In the intricate medley making up the American economy‚ the tort system reigns supreme‚ wielding significant influence and hefty costs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates the nation’s tort system…

One of the tragic—and dangerous—truths of this earthly existence is that there are just some evil people on this globe.   Sadly for America‚ the leadership of the Democratic Party in America…

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Biden's Speech Was Not the Win the Political Class Thought It Was

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It changed everything. The post “Songs that meant something”: Townes Van Zandt’s favourite Bob Dylan album first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

A collection of innovative sounds. The post Beyoncé to The Mars Volta: The new songs David Byrne thinks are future classics first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

A trio of things I’ve said‚ of which some of our readers have offered sideways kudos for noticing the blindingly obvious‚ came roaring back into prominence over the weekend as the political organization nominally built around Joe Biden decided to pounce on this: Since the mainstream media falsely claims that Donald Trump warned of a "bloodbath" if he loses the 2024 election‚ I encourage you to listen to what he actually said and what he was referring to and draw your own conclusion: the automobile industry and the loss of jobs. WATCH pic.twitter.com/txlK67Etjm — Simon Ateba (@simonateba) March 17‚ 2024 The reference to a “bloodbath” that Orange Hitler Man — or whatever it is that Team Biden and its legion of flying monkeys on television and in the other iterations of the idiot box are calling him — is an economic one. Not a political one. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Can We Now Admit Trump Was Right About Haiti? If you weren’t paying close attention‚ you probably didn’t hear that on Monday. I’ll admit that I fell victim to this — having missed Trump’s speech Sunday‚ while walking Bingle on Monday morning I had a neighbor call out‚ “Your man Trump says he’s gonna kill everybody!” to me‚ and all I could do was groan‚ thinking he’d made some sort of over-the-top retributive statement about Jack Smith or Letitia James or someone. But‚ no‚ this was it. A warning that if China were to build a bunch of massive factories to pump out electric cars in Mexico‚ it’d get around the current trade rules and lay waste to the auto industry. And that’s precisely what the Chinese want to do‚ having bought up a large number of idiotic American politicians — most of them Democrats‚ but‚ sadly‚ by no means all — who have enforced China-friendly mandates on the auto industry that make it far harder to build cars in America. The Chinese aren’t known as big players in the auto market‚ but they certainly aim to be‚ and Trump seems to be the only American politician willing to even talk about it. Naturally‚ though‚ he raises the issue of Chinese encroachment on the U.S. auto industry‚ and — shockingly — we get this… Donald Trump has shown us who he is‚ time and time again. pic.twitter.com/pBqyMTloHX — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 18‚ 2024 …from the American politician who is most prominent of all when it comes to accepting bribes from Communist China. Team Biden’s utterly moronic web ad equating Trump’s warnings about trade and the auto industry with Charlottesville — which was yet another utterly moronic ginned-up controversy from his time in office — showed how much disdain it has for the American public. Team Biden is counting on Americans being no better informed than my neighbor — or me‚ at least until I’d had an opportunity to scan the headlines on Monday morning. That this often works is the real horror. It works because legacy corporate media is full of the worst kinds of Baghdad Bobs imaginable: brutal opening of ABC World News Tonight for Trump pic.twitter.com/E4H3ewrhTs — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 17‚ 2024 We are witnessing the invention of the "bloodbath" hoax in real-time Unfortunately for them‚ we have 𝕏 Media narrative: Full context: pic.twitter.com/jaYDvtGomn — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 17‚ 2024 But‚ as noted above‚ I’ve repeatedly said a couple of things that this stupid controversy illuminates. First‚ Team Biden and its lickspittles in the legacy corporate media are actively‚ furiously doing everything they can to gin up the James Hodgkinsons of the world. You’ll remember Hodgkinson‚ the unhinged Bernie Bro who took seriously Sen. Sanders’ persistent references to the efficacy of a “political revolution” in this country and decided he’d do his part by bringing a rifle to the Republican congressional baseball team’s practice and taking potshots at the congressmen‚ very nearly killing Steve Scalise. It can no longer be denied that the Biden baboon brigade is stoking the same sort of political violence by inflating Trump’s rhetoric about the prospective automotive job market into some sort of threat of a political maelstrom of his making. These same people who saw nothing wrong with Sanders stoking a “political revolution” along the lines of his mentors in the Soviet Union (ask him where he spent his honeymoon!) now want to ascribe Holocaustian horrors to Trump while their own voters chant‚ “From the river to the sea!” on college campuses and along Biden’s route from the White House to Capitol Hill. The level of projection here is stunning‚ even when it’s taken for granted