“Can Man Live Without God?” / Creed by Steve Turner

CREED

An excerpt from Ravi Zacharias’ book

 “Can Man Live Without God?” 

Steve Turner says “No!”…But we try all the time….

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin

We believe everything is OK

as long as you don’t hurt anyone

to the best of your definition of hurt,

and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before, during, and

after marriage.

We believe in the therapy of sin.

We believe that adultery is fun.

We believe that sodomy’s OK.

We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything’s getting better

despite evidence to the contrary.

The evidence must be investigated

And you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there’s something in horoscopes

UFO’s and bent spoons.

Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,

Mohammed, and ourselves.

He was a good moral teacher though we think

His good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same-

at least the one that we read was.

They all believe in love and goodness.

They only differ on matters of creation,

sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.

We believe that after death comes the Nothing

Because when you ask the dead what happens

they say nothing.

If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its

compulsory heaven for all

excepting perhaps

Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn

We believe in Masters and Johnson

What’s selected is average.

What’s average is normal.

What’s normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.

We believe there are direct links between warfare and

bloodshed.

Americans should beat their guns into tractors .

And the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.

It’s only his behavior that lets him down.

This is the fault of society.

Society is the fault of conditions.

Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that

is right for him.

Reality will adapt accordingly.

The universe will readjust.

History will alter.

We believe that there is no absolute truth

excepting the truth

that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,

And the flowering of individual thought.

If chance be

the Father of all flesh,

disaster is his rainbow in the sky

and when you hear

State of Emergency!

Sniper Kills Ten!

Troops on Rampage!

Whites go Looting!

Bomb Blasts School!

It is but the sound of man

worshipping his maker.

Steve Turner, (English journalist), “Creed,” his satirical poem on the modern mind. 

Taken from Ravi Zacharias’ book Can Man live Without God? Pages 42-44

Gen4 Nuclear Story

THORNER: GEN IV NUCLEAR ENERGY IS CLEAN, EFFICIENT AND PLENTIFUL - WHY THE FEAR?

By Nancy Thorner - 

Mark Schneider is a nuclear futurist and the president of Gen IV Nuclear, Inc. He has a bachelor's degree in Nuclear Engineering Technology and spent twenty years working with advanced, small-scale reactors within the U.S. Naval Nuclear Power Program. Mark dedicates himself to educating the public about the implications of Gen IV nuclear technology.

He spoke Saturday, September 14th during the afternoon session of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Council XLVIII held September 13-14-15, 2019 at the Marriott St. Louis Airport, Saint Louis, Missouri. His topic: "Green Nuclear Deal."

Canadian radio host recognizes Mark Schneider

Here is what radio host Peter Whelan had to say about “What to Know about Gen IV Power” -- using Gen IV (4) Nuclear by Mark Schneider as a supporting source -- on his April 22, 2019 "What to know" WTK Canadian radio show. Other supporting sources used were:

• Nuclear power can save the world New York Times opinion piece.
• Compare death rates per terrawatt hour nuclear is by far the safest, even more so that hydro and solar.
• Comprehensive website by the World Nuclear Association all the facts.
• Estimated supply of uranium enough to power the world for 10,000 years.

Excerpts from Whelan's radio show transcript

"Who wouldn’t like cheap, cleanly generated, electric power?

Imagine a technology that eats nuclear waste and atomic weapons for fuel.

Imagine that it’s the safest method of power generation.

What if every person on the planet can have it?

That’s what the family of generation 4 power technologies can deliver.

It’s like the Tesla of power generation.

But we can’t raise the supply of renewables fast enough to meet all our needs by 2030.Hydro-dams are protested and delayed every time we try to build one.

Solar occupies a lot of space and it only works during the day, the wind doesn’t blow all the time, we need safer, more efficient designs for wind turbines.

Generation 4 nuclear power is designed to safely shutdown if anything fails.

Gen 4 is the only solution we have that is quickly scalable to billions of people, carbon-free, and always available.

Along the way we’ll end up with cheap, clean, abundant energy. We can use that to desalinate ocean water, providing clean fresh water to everyone. Gen 4 can be built next to existing nuclear plants (CANDU) so nuclear waste can be recycled as fuel. That handles the transportation and storage problem. The power distribution lines are already there.

