The beginning of summer is marked by the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Summer vacation begins for most children, pools open for the season, and families enjoy a 3-day opportunity to barbecue, picnic, or otherwise soak up some sunshine and fun.

Memorial Day began with a collection of mid-19^th century independent local remembrances of war dead. This gradually coalesced into a “Decoration Day” that had gained wide national acceptance by the 1890s. The name “Memorial Day” became more prevalent after World War II, but it wouldn’t be until 1967 when it became a federally named holiday.

Memorial Day is often mistakenly used to celebrate all current and former service members. Coupled with the beginning of summer revelry, it is easy to forget the intent and meaning of the day and the sacrifice of those for which it is named.

Allegiance to an idea

Throughout our nation’s history, various motivations have driven Americans into our nation’s service. These factors range from economic incentives to skills development to love of the nation. However, each American service member swears an oath of service that binds them to a collective duty to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Regardless of religious, political, or other dividing issue, each service member is united around the idea that the ideals and prescriptions enshrined in our founding document are worth protecting, even at the loss of their life.

This concept is revolutionary. Traditionally, soliders swore fealty to a king or a ruling class. Sometimes soldiers fought for a religious cause. Many times, soldiers were motivated by their own desires and struck blows to further their personal interests. However, the idea of swearing an oath to the concept of self rule under the aegis of codified laws was a heretofore unknown concept when Congress approved the first oath of service in 1789.

Remembering the reason

The past few years have seen the hyper politicization of everything in our nation and beyond. One of the few remaining institutions in which a majority of Americans still have trust is the military. That is perhaps because the military, with its transcendant oath of service, rises above the squables of daily political life.

As we embark on yet another Memorial Day weekend, perhaps we Americans could best honor the memory of our fallen warriors by rediscovering that to which they swore this unique oath. Reacquaint ourselves with the Bill of Rights and its guarantee that such concepts as freedom of speech, association, religion, self protection, and many others are not granted by man, but rather divinely bestowed and therefore inviolable. Reawaken our desire to be active participants in our governing system—a system that the Founders purposefully designed to prevent the accretion of power and therefore a necessarily messy, laborious process. Most of all, understand that we have been bequeathed a tremendous gift that may only be perpetuated if we put in the effort to create that more perfect union of which the Founders spoke.

Memorial Day is a time for reflection. Let us spend a moment to not just reflect on the sacrifice made by our deceased servicemembers, but also the ideal for which they sacrificed.

Steve Canyon is a retired military officer.

The Language of Liberty series is an outreach project of the Center for Self Governance, a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization, dedicated to training citizens in principles of liberty. The views expressed by the authors are their own and may not reflect the views of CSG. CenterForSelfGovernance.com

The post This Memorial Day, Remember… appeared first on The Washington Standard.

Last fall, education news repeatedly highlighted the push to divide school boards from parents. In the late summer 2021, the National School Board Association (NSBA) asked President Joe Biden to equate parents questioning local school board policies to domestic terrorists.ⁱⁱⁱ Three business days following this NSBA letter, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland mobilized the FBI to investigate parents at school board meetings.^iv During this same time, President Biden’s Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, refused to affirm parents as the “primary stakeholder” in their children’s education.^v Finally, Virginia Democrat Gubernatorial Candidate Terry McAuliffe said during a debate, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”^vi Clearly there is a massive rift in the relationship between concerned parents and public schools.

Along with these nationally divisive incidents other local issues over the last 18 months have bred mistrust and animosity between parents and school boards. Many parents who voice their concerns to school boards regarding the teaching of critical theory are told CRT and its derivatives are not part of the curriculum. Not surprising, these parents later find these ideologies are indeed taught and encouraged in their child’s school. An Indiana school administrator explains:

“We do have Critical Race Theory in how we teach…We tell our teachers to treat students differently based on color. We tell our students that every problem is a result of ‘white men’ and that everything Western Civilization built is racist…It’s taking advantage of kids’ vulnerability and parents’ inactivity to preen over social snake oil schemes designed to create division.”^vii

Mistrust of school boards is further heightened when parents find that schools are using Chromebooks to spy on families at home. Research conducted by the Center for Democracy and Technology found that more than 80% of teachers surveyed knew that their schools utilized surveillance software on school-provided student devices. One anonymous administrator told the Center that many teachers believe spying on kids will have only positive impacts on the students being surveilled.^viii

Beyond curricula and technology issues, the lingering effects of COVID mandates further divides parents from school officials. According to journalist Jim Allen, “Masks and vaccines have [also] become divisive, even incendiary, issues across the Inland Northwest.”^ix Parental uprisings have occurred across the country to push back on mandates largely viewed as a symbol of tyranny rather than a practical tool in disease prevention.^{x xi xii xiii}

It is easy to focus on issues that divide us; it is much harder to find needed solutions. One way to rise above the noise is to focus on the governing system and protect the role of parents as primary stakeholders in their children’s education. With this as the “north star” of our efforts, workable solutions may be proposed.

One suggestion for focusing on the system is regular parental attendance at school board meetings. If attendance space is limited, or if every month attendance isn’t practical, team with other parents to have group representatives attend to both communicate expectations and report back to the group afterwards. Another suggestion is to build relationships with school trustees by contacting your board and asking questions on concerning issues. When asking these questions, focus on listening to the answer without debating the issue. Please remember this is a conversation, not a confrontation. Take notes during school board meetings and when meeting with board trustees. Some sample questions for your trustee may be:

• Why did you run for this office?
• What are your goals for the district?
• What outside influences play a role in curriculum or policy for our district?
• How did Chromebooks/other technology for school and home use come to be available in the district?
• How are they being monitored?
• Are you seeing any promotion of Critical Theory policy such as social and emotional learning, or diversity, equity, and inclusion policies for our district?
• How do you navigate things that compromise your beliefs?

