Liberty: a time for choosing

The New Neo Posted on by

This is from commenter “Erisguy”:

When liberty dies in the hearts of a people, no court, no law, no constitution can save it. And by now a majority of “Americans”…wish only [for] their side to rule unhindered by law, evidence, reason, morality, custom, tradition.

Imagining themselves oppressed because the government doesn’t pay for their abortion, contraceptives, and sex changes; because the government can’t cure their transmissible diseases; because the government lets them hear voices they don’t want heard, they will bring about oppressions not seen on this continent since the Aztecs.

I used to think the thirst for liberty was more universal and more basic than I now think it is. Oh, I never thought it was everywhere, and I always thought it had to be nurtured and encouraged in order to flourish. But I thought that a lot of people – maybe even most? – had a sort of innate hunger for it. And I thought that in particular in the US, with its history and its self-selected immigrant population in the past that valued liberty more than those who stayed behind, we had an even larger proportion of people to whom liberty meant not just something, but a great great deal.

After all, when I was growing up, we used to learn about Patrick Henry saying “Give me liberty or give me death.” I doubt children learn anything about him now except that he was an evil white man.

What happened? One thing that happened was the failure to teach the value and tradition of liberty as well as to live it – and not just a failure to teach it, but the growth and spread of the teaching of the left, which is antithetical to liberty. Of course, liberty includes freedom of speech, and therefore we don’t shut down the teachings of the left. But the right allowed the Gramscian march, particularly through our educational system, and the left achieved total domination there without the right fighting back powerfully enough to counter what was happening:

Reagan knew over fifty years ago what the danger was:

Actually, the Founders knew the same principles about two hundred and fifty years ago. They may not have known all the details, but they understand the concepts and the dangers.

And the following quote is the nightmare vision of Dostoevsky, as expressed in The Grand Inquisitor portion of The Brothers Karamazov. The Grand Inquisitor is here addressing Jesus, who has come back to earth. Alhough the Inquisitor is a man of the Church, he is not in favor of what he believes Jesus offers to humankind, which is free will. Instead, the Inquisitor proposes to enslave people, and he tells Jesus how he will go about doing it.

I’ve divided it into paragraphs that are not there in the original, the better to clarify what’s being said [my emphasis added]:

Command that these stones be made bread–and mankind will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of cattle. But even then it will be ever diffident and trembling, lest Thou should take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread! Thou didst refuse to accept the offer for fear of depriving men of their free choice; for where is there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread? Man shall not live by bread alone– was Thine answer. Thou knewest not, it seems, that it was precisely in the name of that earthly bread that the terrestrial spirit would one day rise against, struggle with, and finally conquer Thee…

Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? “Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!” will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Thee–a banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel…

…It is then that we will finish building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name. Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: “Enslave, but feed us!” That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings too weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread?…In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling over them–so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men!

The Brothers Karamazov first appeared in 1880, and Dostoevsky died just a few months later. That sounds like a long time ago, but it’s really not that long in the scheme of things (for example, three of my four grandparents were born before then).

I first encountered “The Grand Inquisitor” in the 60s, when we read it in high school. I didn’t fully understand it at the time (not that I fully understand it even now), but it gripped me with a memorable power, and I understood it well enough to be frightened by it, to get the gist of it, and to consider it important.

A lot of years have passed since then, and it only seems more important now. It always was equally important, of course – as Reagan makes clear. But sometimes it seems more urgent. It certainly does now.

[NOTE: The “Grand Inquisitor part of this post appeared in an earlier form here. The title of the present post comes from the title of a famous speech of Ronald Reagan’s in 1964.]

Biden: Hey, let’s make every day Halloween, nationwide!

The New Neo Posted on by

Outside.

Yes, he’s proposing mandatory mask-wearing outside.

The story:

“Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months, at a minimum. Every governor should mandate — every governor should mandate mandatory mask wearing,” Biden said, adding that experts advised it could save over 40,000 lives over the same time span.

“It’s not about your rights,” Biden said, seeming to speak directly to Americans who have complained that compulsory mask wearing is a violation of their personal freedom. “It’s about your responsibilities as an American.”

It’s not about your rights. They are dispensable. And this “40,000” figure is just some epidemiologists’ projection, based on very little knowledge – like so much of what has been going on since this winter and the early predictions and recommendations regarding the pandemic.

And then there’s this [emphasis mine]:

The one thing we do know, these masks make a gigantic difference. I would insist that everybody in public be wearing that mask,” the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee said in an interview with the CBS Pittsburgh affiliate KDKA on Thursday.

