Frustrated wannabe authoritarians

It’s refreshing to see Democrats tear their hair out over the blessings our freedoms give us. Just look at their goal of “transitioning” from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles (including airplanes and construction equipment). The whole plan is based on the unproven connection between the use of fossil fuels and climate change.

Whatever their motivations, it’s not working out as they hoped it would. Don’t be surprised if they soon switch crusades from climate change to some other “emergency.”

As is often the case, Democrats were smitten with a cause — in this case, electric vehicles to rescue the climate — and assumed everyone else would fall in love with it, too.

Then, when President Joe Biden proposed rules that would require 60 percent of new cars sold to be battery-powered by 2030 and 66 percent by 2032, what happened?

Unfortunately for these aspiring socialists, the U.S. economy is still predominantly based on that economic freedom known as voluntary exchange.

So far, auto buyers have not voluntarily exchanged enough of their hard earned dollars for E.V.s. The vast majority continue to prefer fossil fuel alternatives. At this point, only about 7 percent of cars sold are electric. Furthermore, according to a McKinsey & Company survey, 46 percent of electric vehicle owners say they intend to switch back to internal-combustion cars.

A Catch-22 the E.V. enthusiasts are struggling with is the need to maintain a rough balance between the number of E.V.s and the number of charging stations. Unless the number of E.V.s grows, there will be no incentive to build more charging stations. A scarcity of charging stations is already something that E.V. owners complain about.

Democrat policy-makers believe they are far more clever than the rest of us. They don’t seem to think it’s necessary to determine how many car buyers are perfectly happy with their gasoline and diesel vehicles and unimpressed with E.V.s.

In order for their electric vehicle dream to happen, let alone work, they would have needed unlimited power from the git-go. Their precious transition would have required not just subsidies, but brute force as well. Their plan would have necessitated doing away with, in advance, our preference for voluntary exchange.

Democrats are against voluntary exchange because they don’t approve of what we do with it, such as producing and consuming fossil fuels. Fortunately for the rest of us, these incompetent Marxists neglected to emasculate us prior to springing their E.V. fantasy on us. They mistakenly left us free to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Thanks to voluntary exchange we did just that. ____________________

◼ Frustrated wannabe authoritarians - American Thinker August 27, 2024

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Speaking of conservative NeverTrumpers

You no doubt have conservative friends who strongly dislike Donald Trump. They can’t tolerate his take-no-prisoners rhetoric. His personality rubs them the wrong way -- he’s abrasive, crude, and in their opinion, obnoxious.

Their attitude reveals a form of narrow-mindedness known as tunnel vision. These conservative NeverTrumpers, when asked, typically admit that they like his policies -- securing the border, smaller government, lower taxes, and deregulation, to name a few. They say they could never vote for him, though. They apparently want a perfect candidate, but no such animal exists and they know it. They seem stuck on making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Their "...tunnel vision is over-reliance on internal information..." such as bias. They refuse to grasp that Trump’s personality might only be one percent as important as his accomplishments while in office or what he could do in a second term.

These conservative NeverTrumpers show zero gratitude for what Trump has done for them. It’s no exaggeration to say that no other Republican could have beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016. She would have been president for four or eight years. Can they even imagine what living through that would have been like?

During his first term, President Trump was able to get three conservative judges appointed to the U. S. Supreme Court. In the years since then most of the court’s rulings have been applauded by all conservatives.

Common sense should teach us that every human being is a package deal. The conservative NeverTrumpers often say something like, “I just wish he weren’t so braggadocious!”

But humans don’t come a la carte. We have to take the bad along with the good. Just like every other living person, Donald Trump is who he is.

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◼ Speaking of conservative NeverTrumpers - American Thinker August 13, 2024

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Democrats believe in miraculous money

Democrats believe that money in the form of government expenditures can perform miracles and cure any ill.

What used to be Humboldt State University (HSU) in Arcata, California is now Cal Poly Humboldt (CPH).

When I began teaching there in 1969 (and continued for ten more years), enrollment was about 6,000. That is about where it remains today.

Over the past fifty years, the university has made numerous failed attempts to attract more students.

The most recent and by far the costliest attempt occurred in 2021, when Governor Gavin Newsom strong-armed the Legislature to commit almost half a billion dollars to convert HSU to CPH, thinking enrollment would quickly double to 12,000. Thus far, enrollment has increased two percent.

There are two previously existing state polytechnic universities in California, both of which have enrollments exceeding 20,000, but both are close to population centers (San Luis Obispo and Pomona). Arcata, the location of the new Cal Poly, is and always has been the most remote site of the twenty institutions in the California State University system.

Throwing half a billion dollars at HSU/CPH will fail just as all the other attempts to make it grow have failed.

This HSU to CPH conversion is not at all different from Jerry Brown’s “bullet train to nowhere” boondoggle, which is now a sensitive topic for Democrats. That train, the construction for which began in 2015, was supposed to link San Francisco and Los Angeles, but so far, it links only Merced and Bakersfield. Authorized in 2008, it was based on a projected cost of $24 billion, which has since ballooned to $106 billion.

California is a one-party state governed by arrogant “progressive” Democrats. Will they learn anything from this HSU/CPH fiasco?

They will not. Why should they? They have no incentive to do so. After all, that half a billion dollars they’ve squandered is not their own money.

Such waste never fazes Democrats — no guilt, no embarrassment, no lessons learned.

Money must really seem miraculous to Democrats. They confiscate it from their enemies, spend it on whatever suits their fancy, and never have to worry about being held accountable.

The Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam, and the Empire State Building were each built in about three years, start to finish, during the depths of the Great Depression. Nowadays, government projects take seemingly forever and usually cost multiples of their original cost estimates.

Remember Obama’s “shovel-ready jobs,” which he later confessed did not exist? That was a classic Democrat fabrication designed to hoodwink taxpayers into supporting his 900-billion-dollar stimulus bill in 2009. Yes, it was a con job, but who cares? Certainly not Democrats. Simply spending the money is all that matters to them.

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◼ Democrats believe in miraculous money - American Thinker May 11, 2024

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Good news sucks for climate cultists

There's a war against happiness. Climate alarmists bury good news and exaggerate bad news. They have made up their minds to be miserable, and they're determined to take the rest of us down with them.

For example, have you heard that over the past 30 years, there has been a 14-percent increase in the Earth's green vegetation? Deserts are getting smaller, and forests are getting lusher. That gain even has a name: "Earth Greening." Not surprisingly, 70 percent of it stems from the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere! Zaichun Zhu, one of the scientists who measured the greening, says it's equivalent to adding a new continent of green vegetation twice the size of the mainland United States.

The benefits of the increased vegetation are widespread: "It means more food for insects and deer, for elephants and mice, for fish and whales. It means higher yields for farmers; the effect has probably added about $3 trillion to farm incomes over the past 30 years, so less land is needed to feed the human population and more can be spared for wildlife instead." We've given a raise to all commercial farmers around the world. Increased supply eventually results in reduced prices.

The connection between increased carbon dioxide and increased plant growth is a perfect example of "negative feedback" in that the added vegetation from Earth Greening takes CO2 out of the atmosphere. A physicist friend of mine reminds his students, "We live in a negative-feedback world. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here."

Nevertheless, every single catastrophic climate prediction idiotically assumes a world of positive feedbacks, a world of runaway changes. The renowned physicist and climatologist Richard Lindzen says he knows of not a single large-scale positive feedback in the physical world or the biosphere. Insofar as that's true, it annihilates the entire argument of the climate catastrophists.

There are billions of examples of negative feedback in the physical and biological worlds, yet positive feedback is what climate catastrophists stake their predictions and reputations on. If you know of an example of a large-scale long-term runaway change, what is it?

Ironically, negative feedback is doing its own "carbon capture" and "sequestration" thousands of times more effectively than humans do deliberately. And it's doing so without massive subsidies or carbon taxes.

Changes occur everywhere, constantly, but changes never continue in the same direction indefinitely. That's kind of interesting if you think about it. Why can't any given species grow until it covers the globe? Answer: negative feedback.

Some other good news you may not know about if you rely on the media and catastrophists is that snow cover in the northern hemisphere is now at a 56-year high (for this time of year). The population of polar bears is increasing and is currently estimated to be over 30,000. You won't learn that from Al Gore.

We are currently ten years into a "global warming hiatus." The climate-change cultists are falling all over one another trying to explain why that pause means absolutely nothing about long-term warming. That they have so many excuses shows that the Earth's climate is extremely complex and impossible to effectively model or predict. There's no way they can know how long the hiatus will last. Their list of excuses does not include Earth Greening. That would require saying something nice about CO2.

Unlike the Earth's climate, Earth Greening was an easily predictable outcome of the CO2 increase. Life itself is carbon-based. Commercial greenhouses pump in additional CO2 to stimulate plant growth.

The alarmists' hysterical hostility toward carbon dioxide shows their ignorance and tunnel vision. They are willfully blind to anything beneficial deriving from CO2, a compound essential to life itself. When someone doesn't tell the whole truth, he's lying.

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◼ Good news sucks for climate cultists American Thinker - March 22, 2023

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

It just gets harder and harder to live free in California

Legislation passed by California's Legislature six and a half years ago (!) is finally being implemented. Its title is "California's Short-lived Climate Pollutant Reduction Law," or S.B. 1383 for short. (S.B. stands for senate bill.) Its primary purpose is to reduce human-activity methane emissions. The legislation is supposedly going to slow climate change by diverting 75 percent of organic waste from landfills and redirecting 20 percent of edible food to "food-insecure" Californians.

Advocates for the regulations assert that "methane is a climate super-pollutant 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide." That could be true, but only on a molecular basis. What's deliberately left out of that claim is that carbon dioxide constitutes 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, while methane amounts to only 0.00017 percent. Thus, the number of CO2 molecules is 235 times the number of methane molecules in the atmosphere. While it's possible that methane is more powerful as a greenhouse gas per molecule, there are simply not enough methane molecules to have a measurable impact on the Earth's atmosphere.

If you google the question, "Is there evidence that methane contributes to global warming?," all you'll find are assertions and speculation, not evidence. That shouldn't be surprising. Evidence is rarely in evidence when it comes to global warming catastrophism. The alarmists are happy believing naïvely that correlation equals causation.

Furthermore, it never seems to occur to California politicians that California is not the world. The world's population is currently about eight billion. California's is about forty million, which accounts for only 0.5 percent of the global population. Even if California achieved "net zero" methane generation, how much would that reduce global methane? Whatever success California made in reducing methane would quickly be neutralized by circulation in the Earth's atmosphere.

There are numerous questionable assumptions and unanswered questions inherent in S.B. 1383. Some of the organic waste that now ends up in landfills decomposes just as compost does. Meanwhile, many consumers dispose of their uneaten food in garbage disposals. Is there a net difference between disposing and composting in terms of methane generation? If so, how much of a difference?