It’s not the final solution. Nuclear power is not renewable, but we have enough uranium today to meet all our needs for at least a ten thousand years, experts say closer to a million years."

Mark Schneider speaks

Mark vouches for nuclear as clean energy as the green solution. As Mark related, "The biggest concern is what to do about nuclear waste. Our present reactors (light water reactors) use only 2 to 3% of the nuclear fuel put into them because of design inefficiency, the rest becomes waste."

In Gen IV nuclear technology, as explained by Schneider, waste from present reactors becomes fuel. The Gen IV energy generation process also gets rid of any waste faster than would normally happen, and at the end very little waste remains.

As far as the Gen IV technology, Schneider indicated how the technology has existed for a long time. An example given was of EBR1 which ran off plutonium. At present time only light water reactors are in operation here in the U.S.

As to why the public is so skittish about nuclear power, many believe that nuclear reactors can become nuclear bombs, as they saw happen at Fukushima in Japan and Russia's Chernobyl; however, the mishaps, as Schneider explained, occurred because both reactors used water to cool the fuel was the source of the explosion.

It was interesting to learn why this nation chose water cooled reactors when other reactor designs were available in the 50's and 60's.

It was due to the influence of Admiral Rickover, known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy." During the 1950's and 1960's Mouton salt reactors could have worked in the Navy. All Navy submarines and aircraft carriers are powered with light water reactors.

As to why there is a problem about nuclear waste, Schneider spoke of how Carter in 1970 had banned the reprocessing of spent fuel. Regulations also factor in, such as the government saying “no” to the use of plutonium as fuel. Then too, Yucca Mountain for waste storage became a political issue, even after extensive search found Yucca to be safe and acceptable.

Work is now proceeding to scale back regulations so the new Gen IV generation of nuclear reactors can be licensed by the NRA. Rick Perry was cited as a good spokesman for Gen IV technology.

As to reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, Mark spoke about new, existing carbon capture technology which is growing, where we could use the excess heat from nuclear plants to extract CO2 from the air and create “fossil fuels.” The waste left over from generating power from the Gen IV reactors could be used for other applications, such as medicine and nuclear batteries.

As to why we aren't now doing this is because fear exists in industry of the new technology. This is irrational because the old light water reactor plants were designed before computers existed. We now have computer modeling to ensure safety.

What about pubic fear? After all, how could something so toxic as nuclear power be so good? But as Schneider noted: "Nuclear power is the safest from of energy. 2nd is solar power. The death per Terawatt-hour has been .01 deaths in U.S. from nuclear; 3 in solar."

As to radiation in the Harrisburg, PA Three Mile Island accident, "the radiation people received amounted to a total of one dental X-ray worth of radiation or about 3 mrem.  A CT medical scan is worth 1000 mrem of radiation for one scan. In 21 years of operating nuclear reactors Mark has received 255 mrem.  He  has no fear of cancer."

The 2020 new design reactors are of small modular design. They can be built at 1/5th or 1/7th of the cost. They can be built in factories. They can adapt fast to power change. They last 30 to 40 years. They can be placed at sub-stations, so if the power grid should shut down for any reason, power would continue without interruption.

All about Gen IV Nuclear "101"

Read hear of the amazing facts set forth at Gen IV Nuclear "101". Among them:

• Vastly under-utilized nuclear waste can now be efficiently used as Gen IV fuel, yielding over 20,000 years of energy demand for the World -- not a typo!
• If a Gen IV reactors get too hot, it automatically cools on its own. This all happens because of gravity—no pumps, external power, or human intervention is required.
• Existing nuclear waste becomes impotent through the Gen IV process. Gen IV can also consume traditional fuel and no weapons-grade material byproduct will result.

Other articles by Thorner featuring events at Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Council XLVIII:

Phyllis Schlafly's Movement Continues at 48th Annual Conference in St. Louis

Phyllis Schlafly Eagles Hear from Conservative Policy Makers and Current Authors

To view the gallery of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Council pictures, go to EagleCouncil.com. You can order recordings of the events by going to an online store at PhyllisSchlafly.com/store.

