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The ADVANCE, October 20, 2021 /Page 6A
(Site Ahumtce
A free press is not a privilege but
organic necessity in a great society.
—Walter Lippmann
COMMENTARY
out of
CONTEXT
A compilation of quotations on a variety of
issues by national, state and regional writers,
well-known personalities, just plain everyday
people and from various publications
collected by the editors of THE ADVANCE.
Quotes for our Times:
Steve McCann, writer for American
Thinker: The traits of the authoritarians
among us.
Joe Biden, a life-long pathological liar,
will never acknowledge that his Afghani
stan withdrawal was an unmitigated disas
ter because he sincerely believes that it
was not, as he achieved his goal of getting
out of Afghanistan, Biden and the Demo
crats are unconcerned about the crater
ing economy brought about by unbridled
government spending, money creation
and inflation, as they believe it is an incon
venient by-product of their unerring vision
of a quasi-socialist economy,
Spencer Brown, managing editor for
Townhall: 40+ radical programs democrats
don't want you to notice in Biden's budget.
Contradicting one of his own prom
ises, Biden's budget will increase taxes on
"Americans at every income level" (RSC
(Republican Study Committee) point #35)
as "$2 trillion in tax hikes will fall on those
making under $400,000 per year, contrary
to what the White House says."
And because all of this nonsense will re
quire and expand the number of unelect
ed bureaucrats in the federal government,
the bill will provide for an "$80 billion slush
fund to hire an 87,000-IRS-agent army to
carry out the Biden administration's plan to
review every account above a $600 bal
ance or with more than $600 of transac
tions in a year" (RSC point #40).
Greg Gutfeld, host of Gutfeld! and co
host of The Five: No kid cares about who
Superman kisses.
My point - who really gives a damn?
No kid cares or wants to care about who
Superman is kissing. The guy is faster than a
locomotive and able to leap tall buildings
in a single bound! I think that might pique
a kid's curiosity more than what or who he
hooks up with. ...
So that raises a question: why is this
happening? Why is this being forced into
a medium where it's not necessary? It's like
announcing they have gluten-free crusts
at a pie-eating contest. Nobody asked,
and nobody cares. But that doesn't mat
ter.
Stephen Moore, economist and author:
Biden thinks climate change is a bigger
threat than China. He'll be sorry.
The danger is that we now have a
president in Biden who thinks that climate
change is a bigger threat to the world than
the Maoists in Beijing.
And make no mistake about it; the
communists are back in charge in China.
Jinping has basically announced himself
to be president for life, as democracy and
free elections fly out the window. China is
also sprinting back to command and con
trol fascist government and industry "coop
eration." That's a model that will eventually
implode, but as we learned from the Soviet
menace, they can do a lot of damage to
peace and prosperity in the meantime.
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National Divorce Is a
Poisonously Stupid Idea
RICH 1
LOWRY
COLUMN |
Divorce usually isn’t a good
idea, and that’s especially true of
a nearly250-year-old continental
nation.
A cadre of apocalyptic
writers on the right, who believe
the country is too far gone to
save, has become obsessed with
a Secession 2.0 that would cleave
red America from blue and allow
the former to escape the ever-
rising tide of woke insanity.
There is no doubt the
country is deeply riven along
political, cultural and religious
lines. Yet, a national divorce has
nothing to recommend it.
The practical obstacles are
insuperable, and the likely
effectswouldbevery unwelcome
to its proponents. If an
insufficient patriotism is one of
the ills of contemporary
America, then a national divorce
would prescribe arsenic as a
cure. It would burn down
America to save America, or at
least those parts of it considered
salvageable.
A disaggregated United
States would be instantly less
powerful. Indeed, Russia and
China would be delighted and
presumably believe that we’d
deserve to experience the
equivalent of the crackup of the
Soviet Union or the Qing
dynasty, respectively.
The economic
consequences could be severe.
The United States of America is
a continentwide free trade zone,
creating a vast domestic market
that makes us all better off.
Exchanging that for a market
Balkanized by state or region
would be a major loss.
Finally, the United States
foundering on its domestic
divisions would be a significant
blow to the prestige of liberal
democracy. Abraham Lincoln
worried about this effect the first
time around, and it might be
even worse now, with a long
stable republic unable to survive
internal dissension.
Then, there’s the question
of how this is supposed to work.
Lincoln warned of the physical
impossibility of secession when
the Mason-Dixon Line was a
more-or-less ready line of
demarcation. How would it play
out now, with conservatives and
progressives amply represented
in every state in the Union?
If there were to be sovereign
pure red and blue places, this
wouldn’t look like the relatively
neat split of the United States
into two in the 1860s, but more
like post-Peace of Westphalia
Europe, with hundreds of
different entities.