The California Legislature's contribution to the rest of the country is to demonstrate what not to do. If methane needed to be reduced, the most effective route would instead be through innovation and the free market, not coercion. Half the methane generated from human activity in California comes from cows. Ironically, an increasing amount of their waste is being captured and converted into renewable natural gas. That's true as well for landfills.

In that same vein, I recently spoke to the manager of a supermarket where my wife and I usually shop. His supermarket and (he believes) others in town already send their unsold edible food to the local food bank. Any spoiled produce goes to a local pig farmer and has for many years. It's a win-win for all involved and therefore happens voluntarily.

A curious term in the title of the legislation is "short-lived." It's there because the "residence time" of methane in the atmosphere is approximately nine years. Residence time is the average time it takes for a molecule to break down and be removed naturally from the atmosphere. In comparison, the residence time for carbon dioxide varies from 20 to 200 years.

The law all but reimposes the draft. The following excerpts are from the informational instructions provided by the authorities:

Businesses and apartment complexes must provide collection containers for compost and recyclables to employees, contractors, tenants, and customers.

Annually provide educational information about the requirements to compost and recycle including how to sort properly among the three waste streams.

Periodically inspect recycling and compost containers and inform employees if contamination is found.

Who is going to collect the edible surplus food and see that it finds its way to "food insecure" Californians? Logistically, it's not that easy. Who's going to assure that the unsold food hasn't spoiled? Will anyone be held accountable?

Because enforcement of S.B. 1383 is only just starting, very few Californians are aware that arrogant politicians and bureaucrats are once again stealing their freedoms for bogus reasons. When that finally hits home, many Californians will not be happy. Will they rebel? It could be fun to watch. To survive and keep your sanity in California, it helps to have a wry sense of humor.

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◼ It just gets harder and harder to live free in California - American Thinker January 12, 2023

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Religions in disguise

There are two broad categories of religions — admitted and disguised.

Admitted religions principally include Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Religions in disguise include environmentalism, Marxism, globalism, and greenism, as well as other isms too numerous to list.

Traditional religions don't hide the fact that they're religions. They know they are belief systems based on faith.

Religions in disguise never admit to themselves and others that they are faith-based belief systems. They self-identify as being "scientific" rather than faith-based.

Viewing themselves as non-religious is a central element of their worldview. They are, in fact, extremely hostile to the concept of religion. But when it comes to their own religions in disguise, they've morphed into the truest of true believers. Irony of ironies, they've become what they hate.

Not being honest about their religiosity, even to themselves, forces them to live a lie. The worst person you can lie to is yourself.

Disguised religions have many of the trappings of traditional religions, but they are grotesque caricatures of traditional religions. They have all the bad aspects of regular religions and none of the good. Traditional religions are primarily positive, while the disguised versions are primarily negative. They are far more intolerant, doctrinaire, and dogmatic.

They even have their own versions of sacraments — abortion, wokism, and sustainability, for example. Organic is their version of Kosher. Recycling is their way of doing penance. For them, producing, transporting, and using fossil fuels are sins. Donald Trump is the devil.

The religions in disguise have an inconsistent attitude toward evil. When it suits them, they deny that mass murderers and child-molesters are evil, but they have no problem believing that oil companies and Republicans are evil.

The disguised religions ridicule and ostracize anyone who doesn't share their doctrines. When the COVID lockdowns became a kind of fanatical crusade, "non-vaxxers" lost jobs. Masks became a modern "outward sign of inward grace." They attempted to force conformity on the entire world.

The religions in disguise are fervently eschatological, more than Christianity ever was. They truly believe that carbon dioxide will cook the planet and cause mass extinctions.

There's a propensity in human nature toward religion and a belief in God. Denying religion and the existence of God is not a simple matter. Nature abhors a vacuum, and that applies as well to human nature.

When you deny religion and the existence of God, that space wants to be filled — whence come environmentalism, Marxism, globalism, and all the other isms. But there's a problem with those religions in disguise. When you have no traditional god, you're left to become your own god.

Being your own god results in arrogance. Contrast that with Christianity. If you follow the Bible, you cannot be arrogant. The Bible teaches humility and gratitude, as do most other traditional religions.

The religions in disguise have nothing that compares to the Ten Commandments of the Bible. Those commandments are meant to make humans moral, humble, faithful, and honest. The religions in disguise pay little attention to morality and no attention to honesty.

Our country's founders were primarily religious and Christian. They were opposed to a state religion. The Constitution they created included religious freedom. That freedom is as vital today as the other freedoms — speech, assembly, right to bear arms, and freedom of the press.

The opening words in the First Amendment are "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Hundreds of billions of dollars have been expended by federal, state, and local governments because of environmentalism and the hysteria of climate change. And it's not just the money they spend. They do even more damage with the laws and regulations they force on us, such as trying to prevent us from enjoying the huge benefits of fossil fuels. Being their own god is not enough for them. They demand to be ours, too. Once we have exposed the religions in disguise for what they are, it will be game over for them.

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◼ Religions in disguise October 28, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The unbearable miseries of Democrats

Democrats and the Left have a long and ever-expanding list of concerns: climate change, white supremacy, rising sea levels, non-organic vegetables, insufficient diversity, COVID, systemic racism, population growth, pronouns, Fox News, Donald Trump, and now, Giorgia Meloni, just to name a few.

Conservatives, on the other hand, have relatively few concerns, such as individual freedom, economic growth, law and order, secure borders, sanctity of life, the importance of families, and the U.S. Constitution. These are values conservatives have treasured since at least the founding of our nation.

