Avoiding the Tech Giants Biased On Line Tools

Avoiding the Tech Giants Biased On Line Tools

A recent word from our increasingly connected world is “google”.  When we “google” something, we search for it on the on-line world wide web, and we expect a neutral response from the Google search engine on where to find it, or references to it.  But the response from Google is not neutral.  It is shaped by a complex algorithm reflecting both the views of the Google developers and maintainers, and our own historical preferences.



The algorithm in the Google search engine has been shown to be biased and insidious in its search choices politically and commercially.  Particularly insidious are ephemeral and subliminal suggestions built into the google algorithm.  According to psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein google searches in 2016 and 2018 manipulated large numbers of voters toward democrat candidates without them even knowing it.  To be noted is that Dr. Epstein’s politics are left-central and pro Hillary, so his study is not right wing biased.  See the first link below for Dr. Epstein’s testimony before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing held on Google and its censorship policy on July 16, 2019.



 “Duckduckgo”, in spite of its’ strange name, is an unbiased and non-tracking search engine, and is the best alternative search engine out there. DuckDuckGo doesn’t collect any of your personal information or store your history, and does not follow you around with ads because they have nothing to sell to advertisers.



DuckDuckGo doesn’t provide personalized results – all users will see the same results for a given search query. Rather than returning thousands of results, it emphasizes on returning the best results, and extracts those results from more than 400 sources. It’s a smart search engine (uses semantic search technique like Google) that depends on a highly evolved contextual library for intuiting the user’s intent.



The “Brave” web browser is a viable and neutral alternative to the major web browsers.



“Infogalactic” is a neutral replacement for “Wikipedia”, which has become very slanted from user input.



Using all three of the above allows bypassing the tech giants push to slant information toward a leftist point of view and promotes online honesty.  There is a bit of a learning curve.  Results don’t look exactly like the Google-Microsoft-Wikipedia bunch, but small price to pay for online results that are not slanted left by the tech giants’ algorithms.



There is also a Facebook look alike called “gab.ai” that removes Zuckerberg & company’s bias, but I don’t have any experience yet with it.





https://youtu.be/mhwZcB1spV8?t=8



https://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Method_for_Detecting_Bias_in_Search_Rankings-AIBRT_WP-17-02_6-1-17.pdf



http://www.canirank.com/blog/analysis-of-political-bias-in-internet-search-engine-results/



https://thefederalist.com/2017/06/14/keep-online-browsing-unfiltered-political-propaganda/





Ray Gruszecki

October 31, 2019

Is Schrödinger’s Cat Alive or Dead?

Is Schrödinger’s Cat Alive or Dead?

Are those waves or particles through those slits?  And is Schrödinger’s cat alive or dead?



Newtonian Physics had pretty much defined our physical world, and provided the basis for building our bridges, railroads, trains, planes and automobiles, and explaining the basic laws of motion affecting them.



Einstein developed relativistic principles extending Newtonian physics, including gravity, laws of motion and astrophysical effects.



The world was deterministic, observable, measurable.  Larger and larger particle accelerators measured smaller and smaller sub atomic pieces, including the Higgs Boson in 2012.  The Standard Model of Particle Physics which resulted from these efforts, explains virtually all of the phenomena of this deterministic existence.



Starting in the late nineteenth century, Max Planck, Ludwig Boltzmann, Albert Einstein (again), Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Erwin Schrödinger, Richard Feynman, turned deterministic physics on its ear.



Light was shown to be both wave and particle.  It was proven impossible to measure position and momentum of a particle.  Superposition and entanglement of particles is a fact.   Schrödinger’s cat was both alive and dead.  All of the above is impossible in a deterministic world, but altogether possible, in the nano quantum world, and quantum theory forms the basis for many of our electronics and other inventions,



A conundrum, though.  Particle physics and quantum theory are not compatible.  Gravity from our deterministic world doesn’t fit the quantum world.  It can’t be quantized without going to exotic string or “m” theories which incorporate upwards of 12 unseen dimensions, alternate universes and other esoterica, or else, loop quantum gravity which pixilates space-time.