As we listen to learn, rather than confront, we gain credibility with our board members. In doing so, we can move forward united in our efforts to restore parental engagement in their children’s education.

Jennie Bateman & Maria Brown are mothers and activists for parental involvement in education.

The Language of Liberty series is an outreach project of the Center for Self Governance, a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization, dedicated to training citizens in principles of liberty. The views expressed by the authors are their own and may not reflect the views of CSG. CenterForSelfGovernance.com

i^ https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-mom-reads-graphic-gay-porn-found-in-school-library-to-school-board

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“I know that I know nothing” is a phrase commonly associated with the Greek philosopher Socrates. The clear inference from this paradoxical assertion is that knowledge comes from inquisition, research, and dialogue with others.

The eponymous Socratic Method was developed to facilitate critical thinking through development of theses, followed by challenges that would then be defended by the originator. Again, the ancient Greek philosopher recognized the need for robust dialogue between humans to push back the boundaries of ignorance.

The founding fathers engaged in vigorous, sometimes heated debate during the 1787 Constitutional Convention to replace the failing Articles of Confederation.ⁱ The Federalists & Anti-Federalists each developed arguments based on logic and facts in an attempt to persuade state delegates on the veracity of their competing proposals. Ultimately, this yielded a result that has stood the test of nearly 250 years.

In much the same way that competing athletes push each other to greater achievement, society benefits when ideas are free to compete in the arena of public discourse.

Echoes of Silence

While this timeless concept would seem an obvious pillar of a functioning social order, history is replete with examples of individuals or societies that muzzled speech, squashed dissent, or banished heretics.

Galileo Galilei advocated the Copernican concept of heliocentrism—the fact that the sun is the center of the universe. Galileo’s teachings challenged official church dogma and led to his official inquisition, forced recantation, and lifelong house arrest.

The 20^th century was filled with “leaders” who silenced their populace and opposition. Perhaps the most grievous example occurred in the immediate aftermath of the February 1933 Reichstag Fire. Seizing the initiative, Hitler rapidly consolidated power and had his slim Nazi majority in government pass the Malicious Practices Act—an official decree outlawing any speech or act critical of the government.ⁱⁱ This act quickly chilled political opposition to the Nazis and cowed the German people into submission, paving the way for countless horrors to come.

The Chinese Communist government recognized the extant problem they had with burgeoning unrest following the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests. Since then, the government has embarked on a relentless campaign of censorship, arrests, surveillance, and Orwellian memory-holing of all historical records of the event.ⁱⁱⁱ Following their 2020 assimilation of Hong Kong, the government has similarly embarked on a purge of Tiananmen Square memories in the formerly free special administrative region.^iv

In our own nation, civil rights activists endured harassment, beatings, and even death as they sought to provide black voters with a voice in the political process in the Jim Crow Deep South.^v

The common theme is an entity, operating from a position of power to quell open discourse, thus destroying their opposition by silencing their voices.

The Woke muzzling

Over the past two decades, the landscape of American comity has deteriorated. Whereas competing ideas used to be freely shared with respectful tolerance of one another’s point of view, increasingly some Americans have sought to assert their ideological will over a silenced opponent.

The debate over climate change (formerly known as global warming) is a prime example of this muzzling. While the scientific community claims broad consensus on the topic,^vi dissenters face condemnation,^vii loss of employment,^viii and even threat of prosecution.^{ix x} Sadly, this isn’t the only push for enforced ideological conformity.

The advent of social media as a virtual public square has revolutionized the way the world interacts with one another. However, the dawn of the 2020s saw an alarming rise in the use of so-called fact checkers to mark, and oftentimes delete, individual speech that strayed outside thought boundaries. Whether the topic was COVID origins, COVID treatments, the 2020 election, or a litany of other topics, Americans discovered an electronic hand would be placed over their mouth if they displeased the unseen enforcers of societal dogmas.

“Cancel Culture” is perhaps one of the cruelest iterations of this phenomenon. This form of organized bullying^xi utilizes the power of the mob and social ostracism to strong-arm a target into submission. The “cancelled” individual is effectively destroyed—often losing their employment and previous standing in society^xii —but the intent is also to serve as a warning to others that they too will be eviscerated if they step out of line.^xiii

Cancel Vultures circling Franklin TN…

This past weekend, Franklin TN served as the host city to the American Dream Conference featuring several prominent political leaders, academics, and pundits.^xiv It was a thoughtful, respectful reflection on our society’s progress towards Dr. Martin Luther King’s ideal of a nation of equal citizens living in harmony.

Nevertheless, a local group rolled out a predictable arsenal of baseless slander^{xv xvi} in an attempt to disrupt this event in the days preceding. They also made a feeble, cowardly effort at cancel culture in the heart of Tennessee. Their thinly veiled threats at local government^{xvii xviii} and businesses^{xix xx} were a sad display of their utter intellectual and moral bankruptcy.