Some proponents of
national divorce say not to worry
— it can all be worked out
amicably. But if we are going to
split up because we can’t even
agree on bathroom policies or
pronouns, how are we going to
agree to divvy up our territory
and resources?
It would matter, obviously,
who gets control of the federal
government, the most powerful
organization on Earth. It has 1.3
million people under arms and a
stockpile of 3,800 nuclear
warheads. Whether it accrues to
red or blue America would, to
understate it, be a matter of
considerable haggling.
On top of all this, red-state
secession would be self-
defeating. Let’s say Texas left.
That’s 40 electoral votes off the
national map for Republicans. In
2020, with no Texas, Trump
could have won Pennsylvania,
Michigan and Wisconsin, and
still fallen short of an electoral
majority.
On the other hand, Texas
isn’t quite as ruby red as it used
to be. It could secede and still
find itself governed by the very
Democrats it hoped to leave
behind.
Besides, would the rest of
the country really be willing to
watch a state of 29 million
people that represents the ninth-
Please see Lowry page 10A
GRITTY
The New Victim
of Cancel
Culture: Science
Cancel culture
has reared its ugly
head once again, and
this time in a new and
unprecedented way.
A lecture by a
physicist was canceled
at one of America’s
premier institutions
of science, MIT, for
reasons having nothing
to do with the subject of the lecture. The
lecture was canceled not because of its
scientific content but because of the
politically incorrect views on diversity of the
scientist scheduled to give the lecture.
Dorian Abbot is a professor in the
department of the geophysical sciences at
the University of Chicago. He has an
undergraduate degree in physics from
Harvard and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics
from Harvard.
Abbot was scheduled to give the annual
John Carlson lecture at MIT’s Lorenz Center
in the department of earth, atmospheric and
planetary sciences. The topic was to be
“climate and the potential for life on other
planets.”
But this lecture will not take place.
In August, Abbot and Ivan Marinovic,
an associate professor of accounting at
Stanford University’s Graduate School of
Business, published an opinion piece in
Newsweek entitled “The Diversity Problem
on Campus.”
Abbot and Marinovic argued that the
politically correct regime now taking control
of America’s universities, which they identify
as “DEI” — diversity, equity and inclusion
— is undermining the mission of what
universities are supposed to be about. That
mission is, per Abbot and Marinovic, “the
production and dissemination ofknowledge.”
When universities no longer look for the
“most talented and best trained minds” in
hiring, and politically motivated criteria
Please see Nitty page 8A
By Star Parker
COMMENTARY
The hidden blessings of
the supply chain crisis
By Earick Ward, writer for American
Thinker
The Chinese character for crisis
also means opportunity. There are sev
eral blessings hidden amid the current
supply chain crisis.
Exposing Chinese Dependence
You’ve likely heard about the doz
ens of ships lined up just outside the
ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
These ships and the millions of con
tainers they are waiting to offload are
filled with toys, electronics, textiles,
automobiles, appliances, building
supplies, tools, pet food, batteries, so
lar panels, car parts, microchips, and
on and on and on, almost all made in
China.
Our decades-long offshoring of
manufacturing has made us depen
dent on a foreign adversary. Our an
nual trade imbalance with China regu
larly exceeds $70B.
We are overly dependent on
China for many of the things that we
consume.
We should use this “opportunity”
to re-evaluate our purchases. Do we
need all this stuff? If so, can we not
look to domestic alternatives and use
this crisis to bring manufacturing
home?
Let’s use this season to resist buy
ing more (and more) Chinese crap.
Shop local, support your local mom
and pop, and look for the Made in
USA label.
Government Incompetence
The “crisis” has also exposed the
incompetence of Gavin Newsom, Joe
Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and a myriad of
government bureaucrats.
A plethora of government busy-
bodies have damaged our market sys
tem. While they will blame “the mar
ket,” or suggest that this crisis is a suc
cess, it is abundantly clear that elec
tions have consequences.
Some segment of the electorate
may have chafed at President Trump’s
mean tweets or his braggadocio, but at
least things worked during his tenure.
It is my hope that the people see
this crisis for what it is: a foreshadow
ing of life in America under commu
nism. Government doesn’t need to
take over the means of production if it
can effectively take over the corpora
tions that control the workforce or the
means of production. Vaccine man
dates have dictated the winners and
losers in our economy. Leftist corpo
rations are proceeding with abandon
in the wholesale destruction of mil
lions of wage-earners. No doubt, these
plebes will be given some menial tasks
to perform — possibly the construc
tion of their own gulags.
President Trump would remedy
the above two scenarios in a New York
minute. He would overturn Lesko
Brandon’s unconstitutional vaccine
mandate, incentivize production at
home, and create opportunity zones
for Americans to onshore the manu
facturing of more of the things that
Americans consume. He would also
expose and clear out the vast incom
petence deeply rooted in government
bureaucracies from Washington, D.C.,
to San Francisco Bay.