Friday, October 04, 2019 at 09:00 AM | Permalink

COMMENTS

Rosenstein an Active Participant in Deep State Coup

News

Newly Released Judicial Watch Docs Paint Rosenstein as Active Participant in Deep State Coup

 

Debra Heine

 

- October 2nd, 2019

Judicial Watch on Wednesday released 145 pages of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s communications which include a one-line email from Rosenstein to Robert Mueller stating “The boss and his staff do not know about our discussions.” That email came just five days before Rosenstein appointed Mueller to take over the FBI’s Russia investigation as special counsel, roiling Trump’s presidency.

The communications—which include “off the record” emails with major media outlets around the date of Mueller’s appointment—show that Rosenstein did not just dispassionately go along with the fraudulent probe in an attempt to get at the truth, but was an active participant in the deep state coup, secretly plotting with other FBI and DOJ officials against the president of the United States.

In a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last Fall, Judicial Watch sought e-mails, text messages, and other records of communication addressed to or received by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein between May 8, 2017, and May 22, 2017.

The time period referred to in this suit is critical. On May 8, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a memo to President Trump recommending that FBI Director James Comey be fired. The next day, President Trump fired Comey. Just three days later, on May 12, Rosenstein sent an email assuring Robert Mueller that “The boss and his staff do not know about our discussions.”

In a May 16, 2017 email, sent the day before Mueller’s appointment, Rosenstein emailed former Bush administration Deputy Attorney General and current Kirkland & Ellis Partner, Mark Filip stating, “I am with Mueller. He shares my views. Duty Calls. Sometimes the moment chooses us.”

And on May 17 Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

During the same time period, between May 8 and May 17, according to then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Rosenstein met with McCabe and other senior Justice Department and FBI officials to discuss wearing a wire into the oval office to spy on Trump, as well as invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president.

When McCabe’s claim was made public, Rosenstein denied the charge, saying that he was only joking about wearing a wire. However, McCabe’s notes about the meeting  (also released by Judicial Watch), tell a different story: “The DAG proposed that he could potentially wear a recording device into the Oval Office to collect additional evidence on the President’s true intentions,” McCabe wrote. “He said he thought this might be possible because he was not searched when he entered the White House. I told him that I would discuss the opportunity with my investigative team and get back to him.”

Until now, it was difficult to determine which deep state official was telling the truth, especially because Rosenstein left office on good terms with Trump. However, the documents released by Judicial Watch Wednesday strongly suggest that he felt no loyalty toward the president and in fact, felt duty-bound to defy him.

The documents released by Judicial Watch also show that Rosenstein had a cozy relationship with reporters from the anti-Trump news outlets 60 Minutes, New York Times and Washington Post.

In May 2017, Rosenstein exchanged emails with New York Times reporter Rebecca Ruiz to provide background for an article about himself. Ruiz gave Rosenstein an opportunity to read a draft of the article prior to publication so he could add “off-the-record comments and clarifications.”

On the day of Mueller’s appointment, Rosenstein exchanged emails with 60 Minutes producer Katherine Davis, providing off-the-record questions insight regarding Mueller’s scope of authority and chain of command.

Rosenstein: “Off the record: This special counsel is a DOJ employee. His status is similar to a US Attorney.”

Davis: “Good call on Mueller. Although I obviously thought you’d be great at leading the investigation too.”

That same day, on May 17, 2017, Rosenstein exchanged emails with Washington Post reporter Sari Horwitz under subject line “Special Counsel.”

Said Rosenstein: “At some point, I owe you a long story. But this is not the right time for me to talk to anybody.”

Horwitz replied: “Now, I see why you couldn’t talk today! Obviously, we’re writing a big story about this. Is there any chance I could talk to you on background about your decision?”

In a statement, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that the “astonishing emails further confirm the dishonest corruption behind Rosenstein’s appointment of Robert Mueller.” He added: “The emails also show a shockingly cozy relationship between Mr. Rosenstein and anti-Trump media reporters.”

Fitton told conservative radio talk show host Lars Larson Wednesday, “You have the coup discussions that are outlined in these documents, so no wonder the deep staters would rather talk about the Ukraine canard than the coup that was taking place here in Washington.”

Forget The Amazon Hype, Fires Globally Have Declined 25% Since 2003

Forget Amazon Fires Crisis

Forbes article

In defence of DEMOCRACY

In defence of DEMOCRACY

The only trouble with democracry is that there is not enough of it.

