Leftism as luxury in the crisis of coronavirus
I can't know the future but this I know: when the people are reminded that the world is more lions than lambs and more thorns than roses, when they're reminded that our Garden of Eden was built and must be kept up and the wilderness kept out, then they are reminded also that leftism is a luxury, and their impulse is to conservatism. I've studied it as closely as I've studied any mass phenomenon in history, and for one chapter of my life I lived it: when the people are reminded of their fragility they run to the strong, paternal arms of conservatism. "Conservatism" means literally to save and preserve; it's an impulse and a philosophy, and in America it's also the winningest political proposition.
Which brings us to the present crisis. As late as March 11, when America fell fully and finally into the panic of the pandemic, the WHO declared Europe the epicenter of the pandemic, and President Trump moved to slam shut America's door to Europe, the Democrat House of Representatives damned Trump's America First defense of the people against the virus, and moved in their No Ban Act to forbid his exercising that plenary power of the presidency to seal the border for the national defense. When on January 31, just ten days after the first confirmation of coronavirus in the United States, Trump declared a public health emergency, instituted the first system of quarantines in half a century, and slammed the door on China, the now-presumptive Democrat nominee for president Joe Biden damned him as "xenophobic" and "hysterical" and "fear-mongering". As late as that aforesaid March 11 the Democrat mayor of New York urged the people of New York to go out on the town, in keeping with the campaign by New York Democrats since January 31 to defy and damn those measures to save the people from the virus, as "xenophobic" or "racist". New York by now accounts for a third of the U.S. mortality from coronavirus.
By March 22 the Democrat House had been in recess for their spring break for a week, while the Republican Senate and Trump White House had worked day and night for seven days until they concluded a compromise, consensus coronavirus relief and recovery bill, cowritten and approved by Senate Democrats; and then on Sunday night Nancy Pelosi jetted into Washington from San Francisco, and blew it up. The Pelosi Democrat House declined their consent to the relief and recovery, unless and until their demands were met as follows: racial quotas and racial reports and racial enforcement in big businesses accepting federal loans; "carbon reports" on all civilian flights and "carbon offsets" for every breath of fuel in American commercial aviation in just five years; more tax credits for wind and solar; free college for students carrying student loans; the rewriting of election law to benefit Democrat candidates in the 50 states, which presumably is not even within the federal jurisdiction; the rewriting of collective bargaining to benefit Democrat unions; the extension of visas for lawful immigrants and the waiver of immigration law for illegal aliens; bonus funding for cities defying the enforcement of immigration law; free cellphones for Democrat constituencies; free retirements for employees of "community newspapers"; the absorption by the federal taxpayer of the debt accumulated by the post office; and $35 million for the Kennedy Center, among still more demands having not a thing to do with coronavirus or its economic ruin.
The Democrats had miscalculated three ways, at least: the country had no patience now for political games and political blackmail; had the country wished for that wish list then they'd never have made a Senate leader of Mitch McConnell and a president of Donald Trump; and the country couldn't afford that wish list even when we were richer than ever we were, on the day before the bug, so astronomical boondoggles and burdens like that Democrat Wish List look as remote as the stars, now we're spending half again as much as we spend on everything in a year, on a single bill to yank us from the hole China has landed us in.
In the event the bill as passed that Friday was ninety-some-odd-percent as agreed on Sunday; Pelosi had succeeded mostly in delaying the emergency measure by a week, and a week in the coronavirus crisis might as well be a year. Pelosi's Democrat House played the neighbor to a house afire, who saunters over and offers to help pull the family and dog and prized possessions from the burning house, but not before we sign three little papers: we'll carry his mortgage, we'll pay out the lease on his car, and while we're about it we'll put his rotten kid through college too.
Unless the press have managed to conceal all that from the people, the lesson can only be, leftism is a luxury. And just now we're sold out of luxury. 2020 already has been a year of twists and Election Day is seven months off yet, so I can't claim to know the future, but I know Donald J. Trump is the singular president for this crisis and the recovery from it too, and I believe the average American can't fail to notice that despite the best efforts of the press who stand between the people and their president, and I know that to be reminded of our fragility is to be reminded of our conservatism.
