the reversion to the Constitution’s limits means states cannot bar someone from going to another state for the procedure. The national government’s limits would be rather strict – it could still require or ban coverage through the Medicaid/Medicare/SCHIP/Tricare programs, or approve drugs used for chemical abortions in abortion-friendly states, but it cannot interfere with laws WITHIN the states. It can preempt state laws banning mail-order delivery of such drugs, but can’t interfere with laws punishing the USE of the drugs once received.

    Now, this is important. It cuts the legs out from under a LOT of the regulatory state that arose beginning with the New Deal, a process that started with the decision in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), which began chipping away at the abusive interpretation of the Commerce Clause that was created in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942). I can see a LOT of potential implications for federal preemption in areas such as the regulation of drinking water utilities, which is almost always a case of INTRAstate, not INTERstate, commerce and in which state regulatory programs are in general significantly more competent than the USEPA overseers (the topic of my 1995 MPA thesis, BTW). Potentially, it creates loopholes for purely local businesses regarding laws like the PPACA (“Obamacare”) or the FLSA. As a result, one of the WORST things the GOP can do is act in such a way which creates a toehold for a claim of a national government power to dictate abortion policy post-Dobbs to states. The implications go far beyond right to life issues.

      1. Roe vs. Wade.
        States Rights Washington Bites. Now get Washington out of healthcare and education. Where was Obamacare during Covid? Washington leave the 2nd Amendment alone. Close the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI while your at it, don’t forget the Secret Service and IRS, together with the Federal Reserve. Annul the 17th Amendment.

        1. You will ALWAYS have some agency like the IRS to collect revenues. Even when it was just customs revenue and land sales, we had agencies handling it – and they were easy to corrupt because they handle the money. See https://www.jstor.org/stable/1891404.

          The Federal Reserve is actually a GOOD idea, as long as it sticks strictly to Austrian economic models, as it did between the late Carter administration and Obama. The economic swings we had due to the money supply before the Federal Reserve were much more severe than anything except the Depression – which was extended by Congressional, not Reserve, mistakes.

          1. The British Hong Kong free banking system Andrew Jackson established free banking in America in 1825 when he closed the 2nd Central Bank which Alexander Hamilton supported.

            1. He also hit the country with a big recession (The Panic of 1837) when doing it, as his policies resulted in a shortage off species which he required in payment of taxes rather than US banknotes – coupled with his policies enabling private state banks to run wild in printing money. He also violated the law when he removed federal deposits from the bank. The resulting depression lasted seven years.

              1. Free banking caused the newly established nation to become by the 1880s 2nd only to the British empire in industrial production of goods. This industrialization greatly contributed to the US victories in WWl and WWll.

              2. Jackson like all national leaders had his strengths and weakness. Placing that Panic all on the shoulders of Jackson – not fair.

                The failure of the wheat crops had nothing what so ever to do with closing the 2nd Central Bank. Same holds true with the financial crisis and depression in Great Britain.

                President Martin Van Buren was blamed for the Panic of 1837 and proposed the system for the retaining government funds in the United States Treasury and its sub-treasuries to address the situation but met with strong opposition by the Whigs, led by Henry Clay.

              3. Second סוגיה of פרק of Parshat אמור
                Second פרק of Parshat אמור, כב: א – טז. The din of כרת for attempting to practice avodat HaShem while in the condition of breathing tumah spirits. Tumah spirits, effectively define the passions of the Yatzir Ha’rah within the human heart. The Torah brings four לאו דוקא specifics employed to define the general term — tumah: צרוע, זב, שרץ, ונבלה טרפה. A dead body serves as the Av tumah.

                The Torah instructs through means of משל\נמשל. https://www.betmidrash.org.il › index.php › מתוךשלאלשמהבאלשמה
                משמע שהלא לשמה שמתוך כך יבוא לשמה הוא מפני השכר או העונש מה’. וזה שסתם הרמב”ם וכו

                Tumah Partnership mitzvot, if a person fails to keep and do the mitzvot לשמה, then even if that person faithfully keeps all the other 612 commandments, that person worships avodah zarah. Hence the 5th Middle Blessing of the Shemone Esri, does not necessarily address tactical health issues as the primary k’vanna of רפאנו ה’ ונרפא.

                Rather the strategic k’vanna of this blessing, that HaShem remembers the oath sworn to the Avot and heals the soul of Israel from tumah partnership mitzvot done לא לשמה.
                What distinguishes between tohor and tumah partnership mitzvot? Tumah partnership mitzvot, Jews keeping the Torah לא לשמה in g’lut. Contrasted to Jews keeping the Torah לשמה in the oath sworn lands. צדק צדק תרדוף. Justice spins around the axis of court imposed fair compensation of damages. Obviously in g’lut Jews have no power to rule with justice.
                What, Jews in the oath sworn lands do not pursue after passion ecstasy “insanity”, like we do in g’lut? Man lives as an apex predator. Not comparable to a killer whale or a lion, jaguar, or tiger. The latter hunts prey but does not endure being a prey animal hunted by other animals for food.