When I began to study democracy over a dozen years ago, few of the so-called cultural elite were in a rush to argue against it as a form of government. After all, practising democracy was what made them the ‘goodies’. Yes, they may have made a lot of mistakes, they may have lied once or twice, but when the other options were dictatorship and Communism, all they had to say was the magic word ‘democracy’ and the grumbling over these indiscretions would quickly subside. Not only did the elite at this time not question the value of democracy — they actively promoted it as the self-evident, one, true path. It was seen as the end of history. The very word possessed such talismanic power that you could even get away with attacking whole countries and killing all kinds of people just so the ones who survived could have democracy.

Then these gatekeepers of good manners lost a referendum (Brexit) and an election (Trump) and decided that democracy was totally passé. The volte-face they performed was rather breathtaking in its coordination, like a little shoal of well-disciplined fish avoiding troubled waters with mindless accuracy.

Philosopher Julian Baggini proclaimed in the Guardian that ‘Plato and Aristotle get a bad rap these days for their rejection of democracy. But the substance of their objections was spot on.’ The Independent ran articles arguing that some things are just ‘too important to be decided by the people’, and accusing British MPs of hiding ‘behind the vapid UKIP mantra – the so-called will of the people’. According to political-science professors there was ‘nothing democratic about Brexit’, which was to be regarded as a ‘great pretence of democracy’, since quite suddenly ‘the notion that 50 per cent plus one [was] an acceptable threshold [was] a fiction’.

Journalists told us that it was ‘time for the elites to rise up against the ignorant masses’, that the Brexit referendum was a ‘blunt axe wielded by disenchanted and poorly informed citizens’, that we were about to be overrun by the ‘tyranny of the mob’ and that (just in case anyone had missed the point) ‘the problem with democracy is voters’.

A volley of academics chimed in to decry the idiocy of the masses and offer various solutions that would mitigate the effect of ‘the people’ on government. Brookings Fellows Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes argued for politics to return to ‘smoke-filled rooms’ with candidates hand-picked by party insiders. Professors Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels’ research that purported to show that people are so irrational that elections are won and lost on everything from shark attacks to the weather gained a rapturous audience. Georgetown philosopher Jason Brennan’s plea for disenfranchising the stupid and ignorant was treated as some kind of plausible innovation. And pundits contemplated, with seeming seriousness, Canadian Daniel A Bell’s argument for the West to turn to a Chinese model of government by an unelected virtuous elite.

 

VIDEO

Deplorables: Trump, Brexit and the Demonised Masses

SPIKED

In my new book,In Defence of Democracy, I spend some time on demolishing these arguments – lavishing particular attention on ‘Sharknado’ (Achen and Bartels’ claim that Woodrow Wilson lost voters in New Jersey in the 1916 presidential election because a Great White shark was munching down their tourists), as well as Bell’s argument for a virtuous elite that turns out to require about as much virtue as landing a middle management position at PwC does (yes, that much), and could, according to him, be instituted if the West were ever really rattled by a major terrorist attack (think he forgot to use his inside voice on that one).

Not only do very wealthy oligarchs tend to democracy-scepticism, suddenly the chattering classes are also convinced that the big problem with democracy is… people

The long and the short of it, however, is that for the first time in a long time, not only do very wealthy oligarchs tend to democracy-scepticism — suddenly the chattering classes are outstripping them in their conviction that the big problem with democracy is… people.

Now, you may be thinking if the problem is indeed ‘people’, what alternative alien race are anti-democrats planning to populate their wondrous societies with? Aren’t they people, too?

Yes, but they are the right kind of people. The problem is the other people, who, according to anti-democrats, are stupid, irrational and unwilling to take the time to develop informed preferences.

Voters today, as Achen and Bartels put it, harbour thoughts as irrational as those of Ancient Egyptians blaming the Pharaoh for the Nile failing to flood, and are unable to ‘distinguish the effects of shark attacks and droughts from the effects of tax policies and foreign wars’.

Now, having never met anyone in my life who has actually confused the effects of a shark attack with the effects of, say, a sugar tax (and this despite the fact that I am a veritable lightning rod for attracting weirdos), I’m pretty sure this is just the kind of theory academics come up with in order to sound interesting.