There are also qualitative differences between the concerns of liberals and conservatives. Unlike those of the Right, the concerns of the Left are negative. Theirs are also without substantive foundations, clear definitions, logic, or evidence. They are unrecognizable exaggerations of reality. Compared to Democrats, conservatives are worry free.

The frequent additions to their long list of anxiety-causing concerns suggest that the Democrat Party suffers from a kind of collective attention deficit disorder. Democrats and the Left occupy a world fraught with peril, a world in which happiness is impossible.

The anxieties of Democrats lead to enormous costs for the rest of the population. Their hysteria regarding fossil fuels is one of countless examples. Their restrictions on drilling, fracking, and the cancellation of pipelines have caused a doubling of natural gas, gasoline, and diesel fuel prices. Partly because natural gas is the main raw material for fertilizer, food prices have also risen substantially.

The supposed threat of climate change is a favorite issue the Left uses to fan the flames of anxiety. It’s an all-purpose specter that has been highly effective in frightening millions, especially children. The Earth’s climate is an extremely complex subject, but Democrats conveniently ignore that fact. They abide by W. C. Fields’ famous dictum, “Never smarten up a chump.”

Similarly, COVID and the accompanying lockdowns typify the Democrats. It is now clear they grossly exaggerated the threat of the virus and abused it for the largest and most destructive power grab in U.S. history. They coerced us all to behave in absurd and repressive ways -- masks, social distancing, untested and dangerous vaccines, and horrible isolation. The fear of COVID resulted in many more deaths than COVID itself. The lockdowns were crimes against humanity. Those responsible should be punished as criminals.

The Democrat Party has until now been adept at exploiting fear wherever it can to increase its power and control. Individual and societal choices are better based on courage than fear. As Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

The time is ripe to rid ourselves of the miserable fearmongers.

Image: ◼ Enough Project

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◼ The unbearable miseries of Democrats At American Thinker

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The one point that can get people off the global warming obsession train

The dose makes the poison. ... All things are poison and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone is the thing that makes it not a poison.

—Paracelsus, 1493–1541, credited with being the father of toxicology

Climate alarmists play the "hide the magnitude" game. If they didn't, they would soon be out of business.

Politely ask a few of your friends how much of the air they're breathing is CO2. I've done that, and the typical answer, when I can get one, is twenty percent or more. (Most people have no idea and would rather not guess.)

Climate alarmists rarely talk about the actual quantitative composition of our atmosphere. The impression they give is that (1) a substantial part of the air that surrounds us comprises carbon dioxide; (2) that the proportion of carbon dioxide is increasing rapidly; (3) that the increase is primarily the result of human activity, mostly from burning fossil fuels; and (4) that if CO2 continues to increase, it's game over for humanity. Recently, the rhetoric has escalated from "climate crisis" to "climate emergency."

The actual magnitude tells a very different story. Carbon dioxide constitutes four one-hundredths of one percent of the air we breathe (or 400 parts per million). That is an extremely tiny fraction of the atmosphere.

What constitutes the rest of the air around us? Seventy-eight percent of the air we breathe is nitrogen, 21 percent is oxygen, 0.9 percent is argon, and 0.1 percent is other gases. The other gases include methane (0.00017 percent); nitrous oxide (0.00003 percent); and water vapor, which varies from 0 to 4 percent.

How can such a small magnitude of CO2 be dooming humanity? Furthermore, how can climate change alarmists be absolutely, positively certain that if CO2 continues to increase, it will be lights out for life on Earth?

During the Cambrian period 500 million years ago, CO2 constituted over 5,000 parts per million of the Earth's atmosphere. Then, 150 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, CO2 was 1,700 parts per million, more than four times what it is now. Life thrived during those periods. How can 400 parts per million be a threat to our existence?

Before humans started burning fossil fuels about 200 years ago, CO2 made up 250 parts per million of our atmosphere. It has been growing at about one part per million per year for the past 150 years. In other words, a very small magnitude is growing at a very slow rate. Is there any reason that rate will accelerate when it hasn't in a century and a half?

If the tiny magnitude were more generally known, people would want explanations. It defies common sense that such a small magnitude could be responsible for certain catastrophic changes. The least we ought to be is skeptical.

The catastrophists have not been asked to explain because they have successfully suppressed widespread awareness of the magnitude of CO2 in the atmosphere. If more people were aware of the actual percentage, there would be far less global warming panic. More people would stop listening to the doomsayers.

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◼ The one point that can get people off the global warming obsession train at American Thinker July 29, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

There's got to be lots of Biden buyer's remorse out there now

The Biden administration has been a disaster from day one. All sentient persons know it, even those in deep denial.

Before Biden became president, our economy was humming along, as it usually does. To keep it working well, the main requirement was to keep out of its way and to keep bureaucrats and politicians in check. Joe Biden did the exact opposite and we're all paying an enormous price for it.

The millions of Americans who voted for Biden cannot be surprised about how it's turned out. Joe Biden had a fifty-year history of being an embarrassingly incompetent and corrupt politician. His voters were willfully blind to that reality. How many of them lament voting for him?

Anyone who voted for Biden-Harris enabled this disaster. We are now saddled with two and a half more years of deliberate damage done by this administration. The policy choices made thus far have been so harmful that even Democrats are looking for ways out. However, there is no obvious way to end the destruction until 2024, thirty months from now. A President Harris would just be more of the same.

Democrats and the media pretend there's still a possibility that Biden will run for a second term. There is no way that will happen, but they have to go through the motions so as to keep him from being a lame duck this early in his first term.

Democrats ought to be furious at their party leaders, and many of them are. Those leaders are responsible for Biden and Harris being in the White House. Joe Biden was supposedly the best they had. But he has been the worst president in our country's history, and all the other candidates would have been just as bad or worse.