So we are stuck in an untestable, theoretical mathematical vacuum where our theories are limited to increasing complexity and mathematical cleverness as substitutes for measurable experimentation.





References: 



Short history of quantum mechanics:

https://www.livescience.com/33816-quantum-mechanics-explanation.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_quantum_mechanics



Easily understood dissertation on Quantum Computing from Canada:

https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/quantum-computing-101#What-is-quantum-computing



A bit more technical:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing



Gravity and Quantum Mechanics

https://www.space.com/32147-why-is-gravity-so-hard-to-understand.html





Ray Gruszecki

October 30, 2019

Our News Sources

Our News Sources

If there were no Fox Network or National Review, or the Wall Street Journal, all of America would be “woke”, multi-gender afraid, Godless and fully socialist democrat.  Unfortunately, most mainstream news sources in our country have become propaganda outlets for liberal socialist thought and the extreme leftist incarnation of the current democrat party.



That is not to say that a constant diet of Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham is any more balanced from the right than a similar diet of Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow and Morning Joe is balanced from the left.  These are opinion programs, and opinion and bias are to be expected from these programs.  A constant diet of either milieu will make one either a flaming liberal or conservative.



However, similar bias should not be expected in the 6 pm and 11 pm news broadcasts of the ABC, CBS and NBC, or in the news headlines and reportage (not opinion pages), of the New York Times, Washington Post, and most other major U.S. newspapers.  Yet that leftist bias is so clearly evident in our so-called news media, that one can only conclude that what should be neutral news has become slanted liberal, leftist, propaganda.



Unfortunately, this has consequences.  When “Joe Six Pack”, or “John or Judy Professional” read their local newspaper, or come home after a day’s work and turn on ABC or CBS or NBC, they are continually subjected to biased and slanted commentary from the leftist side of politics.  Many average Americans don’t go out of their way to turn on a Fox channel or read the Wall Street Journal or National Review to get a more balanced view of the news.



This is why selective leaks from behind the “star chamber” closed doors of the secret Trump impeachment inquiry by Pelosi and Schiff to the avidly awaiting partisan mainstream media are so effective to move the needle of public opinion about supporting impeachment, and about the presidential polling data.



Do you think Pelosi is a doddering old fool?  She has always used that “breathless” demeanor to mask a calculating and devious mind set.  She wants to gain public acceptance for impeachment without a vote identifying its backers in the house. If she succeeds in gaining a modicum of acceptance for her secretive and ersatz ‘impeachment inquiry”, it will set a new low for cynicism for law and fairness in congress, and will set a dangerous and lawless precedent for overthrowing an elected president.



Ray Gruszecki

October 26, 2019

Our Government is Being Overthrown

Our Government is Being Overthrown

There is a coup being perpetrated on our country to overthrow the elected president of the U.S. and negate the 2016 election.  This is a continuous and insidious effort by the increasingly socialist democrat party, and the hostile liberal media, to unseat a duly elected president.



The election of Donald Trump and the democrats’ losses in 2016 were never accepted by the democrat party, the administrative state and the biased left-leaning media.  Efforts to overthrow the election and remove Trump from office began immediately after the election ended.  One rationale posited by the leftists was that in spite of the fact that Trump won the electoral college by a margin of 304 to 227, he lost the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes.  A point that can be made in this regard is that combining several districts in Los Angeles with those in New York City amounts to more than 3.1 million votes, and the country’s fortunes should not turn on these 3.1 million very liberal voters in these coastal elitist areas.