Their behavior follows a bitter trend among the political left in this country of marginalizing any voices of dissent emanating from minority communities.^{xxi xxii} Whether it’s branding someone like Dr. Thomas Sowell, Justice Clarence Thomas, or Secretary (Dr.) Ben Carson as “Uncle Tom” or a white woman in a gorilla mask throwing an egg at gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder, the message is clear: “you don’t conform to our racial dogma, therefore we will shut you down and destroy you.” Hardly where Dr. King likely envisioned our country 54 years hence…

Celebrating true diversity

So much has been said about the need for diversity in our nation. Americans of every walk of life would likely agree, but not necessarily the diversity championed by woke totalitarians of the 21^st century. As Socrates opined, diversity of thought is good as it leads to discovery and learning.

Rather than attempting to muzzle the American Dream Conference speakers, or any voice challenging the now monolithic narrative of woke, wouldn’t it be more credible to challenge the ideas instead of the right of the presenters to speak? Only by stepping into the arena of ideas and competing on equal footing will the opposition’s position have any true merit among thoughtful Americans.

The question is, do they have the courage to pursue a Socratic approach to advance their cause, or will they choose the path of lesser, reviled historical figures?

Steve Canyon is a retired military officer.

The Language of Liberty series is an outreach project of the Center for Self Governance, a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization, dedicated to training citizens in principles of liberty. The views expressed by the authors are their own and may not reflect the views of CSG. CenterForSelfGovernance.com

Word Count: 1092

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It is always darkest just before dawn…

The past two years have been one of the strangest and very arguably difficult periods in American history.

A global pandemic of questionable origins. Political upheaval that has transcended traditional squabbles regarding taxation levels and discretionary spending. Social mayhem fomented, distilled, and amplified seemingly without concern for the long term effect on the ties that bind us together as a nation. A decidedly dark turn by government away from enforcement of duly passed laws in favor of edicts, promulgations, and fiats. All under the backdrop of metastasizing foreign threats most Americans cannot begin to fathom for all the turmoil within our own unenforced borders.

It is enough to make one despair, to lose hope, to believe the night will never end. It is also easy to forget that we Americans have been in darker places than this before, and through determination, grit, our common bonds and most of all, Divine Providence, we have emerged from that dark tunnel and found new strength to carry on.

Let us recall a couple of these morose echoes from America’s past.

A Revolution on the brink

Americans celebrate the bravado of the July 4^th 1776 Declaration of Independence from the British global superpower. What many fail to consider is that it took another seven years of grueling struggle and sacrifice to realize the promise of that mid-summer act of defiance.

Perhaps the nadir of the Revolutionary War occurred during the long winter of 1777-78. The Continental Army, having fought to a stalemate in the Battle of White Marsh, set up their winter encampment at Valley Forge just before Christmas 1777.

This 12,000 person cantonment was spartan, very poorly provisioned, and suffered from atrociously substandard sanitation. Bedraggled soldiers residing in ramshackle quarters endured amputating frostbite and outbreaks of typhus, dysentery, and influenza. In total, nearly 2,000 soldiers perished during the six month encampment.

To make matters worse, the Continental Army had little standardization across its units, hampering its effectiveness as a fighting force. This combined maelstrom of misery drove morale to such dangerous levels that General Washington warned Congress that the army would either “starve, dissolve, or disperse.”ⁱ

Nevertheless, the Continentals persisted. Washington successfully lobbied Congress for better provisioning and installed a highly regarded combat general as the Quartermaster General to ensure improved logistics. The introduction of Prussian drill master Friedrich von Steuben improved standardization, efficiency, and effectiveness among all units. Finally, a late winter alliance with France gave the Continentals both additional manpower and supplies in their fight against the British. This combined to lift morale, leading to an effective campaign in which the Continentals acquitted themselves well at the Battle of Monmouth six months after making camp outside Philadelphia.

The dark winter at Valley Forge was over.

A bold stab at the heart of the foe

The U.S. was reeling in early 1942. Pearl Harbor, occurring three weeks before Christmas, was rapidly followed hours later by invasion of the Philippines. This American controlled archipelago fell to the Japanese in early April 1942 after most of the Asiatic Fleet was destroyed. There were very real concerns the Japanese would show up in San Francisco.ⁱⁱ

We were being rolled up.

A plan was hatched in the week following Pearl Harbor to strike back in some way, just to swing the emotional pendulum the other direction. National command leadership turned to an Air Corps Lieutenant Colonel by the name of Jimmy Doolittle to offer a glimmer of hope filled light to a reeling nation.

Army Air Corps B-25 bombers would be transported via aircraft carrier to within striking distance of the Japanese homeland. They would hit targets around Tokyo, then go on to land in (then) friendly Chinese territory.

It was highly risky for several reasons. First, B-25s were not carrier aircraft and the U.S. only had two operational carriers at the time. They could neither risk a mishap on one of these capital ships, nor discovery and engagement by the Japanese. Nonetheless, Doolittle’s Raiders conducted the mission–a tactically insignificant mission as the light bombers carried very little ordnance and caused negligible damage to the Japanese war effort. A metaphorical mosquito biting your neck.

However, the mosquito raid had a broader strategic effect. The attack caused tremendous concern and anger in the Japanese high command that they had been attacked on their homeland. The Japanese thus committed to eliminate the U.S. carrier force in the Pacific.

This set the stage for the pivotal and tide-turning Battle of Midway in mid-1942. The Japanese never recovered from this defeat.

Counting the minutes to daybreak

Americans are an impatient lot. We have grown impetuous as the blessings of liberty have begat unimagined luxuries with incredible speed. We want it all, and we want it now.