For the past many years, the Democrat bench has been a totally uninspiring, unimpressive, motley collection of losers. Now they're even talking about having Hillary run again in 2024.

Relatively few voters actually voted for Joe Biden. Most voted from a basis of intense hatred — primarily of Donald Trump, but also of Republicans in general.

Why do Democrats hate Trump so much? The main reason is his effectiveness in defeating the Democrat agenda. They hate him because he's not a John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Mitch McConnell. They hate too the fact that he's not a wimp. Conservative Republicans love fighters; progressive Democrats love spineless weaklings. Trump is a plain-talking, take-no-prisoners fighter and the opposite of an establishment swamp creature.

Trump knows how to get things done. He got things done despite the most resistance ever experienced by an American president. Democrats lied about him and sabotaged him from the very beginning.

The Democrats got their wish. They prevented Trump from winning a second term, at least for the time being. To accomplish that they sold their souls. The party is paying, and will continue to pay, a high price for doing so. It is hemorrhaging voters. Democrats now realize that November will bring electoral carnage in its wake. One of the truest of all adages is "cheaters never win." ____________________

◼ There's got to be lots of Biden buyer's remorse out there now at American Thinker July 13, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The left's marching orders

The Communist Manifesto is a 28-page pamphlet published in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

It's not economic insights that makes The Communist Manifesto so popular, but rather the attitudes that it fosters. Its legacy has been extremely inviting to those with a particular mindset.

The founders of Black Lives Matter are self-avowed Marxists. Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the group, has said this about her and her fellow founders, "We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories."

If you read Manifesto, you will feel that you are reading the marching orders for the modern Left, that you are reading what all leftists have sworn allegiance to. It is virtually a complete list of their grievances — victimhood, religion, borders, the family, private schools, and private property. Marxism is like an addiction for leftists. The reason it has been able to do so much damage is that it has been so alluring to so many people for so many years.

The Communist Manifesto tells those people what they want to hear, especially those people who would rather blame society or the system instead of taking personal responsibility.

In common with today's leftists and progressives, The Communist Manifesto reflects attitudes of resentment, bitterness, envy, victimhood, and arrogance.

The Communist Manifesto is above all utopian. In his book Ameritopia Mark Levin reviews previous utopian literature — Plato's Republic, Thomas More's Utopia, Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, and Marx's Communist Manifesto. Levin begins his book as follows: "Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology."

There is a proclivity in human nature to believe that society and individuals are capable of perfection, that if we only had the proper economic and political system heaven on Earth would be ours.

The Manifesto contains no details regarding what would replace the existing foundations of our civilization. That's a common attitude among utopians even to this day. For them all that's necessary is to knock the pillars out from civilization (especially capitalism) and trust that everything will then be glorious.

As is true with modern leftists, Marx had a monocausal view of the economy and society. The demise of capitalism would mark the end of societal problems. His theories are perfect examples of wishful thinking or what is now referred to as "confirmation bias." Unfortunately, the fact that he was wrong about everything has not reduced his appeal. Marxism is a hydra-headed monster impossible to kill.

The Manifesto is almost comical. Marx claimed to have gotten to the bottom of history once and for all, e.g., "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." He asserted that economic structures determine virtually everything else ("dialectical materialism"). He maintained that he had discovered not just the themes of history but the actual laws of history. Knowing with absolute certainty the laws of history was supposed to allow him to predict the future with confidence.

Marx's objective in The Communist Manifesto was not to discover truth but to start a revolution. If you're trying to recruit an army of revolutionaries, you can't be mealymouthed. Being certain makes your followers believe they are on the right side of history. It helps as well to be simplistic, e.g., to stress that populations consist of only two groups, the oppressed and the oppressors. Marxism is a simplistic ideology designed to appeal to simple-minded people.

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◼ The left's marching orders at American Thinker June 24, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Abortion: moral clarity can be a powerful force

There is no issue that divides Democrats and Republicans more deeply than abortion. It is, after all, a matter of life and death.

How can liberals, Democrats, and the left be such enthusiastic supporters of something that is, at best, a necessary evil? Why are they so protective of unlimited abortion and paranoid about placing any restrictions whatsoever on it? How do they manage to feel so positive about something that is so profoundly negative?

Although liberals give every indication that they believe that abortion is a virtuous and morally neutral act, they also reveal that they are not comfortable with that position. You will rarely hear liberals say they are "pro-abortion." They use various cowardly and misleading obfuscations such as "a woman's right to choose" and "reproductive rights." If they have any conscience at all, they have to be conflicted. If you've ever tried to have a polite discussion about abortion with a liberal, you know that it turns ugly fast.

The abortion enthusiasts have hijacked the word "choice." That word is far too general and anodyne to substitute for the reality of abortion. They're not "pro-choice"; they're pro-abortion. Why can't they just say that?

The very name "Planned Parenthood" is itself a grotesque fraud. Planned Parenthood is an organization dedicated to the prevention of parenthood, not the planning of it, either for the birth mother or for a couple eager for the chance to adopt.

Right-to-life advocates do not believe that the location of an unborn child is equivalent to ownership. An abortion is not morally equivalent to an appendectomy. There is no dispute about who owns your appendix. An appendectomy or the removal of a malignant tumor prolongs a life; an abortion ends a life.

A pregnancy is usually the result of a choice to have sex. Because you did, you now have another human being developing inside your body. The fact that you irresponsibly had sex with someone you were not married to does not give you the guilt-free option of ending the life you started. Roe v. Wade made abortion legal. It did not make abortion either moral or admirable.