Efforts immediately after the election centered on the 25^th amendment, saying that a maverick, “bull in the china shop” like Trump was not fit for the office of the presidency, and on the obscure emolument’s clause of the constitution and the accusation that Trump was profiting from the presidency by not divesting entirely from his multi-billion business empire.  The first issue was that Trump was indeed an unlikeable “beyond the beltway” maverick, to the Washington insiders.  Hating him was not sufficient cause to remove him, although psychiatric competency was cited in this effort.  On the second point, Trump works for free.  He donates his $400k/year salary to various charities. He and his family have eschewed business deals that would hint of any conflict or impropriety. Unfounded accusations continue in the “resistance” and the mainstream media.



Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey and other executive branch intrigues led to the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller, to investigate, among other things, collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice by the Trump campaign.  This effort by Mueller and “13 angry democrats”, to quote opposition republicans, and touted by the ”resistance” democrats, as being the “nail in Trump’s coffin”, took two and a half years.  The final report found no collusion on Trump’s part, and waffled and confused the issue of obstruction such that the new Attorney General, Bill Barr had to rectify the issue as “no obstruction”.  After interminable disputes about the minor redactions in the report, Mueller, in testimony before House committees, failed miserably to elucidate on the report, and could hardly remember many of the salient points.  Another effort to “get Trump” failed.



All during the first three years of the Trump presidency, a constant battle was being fought against Trump, not only by the rather legislatively inactive congress, but also by activist federal judges legislating from the bench against many of Trump’s executive orders.  Trump won many of these cases on appeal, sometimes all the way to the Supreme Court, but the process was tedious and overly complex.



In the meantime, Trump continued to appoint federal judges and two Supreme Court judges, to the consternation and opposition of the obstructing democrats.  These unprincipled democrats subjected Judge Brett Kavanaugh and his family to unproven and increasingly lurid allegations of sexual misconduct while he was a student 25 years ago.  This saga was dragged across our TV screens for months before he was finally approved for SCOTUS.  The “nasty tricks” politics of accusations without proof, of the congressional democrats were on open display while they were trying to ruin Judge Kavanaugh.



Which brings to the current situation – impeachment – not in the open, and not after a House vote, as in prior impeachments - but instead, in “star chamber” type closed sessions, with only anti-Trump media leaks emanating from these sessions.  Again, the anti-Trump mainstream media hangs on every carefully crafted leak as gospel, and as the “next nail in Trump’s coffin”.  As in the Kavanaugh situation, accusations are without proof, and this time “in the dark”, in closed rooms.  One has to ask, did these tactics come from Stalin and Beria?



The basis for impeachment?  Trump’s phone conversation with President Zelensky of The Ukraine where mention is made of Ukraine’s role in possible interference in our 2016 election process, and the Bidens’ corrupt “pay for play” activities in Ukraine while Joe Biden was Vice President.  A so-called “whistleblower” with close ties to the “resistance” democrats and the intelligence community issued a legalistic hearsay “whistleblower” complaint about the phone call, a transcript of which was released by the Trump administration, to the consternation of his accusers.  See link to the transcript of the phone conversation- https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/official-readout-president-trump-s-july-25-phone-call-with-ukraine-s-volodymyr-zelensky/4b228f51-17e7-45bc-b16c-3b2643f3fbe0/

As can be seen, there is nothing “impeachable” in this transcript.  It cycles back to the real reason for this so-called impeachment inquiry – the hatred of the democrats for Donald Trump.



This is the link to the so-called “whistleblower complaint”, a hearsay accusation against the president, after the whistleblower rules were changed to allow such third=party accusatory documentation.  https://www.usatoday.com/documents/6430388-20190812-Whistleblower-Complaint-Unclass/

To be remembered is that these are accusations against the president by an anonymous registered democrat who waited 18 days after the Trump/Zelinsky phone conversation, and coordinated with Adam Schiff, the chief inquisitor in this farce.  Both this anonymous accuser and Schiff then lied about their coordination.