The Chinese infection as invasion
Now that even India, on the point of overtaking China as the world's most populous country, has fallen to the bug, complete with nationwide shuttering, it strikes me that this global pandemic and global depression must be the greatest devastation all told since the Second World War. We're assured that this uncommonly contagious, novel, lethal virus which has devastated the planet like no outbreak in 101 years at least and which by China's own admission first manifest a matter of miles from one of China's virology labs and a matter of yards from another, is not a Chinese biowar program gone awry or in any way deliberate, but how would coronavirus be any different if it were a Chinese biowar program gone awry or if it were the deliberate devastation of the globe by a communist dictatorship open in its ambition for global dominion?
And for our purposes now the question is moot: it is inarguable fact that as late as January 14 China lied and the World Health Organization at the United Nations promulgated the lie as medical science to the world, that coronavirus was not even contagious among humans. As late as middle-January in this year of 2020 China insisted and the WHO accepted that there was "Nothing to see here, folks." It is inarguable fact that well after the Chinese leadership understood the nature and scale of coronavirus, they damned Trump for closing America's border to China and threatened lesser leaders in lesser nations against doing as Trump had done, leaving the world open wide to this Chinese invasion. China sprayed its contagion to every corner of the planet, and wittingly.
And tabulating the dead and wounded, the terror and horror, the strain and dislocation, and the economic ruin, even the military deployments in combating the contagion, how in its effect is coronavirus different from a war waged on every continent at once, by China? How in its effect would coronavirus be any different, if it weren't an infection but an invasion, by hostile forces of the People's Liberation Army, of the wide world? Had the People's Liberation Army invaded every continent in January then surely some agreement and alliance would've formed against China, and some action been taken. And so again I ask, how in its effect is China's coronavirus any different from a Chinese war on the world?
I can't know the future but this I know: when the people are reminded that the world is more lions than lambs and more thorns than roses, when they're reminded that our Garden of Eden was built and must be kept up and the wilderness kept out, then they are reminded also that leftism is a luxury, and their impulse is to conservatism. I've studied it as closely as I've studied any mass phenomenon in history, and for one chapter of my life I lived it: when the people are reminded of their fragility they run to the strong, paternal arms of conservatism. "Conservatism" means literally to save and preserve; it's an impulse and a philosophy, and in America it's also the winningest political proposition.
Which brings us to the present crisis. As late as March 11, when America fell fully and finally into the panic of the pandemic, the WHO declared Europe the epicenter of the pandemic, and President Trump moved to slam shut America's door to Europe, the Democrat House of Representatives damned Trump's America First defense of the people against the virus, and moved in their No Ban Act to forbid his exercising that plenary power of the presidency to seal the border for the national defense. When on January 31, just ten days after the first confirmation of coronavirus in the United States, Trump declared a public health emergency, instituted the first system of quarantines in half a century, and slammed the door on China, the now-presumptive Democrat nominee for president Joe Biden damned him as "xenophobic" and "hysterical" and "fear-mongering". As late as that aforesaid March 11 the Democrat mayor of New York urged the people of New York to go out on the town, in keeping with the campaign by New York Democrats since January 31 to defy and damn those measures to save the people from the virus, as "xenophobic" or "racist". New York by now accounts for a third of the U.S. mortality from coronavirus.