Ronald Reagan said, "We cannot diminish the value of one category of life — the unborn — without diminishing the value of all human life."

It is not just unborn children who pay the price for abortion; we all do. The number of abortions committed, as well as the ho-hum way abortion is viewed, does more than anything else to numb our sensitivities about the sanctity of life. There is probably nothing else that has led to the coarsening of our culture as much as the occurrence of millions of abortions.

A debating tactic that liberals like using is to point out that conservatives are against abortion but favor the death penalty. They think it shows that conservatives are inconsistent and hypocritical. Their smugness, however, is undeserved. It demonstrates their refusal to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. A fetus is as innocent as anything can possibly be, and an unborn child is not in any way equivalent to a convicted murderer.

For too long, Planned Parenthood has been getting away with the lie that it is something other than what it is — primarily an abortion provider and promoter. Furthermore, it discourages adoption. You may as well ask Dr. Kevorkian for pregnancy counseling as to ask Planned Parenthood. Pro-life taxpayers are sickened by the reality of their tax dollars being used to support such a despicable organization.

We hear the chant, "black lives matter." That's true, but it is usually in reference to blacks being killed by police officers. It would be good to keep in mind that the number of black lives ended by abortion is thousands of times greater than the number of black lives ended by police officers.

We who are saddened by the fact that over a million abortions are committed each year in the U.S. can fight back in a number of ways. Let's no longer let the abortion advocates get away with their rampant language cowardice and distortions. Let's vote for politicians who promise to stop public funding of Planned Parenthood. Let's vote for politicians who aren't afraid to speak the truth and say what they believe. Let's make it clear that abortion is not just another form of birth control. Let's make it absolutely clear that adoption is infinitely superior to abortion.

Moral clarity can be a powerful force.

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◼ Abortion: moral clarity can be a powerful forceMay 10, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Follow the evidence, not the 'science'

A frequently heard piece of advice over the past few years is "follow the science." "Science" is a word the left loves to corrupt and then use to control the narrative.

A more useful suggestion is "follow the evidence." "Evidence" is far easier to understand, measure, quantify, define, and follow.

During the COVID lockdowns, government authorities such as Anthony Fauci stole our freedoms from us on the basis of "science," but with virtually no solid evidence. He and his minions didn't even bother to look for evidence. Shooting from the hip, they based their various mandates on simplistic, ill-founded assumptions that we now know were totally false. They continued to enforce those mandates for more than two years, long after it was clear they were useless and doing immeasurable harm. They refused to entertain any disagreement. To admit they had been mistaken all along was out of the question.

Masks are a prime example of how wrong simplistic thinking can be. It is easy to believe that masks can reduce the transmission of an airborne disease. However, regarding COVID, abundant evidence proves that they do not. Nor is there any real evidence that "social distancing" or wiping down surfaces reduces the number of cases.

Anthony Fauci claims that he and science are synonymous. Can he claim that he and evidence are synonymous?

Whenever someone tells you to follow the science, ask to see the evidence. If good evidence is lacking, be very skeptical.

Let evidence be the arbiter.

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◼ Follow the evidence, not the 'science May 4, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The one place where you can really make a difference

Jordan Peterson's sixth "Rule of Life" is "Set your own house in perfect order before you criticize the world."

You determine your life primarily by the choices you make. Some choices are "meta-choices," the ones that impact numerous other choices.

One of the meta-choices is what share of your time you devote to your micro realm versus your macro realm.

The micro realm of your life includes your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors — those with whom you directly interact, as well as your job and other personal uses of your time.

The macro part of your life includes society at large, the economy, climate change, politics, people distant from you, and people you don't know.

In which of those two realms, micro or macro, do you want to live? You have a limited amount of time and energy. Whichever realm you choose has what economists call an "opportunity cost." (The MIT Dictionary of Modern Economics defines "opportunity cost" as follows: "Perhaps the most fundamental concept in economics, the opportunity cost of an action is the value of the forgone alternative.")

There is an enormous difference regarding the level of control you have in the two spheres. Obviously, you have the most influence and impact on those closest to you. Influence is like gravitational force, inversely proportional to the square of the distance. Also, consider the relative populations. You are a significant part of your micro world. Like it or not, you are a tiny and insignificant part of your macro world.

There is also a big difference in your relative knowledge about the two realms. Your macro realm is vastly more complex than your micro realm, and the choices you make there are more prone to error. We all know people who have strong opinions concerning issues they know almost nothing about.

Virtually all your power resides in your micro realm. The person closest to you is yourself. Focusing on a small sphere of influence is an aspect of individual responsibility. It is a way of thinking and behaving that shows the difference between progressives and conservatives. Conservatives love being personally responsible. It's part of the price of freedom.

Unfortunately, individual responsibility is just too big a burden for some people. Personal problems are often too difficult and painful to face. To focus instead on an "urgent" macro issue is a favorite self-deluding tactic of progressives. Their selected macro issue is typically one dire enough to blind them to the cost of hiding from themselves. It enables them to deny the high opportunity cost to themselves of neglecting their own unsolved personal problems.

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◼ The one place where you can really make a difference April 7, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The left hates competition

Competition makes numerous areas of our lives more efficient, from the economy to education to the search for truth.

In the economy, competition is the single most powerful force for progress and innovation. A good way to entice customers away from your rivals is to make a superior product. "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door."

The Nobel Prize-winning economist George Stigler called competition "the patron saint of the consumer." Competition pushes producers to provide consumers the most for their money — a combination of keeping prices as low as possible and keeping quality as high as possible. It pushes them to be efficient. Producers who fail to be efficient don't survive. Competition means survival of the efficient.