The acceleration of the aforementioned current challenges is disconcerting. That alarm will grow exponentially as the pace and tenor of these challenges continues to grow. Americans no doubt want a return to “normalcy,” but they want it on their timeline and may miss both the subtle changes for the better and their ability to effect that change.

In the two historical examples, the situation did not change overnight. It was a hard, arduous process that eventually got the Continental Army “over the hump” and a risky, perilous gamble that set in motion an over response by an American foe in World War II. In the background, average Americans played a role. Whether it was surreptitiously fashioning 2,000 shirts under the nose of British occupiers for the freezing men at Valley Forge, or collecting scrap, buying war bonds, and planting a Victory Garden during World War II, Americans showed their grit, tenacity, and willingness to put their collective shoulders to the effort.

In both cases, the light of dawn eventually came, but not before the nation traversed a very dark period.

We are less than a week from Christmas—a time of hope and rebirth in the Christian Church as the promise of a Redeemer is realized. It is perhaps not coincidental that Christmas occurs in concert with the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere—a time of maximum night before the sun begins to reclaim more of each day.

In this season of darkness, let us not despair in the news of the day. Rather, let us together work to change our future, to push back and reassert our birthright as free Americans, but most of all, believe that the dawn will come.

Merry Christmas

Steve Canyon is a retired military officer.

The Language of Liberty series is an outreach project of the Center for Self Governance, a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization, dedicated to training citizens in principles of liberty. The views expressed by the authors are their own and may not reflect the views of CSG. CenterForSelfGovernance.com

Word Count: 1092

The post Awaiting The Dawn appeared first on The Washington Standard.

The breathtaking devolution of our Afghanistan exit plan stunned the world. In the blood soaked aftermath, 13 American servicemen and women perished, thousands of American citizens remain stranded, and countless Afghans allies face almost certain extermination.

Calls for Executive branch resignations have rained down.^{i ii iii iv} As of yet, no one has “fallen on their sword” for this incomprehenisble disaster. Without fail, the Executive branch leadership team excused the catastrophe as unforeseeable or predestined.^{v vi vii} Interestingly, a flood of journalists, professionals, and experts have rushed to defend this assertion of blamelessness, or disperse the blame so widely to make it impossible to hold anyone accountable.^{viii ix x xi}

One such professional is Elizabeth Shackelford, an author, former foreign service officer, and fellow at foreign policy think tanks.^xii Ms. Shackelford recently penned an op-ed, leveraging her experience to diffuse criticism for this disaster away from the Executive branch.^xiii Shackelford certainly has an impressive resume and is a compelling appeal to expert authority. However, peeling back the onion reveals more to the story.

A Creature from a Dank Lagoon…

Shackelford is a career denizen of the State Department, resigning in protest in 2017 following President Trump’s election.^xiv This raises the very real question of whether she’s mortgaging her credentials to paper over a titanic blunder by her political fellow travelers. Whatever the case, it is clear she is aligned with the same cabal at State & DoD who both hamstrung Trump’s efforts at Afghan withdrawal last year^xv and were responsible for either errors of omission or commission in this current fiasco.

Shackelford also worked for Booz, Allen, Hamilton, a DC area consulting firm who shifted their business focus to government & military contracts following World War II.^xvi Bloomberg has called BAH “the world’s most profitable spy organization” because of the huge number of former intelligence officers on its payroll^xvii and over 10,000 employees with TS/SCI security clearances.^xviii Whistleblower Edward Snowden was a former employee who exposed the existence of a mass NSA surveillance program.^xix BAH has funded both political parties & politicians such as Barack Obama and John McCain who are supportive of the surveillance state, resulting in a steady stream of business.^xx BAH aggressively expanded its footprint in the Middle East and North Africa in 2012.^xxi Notably, this was immediately after the clandestinely U.S.-supported Arab Spring^xxii & attendant refugee crises in Libya & Syria. Whether or not there’s a connection is debatable, but the timing and location of this business expansion was clearly fortuitous for BAH. Shackelford’s association with BAH indicates she has extensive experience with the people in and out of government commonly referred to as the “Deep State.”

Ms. Shackelford is a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. This think tank formed in response to isolationist attitudes in the U.S. after World War I.^xxiii It appears to view the U.S. through a globalist lens and not as a unique, exceptional, distinct nation state in its own right. In 2017, the Council released a report supportive of immigration due to population decline.^xxiv While likely factually correct, it could be viewed as an attempt to oppose Trump Administration policies to control illegal immigration. The Council’s president, Ivo Daalder, led efforts to involve NATO and the U.S. militarily in the Libyan Civil War,^xxv ultimately ousting Qaddafi (who posed no threat to the U.S.)^xxvi and kicking off the aforementioned refugee crisis. Far from the non-partisan organization they claim to be, Shackelford’s current employer has an agenda appearing counter to the primary responsibility of a nation state to protect its own interests.

In her piece, Shackelford blames the Afghan disaster on the U.S. not controling Kabul, thus making the evacuation a chaotic nightmare. This is true, but ignores a triumvirate of facts: 1) the U.S. gave up the much more secure and remote Bagram AB; 2) the U.S. did not take up the Taliban’s offer to stay out of Kabul while the evacuation proceeded; and 3) the U.S. then ceded airport access control to the Taliban, resulting in navigating a terrifying gauntlet of Taliban thugs to escape the country. Shackelford blame shifts, saying all Americans were warned for years to avoid Afghanistan. This destroys her credibility because, as a former State Department employee, she likely advocated for greater non-governmental organization involvement in war zones such as Afghanistan.^xxvii Her railing against the SIV program is similarly odious. She wants to diminish U.S. citizenship to the point where everyone who applies will be quickly admitted as a future citizen. Furthermore, she ignores the fact that nearly all Afghans who rode C-17s out were NOT SIV applicants, but economic migrants looking for opportunity.^xxviii The only thing she gets right is the troops and civilians on the ground in Kabul last month deserve our unending gratitude.