It would be pointless to dwell on the unfair, secretive and closed­­-door nature of the continuing so-called impeachment inquiries.  Nancy Pelosi’s obvious purpose is not to hold a floor vote in the House, as in past impeachments, which would expose tenuous democrats for the 2020 election.  Instead her purpose is to sway public opinion toward impeachment by leaking selected, slanted pieces of anti-Trump, closed-door testimony.  Precedent, good order and fairness be damned, so long as the “resistance” socialist democrats now in charge of the democrat party, get their way. 



“The People’s House” has gone rogue.  One can only hope that the senate will bring some sanity into the process by refusing to even entertain an impeachment trial.  The only other thing that can be done to bring some order back to government is to vote the increasingly socialist left-wing radicals out of congress in 2020, and to vote in strong, pro U.S. republicans, along with a re-elected Trump as president.  I wish there were someone less controversial, but Trump is it.



After a Tornado affected, power out for two days, then TV, phone and internet out for a day after that.



Ray Gruszecki

October 24, 2019  

Thirty Million People Without a Country

Thirty Million People Without a Country

There are between 25 – 35 million ethnic Kurds in the Middle East without their own county.  There are approximately 15 million Kurds in Turkey, 7 to 8 million in Iran and 1 to 2 million in Syria. There are another roughly 5 million Kurds in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a semi-autonomous region in Iraq.

Some history:

During WWI, the British and French formed a secret agreement called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which concluded in May 1916. The agreement consisted of plans to carve up the Near and Middle East into nation-states and spheres of influence to support their own colonial interests. The former provinces of Syria and Mesopotamia under the Ottoman Empire would be divided into five nation-states: Lebanon and Syria which would be under French control and Palestine, Jordan and Iraq including Mosul Province which would be under British control.
At the end of the War, the Treaty of Sevres was drafted to deal with the dissolution and partition of the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty bolstered Kurdish nationalists’ aspirations by providing for a referendum to decide the issue of the Kurdistan homeland.

The Treaty of Sevres was rejected by the new Turkish Republic, and a new treaty (The Treaty of Lausanne) was negotiated and signed in 1923. The Treaty of Lausanne annulled the Treaty of Sevres, giving control of the entire Anatolian peninsula to the new Turkish Republic including the Kurdistan homeland in Turkey. There was no provision in the new treaty for a referendum for Kurdish independence or autonomy. Kurdistan’s hopes for an autonomous region and independent state were dashed.

From the end of World War I to the Gulf War in 1990, the Kurds in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria fought separate guerrilla campaigns to achieve autonomy. All of the campaigns were forcibly put down.

Turkey: 

The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey. According to various estimates, they compose between 15% and 20% of the population of Turkey. There are Kurds living in various provinces of Turkey, but they are primarily concentrated in the east and southeast of the country, within the region viewed by Kurds as Turkish Kurdistan.

Kurds in Turkey have been severely oppressed.  Massacres, such as the Dersim ethnocide and the Zilan massacre, have periodically occurred against the Kurds since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. The Turkish government categorized Kurds as "Mountain Turks" until 1991, and the words "Kurds", "Kurdistan", or "Kurdish" were officially banned by the Turkish government. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish languages were officially prohibited in public and private life.  Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. In Turkey, it is illegal to use Kurdish as a language of instruction in both public and private schools. The Kurdish language is only allowed as a subject in some schools.

Kurds have rebelled against the oppression of the Turkish government. The Kurdish–Turkish conflict is an armed conflict between the Republic of Turkey and various Kurdish insurgent groups, which have demanded separation from Turkey to create an independent Kurdistan, or to have autonomy and greater political and cultural rights for Kurds inside the Republic of Turkey. The main rebel group is the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, a far-left militant and political organization with Leninist roots, based in Turkey and Iraq. Although insurgents have carried out attacks in many regions of Turkey, the insurgency is mainly in southeastern Turkey. The PKK's presence in Iraq's Kurdistan Region, from which it has also launched attacks, has resulted in the Turkish military carrying out frequent ground incursions and air and artillery strikes in the region. The conflict has cost the economy of Turkey an estimated $300 to 450 billion, mostly military costs. It has also affected tourism in Turkey.

