Posts Tagged ‘jon fournier’

1984 was supposed to be a warning not an instruction manual

Posted: October 17, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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George Orwell wrote 1984 as warning to his generation and to future generation, a warning against the totalitarianism that spread throughout many nations during the 1930s and 1940s.  Rather than heeding the warnings, leftists in this country seem to have embraced 1984 as an instruction manual or a playbook.  It may not be the case that they are literally using 1984 as their playbook, it is more likely that they are simply using the tried and true steps to implement their leftist policies which eventually will bring about the totalitarian society Orwell warned us about. 

The progressivism here in the United States is very similar to the other totalitarian leftist political philosophies, socialism and fascism.  The main difference is that progressivism has  a soft veneer of compassion and politeness, along with much better press agents.

All leftist political philosophies target children in an effort to implement social change, very often turning children against the older generations.  Look at how progressivism here infected colleges and universities first then grade and high schools. Compare that to this quote from Chapter 2. 

It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak —  ‘child hero’ was the phrase generally used — had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.

Progressives here have constructed a set of beliefs which are built on many contradictions and absurdities.  If you don’t embrace these beliefs you are labeled an enemy and silenced.  AntiFa now physically attacks those who do not follow leftist beliefs and there have been many calls to imprison  individuals who do not follow along. Check out this quote from chapter 2

Like an answer, the three slogans on the white face of the Ministry of Truth came back to him: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrappings of a cigarette Packet — everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.

There has been a concerted effort in this country to erase our actual history and replace it with politically correct revisionist history. Doesn’t this quote from Chapter 3 remind you of that?

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.

This quote from chapter 3 reminds me of the progressive orthodoxy that is crammed down our throats by the media and other adherents to Political Correctness.

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself.

Political Correctness is Newspeak.  That is abundantly clear from these two quotes from Chapter 5

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.

By 2050 — earlier, probably — all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron — they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’

Collectivism rather than individualism is at the heart of all leftist philosophies, including progressivism.  This is captured in this quote from Chapter 7

The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering — a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons — a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting — three hundred million people all with the same face.

Progressives here have received a tremendous amount of help redefining reality through the liberal news media, infected educational system, and Hollywood, similar to this quote from Part 2 Chapter 5

In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

This quote from Part 3 Chapter 2 reminds me so forcefully of the progressive attempt to force their world view down our throats.  Individualism is a major impediment to their world view,  Turning us into a mindless mob which embraces the twisted PC reality will be the end result of their efforts.

You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.

Like all leftist philosophies, progressivism is all about a small body of elite gaining power over the masses.  This quote by Obrien from Section 3 Chapter 3 captures that so well.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

All quotes are copied from this Wikiquote page.

Sorry Liz and Bernie—For a country to be free and prosperous private property rights must be sacred

Posted: October 10, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and most other Democratic presidential candidates  proclaim support for either outright socialism or policies that are very much like socialism in nature.  At the very heart of all of these policies is a diminishment of private property rights. 

The founding fathers of the United States understood that the right to acquire property and the right to use that property as wished where two of the most important God-given natural rights, rights that were essential for this nation to be both prosperous and free. That was a frequent topic found in their writing.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the rest of the founding fathers of the United States received a great deal of their education about the essential nature of private property rights from John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.  Here is a quote from Ch. V, sec. 27.  As you can see from this quote, money earned in the form of wages is one of the most crucial forms of private property.  It was written in 1689 and it is also the work that influenced the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution the most.

Every individual man has a property in his own person.  this is something that nobody else has any right to. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are strictly his. So when he takes something from the state that nature has provided and left it in, he mixes his labour with it, thus joining to it something that is his own; and in that way he makes it his property. He has removed the item from the common state that nature has placed it in, and through this labour the item has had annexed to it something that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour is unquestionably the property of the labourer, so no other man can have a right to anything the labour is joined to—at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others

This quote from chapter 5 of Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith makes it absolutely clear that the money paid to an individual to perform work is the same as the labor itself and both are the property solely of the individual.  Progressives do not understand that at all. 

Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.

John Adams had this to say about the importance of private property when he wrote The Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States in1787.

Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

Thomas Jefferson wrote this about property in a letter to Samuel Kercheval

The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.