that this is what will be on offer. The ballot harvesting and GOTDV (Get Out the Dead Vote) of 2020 was barely enough — but not enough to win clean — so what came next was the militarization of the Capitol and the taking of political prisoners. And since that hasn’t worked‚ the next step has been unrestricted lawfare against not just Trump but many of those who support him and even others who simply disagree with the politics and abuses of Team Biden. Now that the lawfare doesn’t seem to be working; it’s the Hodgkinsons. The Trump campaign is well aware and is taking the prudent steps to answer the challenge‚ but that hardly softens the disgrace. What’s next is unpalatable even to discuss in theory. The drowning man will do anything for that next breath of air‚ and this machine‚ which is run by some of the least talented‚ least principled‚ least grounded individuals America has ever seen‚ is unquestionably drowning. Is there any doubt that it will subvert more of our national norms in order to hold power‚ even with laughable puppets like Biden and Kamala Harris as the figureheads? No‚ and that brings us to the second obvious truth. These people escalate. They do not admit defeat. They go on raising the stakes until Republicans‚ or really anyone who opposes them‚ lose heart and concede. But this isn’t about eliminating Edison’s lightbulb‚ or raising the CAFE standards‚ or preserving affirmative action. Not anymore. This is about the basic freedoms inherent in American constitutional society‚ which they want to replace with Our Democracy (TM). We’re now at the point when Regular America has no choice but to stand and fight. Heretofore‚ people haven’t seen that. But they’re beginning to‚ which is why Team Biden and its laughable affiliated media shills gave us the Bloodbath Hoax on Sunday. It’s your author’s fervent hope that this wasn’t the signaling of yet another projection from the Left — that a bloodbath might well be coming‚ but not from Trump and not just in the auto industry. I wish we could dismiss this as politics as usual. But we can’t. We’re much too far gone for that‚ and the people involved are much too awful. And that brings us to the third thing‚ which that the 2024 election is now most properly framed as “The Hero’s Journey Starring Donald Trump” — not because Trump’s virtues are unlimited‚ but because his enemies are so pristine in their villainy. The people who created the Bloodbath Hoax over the weekend are villains. They’re the scum of the earth. And they cannot be allowed to retain power over us. The post Bloodbath at the Idiot Box appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Sixty years ago‚ James Burnham’s book Suicide of the West was published to much acclaim from conservatives and much criticism by liberals. It was Burnham’s last book (other than a collection of his National Review columns titled The War We Are In) and‚ perhaps‚ his most pessimistic and prophetic work. Western civilization led by the United States‚ he wrote‚ was dying‚ not because of external challenges but‚ rather‚ because of internal decay. The West‚ in other words‚ was in the process of committing civilizational suicide. And what caused liberals to ridicule and deride the book was Burnham’s conclusion that liberalism was the “ideology of Western suicide.”  READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: The US Space Force: An Important Trump Accomplishment Burnham was viewed by the Left as an apostate. In the early 1930s‚ he had been an organizer and leading theoretician of the Socialist Workers Party‚ a Trotskyite subset of international communism. He broke with Marxism in 1939–1940 and became a respected member of the intellectual non-communist Left‚ writing for and helping to edit one of its leading publications‚ Partisan Review. In 1941‚ Burnham gained international recognition for his book The Managerial Revolution‚ which combined brilliant sociopolitical analysis with hardheaded geopolitics. Two years later‚ Burnham penned The Machiavellians‚ a book that praised Machiavelli and other European writers who looked behind democratic facades and glimpsed the realities of political power. By 1944‚ Burnham was working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)‚ where he wrote one of the earliest predictions of the Cold War that would emerge from the ashes of World War II. After the war‚ he did consulting work for the newly established Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)‚ helped fight the cultural aspects of the Cold War‚ wrote a trilogy of books that shrewdly analyzed the ideological and geopolitical threats posed by the Soviet Union‚ and formulated a strategy for winning the Cold War that was generally followed — consciously or unconsciously — by the Reagan administration in the 1980s.  