Not only do we not know that “these masks make a gigantic difference” – especially if worn outside in settings where people are not close together – but it’s almost humorous that Biden is saying that it’s the one thing we know. I guess there’s nothing else we know?

More:

Asked if he would use his federal leverage to mandate the wearing of masks, the former vice president said, “Yes, I would from an executive standpoint. Yes, I would.”

Whatever could go wrong? He’s not talking about a suggestion or a recommendation, as has already been made, but an order. Supposedly enforceable.

In addition to the anti-liberty aspects of Biden’s statements, the science isn’t what you might call “settled.” What type of mask? All masks are not created equal. As in that article I just linked, masks are evaluated for droplet blockage in controlled situations, not for real-world transmissions under the particular sorts of conditions Biden is specifying – at least, I have searched but been unable to find a thing about it.

What I did find was this sort of article, which is from a month ago and attempts to evaluate mask-wearing. It relies on statistical evaluations of various public health measures such as mandatory mask-wearing and tries to figure out how each one affected transmission of the virus pre-mandate and post-mandate back in April and May. The mandatory mask-wearing mentioned in the article involves use by employees in businesses where they must face the public (supermarkets and other stores, for example), not outdoor use by ordinary citizens [emphasis added]:

The question of whether wearing masks in public place should be mandatory or not has been one of the most contested policy issues with health authorities of different countries providing contradiction recommendations. Reviewing evidence, Greenhalgh et al.(2020) recognize that there is no randomized controlled trial evidence for the effectiveness of face masks, but they state “indirect evidence exists to support the argument for the public wearing masks in theCovid-19 pandemic.” Howard et al. (2020) also review available medical evidence and conclude that “mask wearing reduces the transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infectious droplets in both laboratory and clinical contexts.”

…To the best of our knowledge, our paper is the first empirical study that shows the effectiveness of mask mandates on reducing the spread of Covid-19 by analyzing the US state-level data. This finding corroborates and is complementary to the medical observational evidence in Howard et al. (2020). Analyzing mitigation measures in New York, Wuhan, and Italy, Zhang et al. (2020b) conclude that mandatory face coverings substantially reduced infections. Abaluck et al. (2020) find that the growth rates of cases and of deaths in countries with pre-existing norms that sick people should wear masks are lower by 8 to 10% than those rates in countries with no pre-existing mask norms…

The estimates indicate that mandatory face masks for employees reduce the growth rate of infections and deaths by 8-15 percent, while holding behavior constant. This suggests that requiring masks for employees in public-facing businesses may be an effective preventive measure.

The paper is heavy with math and attempts to separate out one factor from another. I have no way to evaluate the math, but I do know that so much of this sort of research has either been wrong or unverifiable, with results disagreeing from study to study and country to country and state to state. I’m not criticizing these particular researchers – the problems are inherent in trying to isolate these factors and their effects.

In fact, mask-wearing may indeed reduce infection. Of maybe not. But I’ve not seen a study that even attempts to evaluate whether mandatory outdoor mask-wearing has any effect at all.

But even more important are two other questions: at what cost, and by whose order? Locking us all inside our homes indefinitely would reduce all sorts of risks, and yet impose others. And the cost to liberty, as well as the incredible increase in governmental power and therefore tyranny, is so great as to be counterproductive except extremely short-term and in the most dire of circumstances. COVID is not that situation.

Biden – or whichever leftists are “advising” him – is advocating dangerous and alarming policies, all of which go to restrict the liberty of ordinary Americans. And a lot of people seem to think that’s just fine – when Democrats do it.

[NOTE: By the way, note that Biden is only saying to wear masks outside for the next three months. What happens in three months? The election. And rest assured that every single American COVID death till then (and all the ones before, come to think of it) will be laid at Trump’s feet by the left and by Biden as scripted.]

Biden and Kerry on Trump’s UAE/Israel achievement

The New Neo Posted on by

Meh, he just stood on the shoulders of giants – us!

“I personally spent time with leaders of both Israel and the UAE during our administration, building the case for cooperation and broader engagement and the benefits it could deliver to both nations,” the former vice president [Biden] said in a statement…

Reacting to the announcement, Kerry, now a Biden campaign surrogate, said in a tweet that credit was due to the UAE, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, and its ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba.