Syria: 

The Syrian Kurdish–Islamist conflict, a major theater in the Syrian Civil War, started after fighting erupted between the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and Islamist rebel factions in the city of Ras al-Ayn. Kurdish forces launched a campaign in an attempt to take control of the Islamist-controlled areas in the governorate of al-Hasakah and some parts of Raqqa and Aleppo governorates after al-Qaeda in Syria used those areas to attack the YPG. The Kurdish groups and their allies' goal were also to capture Kurdish areas from the Arab Islamist rebels and strengthen the autonomy of the region of Rojava.

Iraq: 

In 1992, an alliance of political parties, the Iraqi Kurdistan Front, held parliamentary and presidential elections. As a result, the Iraqi Kurdistan Front established the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a new autonomous Government of Kurdistan in Iraq.
The KRG is a secular government modeled along the lines of modern independent nation-state in a federation with the rest of Iraq. They have their own parliament, military (the “Peshmerga”), borders and foreign policy.

Iran:

The government of Iran has never employed the same level of brutality against its Kurds as did Turkey or Iraq, but it has always been implacably opposed to any suggestion of Kurdish separatism.  Unlike in other Middle Eastern countries with Kurdish populations, Kurdish separatism in Iran has little to no support due to the very strong ethno-linguistical ties and the common history and culture they share with other Iranian peoples.  Many Kurds in Iran have shown no interest in Kurdish nationalism, especially Shia Kurds, who even vigorously reject the idea of autonomy, preferring direct rule from Tehran. The Kurds sharing a common history with the rest of the Iranian peoples is seen as another reason for why even Kurdish leaders in Iran do not want a separate Kurdish state.

Ray Gruszecki
October 10, 2019

Ukraine Phone Call, “Whistleblower” Document

Ukraine Phone Call, “Whistleblower” Document

I’ve been watching and reading the latest leftist/mainstream media effort to “finally get Trump” – (for what seems the twentieth time in his brief 3-year tenure, so far). 

Any honest and rational person who has read the actual transcript of the July 25 telephone conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian President Zelinsky, and the raw “whistleblower report, can see that there is nothing impeachable here.  Trump’s mention of the Biden’s in the phone-con may be inappropriate, but certainly not illegal or impeachable.  The “whistleblower report” is obviously an agglomeration of hearsay, innuendoes and contrarian news reports cobbled together by a disgruntled Trump hater, and blown all out of proportion to take advantage of our whistleblower laws.

Link to transcript of the phone call:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/official-readout-president-trump-s-july-25-phone-call-with-ukraine-s-volodymyr-zelensky/4b228f51-17e7-45bc-b16c-3b2643f3fbe0/

The Zelinsky phone call is just an excuse to implement a “pseudo” impeachment “inquiry” (without any articles of impeachment), to placate the increasingly vociferous socialist left of the democrat party. – Another complete waste of taxpayer dollars and legislative power.  Shame on the democrats for sinking so low!

Professor Hanson, as usual, makes some great points about Trump most likely benefitting from this latest impeachment hoopla.  Now, if he could only keep his mouth shut, and thumbs off of his tweeter ---.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-impeachment-frenzy-may-strengthen-trump/

I’m not a big fan of this whole “whistleblower” (can you say “rat”), business, but it has been codified in the law, including protection for the rat, er -, “whistleblower”.

The New York Times, to which I have a cheap digital subscription as a junior college “student”, is absolutely unconscionable. Their recent coup, in pursuit of notoriety (and dollars), is to pretty much identify the person, whose anonymity is guaranteed under the whistleblower laws, who precipitated this latest Zelinsky phone call, “impeach Trump”, mania.