The degree of competition determines the crucial balance of power between consumers and producers. Vigorous competition puts power in the hands of consumers. Its absence puts producers in control.

A good way to appreciate the value of competition is to look at its polar opposite: monopoly. Monopoly means consumers have only one producer to choose from. One choice amounts to no choice. Under communism, all producers are monopolists. The state has a monopoly on every aspect of life.

Because it lacks competition, a communist economy is extremely inefficient and always becomes dysfunctional. Cuba and Venezuela, for example, can barely feed their populations.

No economy is automatically or organically efficient. Efficiency requires incentives. Those don't exist under communism. A free-market, voluntary-exchange economy provides an abundance of incentives. The profit motive is one example. The more efficiently the owners of a private business operate, the more profit they will take home at the end of the year. It's similar to the way a fantail keeps a windmill pointed into the wind.

In an otherwise efficient economy like ours, public schools are as dysfunctional as they would be under communism. That's because the public-school establishment has been so effective in blocking competition in education.

Public schools fit most of the characteristics of monopolies. Teachers and their unions have power, while students and their parents have almost none. If more competition were introduced, the power imbalance would be reversed. The increased interest in "school choice" — vouchers and charter schools, for example — are reasons for optimism.

Competition among ideas is what makes free speech and robust debate so vital. Debate is, in fact, competition in search of the truth. The left's cancel culture is about destroying competition and establishing a monopoly of ideas. Leftists think they've already discovered the truth, so there's no reason to continue the search.

Conservatives love a society that rewards the efficiency of competition. Leftists hate it. They love communism instead.
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◼ The left hates competition March 24, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Is the Democrat Party terminal?

The Democrat Party is on the wrong side of every single issue — borders, law enforcement, parents vs. teachers, inflation, Critical Race Theory, school choice, cancel culture, lockdowns, masks, individual freedom, gasoline prices, pipelines, wokism, unrestricted abortions, and a president who has dementia, just to name a few.

Does the party have a death wish? We have all known persons who are self-destructive. That behavior can afflict groups as well as individuals.

The Democrat Party and the left foster self-hatred. They believe that our country is irrevocably racist and is destroying the planet by using fossil fuels.

The Democrat establishment and most of its voters are racked by guilt. Unless they join a monastery, they have no choice but to participate in the system they believe is destroying our future.

The Democrats have lost their self-preservation instinct and their will to live. Just look at the party's lack of concern about its hemorrhaging loss of support among its traditional bases — blacks, Hispanics, Asians, mothers, and independents. The breadth of the damage is unprecedented. In all likelihood, the party is too far gone ever to regain its former status and influence.

The party's problems are deep-seated, rooted in the sick nature of what it has become. The United States has been a two-party country throughout its history. Will that be enough for the party to survive in some form?

The Democrat party is headed for election losses of monumental proportions this November. When that happens, what will be the party's response?

The Democrats are stuck. Most of the party leaders who got them into this mess will still be there after the election. Self-awareness and accountability are definitely not what the Democrats are known for. They will not get the message.

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◼ Is the Democrat Party terminal? - American Thinker March 4, 2022

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Biden and Harris are a cancer on the Democrat party

The Democrat Party has maneuvered itself into an insoluble problem. By whatever means necessary the party managed to get its candidates into the White House. However, it will turn out to be the costliest victory ever for a political party.

How did Joe Biden and Kamala Harris become the Democrat nominees? At the beginning of the 2020 Democrat primary season, there were 24 presidential hopefuls. As each was vetted, various kinds of disqualifying information surfaced and, one by one (starting with Harris), they fell by the wayside. It became obvious that none was presidential material.

The last two standing were Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Because Sanders is an unrepentant socialist, the Democrat party knew he had little chance against Donald Trump. That left the non compos mentis Joe Biden.

Once Biden nailed down the nomination, he had the chance to choose a running mate. Because of the priorities of the Democrat party, it was a relatively simple choice, based on a single consideration—identity politics.

Despite her empty list of career accomplishments, Kamala Harris satisfied two of the party’s victimhood categories—black and female. Her success in the Democrat party happened by way of who she “knew” rather than what she knew. Her sole “qualification” was the only one they cared about—identity, a la identity politics.

In selecting candidates, competence and achievement never crossed the minds of the party establishment. The Biden-Harris administration is what happens when a political party deems merit irrelevant.

You may recall that in 2008 Barack Obama retrieved Biden from the Democrats’ dumpster to be his running mate. Identity politics was not as important then, and Biden was ideal for another role always expected of a running mate—don’t outshine the person at the top of the ticket.

Biden and Harris are incompetent, bumbling, empty suits who haven’t the earthliest idea what they’re doing. They are a disgrace to the offices they hold. They have no beliefs and no vision. Joe Biden has never had good judgment, and now adding to that is his advancing dementia. Kamala Harris has never had a thought or utterance worth remembering. About the best that could be said about her is that she does not have dementia, not that it matters. She is a nitwit in service of the party’s monomaniacal identity obsession.

It’s impossible to imagine what the atmosphere in the White House must be like these days. The people there experience firsthand the man who isn’t there, the dead president walking. It would be fun to see the looks they give one another. Their “leader” is the proverbial crazy uncle in the basement, except this crazy uncle isn’t in the basement, he’s in the Oval Office.