Whispers from History

In his farewell address, George Washington cautioned against “overgrown military establishments” as an extant threat to liberty.^xxix Over 160 years later, President Dwight Eisenhower similarly admonished the nation to be wary of “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial-congressional complex in creating a “disastrous rise in misplaced power.”^xxx

Americans rightly deserve a sober, detailed, and thorough accounting of what led not just to the events of the past month, but of the previous 20 years before it as well. Determining the root cause of this failure, and, more importantly, how to not repeat it in the future, should be every American’s objective.

Experts, such as Shackelford, both in and out of government, appear to want to move past this sad epoch and continue with business as usual. Given the public’s penchant to focus on domestic issues, they may succeed. Nonetheless, Shackelford’s piece, and the event it absolves, indicates Washington and Eisenhower were correct in their assessment. It is thus incumbent upon us, the true power within our nation, to demand a reckoning.

Steve Canyon is a retired military officer.

The Language of Liberty series is an outreach project of the Center for Self Governance, a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization, dedicated to training citizens in principles of liberty. The views expressed by the authors are their own and may not reflect the views of CSG. CenterForSelfGovernance.com

i^ https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-resignation-impeachment-calls

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In September 2020, I wrote for FEE that, “From draconian lockdown powers to taking over the rental housing market, it’s extremely unlikely our elected officials will cede all the authority they’ve seized during the pandemic.” We’re now witnessing my prediction play out in real-time.

Under the Biden administration’s purview, the CDC just unilaterally renewed its so-called “eviction moratorium.” It did so after the nationwide near-ban on eviction of non-paying tenants expired Saturday and in spite of Congress not passing legislation to renew it.

The new CDC order is somewhat more limited than the original one, claiming to only apply to areas with “substantial and high levels of [COVID-19] community transmission.” But this reportedly applies to roughly 90 percent of the US under the CDC’s definition. The two-month extension will now run until October 3. (When, presumably, there will again be a push for its extension).

“The emergence of the delta variant has led to a rapid acceleration of community transmission in the United States, putting more Americans at increased risk, especially if they are unvaccinated,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said. “This moratorium is the right thing to do to keep people in their homes and out of congregate settings where COVID-19 spreads.”

The CDC is renewing this policy, yet again, even though the Supreme Court only narrowly upheld its last iteration. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh specifically wrote that “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31.”

Short version: The CDC doesn’t have the authority to do this.

And guess who agrees? The Biden administration. White House officials have repeatedly acknowledged that the federal government lacks constitutional authority to renew the order without Congress.

But this renewal is more than just an example of flagrant lawlessness and unconstitutional government overreach. It’s yet more illustration of the principle described by Milton Friedman when he said “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

The Nobel-Prize-winning economist argued that we should be wary of “temporary” expansions of government power, because more often than not they become permanent, or at least part of the expansion remains. Why? Well, as Friedman explained, “temporary” programs “establish an interested constituency that… lobbie[s] for their continuation.”

Essentially, the public will acquiesce to more than it otherwise would under the promise that the infringement is temporary. But, then, the intervention will benefit some key parties so much that they will fight to keep it in place permanently after public scrutiny fades.

This is exactly what has played out with the CDC’s eviction moratorium dysfunction.

Even setting aside the fact that the first order was flagrantly unconstitutional from the get-go, it never made any sense. Ordering a halt to evictions without compensating landlords is like passing a law saying anyone may go into a grocery store, load up their carts with food, and walk out without paying. Applying this broken logic to rentals (predictably) bankrupted many middle-and-working class landlords and led to many rental properties being taken off the market altogether.

The moratorium has also created a $21 billion backlog in unpaid rent and millions of evictions that will occur when it is allowed to expire—costs that grow even bigger with every day it is left in place.

This has, as Friedman predicted, created a strong constituency demanding its extension time and time again, prompting the CDC’s latest move. But even setting aside the Constitutional questions, we can’t feasibly continue the policy forever any more than we could force grocery stores to hand out food for free into perpetuity. The shelves would run bare, and so, too, rental units will continue to evaporate from the market—ultimately leaving even renters themselves worse off.

The CDC order is essentially a ticking time bomb, bound to explode and hurt people whenever it ultimately lapses. But the government has every incentive to delay this damage as long as possible, even though it only grows more harmful with each delay. The result will likely be permanent and long-term dysfunction, all thanks to a “temporary” government measure that has proven to be anything but.

The CDC has created an absolute debacle, but there may be one small upside. Perhaps now more Americans will understand why Milton Friedman so famously warned the public to be skeptical of “temporary” government programs.

Brad Polumbo is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education. Published with permission, fee.org

The Language of Liberty series is a collaborative effort of the Center for Self Governance (CSG) Administrative Team and is an outreach project of Center for Self Governance to educate citizens in principles of liberty. The authors include administrative staff, students, and guest columnists. Views expressed may not reflect the views of CSG.

The post The CDC Just Proved Milton Friedman Right (Again!) appeared first on The Washington Standard.