But Kerry, too, did not directly acknowledge the efforts of the Trump administration in achieving the agreement, which he said “builds on years of work to advance regional peace.”

Blah blah blah and blah.

Two career politicians with zero accomplishments except their repeated elections in blue-blue states, their appointments by Obama as his lackeys, and their poor decisions over the many long years. I must say that even back when I was a liberal Democrat I detested these two – in particular Kerry, to whom I took an instant dislike during his Winter Soldier thing.

The mail-in votes, the 2020 election, and the left

The New Neo Posted on by

This article at RedState by shipwreckedcrew is one of the most frightening things I’ve read in a long time:

There are significant factions of the Democrat party coalition that will stop at almost nothing to deny Pres. Trump a second term regardless of the outcome of the election. There is a growing minority in the Democrat party for whom the very idea that Pres. Trump could be elected to a second term would be conclusive evidence that the democratic republic form of Government is outmoded and must be done away with. Donald Trump’s re-election would validate their demand to alter the nature of the federal government and our system of elections to ensure that someone like him could never be elected again – much less re-elected by a “tyranny of the minority” through the Electoral College.

Please read the whole thing, which outlines how the left might invalidate the election if Trump were to win. An excerpt:

Democrats are using the cover of the pandemic to claim it is too dangerous to force people to vote in person at a polling place. But with mail-in ballots, there are no safeguards to assure that the person who received the ballot, cast the ballot, and returned the ballot is the person named on the ballot or whether that person is even entitled to vote.

The key factor for the Democrats is the chaos they can cause in the aftermath of election day if Pres. Trump seems to have won a second term. The timeliness and completeness of the vote count in “vote-by-mail” states will subject to controversy and litigation.

I fully expect the last line of defense — if Pres. Trump looks likely to be re-elected — to be a refusal by Democrat state officials to certify the state vote count ahead of the statutorily prescribed day for the meeting of electors of the Electoral College. The goal would be to deprive Pres. Trump of electors from enough states to keep him from accumulating the 270 electoral votes needed to be re-elected. The mechanics of the electoral college and the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment are critical here…

Pursuant to the Twelfth Amendment, the election for President shall be decided by the House of Representatives, and the election for Vice President shall be decided by the Senate.

The vote in the House is by state delegation, with each state getting only 1 vote. The vote in the Senate is done with each Senator getting a vote. It takes 26 state votes to be named President in the House, and 51 votes to be named Vice-President by the Senate. The composition of the House and Senate are made up of the NEW members voted in during the same election.

Does anyone on the right think that there remain any bars to what the left would be willing to do to gain power and consolidate it with the goal of never being forced relinquish it?

I used to think there were limits – but that was when there actually were “moderate Democrats” to keep the left in line. And perhaps there still are. But I see zero evidence of it. There are no moderate Democrats left in government, anyway – or if there are, they are remarkably silent and have remained so for many years, as the party becomes more and more radical, more and more devious, and more and more successful (mostly in the courts) in muscling through major “reforms” that help solidify their power.

Imagine a boot…

The Clinesmith guilty plea: beginning or end?

The New Neo Posted on by

Today’s announcement that ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith will be pleading guilty to falsifying a document in the Russiagate probe should come as no surprise to anyone following the case:

Clinesmith is accused of altering an email that said Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was not a source for the CIA, even though Page had had a relationship with the agency. The FBI in turn did not disclose Page’s relationship with the CIA, allowing them to renew a warrant to monitor for potentially working with foreign powers.

This is the first criminal case brought by Durham. But will it be the last? Will there be others, and how high up will the charges go? Will Clinesmith implicate anyone else? I have long assumed that a few lower-downs such as Clinesmith will be the fall guys, and that a great many Americans will just yawn, because they either hate Trump and therefore think all is justified, or don’t understand how grave a threat the Russiagate coup attempt has been to our nation, or both.

I apologize once again for my cynicism, but there it is. I will be pleasantly surprised if I’m wrong and this sort of thing does end up being enough of a big deal to garner more sympathy and more votes for Trump.

Even the guilty plea comes with a caveat, though:

Clinesmith’s lawyers reportedly said this was unintentional.

“Kevin deeply regrets having altered the email. It was never his intent to mislead the court or his colleagues as he believed the information he relayed was accurate. But Kevin understands what he did was wrong and accepts responsibility,” his lawyers told the Washington Post.