                Mankind as an apex predator contrasts with pedophiles. The latter expresses a form of ecstatic insanity warned in the mussar commanded by the Book of Sh’muel in the aggadah of Amnon and Tamar, and repeated in the mussar aggadah of king David and Bat Sheva.

                Man as an apex predator compares to a niche market. By which an individual develops a wisdom, a cut or more, utterly profound, above his or her peers, not limited to any particular generation. Making a chiddush on the Torah qualifies, at least for me, as the definition of an apex predator. This author hunts the learning of king Shlomo and the Rambam like a lion kills and consumes prey herds.

                Specifically, even if a person obeys and observes all the other 612 commandments לא לשמה, that person worships avoda zarah. Tumah Partnership commandments pass from generation to generation, comparable to DNA as a genetic inheritance.

                The דיוק made on this chiddush, even if a person keeps only the 1st Commandment of the Sinai revelation and profanes all the rest of the 612 Commandments, that person does not worship avodah zarah – the 2nd Commandment of the revelation of the Torah @ Sinai. The mitzvah of writing a Sefer Torah serves as a precedent witness.

                T’shuvah exists, based upon tumah vs. tohor partnership commandments, as a form or grade of madness. Madness, defined as ecstasy. Tumah partnership commandments, if done לשמה contrast with tumah partnership commandments, if done לא לשמה. The 5th middle blessing of the Shemone Esrei, it seems to me, strategically addresses healing the soul (future as yet unborn generations) from the passion madness as described in the Book of Sh’muel. Consider the US National debt as another relevant example, the future born generations inherit this criminal poverty.

                When a person reaches an Apex in life achievements, from where does that person go thereafter? Down, down, down, America post WWII. Primitive societies relied upon their shaman to heal them. Ecstatic mysticism in a sense compares to how pornography arouses human passions to express sexual fantacies. The false messiah, Yaacov Frank, employed tumah sexual passions and other negative partnership commandments, as a medium to plant his control over minds of others, something like Hitler seduced Germany with his empassioned speeches.

                The Yatzir Ha’Rah once aroused, it proceeds to supplant, dominate, conquer, and subjugate the rational brain. This transfer of control from the tohor Yatzir within the heart to the tumah Yatzir compares to a worm transforming into a moth.

                The aggadic story of Yechuda and Tamar compounds and serves to amplify the aggadic mussar commanded in the trial of Yosef by his brothers. The brothers did not decide in one day to murder their brother. The tumah of their jealousy took years to fester before it overruled their rational minds.

                The anguish and hurt Yosef’s brothers saw in their fathers’ eyes, this intense mussar, it removed the scales which had till then blinded their eyes. For the first time in years, they realized the gravity of their tumah jealousy crime. That crime caused a תמיד מעשה בראשית, the descent of Israel unto Egyptian g’lut.

                Having sold Yosef as a slave those apex predators reached the summit of their desires – then came their fall. The tumah Yatzir\passion ecstasy/ lives as an apex predator within our hearts. This insane madness can and does, it dominates the rational mind. ערוה sexual incest crimes occur because at that moment, the person can not comprehend nor see the consequences of his actions. Even if expressly warned against the crime of that ערוה, again and again, by friends and family. Their warnings accomplish no effect, not short or long term.

                The tumah Yatzir behaves toward the tohor Yatzir something like a predator\prey relationship. Tumah partnership mitzvot, they can either occur לשמה or לא לשמה. Yosef failed to give מחילה to his brothers. Had he sanctified this mitzva לשמה Israel would not have descended into Egyptian g’lut.

                The rule and dominance of the tumah Yatzir לא לשמה – partnership commandments – describes the warning din of g’lut. When Israel refused to free the debt slaves among our people during the sh’mitta year, that prophetic mussar aggadah, as instructed in the Book of ירמיה, teaches that that Yatzir Ha’Rah sealed the din of g’lut; the fall of the kingdom of Yechudah before the armies of Babylon.

                The concept of לשמה or לא לשמה applies directly to – tohor and tumah partnership mitzvot – most specifically to the mitzvah of t’shuvah. Impossible to judge the aggadic mussar instruction without wearing the same wet moccasins (a metaphor taught by Rabbi Asher Dov Kahn), worn by the characters within those stories. The struggle to grow and mature applies equally to all generations. The moose does not kill a pack wolf member at every hunt. If moose did, wolves would soon cease to hunt moose as prey.

                The din of profanation of קודש, compares to theft wherein justice requires that the criminal pays double the value of tithing – 20%.

                Let’s learn: A precise exact precedent: משנה תורה ה: ו – טו. Avodah zarah compares to a dead body, both define – Av tumah. Swearing false oaths brought the g’lut floods in the days of Noach. Only Israel defines the negative commandment of not doing כל מלאכתך through the 39 labours required to build the Mishkan. Assimilation to the cultures and customs practiced by Goyim who never accepted the revelation of the Torah @ Sinai @ Horev — the first face of avodah zarah g’lut death.