In reality, the average person, being, it must be said, per definition average and therefore not much to write home about, is really quite stable and straightforward, with preferences that seem fairly sensible. Rather than running off on a tangent following every encounter with aquatic predators, his or her opinions tend to be fairly grounded and resilient.

Indeed, way back in 1998 an American study concluded that, ‘Public opinion is remarkably well-structured and overwhelmingly partial to the policy status quo’. When asked to choose between different public-finance options, the majority of participants consistently chose to cut defence spending while rejecting other options like raising or lowering taxes, increasing the deficit or decreasing domestic spending ‘usually by overwhelming margins’.

In other words, over 20 years ago, Americans wanted to cut their bloated and euphemistically named ‘defence’ spending and use that money to fund public services while maintaining tax levels, rather than do what American politicians have done: continue to increase defence spending while engaging in a wholesale war over whether they need to raise taxes on the middle class or gut public services.

What Americans wanted back in 1998 was simple, painless, and arguably could have saved everyone a lot of trouble. Perhaps having the brakes applied to the otherwise limitless military-industrial complex would have mitigated enthusiasm for the attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria, in turn avoiding waves of destabilisation, mass migration and the power vacuum that allowed terrorism to flourish. At the same time, the funds saved could perhaps have taken the worst edge off meth and opioid addiction, violence and declining infrastructure.

Good thing elites were around to make sure those kind of straightforward policies weren’t put in place and to save voters from their ignorant irrationality.

That study is not a one-off, either. Benjamin I Page, co-author of the famous ‘oligarchy study’; tells us that ‘Americans’ poll-measured, collective policy preferences have generally been real (not coin flips or doorstep artefacts), stable, consistent, coherent and responsive to best available new information and reflective of citizens’ underlying values and interests’.

A third scholar, Morris P Fiorina of Stanford, claims that voter preferences tend to move very slowly, and that on many issues, including ‘hot-button issues’ like abortion, they have hardly changed since the 1970s. While party activists have hardened their positions into complete pro- and anti-choice camps, most ordinary people remain somewhere in the middle.

That shouldn’t be too surprising: given the constraints of the time-space continuum we inhabit, the conditions of life don’t change much, and absent a change in conditions, a change in opinion is unlikely.

Photograph of the Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, London in 1848

There is a similar case to be made for Europe. Studies show that the majority of Europeans, including the British, are still generally onboard with top-line EU goals like promoting peace within Europe and are willing to credit the EU with achievements here.

When asked what would be the single greatest consequence that an EU collapse would bring with it, a surprising number of respondents stated this to be losing the benefits of a trading bloc to counter superpowers like China and the US. Indeed, in France and Denmark this was rated as the greatest potential loss by more respondents than selected losing the Euro or the ability to travel freely across the EU.

So… people like to be able to travel across the EU, they find the Euro handy and they see the value of the EU in protecting them from hyper-globalist competition from China and the US, where labour laws are considerably less stringent. So far, so good.

But there are a ream of other things that the EU does and aims to do, like forming a European army; deregulating and privatising public infrastructure, like the energy sector and postal services; limiting national governments’ ability to subsidise industry; disempowering elected national lawmakers; updating the common fisheries policy; and, of course, rather watering down some of the traditions that so many Europeans are so attached to through harmonisation. The moment in time where Europeans really said yes to these things after an open and honest discussion is hard to pinpoint, making one wonder if they ever really said ‘yes’ at all.

The last time any substantial number of Europeans were asked for their opinion was during the referenda to adopt the so-called Constitution of Europe in 2005. While 10 referenda were planned, only four were held: two in favour of adopting the constitution (Spain and Luxembourg) and two against (France and the Netherlands). Subsequently, the project was abandoned and only Ireland would get a referendum on the constitution’s replacement, the Treaty of Lisbon, which it also initially rejected.

Following the Constitution of Europe debacle, it would have been possible to start talking seriously about the potential benefits of immigrant labour in propping up pensions, or the precise use-cases for a future European army, or what advantages Europeans expected to reap from a trading bloc. But I’m guessing these expectations would on the whole not involve lower wages and less steady jobs, or the slow dismantling of the welfare state. I’m guessing that many Europeans don’t want to get into the kind of pax-Americana adventurism that that nation decided to inflict on itself, or allow Germany and France to get more involved in their erstwhile African colonies. At the same time, some of them might want other things, like transfer payments from rich to poor regions. Since no one ever seems to ask in any really conclusive way, I guess we’ll never know.