Burnham’s break with liberals resulted from his criticism of their passive containment strategy toward the Soviet empire and liberals’ unwillingness to confront what he called the communist “web of subversion” within the U.S. government. In 1955‚ Burnham became a founding editor of William F. Buckley Jr’s National Review and thereafter was the magazine’s dominant theoretician until he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1978. In 1959‚ he wrote a much-underappreciated book about the nation’s founding principles and governmental structure titled Congress and the American Tradition. That same year‚ he gave three lectures on “American Liberalism in Theory and Practice” at the Carnegie Institute of Technology; four years later‚ his set of papers on “Liberalism as the Ideology of Western Suicide” served as the subject of a critical seminar at Princeton. In 1964‚ Burnham synthesized his Carnegie lectures and Princeton papers into Suicide of the West. Suicide of the West‚ as Brian Crozier later explained‚ dissected liberalism. “One by one‚ in his manner at once gentle and intellectually ruthless‚” Crozier wrote in National Review (“The Political Thought of James Burnham” April 15‚ 1983)‚ “he shows [liberal ideas] up for the woolly and muddle-headed notions they are.” Burnham’s colleague Jeffrey Hart called Suicide of the West Burnham’s “masterpiece” and “one of the central works of political and cultural reflection of our time” (NR‚ September 11‚ 1987). Burnham’s main theme in the book was that the West was contracting both in terms of geography and values. Interestingly‚ he did not blame liberalism for causing the West’s contractions. “The cause or causes‚” he wrote‚ “have something to do‚ I think‚ with the decay of religion and with an excess of material luxury; and‚ I suppose‚ with getting tired‚ worn out‚ as all things temporal do.” The ideology of liberalism‚ however‚ serves to “justify” and “reconcile” us to our decline by diminishing the achievements of our country and Western civilization‚ ridiculing the notion that the United States and the West are somehow exceptional or superior to other countries and civilizations‚ deriding the sentiment of nationalism‚ and promoting a universalism that transcends national sovereignty.  Writing in 1964‚ Burnham could have been describing the American progressives of 2024. “Modern liberal doctrine‚” he wrote‚ “tends naturally toward internationalist conceptions and the ideal of a democratic world order.” “To the liberal‚” Burnham continued‚ “it has become self-evident that ‘national sovereignty is an outworn concept’ that must be drastically modified if not altogether abandoned.” To the liberal‚ “[p]atriotism and nationalism … are non-rational and discriminatory. They invidiously divide‚ segregate‚ one group of men … from humanity‚ and do so not in accord with objective merits determined by deliberate reason but as the result of habits‚ customs‚ traditions and feelings inherited from the past.” “The duty of the fully enlightened liberal‚” Burnham wrote‚ “is to nothing less than mankind.” Indeed‚ Burnham noted that for liberals‚ “patriotism plus Christian faith” must be replaced by “internationalism … that views world affairs in global terms” and recognizes that “there is a multiplicity of interests besides those of our own nation and culture.” Today’s progressives frown upon “America first” and see “white Christian nationalists” as the greatest threat to democracy.  Burnham also noted that American liberals have a “thoroughly instrumentalist interpretation of the Constitution‚” believing that “the meaning of the Constitution should be understood as wholly dependent on the time and circumstance.” As if he were looking through a crystal ball‚ Burnham noted that liberals “are pro-[Supreme] Court when it is handing down liberal decisions‚ and anti-Court when it is on an anti-liberal swing.” Liberals today promote the dangerous idea of a “living Constitution‚” and conservative justices who oppose that notion have suffered the slings and arrows of liberal critics: from Sen. Chuck Schumer’s public threats against conservative justices to the attempted murder of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Left’s unrelenting campaign against Justice Clarence Thomas.  Liberalism‚ Burnham wrote‚ applauds diversity in religion and cultures and ridicules as “backward” those Westerners who believe in the superiority of their religion and culture. Hillary Clinton called her fellow citizens who hold such sentiments “deplorables‚” while Barack Obama warned against people who cling to their religion and guns. Such liberals applaud the professed idealism of an Alger Hiss and a J. Robert Oppenheimer despite Hiss’ treason and Oppenheimer’s dangerous communist associations. Indeed‚ Hollywood liberals just honored with several Oscar awards the movie Oppenheimer‚ which portrays the protagonist as a victim of a McCarthy-era witch hunt instead of the security risk that he was.   Today‚ liberalism — called progressivism — controls our culture‚ most of our media‚ our educational institutions‚ and‚ at least for now‚ the federal government. Burnham’s conclusion of Suicide of the West should make those who cherish the values of nationalism and the achievements of Western civilization shudder. “Liberalism‚” he wrote‚ “permits Western civilization to be reconciled to dissolution.” It teaches us that the collapse of that civilization is not a defeat but‚ instead‚ “the transition to a new and higher order in which Mankind as a whole joins in a universal civilization that has risen above the parochial distinctions‚ divisions and discriminations of the past.” Burnham showed us 60 years ago that we were headed in that direction if liberalism triumphs. Arnold Toynbee taught that civilizations don’t end abruptly; they go through phases on their way to dissolution. If the trends Burnham identified 60 years ago continue‚ we may be closer than you think to civilizational suicide. The post We Are Closer Than You Think to Civilizational Suicide: Lessons From Burnham appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

John's leftist friends try to help him understand the error of his right-wing ways. John’s leftist friends confront him about his descent into what they deem as right-wing extremism.