                An exact precise precedent: טו: א – יא. Do we keep the mitzvah of sh’mitta לשמה דאורייתא or לא לשמה heter mechirah? The opening סוגיה likewise distinguished between the assimilated אביון from the poor עני. Many chilloni Jews feel they have no inheritance in the Torah. Who imprisoned their minds with such an absurd tumah idea? No group or movement(s) holds a monopoly over the Cohen national inheritance. Those who cry out “Torah True Judaism” compare: to the wicked evil of false prophets. No such thing as the wicked lie: a particular set of Jews closer to the masoret of Yiddishkeit than other Jews.

                A slightly distant precedent: יז: ב – כ. Folk who assume that their religious sect has a monopoly over the Torah, compare to the רשעים who seduce their city to worship avodah zarah. The prophet Moshe mandated that the Sanhedrin determines the culture and customs practiced by the Cohen nation in the oath sworn lands. The Sanhedrin determines the times and seasons when Israel sanctifies the Chagim. No other authority has any Torah mandate to challenge the authority of the Sanhedrin lateral common law court. Alien Goyim who worship avodah zarah, how much more so, they have no say what so ever in the determination of practiced Jewish cultures and customs. Just as American citizens do not cast ballots in Russian elections to the Duma.

                Order requires the establishment of a Central Government. The metaphor of the Torah, refers to the anointment of a king. Laws imposed by the king, but the Torah primarily mandates the Sanhedrin to determine the k’vanna intent of the “kings” statute laws. The Talmud employs Aggadic משנה תורה mussar as the medium to practice “Legislative Review” which determines the statute halachot imposed by the Rabbis. The Torah employs the לאו דוקא metaphor “king” when it refers to the mitzvah to establish a Central Governing Order upon the nation. As the Aggadic portions of the Talmud determine the משנה תורה k’vanna of ritual halachic mitzvot, so too and how much more so the Great Sanhedrin has a משנה תורה mandate from the Torah to rule the “Tumah Yatzir” halachot statute Roman law decreed by any assimilated halachic codes written in the Middle Ages (forms of religious g’lut rabbinic governance).

                Establishment of the Great Sanhedrin and lessor small Sanhedrin Federal lateral common law courtrooms, most essentially defines Post Shoah t’shuvah where Jews once more rule our homelands. Do we do this mitzva לשמה or לא לשמה?

                A distant precedent: כ: י – כא: ט. A distant city, conquered perhaps to add another City of Refuge small Sanhedrin court, why does the Torah permit sparing the lives of הנשים והטף והבהמה וכל אשר יהיה בא עיר כל שללה תבז לך. These folk did not enjoy their freedom to choose to make war. They compare to the woman raped in the field and no one heard her cries. Therefore the din of slaughter does not apply to them as to the military-fit, male populations. Herein the interpretation:

                משמע שהלא לשמה שמתוך כך יבוא לשמה הוא מפני השכר או העונש מה’.

                An exact precise precedent: כג: ב – ז: The types of ערוה Moav and Bil’am, they have no possibility of doing t’shuvah לשמה. A slightly distant precedent: לג: כב עד סוף. A blessing of tohor partnership mitzvot required to forge the alliance between the Tribes of the Republic as valid – then as today. Mussar never becomes archaic or out of date. Those who read the Torah as stories of way back then, they lack knowledge in the basics of the Torah faith.

                Turning to the kabbalah of prophetic mussar: יחזקאל ג: כב – ה: יז, a distant precedent. What defines Israel as בית מרי המה? G’lut predestined: Israel pursues tumah partnership mitzvot לא לשמה. Contrast how the prophets sanctifies tumah partnership commandments לשמה through how the prophet יחזקאל endured the pain and distress to teach mussar to the generations of Israel.

                A distant precedent: ח:א – ט: יא. The vision of the Chariot פרדס mysticism. The tumah partnership לא לשמה, avodah zarah within the Temple! Jerusalem described as a city full of tumah injustice and oppression. A slightly distant precedent: יא: יז – יב: טז. Tohor t’shuva overcomes the tumah Yatzir within our hearts. Israel, the chosen Cohen nation pursues partnership mitzvot לשמה. The prophet has a compound vision that separates t’rumah from chol. Rule by the tumah Yatzir Ha’Rah, tumah partnership mitzvot done לא לשמה and the Divine decree of g’lut to the nation.

                The mussar rebuke of יחזקאל bitter cold and dark. Herein concludes the learning on the 2nd סוגיה of Parshat אמור.

                  1. Post WWII, which country had viable industrial development? Hmmm France phooey. China or Jalpan? Double phooey? Perhaps Germany? Total phooey.

                    If having the top economy of the entire planet Earth does not qualify as Apex, then please explain all the efforts to achieve industrial development which defines the 19th Century.