But if over a quarter of western Europeans are able to twig ‘trading bloc’ as the single greatest potential loss of the European Union falling apart, despite this being a neglected narrative, it doesn’t seem like they’ve missed the theoretical benefits of membership. It’s that some of them are just not in love with the EU package on offer. And since the EU takes a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude on this, some people will inevitably choose the highway.

Britain’s Leave vote may be the result of a jumble of factors, but it wasn’t just some irrational, ill-informed bad-hair day. Commentators should really have been tipped off by the fact that more than 3.8million voters (12.6 per cent of those who cast a ballot) supported UKIP in the 2015 national election, and over five million (30 per cent) supported the Brexit Party in the 2019 European election. That is a pretty resilient vote spanning four years, and holding up in the face of a persistent media barrage focusing on the negatives of Brexit.

But while elites have been strong on the negatives of what they don’t like, they haven’t spent much time on why their preferred option – in this case remaining in the EU – is so great. Instead, like their American counterparts so frequently do, they insist on offering a relatively bad package that doesn’t fully take account of underlying preferences. People aren’t opting out, because they are ignorant of the consequences of their actions, but rather because ‘elites’ have decided they don’t need to make a compelling case for why their ideas are good ones, as one would need to do in a democracy. They believe their ideas simply are good and people who don’t agree with them need to be cancelled.

As the 1998 American study on public opinion put it:

‘on the face of it, the problem the public creates for policymakers is that it does not want what its leaders seem to want… the portion of the electorate that seeks something for nothing is decisively in the minority. Most people recognise that they cannot have budget trade-offs both ways.’

Since then, years of participatory budgeting exercises – where citizens get to decide on how a portion of the budget is spent – have shown this to be true. Because they aren’t ignorant idiots, people tend to choose sensible and boring things during participatory budgeting exercises, like disabled access to the public library or repairing the street lighting, and they do so from Brazil to Paris to China.

Ruling elites believe their ideas simply are good and people who don’t agree with them need to be cancelled

Participatory budgeting, which is available in digital form and therefore can be rolled out en masse, has also shown something else – that the trap of lousy alternatives elites offer up is no longer necessary.

In the internet era, the days of ‘ban-all-Muslims Trump’ vs ‘Goldman Sachs Hillary’, and ‘neoliberal EU’ vs ‘no EU at all’ are fast sliding into the past. There’s simply really no need for binary choices presented at intervals of years.

‘Elites’ like to talk about the possibility of a second Brexit referendum so that they can overturn the first one and forget it ever happened, but modern technology means that Britain could have held a hundred referenda in the time the Brexit bickering has been going on. Three years would have been plenty of time to go over the pros and cons of multiple trade strategies quite thoroughly. Everyone would know where everyone stands and there would be a basis of aggregate opinion upon which to move decisively forward in whatever direction.

But since this would be based on what average people want, average people would likely start to add a lot of interesting issues like tax evasion and protecting jobs into the mix. You’ll notice there are no calls for this. Indeed, there is merely a push to castigate the majority for not wanting exactly what the elite want them to want in precisely the form it is offered, and to get rid of democracy wholesale as the only logical solution to this ‘problem’.

It’s exactly because democracy on a larger scale is now possible, because communications have become so simple and cheap that elites have come out to try to preserve their privilege by axing what is probably one of the greatest achievements of Western civilisation: one person, one vote. We’ve seen above the kind of hatred they are willing to spew in order to get that, and the kind of strange theories they are willing to spin in their attempt to relieve people of their rights – precisely because technology would enable the exercise of those rights on a more continual basis and would no doubt reveal voter preferences that they prefer to ignore.

I could say that what elites really need to do is get people on board with their programme, but most people never will be on board with it, for the good reason that it isn’t in most people’s interests. Changing your electricity company every 12 to 18 months to avoid being shafted is a right pain in the neck that no one gets around to – not in most people’s interests. Corporate forum-shopping for low wages isn’t in most people’s interests. Gutting health services – not in most people’s interests. Sky-high property prices that set off a real-life game of Monopoly – not in most people’s interests.
There’s a big, unbridgeable disconnect between the average person’s interests and elite interests. And in a direct democracy that would be settled quite quickly, in the interests of the average person.