Sure, don’t we all change “is” to “is not” unintentionally? How could this be an error?:

The CIA told the FBI [in an email] that [Carter] Page had been a friendly source of information in the past about Russian intelligence activities, and Page would be treated as a friendly source of intelligence in the future if he offered additional information. That was contrary to what the FISA application ended up representing to the FISC about Page’s status as a “Russian Agent.” Clinesmith certainly recognized the implications of the CIA communication, as he opened up the message in a way such that he could edit it, and he changed the language to make it say the exact opposite of what the CIA had reported to the CH. Clinesmith made it read that Page was NOT a friendly source of information for the CIA, and he forwarded the altered message to the CH case agent to be included in the Page FISA application.

Ever since we learned that the entire Russiagate investigation was riddled with falsehood and traps, it has been clear that if it is allowed to stand then the rule of law in the US and the orderly transition of power is finished. Actually, I think it’s been clear for quite some time that it is finished, even if a few indictments come down.

And I also believe that, even if the higher-ups were indicted and tried – and by “higher-ups” I mean all the way to the very tip-top – it would still be finished. Trying the heads of a previous administration is banana republic territory, and unfortunately, that is true even if they are guilty. Maybe even especially if they are guilty. Either way, when the Obama administration and the FBI and the DOJ decided to lie in order to frame a major presidential candidate and then continued the approach during that person’s presidency, and the party involved (Democrats) and the MSM looked the other way, made excuses for it, and/or lied about it, we were already deeply and perhaps irrevocably steeped in corruption.

United Arab Emirates officially normalizes relations with Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the statement:

President Donald J. Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates spoke today and agreed to the full normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates…

Delegations from Israel and the United Arab Emirates will meet in the coming weeks to sign bilateral agreements regarding investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, healthcare, culture, the environment, the establishment of reciprocal embassies, and other areas of mutual benefit. Opening direct ties between two of the Middle East’s most dynamic societies and advanced economies will transform the region by spurring economic growth, enhancing technological innovation, and forging closer people-to-people relations.

As a result of this diplomatic breakthrough and at the request of President Trump with the support of the United Arab Emirates, Israel will suspend declaring sovereignty over areas outlined in the President’s Vision for Peace and focus its efforts now on expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world. The United States, Israel and the United Arab Emirates are confident that additional diplomatic breakthroughs with other nations are possible, and will work together to achieve this goal.

The United Arab Emirates and Israel will immediately expand and accelerate cooperation regarding the treatment of and the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus. Working together, these efforts will help save Muslim, Jewish, and Christian lives throughout the region.

More here:

The groundbreaking deal is the first peace treaty signed in decades between an Arab nation and Israel, with the last enacted with Jordan in 1994. The UAE has never publicly recognized Israel as a state since its formation in 1948, similar to many countries in the region in a show of allegiance to Palestine.

It won’t make a particle of difference to those who hate Trump – many of whom hate Israel, too.

But if Obama had done it, he’d be getting his second Peace Prize, of course.

The en banc hearing didn’t go well for Flynn – or for the judicial system

The New Neo Posted on by

Courts have become almost entirely political, so when I heard that there was a chance that the DC Circuit Court might be hearing the Sullivan/Flynn mandamus case en banc, I wrote the following prediction:

I think the court will grant the hearing, and I think there’s a good chance – because of the political makeup of the court, which is heavy with Democrats – that they will side with Sullivan. That’s a travesty of justice, but we see a great deal of that these days, don’t we?

I hope I’m wrong. I’d like to feel a little less cynicism.

Well, here’s news of the oral arguments in front of the en banc court:

A NeverTrumper who wants Trump to win the election by a landslide

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of previously seemingly-sane people have lost their minds, or at least their reasoning power. Check this out from Bernard Goldberg:

I’m no fan of Donald Trump. And that’s putting it mildly.

I don’t like his chronic dishonesty. I don’t like narcissism. I don’t like his nastiness and his silly name-calling. I detest his need to constantly cause chaos, as he did with a recent tweet suggesting we should postpone the 2020 presidential election. There’s nothing about this man’s character that I like.

And I hope he wins re-election in a landslide.

No, that’s not the crazy part.

He goes on to list all the reasons he really really really doesn’t want the Democrats to win, including this:

As for free speech, it will be in serious jeopardy if Democrats win in November, especially if they make a clean sweep and take the Senate and keep control of the House. So-called hate speech could become a crime. And they’ll decide what’s hateful and what isn’t.

If Biden and his progressive puppet masters take over, the cancel culture will be in full bloom. You think it’s bad now? Just wait!