By March 22 the Democrat House had been in recess for their spring break for a week, while the Republican Senate and Trump White House had worked day and night for seven days until they concluded a compromise, consensus coronavirus relief and recovery bill, cowritten and approved by Senate Democrats; and then on Sunday night Nancy Pelosi jetted into Washington from San Francisco, and blew it up. The Pelosi Democrat House declined their consent to the relief and recovery, unless and until their demands were met as follows: racial quotas and racial reports and racial enforcement in big businesses accepting federal loans; "carbon reports" on all civilian flights and "carbon offsets" for every breath of fuel in American commercial aviation in just five years; more tax credits for wind and solar; free college for students carrying student loans; the rewriting of election law to benefit Democrat candidates in the 50 states, which presumably is not even within the federal jurisdiction; the rewriting of collective bargaining to benefit Democrat unions; the extension of visas for lawful immigrants and the waiver of immigration law for illegal aliens; bonus funding for cities defying the enforcement of immigration law; free cellphones for Democrat constituencies; free retirements for employees of "community newspapers"; the absorption by the federal taxpayer of the debt accumulated by the post office; and $35 million for the Kennedy Center, among still more demands having not a thing to do with coronavirus or its economic ruin.
The Democrats had miscalculated three ways, at least: the country had no patience now for political games and political blackmail; had the country wished for that wish list then they'd never have made a Senate leader of Mitch McConnell and a president of Donald Trump; and the country couldn't afford that wish list even when we were richer than ever we were, on the day before the bug, so astronomical boondoggles and burdens like that Democrat Wish List look as remote as the stars, now we're spending half again as much as we spend on everything in a year, on a single bill to yank us from the hole China has landed us in.
In the event the bill as passed that Friday was ninety-some-odd-percent as agreed on Sunday; Pelosi had succeeded mostly in delaying the emergency measure by a week, and a week in the coronavirus crisis might as well be a year. Pelosi's Democrat House played the neighbor to a house afire, who saunters over and offers to help pull the family and dog and prized possessions from the burning house, but not before we sign three little papers: we'll carry his mortgage, we'll pay out the lease on his car, and while we're about it we'll put his rotten kid through college too.
Unless the press have managed to conceal all that from the people, the lesson can only be, leftism is a luxury. And just now we're sold out of luxury. 2020 already has been a year of twists and Election Day is seven months off yet, so I can't claim to know the future, but I know Donald J. Trump is the singular president for this crisis and the recovery from it too, and I believe the average American can't fail to notice that despite the best efforts of the press who stand between the people and their president, and I know that to be reminded of our fragility is to be reminded of our conservatism.
The Chinese infection as invasion
Now that even India, on the point of overtaking China as the world's most populous country, has fallen to the bug, complete with nationwide shuttering, it strikes me that this global pandemic and global depression must be the greatest devastation all told since the Second World War. We're assured that this uncommonly contagious, novel, lethal virus which has devastated the planet like no outbreak in 101 years at least and which by China's own admission first manifest a matter of miles from one of China's virology labs and a matter of yards from another, is not a Chinese biowar program gone awry or in any way deliberate, but how would coronavirus be any different if it were a Chinese biowar program gone awry or if it were the deliberate devastation of the globe by a communist dictatorship open in its ambition for global dominion?
And for our purposes now the question is moot: it is inarguable fact that as late as January 14 China lied and the World Health Organization at the United Nations promulgated the lie as medical science to the world, that coronavirus was not even contagious among humans. As late as middle-January in this year of 2020 China insisted and the WHO accepted that there was "Nothing to see here, folks." It is inarguable fact that well after the Chinese leadership understood the nature and scale of coronavirus, they damned Trump for closing America's border to China and threatened lesser leaders in lesser nations against doing as Trump had done, leaving the world open wide to this Chinese invasion. China sprayed its contagion to every corner of the planet, and wittingly.
And tabulating the dead and wounded, the terror and horror, the strain and dislocation, and the economic ruin, even the military deployments in combating the contagion, how in its effect is coronavirus different from a war waged on every continent at once, by China? How in its effect would coronavirus be any different, if it weren't an infection but an invasion, by hostile forces of the People's Liberation Army, of the wide world? Had the People's Liberation Army invaded every continent in January then surely some agreement and alliance would've formed against China, and some action been taken. And so again I ask, how in its effect is China's coronavirus any different from a Chinese war on the world?