It’s not because the average person is too stupid and can’t identify his or her own best interests that elites are so down on direct democracy – it’s because we are too smart.

Dr Roslyn Fuller is the director of the Solonian Democracy Institute and author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed its Meaning and Lost its Purpose. Her new book, In Defence of Democracy is out now.

Secular humanism having an existential crisis.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ IN THE WSJ:

Secular humanism was full of promise. Now it’s having an existential crisis.

The 20th-century left tended to define progress in terms of material goods, and that was true of liberals and Communists alike. Lyndon B. Johnson waged “war on poverty,” and in 1920 Lenin confidently declared that “communism is Soviet government plus the electrification of the whole country.”
That optimism is gone. Americans live in a world of mass air travel, endless entertainment options, food delivery, constant connectivity and air-conditioning, and the left insists we have to renounce it all. “Every one of the world’s major polluting countries,” writes novelist Jonathan Franzen in the New Yorker, must “institute draconian conservation measures, shut down much of its energy and transportation infrastructure, and completely retool its economy. . . . Human beings, including millions of government-hating Americans, need to accept high taxes and severe curtailment of their familiar life styles without revolting. They must accept the reality of climate change and have faith in the extreme measures taken to combat it. . . . Every day, instead of thinking about breakfast, they have to think about death.”
Children shouldn’t even think about schoolwork, according to 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, organizer of the Global Climate Strike: “Why should we study for a future that is being taken away from us?” This atmosphere promotes an antipathy to religious optimism. “Thinking of sending your ‘thoughts and prayers’?” asks a CNN report. Don’t bother: “Some atheists and agnostics would pay money to avoid them, according to a study.” A co-author of the study told the network that the “result is surprising because one might expect that atheists/agnostics would be indifferent to people praying for them—why care, if you don’t believe in the gesture?”

Personally, I don’t believe in the left. And I actually think that electricity does light up the soul. At least, I was moved when Senator Jellison said “give my children the lightning!”

48Posted at 7:48 am by Glenn Reynolds   

O

Oct 1, 2019 Jim Farrish DOWNSIDE

FINAL NOTES:

Tuesday: Not a good day for stocks as investors see the reality of a slowing economic outlook with manufacturing posting a second month of contraction in the sector. Reality is always present it is just a matter of how long it takes us to believe it. Hope is always the default emotion for investors following optimistic periods… the last default is reality. The economic picture has been slowing since last September… a year later some are starting to believe it. The prop or hope for the market is the Fed and liquidity. They are engaged, but is it too little too late? Watching and trading accordingly.

Monday: Solid gain for the broad indexes as we start the week on a positive note. There are plenty of question marks for the markets to deal with as we head to a week full of data from economic to earnings. Taking it one day at a time as the challenge remains for stocks. Earnings will be one big hurdle to jump as they start to report and analyst measure the impact of the tariffs and slower spending from the consumer.

Markets found enough buyers to break from the five-week trading range and make a run at the July highs. Test of the move deepened this week leaving plenty of question marks for me. Some pressure on Friday from the rumored discussion of delisting Chinese stocks from the White House. The close Friday left plenty of questions we addressed above. I continue to raise the question about the conviction behind the move. There is a test of the break higher, but I still have my doubts about the move. Thus, managing our risk. Small caps took on a leadership role on the upside and now doing so on the downside as buyers quickly abandon growth stocks. The treasury bonds took a hit as money rotated out of bond and yields climbed to 1.95%, but this week money found its way back with yields at 1.67%. The risk remains high for upside opportunities as the underlying data remains weak. The market remains controlled by headlines as each day holds movement related to the speculation of what might happen. Trade with China and the US remains at the top of the list with both making interesting statements. Throw in Brexit and other global issues and you get the picture. The economic data showed mixed news and earnings show impact to tariffs with specific sectors. There are still too many questions unanswered and that invites speculation and volatility. Speaking of volatility the index bounced back above 17 after a brief stay at the 13 level. We remain focused on what is working and what is failing. Therein lies the opportunities. Manage your risk accordingly and let this unfold… one day at a time.