In this quote from a letter to Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, Thomas Jefferson echoes John Locke.

A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.

Milton Friedman had this to say about private property in the interview “Free to Choose”: A Conversation with Milton Friedman

I think that nothing is so important for freedom as recognizing in the law each individual’s natural right to property, and giving individuals a sense that they own something that they’re responsible for, that they have control over, and that they can dispose of

Here is one last quote on this subject, this one from the essay Will Property Rights Return? written by my favorite author Thomas Sowell

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

Animal Farm is so very relevant today

Posted: October 3, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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I just finished rereading Animal Farm, the first time in over a couple of decades. All the time I was reading this great work I was continuously surprised by parallels between the fictional world created by George Orwell more than 70 years ago and conditions today in so many countries. There are also warning signs that these conditions could be created here. 

Animal Farm was written as a warning against the totalitarianism that had spread through many nations in the 1930s and 1940s.  Unfortunately so many have ignored the warnings and so many are keen to implement the policies that have time and again led to the totalitarianism Orwell warned against.

This quote from the pig Old Major in Chapter 1 is so reminiscent of the rhetoric used by Karl Marx and other socialists who sought to overthrow capitalism.  The rhetoric is eerily similar to that used by Bernie Sanders,  Elizabeth Warren, and the rest of the Democratic presidential candidates.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. Our labour tills the soil, our dung fertilises it, and yet there is not one of us that owns more than his bare skin.

Despite the promises of a more equal and just society made before, during, and after the revolutions that overthrow democratically elected free market societies, a cabal of elites always end up taking over and demanding special treatment, at the expense of the majority.  This is captured in this quote in Chapter 3 by Squealer, who is responding to complaints about the ruling pigs alone getting all of the milk and apples while everyone else is nearly starving..

“Comrades!” he cried. “You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.

This point is reiterated in Chapter 5

Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?

In a socialist nation laws and Constitutions are changed at a whim. Democrats have done that quite often here such as this notion of our Constitution being a living document. Here is a quote from Chapter 6.

Afterwards Squealer made a round of the farm and set the animals’ minds at rest. He assured them that the resolution against engaging in trade and using money had never been passed, or even suggested. It was pure imagination, probably traceable in the beginning to lies circulated by Snowball. A few animals still felt faintly doubtful, but Squealer asked them shrewdly, “Are you certain that this is not something that you have dreamed, comrades? Have you any record of such a resolution? Is it written down anywhere?” And since it was certainly true that nothing of the kind existed in writing, the animals were satisfied that they had been mistaken.

Straw men are constantly used by leftists regimes to justify abuses.  This took place in Chapter 7.

Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball. If a window was broken or a drain was blocked up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done it, and when the key of the store-shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown it down the well. Curiously enough, they went on believing this even after the mislaid key was found under a sack of meal.

The real turning point of the novel is when nine puppies are taken from their parents and educated by the ruling elite.  These dogs were turned into a secret police and became the most ardent supporters of the ruling elite.   This has taken place over and over again in totalitarian nations and this is the type brainwashing of the youth that has been happening here on college campuses for decades and is now taking place in grade and high schools.  The dogs committed atrocities that are chronicled in the next two quotes, also from Chapter 7.  All those killed were innocent but that did not stop the indoctrinated dogs.

And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon’s feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones.

When it was all over, the remaining animals, except for the pigs and dogs, crept away in a body. They were shaken and miserable. They did not know which was more shocking–the treachery of the animals who had leagued themselves with Snowball, or the cruel retribution they had just witnessed. In the old days there had often been scenes of bloodshed equally terrible, but it seemed to all of them that it was far worse now that it was happening among themselves. Since Jones had left the farm, until today, no animal had killed another animal.

Purges such as this are always the end result when the policies advocated by Warren and Sanders are implemented. It is just a matter of time.

This quote from Chapter 8 is a dire warning against the notion of a living Constitution.

A few days later, when the terror caused by the executions had died down, some of the animals remembered–or thought they remembered–that the Sixth Commandment decreed “No animal shall kill any other animal.” And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this. Clover asked Benjamin to read her the Sixth Commandment, and when Benjamin, as usual, said that he refused to meddle in such matters, she fetched Muriel. Muriel read the Commandment for her. It ran: “No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE.” Somehow or other, the last two words had slipped out of the animals’ memory. But they saw now that the Commandment had not been violated; for clearly there was good reason for killing the traitors who had leagued themselves with Snowball.