And if Biden wins and Democrats take over the Senate, there’s at least a 50-50 chance they’ll blow up the filibuster, which means all they’ll need is a simple majority to pass whatever they want. And that’ll include making Puerto Rico a state, packing the Supreme Court with liberal Justices, passing some version of a budget busting Green New Deal and who knows what else that’s on the progressive wish list.

And then he follows that up with this stunner:

But if Donald Trump is going to win – and that looks like a long shot – he’ll have to do it without me. I can’t bring myself to vote for such a defective human being.

I simply don’t understand how a thinking person can get from those earlier points to that last point. Is Trump really so incredibly defective? Is he that much more defective than most politicians? Than Joe Biden? Than Kamala Harris? It doesn’t make sense because Trump happens to be running against those two people and their party, which Goldberg has already indicated will wreak havoc on the country.

If a voter who reasons like Goldberg lives in a place like New York, I suppose his/her vote really doesn’t matter because Trump’s not going to be winning that state anyway. However, there’s also the popular vote, which needs to be shored up to avoid a repeat of at least a portion of the caterwauling in November of 2016.

Positions such as Goldberg’s are a bizarre sort of virtue-signaling that seems self-indulgent and illogical. And yet, those are rather common traits these days. The way I see such a stance is that people who hold it are treating an election not as a contest between two people and their parties’ policies but rather as a test of their own personal moral rectitude as reflected in the moral rectitude of the person for whom they vote. If the candidate isn’t up to standard, the vote cannot be tendered, and such voters can brag about their own uprightness while the country falls apart and they’ve done nothing to stop that from happening. But what’s most important to them is that they feel they can hold their heads high.

Chauvin, Lane, Kueng, and Thao were doing what they had been trained to do

The New Neo Posted on by

Almost from the start, nearly everyone on left and right claimed that the video of George Floyd’s dying moments made it clear that Officer Chauvin was a murderer.

I found this to be a shocking assertion – not in terms of the left saying it, but the right, too? Murder, really? Surely those who remember previous videos that told an incomplete tale ought to have held back from making such charges. But only a few could resist jumping on that bandwagon.

An exception to the rule was commenter “j e” at this blog on May 28, very early on in the story:

Although the actions of the police may in this case look bad, experience of these matters should teach us that hasty and highly emotional reaction to stories constructed around snippets of video without proper context should be tempered by measured analysis based upon all the facts as they become available, The rush to rapid judgement by all on the left (and by some on the right) has been proven to be foolish indeed time and time again.

It was only a couple of weeks later that I discovered that the restraining hold used by Chauvin on Floyd was an approved one in Minneapolis. It has since been banned and the instructions are no longer available online at their site – or even referred to. Instead, now it says “5-311 PROHIBITION ON NECK RESTRAINTS AND CHOKE HOLDS (10/16/02) (08/17/07) (10/01/10) (04/16/12) (06/09/20) (D) Neck Restraints and choke holds are prohibited. Instructors are prohibited from teaching the use of neck restraints or choke holds.” In other words, “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.”

But based on the original information I had found there earlier, sometime prior to June 20 (I don’t have the exact date I began it) I wrote a draft for a post (never published), part of which went like this:

That made me curious to learn what the rules for restraint by police are in Minneapolis, and it just so happens that they can be found online:

Because the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application, its proper application requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case, including:

The severity of the crime at issue,
Whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and;
Whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.

The “reasonableness” of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of the reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.

The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments – in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving – about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”

More:

Medical Assistance: As soon as reasonably practical, determine if anyone was injured and render medical aid consistent with training and request Emergency Medical Service (EMS) if necessary.

The following is clearly relevant. Not all police departments allow this, but apparently Minneapolis does, in certain circumstances:

5-311 USE OF NECK RESTRAINTS AND CHOKE HOLDS (10/16/02) (08/17/07) (10/01/10) (04/16/12)

DEFINITIONS I.

