Monday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

Where in the Hell did the weekend go? It’s already Monday again.

Reaching Peak Progressivism

Via American Greatness

The frightening visions of the new peak progressives will ensure the reelection of Donald Trump, as well as either the likely end of themselves—or else a collective dystopian nightmare.

In 2020 we have finally hit peak progressivism. The adjective “peak”—apex or summit— is often used to describe something that has reached its maximum extent but thereafter will insidiously decline—like supposed U.S. domestic oil production in 2000 when more oil was purportedly taken out of, rather than still in the ground. While the idea of peak oil in the days before fracking and horizontal drilling proved vastly premature, we likely are witnessing something like “peak progressivism” today.

By that I mean the hard-left takeover of the Democratic Party and the accompanying progressive agenda now have reached an extreme—beyond which will only result in the steady erosion of radical ideology altogether.

The French Revolution hit “peak” coerced egalitarianism with the Jacobin takeover and so-called Reign of Terror. After all, when you begin guillotining fellow travelers on charges they are counterrevolutionaries and begin worshiping a new atheist secular power “Reason,” institutionalized as Robespierre’s “Cult of the Supreme Being,” you have mostly reached the limits of political radicalism and are into the territory of the nihilistic, if not the maniacal and absurd—with a rendezvous with Napoleon on the horizon.

From 2009 through 2016, Barack Obama recalibrated the Democratic Party’s liberalism into progressive radicalism. He opened the border and all but dismantled existing immigration law. Sanctuary cities sprang up with impunity. Executive orders bypassed the Congress. The Iran Deal ignored the Senate’s treaty-making responsibilities. Obama sought to nationalize healthcare. The concept of “diversity” replaced affirmative action, by redefining racial oppression as distinct from historical grievance and economic disparity and instead lumping together 30 percent of the population as nonwhite, and thus antithetical to the new buzz construct of “white privilege.” Fast and Furious, the surveillance of the Associated Press reporters, Benghazi, the weaponization of the IRS, and the use of CIA, FBI, and DOJ to seed the spurious Steele dossier were all written off as proof of the “most scandal free” administration in memory.

But today Obamaism has been figuratively guillotined by the New Jacobins. It is found guilty of crimes of insufficient revolutionary zeal, as well as compromises with the U.S. Constitution and capitalism.

Once considered a crank socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is now leads in many Democratic primary polls. Arriving with him at this moment in our politics is peak progressivism.

Read the entire article HERE.

The Crumbling of Cuba’s Grand Socialist Experiment

Via The American Thinker

The once vibrant island nation of Cuba is but another place where socialism added to its unbroken trail of failure.  The country’s capital, Havana, was once an international tourist destination.  Known as the “Jewel of the Caribbean,” Havana was a glamorous city with beautiful homes and modern vehicles.  After six decades of socialism, only the communist rulers and their cronies live in upscale homes, and the country’s poorly maintained roads are traveled by junker cars built in the middle of the last century.

The harsh and unforgiving hand of single-party socialist rule

Promising to bring fairness and equality to his troubled nation, a young and charismatic Fidel Castro led a revolution that ousted Cuba’s corrupt U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista.  When victory was won, Castro rode triumphantly through the streets of Havana.  Based on their new leader’s assurance that he was not a communist, the Cuban people embraced Castro with wild enthusiasm.

Among the greatest heroes of the Cuban Revolution were two foreigners whose battlefield exploits were so legendary that they became the only non-Cubans to be awarded the rank of Comandante in Castro’s army.  One was an idealistic 29-year-old American named William Alexander Morgan, the other a ruthless Marxist revolutionary from Argentina named Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Hailed by Castro for acts of valor that earned him the affectionate nickname “the Americano,” Morgan said he joined the Cuban Revolution because “the most important thing for free men to do is protect the freedom of others.”  A fervent anti-communist, Morgan was personally assured by Castro that communism would play no part in the future of the new Cuba.  But once Castro had consolidated an iron-fisted grip on power, he revealed his true stripes.

Read the entire article HERE.

Luring Children: How Socialism Got Its Groove Back

Via Townhall

Bernie Sanders keeps telling young people how he will give them so much free stuff, if only they will go with him, vote for him. Bernie basically stands in front of a windowless van, telling kids to get in, luring them with candy and puppies.

Back in my day, I was taught to be wary of people luring me with promises of Utopia. I was taught that if someone offers something for free, I should tell them, “no, thank you, I can’t afford it.” But those days are gone. At the start of the new millennium, adults have lost sight of teaching kids the basics.