                    1. The US of 1930s and the US post WWII … two totally different countries. Isolationist America vs. American military occupying over 155 countries – that according to Ron Paul. He chaired the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Pretty good credentials.

                      Really do not understand “Oh, please.”

                    2. Sigh. No. The country of the 1950s might have been the richest of that age, due to WWII damage, but it was an authoritarian country, built by FDR and Wilson. Even the Republicans were “progressives” who thought they not only could shape the future from the top down and the center out. It was “communism on the installment plan” or perhaps fascism. (the two bleed together.)
                      THIS IS NOT THE AMERICAN SYSTEM, it is the system that’s collapsing now worldwide, because it never worked.
                      As for wealth, etc, they were poorer than us, unhealthier and, yes, though you might not believe it, less free.
                      That system IS collapsing, thank heavens. But that system is not and never was America.

                    3. The 50s ruled by Truman and Eisenhower not FDR (30s) and Wilson (prior to WWI). Socialism houses under this political ideology both Communism and Fascism. The US military occupies Europe 80 years after WWII.

                    4. So your definition of occupies is whenever anyone in uniform is physically present?

                      We don’t make their laws, or run their courts, or patrol their streets, Your definition of occupation matches nothing ever found in history.

                    5. US military bases in foreign countries serves as the basis of the US being the World Cop. Approve the closure of all US military bases in foreign countries. Oppose the Pax American Empire replacement of the dead British empire.

                    6. Yo, can someone else take up this discussion — not I’m not calling for a pile on, just discussion — because today I’m being nibbled to death by ducks.
                      Thank you.

                    7. How long does a person who climbs Mt. Everest remain at the apex of that mountain? “We were BRIEFLY the only man standing.

                    8. We were the only man standing, not because we had climbed, but because everyone fell.
                      And I appreciate Jewish instruction by story as much as anyone else (I was for a few years on a Torah study group) BUT metaphor is not reality.

                    9. If your standard is who is on top of the pile, then the half dead guy clinging to a rock is “the best” among a pack of people drowning in a swamp.

                      Fortunately Americans have better standards. And while it isn’t the be all and end all, charting the state of the second amendment provides an excellent view into what direction of the country was heading at any given time.

                    10. You realize that your Glorious Russian Fighters only continued existing as an alleged fighting force because America provided all of the logistics, right?

                    11. Pre 1913 establishment of the Federal Reserve, the US stood as exceptional. Post WWII America as an industrial power made it: to quote Mohammad Ali: “The Greatest”.

                    12. Cassius Clay stood at the “apex” of the Boxing world. Mohammad Ali’s rejection of US imperialism in Vietnam, the Government used as an excuse to strip him of his title and did not allow him to practice his trade for 3 years, years of his prime. He came back and lost the first of his 3 fights with Joe Frazier, another man who sat at the “apex” of his trade till George Forman came along.

                      My argument that post WWII America sat at the apex of US power and prestige, this assertion you deny?

                    13. Clearly you can agree with me that the US defeat in Vietnam and again in Afghanistan that American international prestige and reputation damaged the “apex” position of the US who would, even after the fall of the USSR in 1990. These examples serve as evidence that “apex” like climbing Mt. Everest,,, a fleeting experience.

                    14. War represents a 50/50 win\loss risk. US imposing a military dictatorship, General Augusto Pinochet, over Chile – a Banana Republic, hardly qualifies as war.

                      The US defeat in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and even Iraq does qualify as war. The US pulled out of all three countries like a puppy with its tail tucked between its legs peeing all over itself. Washington abandons billions of dollars of military equipment in all three defeats.

                      At Officer school @ Texas A&M remember hearing the Officers justifying that defeat by saying that the US never lost a battle. So what the chaos and anarchy on the Domestic front. Ho Chi Min’s strategy known as “Peoples’ War” prevailed.

                    15. “Officer School” at Texas A&M? Is that what they called it, ‘officer school’?
                      And the instructors were right, the military did not lose the war, the Democrats abandoned the RVN. That we abandoned our allies, a shameful act, is not the same thing as being defeated militarily.

                    16. Sure ROTC. Until 1968 the only Texas A&M only taught military students. Its a military school. Something like 50 or more A&M graduates won the Congressional medal of honor.

                    17. Membership in the Cadet Corp became voluntary in ’65, not ’68. I’m surprised that an Aggie ring knocker got that wrong.
                      I’ve never heard anyone in ROTC call it ‘Officer School’.

                    18. Not necessarily. The Guard or the Reserves are options, or one of the other services if they’ll have you. And that’s only for those that complete ROTC, which hasn’t been a requirement since ’65. Everyone else just goes into the world like other colleges.

                    19. You give others a hard time about accuracy, yet can’t even be bothered being accurate yourself? Why am I not surprised?

                    20. Also, you’re making pronouncements about Vietnam as if you were there, and here we find out that you were barely aware during the War. Many of the ‘brass’ that you malign were veterans of WWII and Korea as well.

                    21. No it was before my time, but the Officers who trained me served in Vietnam. And fracking officers and other examples of poor moral they told me of their first hand experiences.