Choke Hold: Deadly force option. Defined as applying direct pressure on a person’s trachea or airway (front of the neck), blocking or obstructing the airway (04/16/12)

Neck Restraint: Non-deadly force option. Defined as compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck). Only sworn employees who have received training from the MPD Training Unit are authorized to use neck restraints. The MPD authorizes two types of neck restraints: Conscious Neck Restraint and Unconscious Neck Restraint. (04/16/12)

Conscious Neck Restraint: The subject is placed in a neck restraint with intent to control, and not to render the subject unconscious, by only applying light to moderate pressure. (04/16/12)

Unconscious Neck Restraint: The subject is placed in a neck restraint with the intention of rendering the person unconscious by applying adequate pressure. (04/16/12)

The Conscious Neck Restraint may be used against a subject who is actively resisting. (04/16/12)
The Unconscious Neck Restraint shall only be applied in the following circumstances: (04/16/12)

On a subject who is exhibiting active aggression, or;
For life saving purposes, or;
On a subject who is exhibiting active resistance in order to gain control of the subject; and if lesser attempts at control have been or would likely be ineffective.

Neck restraints shall not be used against subjects who are passively resisting as defined by policy. (04/16/12)

This article says that the police called for an ambulance after they cuffed him. So they may have complied with that regulation.

Did Floyd resist? However, if Floyd didn’t resist, you would think the criminal complaint wouldn’t say he did resist. But that seems to be what it says:

Police were trying to put Floyd in a squad car Monday when he stiffened and fell to the ground, saying he was claustrophobic, a criminal complaint said. Chauvin and Officer Tou Thoa arrived and tried several times to get the struggling Floyd into the car.

Chauvin eventually pulled Floyd out of the car, and the handcuffed Floyd went to the ground face down. Officer J.K. Kueng held Floyd’s back and Officer Thomas Lane held his legs while Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s head and neck area, the complaint said.

When Lane asked if Floyd should be rolled onto his side, Chauvin said, “No, staying put is where we got him.” Lane said he was “worried about excited delirium or whatever.”

So it seems pretty clear that Floyd resisted getting into the squad car, and that’s why the extra police were there. But why did Chauvin pull him out? How was he acting in the car? There’s missing information there. And is that criminal complaint merely what the police said happened? Is it backed up by video evidence? The amount and quality of Floyd’s resistance, or its lack, could be very important.

The following is one of the most terrible parts of the video:

Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes, 46 seconds, including nearly three minutes after Floyd stopped moving and talking, the complaint said.

But having read the rules on Conscious Neck Restraint and Unconscious Neck Restraint, I wonder whether any of the behavior of these offices fit into those rules. For example, if Floyd was “exhibiting active resistance” in repeatedly refusing (physically) to get into the car, they might have decided they were justified in using Unconscious Neck Restraint “in order to gain control of the subject; and if lesser attempts at control have been or would likely be ineffective.”

Remember also that Unconscious Neck Restraint is considered a non-deadly force restraint, but it is designed to render a person unconscious. This seems inherently dangerous to me, although a medical person could say whether it ordinarily is or isn’t. The danger is that it would be difficult for an officer to know whether the person is merely unconscious or is in far more trouble than that, and I don’t see any instructions on how to make the distinction.

The difference between a Conscious Neck Restraint and an Unconscious Neck Restraint appears to be the amount of pressure used. That unfortunately cannot be gauged by watching a video, and I’m not sure there’s any way to ascertain it.

I want to re-emphasize that all of the research in the above quote was done by about three weeks after Floyd’s death, which is two months ago. And it wasn’t hard to do – it was all readily available online at the time. We know more now, of course – a lot more. And it all falls on the side of the exoneration of Chauvin and the others rather than their guilt.

I forget why I didn’t publish the post at the time it was written. I think it was because it was very long and unorganized (the above is only an excerpt), and so many dramatic events were happening at the time that I think it just got lost in the shuffle. But my point isn’t about me; it’s about how easy it was, early in the proceedings, to find out a lot that was relevant to the guilt or innocence of Chauvin and the others.

Very few people even tried. Their minds were already made up, either because the video convinced them or because it was ideologically necessary for them to spread the word that Chauvin was a cold-blooded murderer.

That’s all a preface to this new article by George Parry, a former prosecutor, which I read today. Here’s an excerpt:

As will be explained in detail below, throughout Floyd’s confrontation with the police, he was at imminent risk of death from sudden cardiac arrhythmia caused by excited delirium. So it was that these officers followed the MPD’s official procedures for how to properly and safely subdue someone in that life-threatening condition. In doing so, they were not only keeping Floyd in the prescribed “recovery position” to alleviate his risk of asphyxiation, they were also keeping an agitated and delirious Floyd from harming himself as they awaited the arrival of the ambulance that they had twice summoned to provide medical aid to him.