How low the veritable Gray Lady has fallen – from “All the News that’s Fit to Print” to “All the Sensationalism that Can Be Tolerated”.

As is typical for the left-wing media, if something published may bring a negative reaction, blame it on Trump.  And on que, NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet shifted the blame to Trump. (See the second link). For shame, NYT.

Link to the “Whistleblower” complaint

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/politics/who-is-whistleblower.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/reader-center/whistle-blower-identity.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act

Ray Gruszecki

Sept 29, 2019

Relative Economic Strength of China, Russia, U.S.

Relative Economic Strength of China, Russia, U.S.



China, Russia and U.S. GDP’s, CIA World Factbook, 2017 basis, per year.



GDP (official exchange rate)  - China $12.01 Trillion;  Russia 1.58 Trillion;

U.S. – $19.49 Trillion



This entry gives the gross domestic product (GDP) or value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a given year. A nation's GDP at official exchange rates (OER) is the home-currency-denominated annual GDP figure divided by the bilateral average US exchange rate with that country in that year. The measure is simple to compute and gives a precise measure of the value of output. Many economists prefer this measure when gauging the economic power an economy maintains vis-à-vis its neighbors, judging that an exchange rate captures the purchasing power a nation enjoys in the international marketplace. Official exchange rates, however, can be artificially fixed and/or subject to manipulation - resulting in claims of the country having an under- or over-valued currency - and are not necessarily the equivalent of a market-determined exchange rate. Moreover, even if the official exchange rate is market-determined, market exchange rates are frequently established by a relatively small set of goods and services (the ones the country trades) and may not capture the value of the larger set of goods the country produces. Furthermore, OER-converted GDP is not well suited to comparing domestic GDP over time, since appreciation/depreciation from one year to the next will make the OER GDP value rise/fall regardless of whether home-currency-denominated GDP changed.





GDP (purchasing power parity)  - China $23.21 Trillion;  Russia 4.02 Trillion;

U.S. $19.49 Trillion



This entry gives the gross domestic product (GDP) or value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a given year. A nation's GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates is the sum value of all goods and services produced in the country valued at prices prevailing in the United States in the year noted. This is the measure most economists prefer when looking at per-capita welfare and when comparing living conditions or use of resources across countries. The measure is difficult to compute, as a US dollar value has to be assigned to all goods and services in the country regardless of whether these goods and services have a direct equivalent in the United States (for example, the value of an ox-cart or non-US military equipment); as a result, PPP estimates for some countries are based on a small and sometimes different set of goods and services. In addition, many countries do not formally participate in the World Bank's PPP project that calculates these measures, so the resulting GDP estimates for these countries may lack precision. For many developing countries, PPP-based GDP measures are multiples of the official exchange rate (OER) measure. The differences between the OER- and PPP-denominated GDP values for most of the wealthy industrialized countries are generally much smaller.



Ray Gruszecki

October 8, 2019

Modern Politics, Liberalism, Conservatism

Modern Politics, Liberalism, Conservatism

What kind of world do we want for our grandchildren? – The democrat/socialist one based on identity politics being touted by most of the 2020 democrat candidates for president? – Or the one being defended by President Trump and the republican right?



The culture war rages and has become politicized to the point that the opposing factions rarely rationally debate their differences.  These differences have morphed into burning hatreds of each other expressed as virtually articles of religious faith.  Those on the right side of politics, and those who dare exhibit trappings of their affiliation, like pro-Trump signs and red MAGA hats, are vilified and persecuted by leftist mobs, and even violently accosted in the streets, in restaurants and in their homes.  Backers of the left and leftist causes don’t seem to bear the same opprobrium from the right, or there would be an angry roar from the left and their accomplices in the media.  There have been very few, if any, reports of similar actions by right wing mobs against the left’s “pussy hats” or “squad” tee shirts.