                    22. I served in Nam as well. As did the officers and NCOs that subsequently taught me in ROTC. So what?
                      Does your anecdotal hearsay trump my experience as an REMF translator and my anecdotal hearsay?

                    23. Many boxers get into the ring. But only a small few become champions. General Westmoreland a 3rd tier bureaucrat compared to General Douglas MacArthur.

                    24. The US brass in Vietnam – just a bunch of bureaucrats wearing a uniform. Not the case during WWII and Korea. A completely different caliber of talent.

                      Lincoln went through allot of generals before he found Grant to take on Lee.

                      Lee had many talented generals but when they cut of Stone Wall Jackson’s left arm after the Battle of Chancellorsville, Lee said: Jackson has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right.

                    25. Do not mean to go off topic, but Korea and Vietnam two completely different wars. General MacArthur flanked the North Korean army and invaded North Korea. He wanted to use nukes against China. Total War.

                      Vietnam LBJ later admitted the hoax of the Gulf of Tonkin attack, he said: “perhaps it was whales”! The US illegally invaded S, Vietnam, their Banana Republic and never once did General Westmoreland invade North Vietnam. This latter vile criminal war ,, a war of US imperialism.

                    26. 50,000 or more and perhaps 5 times that number wounded — all for nothing! Vietnam no question disgraced the honor of the US military. The soldiers who returned from that conflict received no ticker tape parades by the American people, just the opposite!

                    27. Nixon’s illegal bombing of Cambodia. Without a declaration of War from Congress that criminal President bombed Cambodia into the Dark Ages. Pol Pot committed genocide because Nixon and Kissinger silly stupid and vile decision that the US Air Force could destroy the Vietnamese supply lines through Cambodia, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, without troops on the ground! The stupidity of this error compares to Hitler ordering his Army to stop in the 1940 Battle of Dunkirk!

                    28. This will be my last reply to you. For one, I believe the interesting version of history you have is Russian. Now whether that means you learned it from Russia, or because you learned it in our subverted education.
                      However, this entire discussion is an example of dialogue in the same language (Though your command of it is iffy) but across cultures, which make you unable to understand what we’re saying.
                      You keep looking for minutia to support your points and are amazed we’re not listening, but the problem isn’t that (Though I’d like you to consider if you’re able that there is no such thing as an “illegal” bombing. Illegal according to WHOM? Nations have gone to war since forever, and they might do unjust things, but illegal presupposes there’s a law the whole world accepts, which is bunkum and you should in fact know that, if you know anything.)
                      The problem here is that you are coming from the world inside your head, and can’t understand it bears no resemblance to reality.
                      Or as the great RES who sometimes drops by says “The problem is that you’re talking pussy and we’re talking bear.”
                      Look, dude: First you’re assuming that there is an eternal contest between nations in which one emerges victorious for a time and then has to fall. For…. reasons. Because history is pre-ordained, don’t you know, and there’s an ARROW. And arrow, I tell you. Or perhaps the LAWS of history make it illegal for a nation to stay at the top.
                      Second you assume that the way a nation stays “on top” is WAR. This is curiously and bizarrely Russian, or German, or another of the barbarian nations on the periphery who strive like toddlers to make the other nations take them seriously, and the way to do that is to throw tantrums, invade other countries and kill people, because that will mean they have the biggest tonker, and if they wave it in the face of the world, the world will bow.
                      This has absolutely nothing to do with history, though it might with the history YOU learned, but in that case consider what you learned is in fact bullshit. And not a high grade of bullshit, at that. It might in fact be poisonous.
                      Both Rome and France dominated the world through wars gained and lost, and after Rome had voluntarily stopped expanding its empire.
                      The US DOMINATES culture, invention and production, even with our institutions penetrated by the enemy.
                      What’s more the enemy is operating from your position, and seeking to “destroy” and “humiliate” us by making us give up on territory.
                      The thing is the US was NEVER an imperial power. Our position post world war II was an accident from trying to stop Europe destroying itself.
                      We don’t want to invade and conquer other countries. That we’ve ended up in that position out of necessity of defense makes most of us deeply uncomfortable. We don’t want you to occupy you. We want you to behave like grownups and mind your own business.
                      Or as my friend Dave Freer puts it “Americans are terrible imperialists. All they want to do is go home.”
                      You might think that the apex of America is standing alone in a defeated world, but that sucks. America is a merchant nation. We want trading partners, not slaves.
                      And what Americans consider a great America is a prosperous one, free of foreign entanglements, creating and growing and making our population (and by overflow the world) prosperous.
                      All of your idiotic examples are based on the idea there’s some kind of tonker-waving contest that can be won by going to war. Your kind of mind is why Russia invaded Ukraine. And why we are appalled at it, regardless of whether Ukraine is “mean” or not.
                      History is not a dick waving contest. Not for Americans.
                      We want to be happy and prosperous within our borders. And we want the rest of the world to pull their socks up and become free and worthy trade partners, instead of dangerous, skivvy slave lords like China or Russia.
                      History isn’t written. And if we have a say in it, America’s history will never be one of climbing to the top on a pile of corpses.
                      It will be an history of inventing, creating, making the world more prosperous than it’s ever been, and eventually colonizing the stars.
                      The apex? We can kind of see it in the dim distance. And once we get there, we’ll see a clearer one ahead.
                      Or as my grandmother used to say “Behind a peak, there’s a taller one.”
                      Until you understand that, and that the world is not a fixed pie to be fought over by vultures, this discussion is done.
                      We might as well be speaking Martian, for all you understand us.