So where are these well-intentioned, well-trained, and dutiful public servants today? They are in jail awaiting trial on murder and aiding and abetting charges after having been universally condemned in the news media and used by neo-Marxists and opportunistic criminals across the country as a pretext to riot, loot, and burn. And, while they sit in their cells, not one Minneapolis official, from Mayor Jacob Frey to Police Chief Medaria Arradondo or any member of City Council, has come forward to acknowledge that, in subduing Floyd, these law officers were acting in meticulous accordance with the MPD training and directives designed to reduce the risk of harm to persons suffering excited delirium…

By their hypocrisy and cowardice, these blame-shifting public officials, desperate to preserve their political careers and places at the public trough, have tossed these police officers to the howling mob.

As I explained in my recent American Spectator article “Who Killed George Floyd?,” “the physical, scientific, and electronically recorded evidence in the case overwhelmingly and conclusively proves that these defendants are not guilty of the charges and, in fact, played no material role in bringing about Floyd’s death.”

Please read the whole thing.

George Floyd’s death has been used opportunistically as an excuse for the agenda of the left. The narrative of police brutality leading to a need for a complete re-organization of the country, the cooperation of so many elected officials and virtually the entire MSM and pundit class, and the sheer stupidity of many others who should know better but follow them blindly, is a profoundly depressing situation, particularly because the facts are available for all to study. But if our so-called leaders refuse to reveal them to the public and insist instead on propaganda, I just don’t see how the truth can be accepted.

When something like this happens – and it’s happened quite a few times before – it’s not unusual for the facts to emerge in a courtroom and for the accused officers to be acquitted or to be convicted of extremely mild charges. That infuriates a public that’s been fed on lies for so long. And that’s part of the plan of the left, too – the riots and rage that ensue at the thought that justice has not been done when in fact it has.

I wish I had a solution. I don’t – except the hope that enough people still have enough common sense and good judgment that they will see through what’s happening in time. But do they, and will they?

Choosing Kamala

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of people on the right are salivating about Joe Biden’s naming of Kamala Harris for VP, because she’s so loaded with baggage. Roger Kimball, for example, has this to say:

She’s the one who, as California’s Attorney General, held back exculpatory evidence about a chap on death row in order to burnish her ‘tough on crime’ image. That was before her leadership role in savaging Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court — the single most disgusting attempted political assassination I have ever witnessed. And it was also before her vicious attack on — why, it was on the puppet himself, on Joe Biden for being against forced busing back in the day.

We’ll be seeing those clips and many others like them early and often for the next 90-odd days…

Experts disagree about who is the nastiest and most disagreeable woman in politics. Some say it is Elizabeth Warren, and there is a lot to be said for her candidacy. Some say it is Hillary Clinton or Amy Klobuchar. I admit there is quite a lot to said for both of them as well. But for my money, the single most repellent woman in politics today is Kamala Harris. She is also, as this devastating video clip tweeted out today by President Trump reminds us, one of the most extreme leftists in what we used to be able to call, without irony, mainstream politics.

I can’t say I disagree with Kimball, although I’d make the case that Ilhan Omar – who handily won her primary yesterday in the great metropolis of Minneapolis – is actually most repellent. But let’s not quibble; Harris is “repellent enough.”

But I’m not sure how much that matters. In the end, what will matter is how many people hate Donald Trump and how much they hate him, as well as how many people have been propagandized into thinking that far leftism is just hunky-dory, and that a “person of color” and in particular a female POC has a special moral glow no matter what that person actually does.

Another thing about Kamala as the VP pick: what better choice did Biden, or his handlers, actually have? Boxed in by the assumption that they needed to make the choice a woman and probably a minority woman at that, Harris may have been the best of the lot as far as the Democrats are concerned.

Despite the fact that a lot of people are well aware that, if they vote for Biden, then his VP may become president sooner rather than later, many just don’t care. They would vote for the proverbial yellow dog or worse in order to get rid of Trump. That’s how deep their hatred goes.

[NOTE: I also think that voters need to be reminded of Kamala Harris’ busing stand.

I want to add that another possibly decisive factor in the 2020 election will be the extent to which voter fraud is committed, particularly in light of the push for mail-in voting.]

[ADDENDUM: Also, the fact that Biden will be a mere figurehead, controlled by returnees from the Obama administration as well as others to the left of them, is considered a plus and not a minus to many Democrats, who wish that Obama could have run for a third and fourth term like FDR.]

It’s Kamala Harris for VP

The New Neo Posted on by

She couldn’t get any traction in the primaries, except by trashing Biden. So somehow it’s a perfect pick for the way 2020 has been going: Joe Biden (or those telling him what to do) has chosen Kamala Harris as his running mate.