The phantom proposal, which was supposed to be the shell of Joe Biden’s phony infrastructure bill, never materialized. Amazingly, that didn’t deter Democrats, who are desperate to blow through more taxpayer dollars before summer recess. Well, the Left has proved they can game the system, but they can’t bypass it. “These discussions have yet to conclude,” McConnell said “There’s no outcome yet, no bipartisan agreement, no text. Nothing for the Congressional Budget Office to evaluate. And certainly nothing on which to vote. Not yet. So obviously, if the Democratic leader tries to force a cloture vote on a bill that does not exist. It will fail.”

And it did. Republicans, even the ones negotiating with Democrats, refused to take a $1.2 trillion dollar proposal on faith. “There just isn’t the kind of trust around it right now that would allow that to happen,” Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) warned. Across the aisle, Schumer, competing for understatement of the year, declared after the vote, “In order to finish the bill, first we need to start.” That’s proving to be a tall order for Biden’s party. Turns out, there’s a big difference between squawking about bipartisanship and actually practicing it. And of course, Democrats have made that even more difficult by trying to cram the bill full of wildly unpopular priorities.

Just this week, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) argued that the bill — which is already so far removed from actual infrastructure that it’s become a late-night punch line — should include things like “voting rights.” What does that have to do with paving highways? Absolutely nothing — unless the road is to a permanent Democratic majority. On the White House’s Twitter account, Biden’s spin-masters insist the plan will build “thousands of bridges.” That’s interesting, NRO’s Dominic Pino writes. Because 99.2 percent of what they’re discussing has nothing to do with bridges.

Frankly, the idea that members of both parties are willing to add heaping piles of debt onto a towering mountain of IOUs ought to worry everyone, Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.) warned on “Washington Watch.” “How are they going to pay for this $1.2 trillion dollars?” he asked. And let’s not forget, Daines said, “This is just the warm-up. [These are] the hors d’oeuvres for the main course the Democrats are salivating over. And that’s the $3.5 trillion dollar — that’s with a T — [grab bag of liberal priorities that Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is pushing], which includes massive spending, massive tax increases, massive increase in the deficit, massive effects on inflation in our country. But if there’s something the Democrats do really, really well,” Daines pointed out, “it’s that they know how to spend and they know how to raise taxes.”

Not surprisingly, Daines said, this twin set of bills — worth an eye-popping $4.7 trillion — will cost much more than what they’re claiming. “Because what they’ve done is [stuffed it with brand] new entitlements that go out for five years. But the reality is, those will continue on beyond five years and [will] probably be there forever. As Ronald Reagan talked about, [these are] the forever programs of federal government… And what’s going on now is, of course, inflation… the greatest inflation we’ve had in 13 years. Inflation is really a tax on the American people. It’s the most regressive kind of tax, because those who can afford it the least are impacted the most. With inflation, you throw another $5 trillion dollars of spending in the economy and you know what’s going to happen? It’s going to put more inflationary pressure.”

But wait — what about Biden’s speech that spending helps inflation? Daines, like everyone else who understands basic economics, half-laughed. “You can’t defy the laws of gravity. That’s what’s going on. Or when you inject that amount of federal spending into the economy, we’re already starting to see the effects… I can’t imagine what will happen here if they’re successful in pushing another $5 trillion dollars into the economy over a relatively short period of time… The scale of what they’re looking at is dangerous,” he warned. Apart from the actual numbers — which are massive — this whole stunt of moving forward with a bill that doesn’t even exist is very revealing. It’s like running around with a checkbook full of signed checks! How many Americans in their right mind would do that? And yet, that’s exactly what the Left tried here.

Americans need to be paying attention, Daines said, because China is. They watched Biden ram through — on purely partisan lines — another $2 trillion dollar COVID relief package this year — even though we still had a trillion dollars of unspent funds from 2020. “We didn’t need it.” Now, there’s $4.7 trillion dollars on deck, and China is cheering — because if we keep passing proposals like this one, America will eventually collapse under the weight of all of this spending. “We’re unilaterally disarming in this country by raising taxes to make us less competitive, pushing jobs back overseas, creating inflationary pressures which really shrinks the paycheck of the American people. This is recklessness by the Left,” he insisted. “We must do everything we can to stop it. And by the way, it just takes one Democrat to stop this — just one — because they don’t pass this purely on a 50-50 kind of vote. If one Dem stands up and has the courage to push back, we can stop this.”

Published with permission, Family Research Council, Washington Update, July 22, 2021 frc.org.

The Language of Liberty series is a collaborative effort of the Center for Self Governance (CSG) Administrative Team and is an outreach project of Center for Self Governance to educate citizens in principles of liberty. The authors include administrative staff, students, and guest columnists.  Views expressed may not reflect the views of CSG.

The post Dems: All Good Things Must Come to a Spend appeared first on The Washington Standard.

One concern regards the right to privacy, specifically “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches,” per the Fourth Amendment. Federal law strictly protects access to medical history — like vaccinations — a fact abortion activists exploit by claiming that the decision to abort should be kept between a woman and her doctor (the difference is that abortion is not healthcare). But abortion activist Xavier Becerra, Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, insisted today that knowing whether a person has been vaccinated for COVID is “absolutely the government’s business.” Why the double standard?

Related to privacy, Americans could face retaliation if the government forced them to disclose their vaccination status, and it was leaked. The Supreme Court just struck down a California law (formerly championed by Xavier Becerra), in part due to concerns over retaliation from leaked confidential information. “The Left is now politicizing this issue of the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), so a door-to-door campaign could lead to intimidation or worse. Norman warned “there appears to be [studies] targeting of Republican males” for their lower vaccination rates. The mafia, too, was known for its “targeted community door-to-door outreach” — and baseball bats.