                    29. Second you assume that the way a nation stays “on top” is WAR. This is curiously and bizarrely Russian, or German
                      :SNIPS:

                      Very middle eastern tribesman, too.

                    30. I honestly can’t even remember his name, just that he was running around with his hair on fire insisting that Sarah had blocked him and hated him and had made all sorts of accusations, and etc, and she finally went “who?” and then he really got pissy.

                      I think it’s the one where the same email and user name was on a Russian bot twitter guy, but I may be confusing with someone else; the “throw down an ace card” when it was from the wrong deck is what stuck in my head.

                    31. He’s as Israeli as I am. He MIGHT maybe have some Jewish blood, but he’s Russian, and learned his history in Russia. I spoke with enough of them in the seventies to recognize the delusions.
                      That country, as one of you said, is too d*mn big to have small dog syndrome. They just feel left out of civilization. Which they are, because they are barbarians. By choice.

                    32. Russian history, my major @ Texas A&M. Made alyah to Israel in 1991. Minored in English.
                      [[Though I’d like you to consider if you’re able that there is no such thing as an “illegal” bombing. Illegal according to WHOM?]] Lincoln did not declare War through a Congressional declaration. He ordered US troops to invade the Confederate States. This action violated the Constitution. Congress and not the President alone has the power to declare war. This “illegal” action set up the Post WWII set of illegal invasions of other countries. The classic language for Centuries: a just war. Ron Paul criticized the illegal invasion of Iraq by Bush as not a just war. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack.

                      Try to bring known historical examples and know historical figures to support my opinion. Notice that you and your friends never do this. The once possible exception, the mention of Cassius Clay which I clearly refuted by pointing out his first Title fight defeat to Smok’n Joe Frazier. Proof that apex a short and limited duration.

                      [The problem here is that you are coming from the world inside your head, and can’t understand it bears no resemblance to reality.] The problem here, you bring a general statement accusation. But fail to bring even one example of me ‘being inside my head’.

                      [Or as the great RES who sometimes drops by says “The problem is that you’re talking pussy and we’re talking bear.”] What does this have to do with “apex”????

                      [ Because history is pre-ordained] A very Calvinist idea. None the less being Jewish I simply don’t buy this theology slipped over into political theory.

                      [ Second you assume that the way a nation stays “on top” is WAR. ] The Greek empire rose when it stopped the Persian invasion. Alexander the Great defeated and conquered the Persian empire. Can a nation become a top tier nation without war? Sure. France surrendered to the Nazis yet sits on the Security Council of the UN as a permanent member!

                      Russia defeated Napoleon, this made Russia a top tier nation together with England till the Crimean War. Then it became apparent that the Industrial revolution which started in England just prior to the wars with revolutionary France, that Russia no longer qualified as a 1st World nation. The Ottoman empire of the 19th Century took on the name “the sick Man of Europe” b/c that empire stood on the verge of total collapse.

                      Rome fought 6 stalemate wars with the Persian empire. Those wars exhausted both empires and set the stage for the climatic victory of the Arab Califate. Why you assume you know me, very interesting. I do not make such speculative judgments about you. In point of fact I do not know you for squat and visa versa. Confusing speculations as fact — very iffy at best.

                      [We don’t want to invade and conquer other countries.] Non sense. The Yiddish: narishkeit. Post WWII the US as invaded and attacked some 10 countries in South and Central America to Korea and Vietnam in Asia, to Afghanistan next to Pakistan. That’s a global invasion of other countries. And it has nothing to do with Europe, a 2nd tier power post WWII.

                      “Americans are terrible imperialists. All they want to do is go home.”] Bunk post WWII the US did not disband its Armed Forces. Unlike the Civil War and WWI where Washington immediately disbanded its Armed Forces. The Indian War that culminated in the slaughter @ Wounded Knee involved an Army of less than 5000 soldiers.

                      Post WWII America changed its status to the Pax American empire. Truman set the foreign policy of all post war US governments through (1) The Marshal Plan (2) The Containment Policy.

                      The Marshal Plan US foreign loans in exchange for US military bases which “occupy” those foreign countries. The Containment Policy, tactically expressed through the famous 2 State Solution.

                      Once a nation hits an apex, the only way to go – Down Down Down. France hit an apex under Louis XIV, it declined till the French revolution chopped off the head of the Monarch and replaced it with Napoleon as its Emporor.

