Showing the Virtue of the 2nd Amendment

“My whole adult life, opponents of private gun ownership have insisted that an individual right to keep and bear arms was outmoded because it is better to rely on the police,” Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett recently remarked. “In multiple ways, in 2020 that argument has been completely demolished.”

He is correct on both counts. The argument that only the police should have guns was once standard. It has now become unfashionable, as everyone is expected to accept the premise that only criminals and rioters should have them.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/abolish-police-and-the-second-amendment-becomes-a-first-resort

The 2nd Amendment was instituted to allow us to defend ourselves against an over bearing government, however, it comes in very handy when the government fails to accomplish its legitimate purpose of defending individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

How Dare You Claim It Is Not a Catastrophe?!

 Another example of how opposing the climate religion will get a person ex-communicated. 

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/07/28/prominent-environmentalist-censored-forbes-called-white-supremacist-writing-sense-about-climate-14938

Pandemic Impacts on Schools

A darned good read from CNN, never would have thunk it.

The pandemic appears to be intensifying the longstanding threat to the future of universal public education. Proponents of school privatization see closings as an opportunity to make inroads; if public schools don't open, the argument goes, parents should be able to take their taxpayer money elsewhere. President Donald Trump has threatened to do just that by withdrawing public funds from schools that don't offer in-person learning and giving the money directly to parents. How that would work is unclear, but for-profit distance learning companies are already ramping up business.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/07/opinions/school-reopening-threat-to-public-schools-kantrowitz/index.html

Lockdown the Lockdowns

Invasion of liberty doesn't achieve any of the desirable effects. 

https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-comparing-europe-us-evidence-clear-lockdowns-dont-work/

Americans are now facing this predicament: The more the effectiveness of these executive policies is disproven, the more the politicians use that lack of results as a pretext for even more rules. Thus, if stay-at-home orders failed to work as promised, they demand mask-wearing. If mask-wearing was in place for months and still didn’t work, which has been the case in most hot spots, then they mandate mask-wearing in personal homes in Broward County, Florida, and for two-year-olds in Baltimore County, Maryland. Because you know, the only possible explanation for continued spread of a virus that is not deadly for most people is that two-year-olds weren’t wearing masks. Never mind studies from nearly every major European country showing kids, particularly young kids, do not contribute to community spread, even if masks did work.

Speaking of European countries, it’s time to dispel one of the more popular myths propagated by our new dictators. We are constantly being lectured to by the “experts” that America didn’t have enough of a lockdown and that is the reason why we are still seeing a spread of the virus while Europe seems to be done with it. A new eye-opening analysis from the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) shows that America had just as severe a lockdown as most European countries and in fact had a longer-lasting lockdown than every country except for England.

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This one may already be out of date - however, it's another example that the spread is more about the flow of infectious people into a locale that about the responses by governments to awareness that the bug has reached their political sphere. 

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/how-japan-beat-coronavirus-without-lockdowns-11594163172?fbclid=IwAR3_pvLdqhHkbTRpYS-9JjUvKndvyS6JfPsp5iK_YGcAYHW8YGsTLc3IIGM

Obvious and Fascinating

This is an example of what "Guns Germs and Steel" explained in the evolution from hunter gatherer to agriculturalist.

Basic premise - agriculture made humans sick and frail relative to hunter gatherers, but also let them reproduce at a 4x higher rate. It allowed humans to have specialists like blacksmiths, carpenters and politicians, and combined with the higher populations led to the displacement of the hunter gatherers all around the world. History was there to watch it happen in the 1800s in north america, when, for example, the dominant plains tribe, the Comanche reached a population of 20,000.  By then there were millions of european immigrants and their children. It was only a matter of time. 

-Roughly 9,000 years ago farmers from the Middle East headed toward Europe, seeking new land to cultivate.
-The farmers traveled either along the Mediterranean coast or the Danube River, encountering hunter-gatherers who lived in dense forests.
-At first, the farmers and hunter-gatherers traded or mated. By 5,000 years ago, however, agriculture dominated the continent and hierarchical societies had evolved.
-Genetic studies suggest that individuals with high hunter-gatherer ancestry may have been treated as inferiors.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-first-farmers-arrived-in-europe-inequality-evolved/

Olympic Gold Medal Winners, Depression

I never would have guessed this. I grew up thinking that if I could accomplish something like winning an Olympic gold medal, I would transcend the struggle of life and the rest of life would be easy street. 

https://www.insidehook.com/article/sports/weight-of-gold-documentary-hbo-olympic-depression

In Support of Schools Re-Opening

I can see the virtues of keeping schools closed from both side of the argument. On the one hand, what if we just let them go away and let online learning take over - high costs to the underprivileged but the regular kids will get access to the best teaching on the planet, with options that let kids and families select the best option for their kids. It would interrupt the current leftist indoctrination inherent in schools.

The grotesque way some teachers' unions are trying to leverage the event with no regard for the kids is disgustingly typical.

"There is a great deal of fear generated in the media about risk to children, but the truth is that children are incredibly resistant to coronavirus. So much so that children are far more likely to die from the flu, or even just from driving to school, than from COVID-19.

"The CDC has recorded a total of 20 COVID-19 deaths in children ages 5-14compared to almost 2,000 deaths from non-COVID causes in the same time period for the same age group. It means children have been 100 times more likely to die from non-COVID causes during the pandemic than from COVID. This puts the risk of COVID death for children 5 to 14 in the same ballpark as deaths by lightning.

"Claims of long-term damage or mystery illnesses have not been backed by any definitive evidence and they therefore serve more as a scare and intimidation tactic than as a medical guide. The truth is that children so far have had around a 1 in 20,000 rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations, according to the CDC. While controversial to some, Sweden’s policy of keeping primary schools open even at the height of the pandemic serves as an excellent counterpoint. With over 1 million children, Sweden did not have a single death of a school-aged childdespite full attendance and no masks."

Also cited a Swiss study that failed to find a case of a child passing this bug to an adult.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/31/politics_not_science_keeping_schools_closed_143847.html

"First, when it comes to children, the virus doesn’t impact them even on the same level as the flu. A JAMA Pediatrics report states, “Our data indicate that children are at far greater risk of critical illness from influenza than from COVID-19.” The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports, “SARS-CoV-2 appears to behave differently in children and adolescents than other common respiratory viruses, such as influenza, on which much of the current guidance regarding school closures is based.”

"Toronto’s world-renowned Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) echoed this finding, saying, “evidence is mounting that children may be less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and may be less likely to transmit the virus to others.” Daniel Koch, Switzerland’s head of public health, has said that even when children test positive for the virus, their viral load is low, and it seems that adults tend to infect children, not the other way around."

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/30/gov-kristi-noem-science-shows-not-going-to-school-hurts-kids-much-worse-than-covid/