• US Soldiers Threaten To Quit Over Mandatory Jabs As Biden Says “Door To Door” Vaccines Coming Soon
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• California: Vaccine “Police” Going Door To Door To Intimidate “Unvaccinated” Into Taking Gene-Altering Experimental Injection (Video)
• The Vaccines Are Coming To Your Front Door, Literally!
• It Begins: Seattle Fire Dept Will Go Door To Door To “Adult Family” Homes To Administer COVID-19 Vaccines
• Minnesota: Armed Residents Confront COVID-19 Testing Teams Conducting Random Door To Door Blood Tests
• Look At What Ignorance & Inaction Is Bringing To Your Front Door: Now Discussing Going Into ‘Family Homes’ to Separate People
• Rockefeller Playbook: United Nations Rolls Out In Your Face Official New World Order Website As CDC Goes Door-To-Door (Video)

To date, Psaki and Biden have insisted that the door-to-door outreach is purely to spread information. In mellow tones, they laugh off conservative warnings about mandatory vaccine targeting, just like the Left laughed off conservative warnings of CRT in schools and of transgender ideology following gay marriage, following legalization of homosexual behavior. See the pattern?

President Biden’s latest policy flub demonstrates his misunderstanding of Americans’ relationship to their government that led to the vaccination shortfall in the first place. As Norman said, Biden believes “the government is our keeper.” He believes vaccination rates are low because people don’t know they should get vaccinated. He expects people to get the vaccine simply because the government tells them to. Biden does not expect Americans to act rationally and make their own decisions, so he feels no need to persuade them with reasoned arguments. There’s no other way to explain Biden’s pathetic rhetoric like, “It sounds corny, but it’s a patriotic thing to do.”

But this is America, where people are free to make their own decisions for themselves and their families. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) explained, “The burden is on [Biden and Harris] to make sure people understand these vaccines are safe.” Ever since his vaccine skepticism in September 2020, Biden has failed to fulfill the burden of moral suasion Americans expect from a president. For instance, the president could end the public transportation mask mandate for vaccinated people. What won’t persuade Americans — particularly conservatives — to get the vaccine is federal intimidation tactics. When Biden’s persuasion campaign without persuasion fails, what more draconian tactics will he turn to?

Published with permission, Family Research Council, Washington Update, July 8, 2021 frc.org.

The Language of Liberty series is a collaborative effort of the Center for Self Governance (CSG) Administrative Team and is an outreach project of Center for Self Governance to educate citizens in principles of liberty. The authors include administrative staff, students, and guest columnists.  Views expressed may not reflect the views of CSG.

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I didn’t know what the word meant, but I liked the way it sounded.

Even better, I liked having a business. I was selling hand-knitted dolls, made from patterns I had designed myself. I sold them for $24 apiece, which, at 12 years old, was good money. It would only take me four sales to make nearly $100, and $100 significantly upped the balance I scrawled on the lid of my money box.

That number excited me when I first got started. Little did I know I would surpass it many times over in the years I was in business.

The money was nice. More importantly, I was learning real-world lessons about life, business, and being opportunistic—skills that served me well in my future entrepreneurial ventures, such as breaking into the startup world and becoming a professional development coach.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized how much of an advantage being homeschooled gave me when it came to thinking entrepreneurially.

There are some very tangible reasons why.

• ONE: Immersed in the Business World

I grew up watching my parents engage in business. I’d sit at the kitchen table to do math in the morning, while my mom made lunch a few feet away. In the afternoon I’d go out with my parents to run errands, and I’d get to watch my mom make transactions at the bank and decisions at the store.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the world of a homeschooler is very different from the world of a public schooler.

The world of public school is divided into segments: ages divided by grade, days divided by period, life divided by school vs. work vs. activities.

The world of a homeschooler, on the other hand, is organic. It’s all one world: work and play, learning and recreation. The adult world is not a distant thing to be engaged with “someday.” It’s just part of the sandbox kids are playing in on a daily basis.

So the connections between “people do that” and “I could do that” happen organically.

While the public schooler is stuck in class, the homeschooled kid is home to watch the landscaper pull up and take care of the neighbor’s lawn. The possibility is presented to them: “What if I did that?” A push mower and a weedwhacker later, a new landscaping venture is born.

Of course, this doesn’t mean a public schooler can’t start a landscaping business too. Many do, I’m sure. But the homeschooler has two distinct advantages:

1. They see opportunities for entrepreneurship more clearly.
2. The surface area for opportunities to come to them is greater, because they’re around in the real world and exposed to them.

Both of these advantages make a big difference.

• TWO: Freedom to Lean Into Opportunities

Back when I was working my first office job, I remember my CEO’s homeschooled kids coming into the office to run a bake sale.

They had made the connection that their dad had a bunch of hungry employees, that they had baking skills, and that those two things went well together. They made cookies and Rice Krispy bars and some cute signs and brought them all into the office one Friday around lunchtime.

If I remember correctly, they made bank.

It is our natural inclination as children to mimic the behavior of others in the real world. Just think about how much small children love toys like cash registers and play kitchens. Little kids tend toward play-mimicry; as kids get older, they start gravitating toward real-world emulation and experimentation.

When there’s less distinction between things you “have to do” and things you “want to do,” between “kid stuff” and “grown up stuff,” it’s much easier for the worlds to blend.