                      [Until you understand that, and that the world is not a fixed pie to be fought over by vultures, this discussion is done.] Why you insist that you understand a person you do not know in the least — mind boggling.

                    33. Discussions of the ACW are frowned on here, however let me point out that suppressing rebellion doesn’t require a declaration of war.

                    34. Nor, arguably, does the US Constitution permit a president to allow secession. It requires that a republican form of government be guaranteed in each state by the federal government, which is kind of hard to do if you have no presence there.

                    35. As is to be expected by this point, you abandon you assertion as soon as it is refuted, to go make another assertion, even if it’s refuted on the same page.

                    36. Yes, it was.

                      You just couldn’t be bothered to go read the very long post that showed that not only was your chosen definition irrationally limited, it was additionally unsupported by the facts.

                      As I said: you abandoned supporting your argument rationally. I accept your forfeit.

                    37. No it was not. Proven from the start. A person does not climb mount everest and build a house at the peak of the Mountain top. Duh.

                    38. How do you figure? The Levites never got any land when it was apportioned, so how is it a Kohen nation?

                    39. Nooo……

                      The Kohenim are a specific group within the tribe of Levi, traditionally descended from Aaron the High Priest (Moses’ brother).

                      And how does obeying the mitzvot given to the entire nation of Yaakov’s descendants (of which the laws of kashrut are a part) designate everyone as part of the priestly caste? By that standard, honoring Shabbat or leaving the gleanings for the hungry makes everyone a priest. If you have a primary cite on this (Tanach or Gemara, though I would accept something from a sage on the level of Hillel, Shamai, the Rashi, or the Rambam) I would love to see a reference.

                    40. Tactically yes strategicallly no. Only Israel, the Cohen nation accepted the Torah @ Sinai @ Horev.

                      Commandments and mitzvot two separate categories. Very similar for sure but different.

                      What’s the central lesson of Shabbot? Not to work? Obviously not. Rambam Rabbeinu’s beit din placed him in charem/נידוי. Torah law: common law. Rambam’s code assimilated Roman statute law.

                    41. What differentiates between tohor and tumah. A non Jewish person does not have the slightest clue. Not an insult just a simple fact. The subject of tohor and tumah the most complex and difficult subject in the whole of the Talmud.

                    42. Well, then, Gantze Rebbe Mosckerr, do enlighten, then. Especially in how those particular principles are at all relevant here.

                    43. You mentioned “chosen”. That reference refers to Cohonim. The central limitation of any service to HaShem, a person must breath tohor spirits.

                    44. Cite where I brought religion or Chosen People theory into this, please?

                      And the central limitation of service to G-d is being a living human adult. While we are obligated to the 613 mitzvot, all of humanity is bound to the 10 Noachide laws.

                    45. No. The Goyim bible translations duplicate the sin of the golden calf. Just as Aaron translated the 1st Commandment Name to אלהים/a word so too the bible and koran make the identical error.

                    46. Then it’s a good thing I read it in All of my translations (I think I have like 5 kicking around the house) are by rabbinic authorities.

                    47. Yes. My Rav, Aaron Nemuraskii, had me read 18 chapters a day of the T’NaCH and would complete it every 52 days. The Chumash i read till i could read it like i do an English news paper. Then repeated the process with both Aramaic targumim

                    48. Targum Uziel opens upon how to learn and understand Midrash. Midrash the primary commentary on Aggadah in the Talmud.

                      The Chumash learns through a Case/Rule common law system just as does the Mishna.

                    49. Rashi’s commentary to the Chumash primarily teaches how to learn the Talmud. Rashi’s commentary to the Talmud teaches primarily how to correctly read a dof of Gemarah. Two entirely different purposes.

                    50. The Baali Tosafot go off the dof because they learn by means of precedents just as does the Gemarah on every Mishna. Common Law not the same as Roman statute law.

                    51. The Rosh witness the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1242. A direct result of the Rambam Civil War. The Rosh spoke harshly against the Rambam. Both the Rif and Rosh codes of Halacha bring the Mishna first. Why? Because the halachot which they bring thereafter serve as precedents to understand the language of that Mishna. The Rambam, his statute law failed to discern that Gemarah serves to understand the Mishna. The Gemarah learns by way of bring precedents to understand the language of the Mishna. The Rambam code destroyed this common law way of Talmudic learning. His halachot do not differentiate between Gemarah and Mishnaic sources. Big Error.

                    52. By the time the Ron wrote his commentary to the Rif, Jews had lost the wisdom of learning the Talmud as common law. A terrible disaster.

                    53. You and other like to declare victory in some imaginary debate. Sorry in a blog it does not work that way. A presents his or her argument. The B presents his or her counter argument. The C the readers of the blog reach their own conclusions.

                    54. Russia beat Napoleon. Seriously?

                      Top be fair, Russia did beat Napoleon. It’s just that Russians had very little to do with it.