Today’s youngest voters grew up tightly packed in bubble wrap, never exploring on their own, never making mistakes from which they can learn, never getting to understand reality. These young people spent their lives dependent on authority, on guidance. Yet those who were supposed to guide them have failed them. Millennials grew up as a generation expecting handouts but not learning work ethic or personal responsibility, never finding the inner drive to succeed independently. The idea of autonomy and freedom are genuinely frightening concepts for these youths. Socialism simply fits their expectations more comfortably. If you grow up with white-glove care from a nanny, why wouldn’t you ask for a nanny-state to continue coddling you through your illusory adulthood? (And illusory it sure is.)

Read the entire article HERE.

Report: FBI Handed Over Classified Information To Spy Christopher Steele

Via The Federalist

Inspector General Michael Horowitz discovered that FBI agents shared extensive classified materials with former British spy Christopher Steele, despite knowing the Democratic National Committee was paying Steele and that Hillary Clinton herself was aware of Steele’s research, according to a new report by Eric Felten at RealClearInvestigations.

FBI agents met with Steele in Rome just a month before the 2016 election, where they gave him a “general overview” of Crossfire Hurricane as well as details of the cases against Trump campaign staffers Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn. In addition to the intel, Steele was compensated $15,000 by the FBI for attending the three-hour meeting.

Felten points out that the FBI took extra measures internally to keep Crossfire Hurricane confidential. It was considered both “prohibited,” meaning it could be accessed only by agents officially working on the case, and “close-hold,” meaning information was known only by DOJ and FBI officials. Yet despite the appearance of classified intel, the FBI was eager to meet with Steele, even with the knowledge of his DNC connections.

Read the entire article HERE.

Censorship Is the Way that Any Dictatorship — and No Democracy — Functions

Via The Duran

No democracy can survive censorship. If there is censorship, then each individual cannot make his/her own decisions (voting decisions or otherwise) on the basis of truth but only on the basis of whatever passes through the censor’s filter, which is always whatever supports the censoring regime and implants it ever more deeply into the public’s mind — regardless of its actual truthfulness.

The public does have a mind, as a collective constituting the majority of the residents in the given land, which majority rules any democratic government. If the government doesn’t really represent the majority, it’s no democracy, at all, but instead represents other individuals, the real rulers, who might be hidden. Consequently, if a democracy exists but a censor somehow becomes allowed, and emerges into existence in a given land, then democracy will inevitably be snuffed-out there, and dictatorship will inevitably be the result — merely because censorship has been applied there, which blocks some essential truths (truths that the rulers don’t want the public to know) from reaching the public.

Nothing is as toxic to democracy as is censorship. Censorship prevents democracy.

If a dictatorship already exists in a given land, then it does so by means of censorship, because only by that means will the public be willing to pay taxes to the regime and to go to war for it and to kill and die for it. Without censorship, none of that could happen, except in an authentic democracy. An authentic democracy has no censorship.

Anyone who endorses censorship is a totalitarian, a supporter of totalitarianism, even without recognizing the fact. If the person fails to recognize the fact that censorship is applied only in a totalitarian regime, then that person has bought into the most basic belief of totalitarianism: the idea that censorship can be justified in some circumstances. Dictatorships always pump that lie, so as to be able to continue to exist as a dictatorship. There is no circumstance which ever can justify censorship, unless one believes that dictatorship is, or can be, good instead of bad.

Read the entire article HERE.

Climate Crisis Solved By New Jet That Runs On Liberal Hypocrisy

Via The Babylon Bee

U.S.—The climate crisis has been getting worse, despite liberal elites’ best efforts to fly all over the country in their private jets lecturing everybody about it.

There seemed to be no end in sight until a new tech startup, Hypocri-Fuel, introduced a private jet that runs on liberal hypocrisy.

“We just hook this bad boy up to Leo DiCaprio, Al Gore, Justin Trudeau, or any of the other thousands of progressive elites who refuse to change their lifestyles to match their beliefs, and presto — plenty of fuel to go around,” said the startup’s CEO, Gus Perder. “One fuel-up can power a jet for over a year.”

Perder said he was trying to figure out what resource the earth has that’s nearly limitless when it hit him: the hypocrisy of rich lefties. “There is so much liberal hypocrisy to go around that we never have to worry about running out,” he said. “Fossil fuels may go away in a few hundred years, and people are scared of nuclear, but we have an inexhaustible supply of liberal hypocrisy.”

And every time one of these liberal elites gives a condescending Oscar speech or goes on a world tour in their private jet to tell people how bad they are for flying commercial and not running around in a Flinstones car, they’re just generating more energy to power these new airplanes.

“It’s a win-win for everybody — liberals can keep lecturing people and actually be useful, and the rest of us can go on ignoring them while the planet cools substantially.”

Check out all of the Bee’s great takes on politics and culture HERE.