Hey, whyever not? She’s a female, she’s young by current standards (55), she’s fairly attractive, she’s black (father Jamaican) and Indian (red dot, not the other kind), she was raised partly in Canada, and she has zero charisma. She isn’t loved by the far left of the party, and I’m not really sure who loves her. She’s only been a senator since 2017, but a similar short tenure didn’t stop Obama, and anyway Biden certainly has enough senatorial experience to take up any slack.

Remember a year or two ago, when Harris was considered the up-and-coming frontrunner for 2020? That didn’t pan out, but now she’s gotten in by way of the back door. Make no mistake about it, she is running for president as well, because everyone knows that Biden’s cognitive decline has been advancing.

What a long strange trip it’s been.

[ADDENDUM: I meant to add that Harris doesn’t bring in a swing state; just California, which is already blue-blue-blue.

Also, seen in a comment somewhere: “the Black Hillary.” Well, not quite. But that’s the lack of charisma I’m talking about. It may not matter, of course, since those who hate Trump would vote for anyone else.]

Why did Orwell remain a socialist?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Recently I came across an old post of mine on Orwell and decided to repeat it in edited form, because I think it’s still interesting and timely, maybe even more than before. So here it is.]

Commenter “Nick” wrote this about Orwell and Animal Farm:

Orwell was a socialist. His problem with the pigs was that they became no different from the neighboring farmers; his problem with Soviet Marxism was that it acted just like capitalism.

Orwell self-identified as a socialist, and “Nick” makes a thought-provoking point, but I disagree with it. Animal Farm isn’t about Orwell’s own complicated and contradictory political stance. It’s a parable that was meant to illustrate some of the evils inherent in Communism. Yes, economic exploitation by those in power towards the workers (all in the name of a false “equality”) was part of it. But the focus was on totalitarianism, lack of liberty, and statist control – problems he located in the left, not in capitalism.

That said, it is also true that Orwell was very much against income inequality. In fact, that’s the main reason he identified as a socialist. His socialism was a strange beast, however, and he himself recognized the inherent contradictions and difficulties of adherence to it:

As [Orwell] describes so well in “Capitalism and Communism: Two Paths to Slavery”: “Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets and war. Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect.”

Orwell (Eric Blair) was a brilliant man, and he struggled to reconcile his wish for a certain type of world with his knowledge that such a world could probably never come to be as he wished it. Much of his writing was devoted to the horrors of failed attempts to achieve that world.

Animal Farm is a critique of Stalinism/Communism, and although capitalism as an exploitative system plays a role at the beginning of the book, by the end the astute reader sees Communism as at least as bad or even worse. Orwell was also aware of the strong possibility that liberty and socialism of any sort (not just Communist Stalinism) could not be reconciled, as the above quotes from him indicate. It is my opinion that Orwell came very close to understanding that his vision of a planned economy plus freedom could not come to pass, that the contradiction was basic, and that socialism would always sow the seeds of its own destruction. I just think he couldn’t fully face and embrace that knowledge because to do so would have meant renouncing a lifelong dream. So he clung to some notion of a kinder gentler socialism without the totalitarianism, while at the same time he wrote tirelessly about the evils of Communism.

More:

Socialists have also raised some interesting questions about what Orwell seems to be saying about Lenin and the rise of Stalinism. In fact, Orwell has suggested elsewhere that Trotsky and Lenin are partly responsible for the rise of totalitarianism in Russia and that Bolshevism itself contained elements of authoritarianism. Molyneux, the British socialist, has written a compelling article with a very close reading of the plot and characters of Animal Farm, and concludes that Orwell equates Lenin with Stalin (morphed into the single Napoleon character). Molyneux argues that Orwell gives no way to understand the reasons for the revolution’s failure except human nature (as opposed to insufficient material conditions). All this leaves the book with the reactionary message at the heart of it – that all revolutions fail.

…Even in his best political writing, and his sharp exposés of aspects of capitalism, Orwell was never sure whether a real alternative was possible. Whatever Orwell’s intentions, his most famous books undoubtedly reflect these frustrations and despair. Writing as an isolated intellectual removed from day-to-day struggle, (with the notable exception of his participation in the Spanish Civil War), Orwell never regained the hope for workers’ power he experienced while in Spain.

And that’s coming from a pro-socialist, writing in a socialist periodical.