                    55. Narishkeit. Napoleon retreated from Moscow and lost 98% of his Army. Russia joined Prussia and Austria and took the war into an invasion of France.

                    56. Dude outran his supply lines. In Russia. During a winter campaign.

                      At that point, a toddler with a stick could have beaten him.

                    57. Yep. Russia wins defensive wars. Russians are only of marginal effect.

                    58. Russians fought and defeated the Nazis in a brutal war. From 1941 till 1944 only the Nazi and Russian armies slugged it out in Europe.

                    59. They mostly slugged it out in Russia, with the Nazis relying heavily on horse drawn supplies. Again, Russia wins, Russians mostly don’t.

                    60. Do not know what Russian mostly don’t. This makes no sense to me. 27 million Russians died fighting the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War.

                    61. So they died like flies due to poor training, poor doctrine, poor leadership, and poor equipment. That doesn’t exactly speak well of their military capability. In fact, it reinforces my point, that Russians only defeat apparently peer-level enemies when the Russian land and enemy mistakes have done most of the work for them.

                    62. They died fighting, certainly, just like the Zulus at Rorke’s Drift. That doesn’t mean they were particularly effective, since they only started winning after the German invasion force had turned into a starving, diseased, and unsupplied husk. Not exactly impressive.

                    63. Where?

                      No, seriously – find me a place where the Red Army managed to take the Nazis when the Nazis were fresh and well supplied without dying in droves.

                    64. So, nowhere then? So much for your studies of Russian military history.

                    65. You just made my point for me. In conditions tailor-made for easy defense, the defenders still died like flies.

                    66. Yes, we agree that they have iron-based hemoglobin, being Terran mammals. How is this relevant to the fact that they stink on ice militarily?

                    67. Cause they don’t stink. Ukraine compares to pre WWII Finland. Just as weapons require testing soldiers require getting blooded.

                    68. So they have trouble suppressing a country a third their size, of which a chunk was already on their side. Yeah, that speaks really well of their military might.

                      Dude, they are basically Bulgaria with nukes.

                    69. Have you looked at Finland’s geography? The place more or less defends itself.

                    70. Napoleon and Hitler: the only two idiots to invade a vast frozen wasteland without making sure they could feed their troops, thus weakening their armies to the point where a granny with a broom could have taken them.

                    71. Dying in large numbers does not mean you are competent. Rather the opposite, in fact.

                    72. They captured Saigon because the Americans decided not to get involved in round 2 of the war. You really don’t know a lot about this, do you?

                    73. Hard to be defeated if you are across an ocean going ‘Yeah, I know we said we’d intervene, but we’re not going to “

                    74. Who captured Saigon? What is a ‘Gok’?

                      Did Saigon fall while the US military was in country, or while our government honored our commitments?

                    75. By the time of the Normandy invasion, the Russians had defeated and destroy the Nazi’s ability to fight anything other than a defensive retreating conflict.

                      Yes at the Battle of the Bulge the Nazis did attempt a winter offensive. It collapsed with a loss of half a million casualties in less than 3 months! Germany already exhausted and defeated by the Russians.

                    76. The fact that the Nazis were stupid enough to ignore logistics and weather only points to their own incompetence, not Russian competence.

                      That’s the Germans for you, though. Great on an operational or tactical level, absolutely useless on a strategic/logistics level.

                    77. ב”ה the Nazis made critical mistakes which cost them the war. Russia in its hour of crisis had brilliant generals as did the US in WWII.

                    78. As you have clearly abandoned your prior argument, I accept your concession that your prior assertion was in error and see no reason to continue this discussion.

                    79. When a Roman general would return to Rome with his spoils of war. A man would whisper in his ear, “all fame is illusionary”.

                    80. Foxfier you have brought forth zero factual cases of history that disproves what I initially wrote, which has caused Hoyt to “roll her eyes”.

                    81. Your not following the thread. Hoyt denied that the US sat at the “apex” of American international prestige and power immediately after WWII.

                    82. No problem no intention to show her or anyone else disrespect. But Hoyt does not employ the title Mrs on her blog. And I did not know her marital status.

                    83. Then you don’t pay attention.

                      Is this the first blog post of hers that you’ve read? It’s not like she doesn’t regularly mention her husband and kids.

                    84. In point of fact yes. I might in the past commented on an earlier post but this is the first conversation inside her blog.

                    85. So you read this blog post, and without actually looking around a bit decided to jump right in.

                    86. So, not knowing her marital status, you skipped right to the spit-in-your-face disrespectful “Hoyt”? You didn’t try anything like “Ms.”, “ma’am”, “Our gracious hostess”, or even “the Beautiful but Evil Space Princess”? (The last is an inside joke, so I wouldn’t expect you to get it.) And then repeated it.

                      And my happiness is not dependent upon you.

                    87. Heck, we mostly just call her Sarah (or occasionally “young Portagee”)…

                    88. On the contrary, I followed it just fine.
                      You are the one either not following the comments, or ignoring those which provide evidence for their assertions.