And on a practical level, homeschooled kids just have more time. If you’re not waiting for bells and periods and other students, your school work doesn’t actually take that long.

Most kids I knew growing up could get their work done in two or three hours a day, which left them with the rest of the day to play with.

Literally. They could play, they could explore their interests, they could have fun.

• THREE: How Play Evolves Into Entrepreneurship

Often it’s an organic transition from play to entrepreneurship: such a fine line that it isn’t even discernible to the naked eye.

I started my doll-making business by accident. I was playing with knitting patterns, found an idea I liked, and made the doll—just for fun.

Then I gave it to my little sister as a present—just for fun.

One of the homeschooling moms I knew loved the doll and asked if she could buy one. So I sold her a custom order—just for fun.

And then I realized that this was a process I could rinse and repeat—and make money off of. And slowly my opportunistic tendencies kicked in. But it all stemmed from play.

There are many valuable things that we’re naturally drawn to. But it’s only when we’re given the freedom to play that we get to go explore them, try them out, find how they’re valuable and make them stick.

And since we’re just playing, it’s always fun.

And since it’s always fun, we keep going.

And since we keep going, we’re more likely to succeed.

Hannah is a writer, filmmaker, photographer, and storyteller. Published with permission, Foundation for Economic Education, fee.org

The Language of Liberty series is a collaborative effort of the Center for Self Governance (CSG) Administrative Team and is an outreach project of Center for Self Governance to educate citizens in principles of liberty. The authors include administrative staff, students, and guest columnists.  Views expressed may not reflect the views of CSG.

The post 3 Reasons Homeschoolers Often Become Entrepreneurs appeared first on The Washington Standard.

For all of recorded history, the need to explain why fathers are necessary would have been regarded as, well, unnecessary. It would have been like explaining why water, or air, is necessary.

But we live at a time in which the obvious is routinely denied.

There have been articles in the most prestigious journals denying the importance of fathers:

The Atlantic Magazine, for example, published an article titled: “Are Fathers Necessary? A paternal contribution may not be as essential as we think.”

The New York Times published a discussion among five intellectuals titled, “What Are Fathers For?” One of them, Hanna Rosin, an editor at New York Magazine, opened her response by stating: “I’m not sure whether a child needs a father.”

I could give dozens of such examples. I’ll just give one more.

HuffPost published a piece titled: “Fathers Are Not Needed.”

Fortunately, this dismissal of the importance of fathers is not universal.

In a 2008 Father’s Day speech, a few months before his election as president of the United States, Barack Obama said, fathers are “critical” to the foundation of each family, that “they are teachers and coaches; they are mentors and role models; they are examples of success; and they are the men who constantly push us toward it.”

What makes his comments particularly noteworthy is that Barack Obama grew up without a father.

Both boys and girls need fathers.

We’ll begin with boys. A boy has no built-in understanding about how to be a man — meaning a good and responsible man. Male nature is wild — most obviously regarding sex and violence. If a boy does not have a father who models how a man controls himself, he will most likely not know how to control himself — let alone want to. That’s why most males in prison for violent crimes grew up without a father.

After days of riots in the UK in 2011, quite like the 2020 riots in America, Cristina Odone wrote a column for The London Telegraph whose title says it all: “London riots: Absent fathers have a lot to answer for.” In the column, she wrote, “The majority of rioters are gang members… Like the overwhelming majority of youth offenders behind bars, these gang members have one thing in common: no father at home.”

There is no question that many mothers have done an excellent job raising a boy without their son’s father. But common sense alone suggests that a mother simply cannot model what a boy should be any more than a man can model to a girl what a woman should be.

And, then there is the issue of controlling boys and their wild natures. Again, there are mothers who are able to do this. But if a boy is at all difficult — as so many are — as he gets older, most mothers will find it more and more difficult to control their son: because unruly boys listen to their fathers much more than they listen to their mothers. Which is precisely why most violent criminals grew up in fatherless homes. They obviously did not listen to their mothers.

As regards daughters, the father is THE man girls learn to relate to. Without a father to relate to and bond with, there are at least two destructive consequences. First, she will not know how to choose a man wisely. She will not know how a man should treat her, and she may well end up with a man who mistreats her. Second, to fulfill her desire to bond with a man — as primal a yearning in most women as bonding with a woman is in most men — she will go from man to man. Girls without fathers in their lives are far more likely to be sexually promiscuous, and to begin sexual activity at an earlier age, which in turn are reasons many young women are depressed. Few women find sleeping with man after man fulfilling. Most find it ultimately depressing.

Finally, fathers give both sons and daughters the thing children need most: a sense of safety and security. As much as children need love, they need a sense of security even more. And in general, Moms give love and Dads give security.

I learned how necessary fathers are, not only by having one and being one, but by the many people — men and women, of all ages — who have told me that they see me as a “father-figure.” I am honored to fill that role. The good news is that many men can fill it: grandfathers, uncles, teachers, mentors, clergy, and yes – even a man on the radio.

But some man has to be your father.

Dennis Prager is a best-selling author, columnist and nationally syndicated radio talk show host. Published with permission, Prager University.

The Language of Liberty series is a collaborative effort of the Center for Self Governance (CSG) Administrative Team and is an outreach project of Center for Self Governance to educate citizens in principles of liberty. The authors include administrative staff, students, and guest columnists.  Views expressed may not reflect the views of CSG.

The post Are Fathers Necessary? appeared first on The Washington Standard.