All quotes are copied from the Animal Farm Wikiquote page because I am a lousy typist.

Climate change alarmism is causing a lot of harm to children

Posted: September 26, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Children today are being bombarded with a consent stream of dire warnings about climate change. The constant stream is causing children a great deal of anxiety, as documented by this Climate Change Dispatch article titled Only A Monster Would Afflict Children With ‘Eco-Anxiety’.

What kind of monster afflicts children with eco-anxiety by telling them they will be dead in 12 years? I’ll tell you who: the child abusers in the establishment media, the environmental movement, and the Democrat Party — that’s who.

What’s especially disturbing is that children are being taught the opposite of empathy. Empathy is the most important value an adult can impart to a child. But what these kids are being encouraged to become is nothing less than wild-eyed, religious fanatics where non-believers are fingered as the enemy, as heretics looking to destroy the world and kill everyone. And this is always the result of such things, of the moral certainty of a zealot mixed with intolerance.

This anxiety has become  so widespread it has even been noticed by the American Psychological Association, according to this Ecowatch.com article Climate Change Is Causing Us ‘Eco-Anxiety’

A growing number of people report feelings of loss, grief, worry and despair amid news that climate change is making natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires worse and more common, that polar ice is melting faster than we thought and that we only have 12 years to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

The American Psychological Association has come up with a term for these “resounding chronic psychological consequences” related to how we process the climate crisis: eco-anxiety.

Eco-Anxiety, which the APA describes as a “chronic fear of environmental doom,” isn’t listed anywhere in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the handbook for diagnosing mental illnesses

What makes the anxiety caused by fear over climate change even more despicable is the fact it is all based on a lie, a monstrous lie that has reached the level of indoctrination.  The American Thinker article Scaring the children on climate is cruel, cynical, and dangerous describes the far reaching nature of this indoctrination.

It is dangerous when teenagers who have been indoctrinated their entire lives are treated as if they have knowledge on climate change and fossil fuels.  They are just repeating talking points when trotted out on media outlets and before Congress as if they were experts.  They have been discouraged from doing research and critically thinking because they have been told the science is settled.  They know that anyone who says the climate is changing and has always changed naturally is de a climate change denier; to get good grades, they need to repeat what they are told.

It is more dangerous when almost all journalists and other Democrats repeat the same talking points instead of doing research and asking questions.  Instead of pointing out to the teenagers that temperatures, sea levels, storm activity, droughts and floods have always fluctuated naturally, and previous dire predictions have been 100% wrong, they just go along.

This New York Post article The climate strike is all about indoctrination, not science has much more to about the indoctrination.

Unfortunately for students, the movement is not about education but indoctrination. One of the final demands, “comprehensive climate change education,” is to be aimed at children ages 5 through 14 because “impressionability is high during that developmental stage.”

If the climate threat eventually leads to radical national action, it will only be because the concept is drilled into youngsters “from the beginning.” Of course, it’s unclear why such a long-term strategy is necessary, given that we have only “11 years” left to avert disaster.

Judging from the bizarre, extremist, sloppily composed manifesto, the students who have the city Education Department’s blessing to attend this event clearly won’t be learning much of anything truly “science-based.” The rest of us, however, are learning quite a lot about the climate change movement, and it’s not pretty.

The Breitbart article Watch: Climate Strike Activist Says Climate Change Activism and Socialism Are ‘Inseparable’ explains just why this hoax was originally perpetuated and why it is still being crammed down the throats of children in the United States and across the world.

The fight against climate change is intricately connected to the push for socialism, according to a climate change alarmist who flocked to the nation’s capital to participate in the global climate strike on Friday.

Thousands of activists participated in the Greta Thunberg-inspired global climate strike in Washington, DC — and around the world — on Friday. Participants in D.C. were heard shouting, “Hey hey, ho ho, climate change has got to go,” and, “Don’t eat cows; eat the rich.”

One activist told Breitbart News that he was there to not only fight against climate change but to actively “fight for socialism,” calling the two “inseparable.”

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