The far left, which now seems to comprise most of the democrat party, is pushing for socialism, identity politics, open borders, sanctuary cities, diminished law enforcement, full and even post term abortion, restrictive and choking anti-industry environmental controls, a diminished and more docile defense and military posture, - and all of the other trappings of government control of everything in political, economic and personal life.  Embedded in the socialist/communist/fascist hybrid being proposed by the left are special and unique privileges for subgroups of society, “free stuff”, forgiveness of student debt, redistribution of productive wealth via a wealth tax, and the green new deal, all of which may sound attractive to someone with little historical, political or economic perspective, but which obviously would break even a strong economy like the U.S. in short order.



The right side of politics (pun intended), advocates a more traditional American approach to governance, to the economy and to personal freedoms.  This entails recognizing that socialism, whether the national socialism or “Nazi” kind, or the Russian communist kind, or the Venezuelan “democrat socialist” kind, has never worked, nowhere and at no time.  Countries have been destroyed and 120 million people have lost their lives in the twentieth century due to ill-conceived efforts to institute “socialism”.  This conservative side of politics posits that all American citizens have equal and inalienable rights, regardless of skin color or ethnicity or “gender” or sexual orientation or origins or background.  It entails passing and enforcing legislation defining the borders and citizenship of our country.  It includes enforcement of our laws, including in many major cities, parts of which have become rat-infested and disease-ridden cesspools of high crime and murder.  It includes an honest, science based, realistic and un-politicized approach to the world’s climate change which includes all the major polluters, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia and others, and not just the U.S. and the E.U.  It includes a strong U.S. military that is respected, but that is not expected to be the “policeman of the world”.



So it’s not just Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer versus Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, and business as usual in our congress; and just another election cycle and minor swing between the political parties, - this is a fundamental shift in what our government and our country should be.  The modern liberals and democrat/socialists representing the current democrat party want us to be socialist and secular and devoid of constitutional (and spiritual) guidance.  The republicans and conservatives say that we should preserve and evolve from our traditional American heritage to face the challenges of the modern world.



Some definitions and background:



Liberals believe in government action to achieve equal opportunity and equality for all. It is the duty of the government to alleviate social ills and to protect civil liberties and individual and human rights. Believe the role of the government should be to guarantee that no one is in need. Liberal policies generally emphasize the need for the government to solve problems.



Conservatives believe in personal responsibility, limited government, free markets, individual liberty, traditional American values and a strong national defense. Believe the role of government should be to provide people the freedom necessary to pursue their own goals. Conservative policies generally emphasize empowerment of the individual to solve problems.



Both modern conservatives and liberals can trace their early beginnings back to thinkers like Aristotle and Machiavelli, and thence to 17^th century thinkers John Locke of England and Adam Smith of Scotland, and to 18^th century thinker Charles de Montesquieu of France.  Without overcomplicating, the path toward modern liberalism and progressivism tracks though David Ricardo, Rousseau, Voltaire, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill, to Thomas Jefferson.  More recent notables are Karl Popper, John Maynard Keynes, John Dewey, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King. 



Noted historical conservatives are John Locke, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, John, John Quincy, Henry and Brooks Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Alexis de Tocqueville, Auguste Comte, Benjamin Disraeli, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Irving Babbitt, Milton Friedman, Paul Elmer More, George Santayana, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, William H. Buckley, George Will, Victor Davis Hanson and others.




IMHO, the link below, a quite long, but very educational article should be required reading for anyone wishing to know more about the origins and current state of our political process and thought.



The title does not do the article justice.  This is an in depth, historical review of the underpinnings of our political beliefs, and how they relate historically, philosophically and societally in our currently polarized world. The writer, John Hood, describes how classical and modern conservatism, classic and modern liberalism, libertarianism, modern progressivism, modern populism and Trumpism are all related and how they differ.  Hood also freely references who the thinkers were that promulgated these differing beliefs.



https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/new-nationalists-make-three-big-bets/




Ray Gruszecki

August 27, 2019