To survive, the Democrat party must rid itself of Biden and Harris. If both remain in office, the party implodes, taking many of its cronies down with it. Numerous leftist institutions—mainstream media, teachers’ unions, Black Lives Matter, climate alarmists, and universities, have a symbiotic relationship with the party and they will all suffer.

The Biden-Harris administration is nothing short of a malignancy that will fester and spread for three more years. The party has no easy solutions. Amputating Biden and Harris may not even solve its deep-seated problems. Any moderate Democrat replacement such as Tulsi Gabbard wouldn’t have a prayer against the party’s uncompromising, far-left base. There is not a single alternative Democrat politician who is noticeably better than Biden or Harris, whether it be Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Debbi Wasserman Schultz, Bill de Blasio, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, or Al Sharpton. All on the Democrat bench are plagued with political comorbidities.

It will be interesting to watch the Democrat Party as it tries to extricate itself from this self-inflicted political nightmare.
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◼ Biden and Harris are a cancer on the Democrat party - American Thinker

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

American Thinker Archives

◼ Why leftists want to turn your kids into weaklings December 15, 2021

◼ Gratitude and the left November 23, 2021

◼ The left's intellectual chaos October 21, 2021

◼ Lockdown lessons August 4, 2021

◼ The education establishment self-destructs July 28, 2021

◼ Now is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy July 17, 2021

◼ The inscrutable left July 1, 2021

◼ The damage done by probability blindness June 17, 2021

◼ Remember when leftists were obsessed with self-esteem? May 22, 2021

◼ Righteous Recycling April 28, 2021

◼ It's time to revisit The Road to Serfdom March 9, 2021

◼ The big difference between Democrats and Republicans February 4, 2021

◼ The pandemic is history September 9, 2020

◼ Media Dereliction September 22, 2013

◼ The Larger Lessons of the IRS Scandal June 6, 2013

◼ 'We interrupt your vacation fun for this important announcement...' April 17, 2010

◼ President Incompetent February 18, 2010

Why leftists want to turn your kids into weaklings

Thanks to leftists, we are doing lasting harm to our children: we are making them into weaklings. It is an insidious form of child abuse, done in plain sight. We are denying them the most important trait necessary for living happy, successful, and meaningful lives: courage.

Life is difficult. It's impossible to sail through life on smooth seas. Loss, frustration, heartbreak, struggle, disappointment, and suffering happen to everyone.

We see widespread panic on college campuses these days about "micro-aggressions." Students openly admit they can't tolerate things that even they grant are micro.

At our local university (Humboldt State), students are provided therapy dogs to help them cope with the stress of finals week. I was born too soon.

We are teaching our children to report being "triggered." We are teaching our children that they're entitled to live lives free from hurt feelings. We are turning our children into crybabies ill equipped to deal with real life.

Jordan Peterson says, "If you over-coddle people, you make them dull and narcissistic."

Unfortunately, it's easier to make children spineless than to make them brave. "Tough love" is much harder to give than wimp love. Wimp love isn't love; it's cowardice.

The left's efforts to weaken our young people have been going on for decades. Why? Weak children become weak adults, who willingly obey vaccine and mask mandates and other senseless dictates meant to crush our freedoms.

A power struggle is raging between America's ruling class and individual Americans. There's only so much power to go around. It's a zero-sum game. For the left, power is what it's all about. It's a fight to the political death. It's a fight we must win and one we can win.

Thankfully, individual courage is the enemy of the ruling class, as are freedom, the family, religion, and truth. They are the keys to victory because they all empower the individual American at the expense of America's ruling class.
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◼ Why leftists want to turn your kids into weaklings - American Thinker December 15, 2021

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Gratitude and the left

Apart from lying about everything, leftists are insufferable ingrates.

Leftists spend their lives complaining. Their list of grievances is endless. They are never happy even when they get their way.

If you're an American citizen alive in the 21st century, you've won the lottery. You are so much more fortunate than your forebears that it's hard to list the ways.

Someone born in America in 1900 had a life expectancy of 47 years. Someone born today can expect to live to 80, an increase of 70 percent. In 1900, 30 percent of all deaths in the United States happened to children less than five years of age. Now only 1.4 percent of deaths happen to children five or younger.

In the 19th century and earlier, very few people had indoor plumbing. Think about that.

Physicians back then had few if any treatments to prolong life. Antibiotics were not developed until the early 1940s.

Commercial air travel, so common today, barely existed before 1950.

Until Edison invented the incandescent light bulb, ours was A World Lit Only by Fire.

How many on the left, how many young leftists especially, have any grasp of their blessings? Where is their gratitude?

Leftists never give the slightest thought to their incredibly good luck. They take it for granted.

The ungrateful mindset of the left is that of spoiled brats. There are few things as disgusting as someone who is quite fortunate but who disguises himself as a victim and whines about his lot in life.

Does anyone believe that leftists are sincere when they celebrate Thanksgiving?

Dennis Prager has argued the following:

The mother of happiness is gratitude, and the mother of goodness is gratitude. It is so powerful, gratitude, that it is not possible to be happy if you are not grateful, and it is not possible to be a good person if you are not grateful.

Leftists are devoid of gratitude. What else so clearly explains their dishonesty and wretchedness?

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◼ Gratitude and the left November 23, 2021

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The left's intellectual chaos

In our country today, chaos is on the rise. Everywhere we look, we see craziness and absurdity. We're dumbstruck.

Our southern border has been erased, shoplifting has been decriminalized, parents are domestic terrorists, the police should be defunded, most college campuses are mini–North Koreas, merit and excellence have no value, our children are taught to despise their own country, Joe Biden is president, and the most important thing in the world is a vaccination.

The cause of such strange leftist behavior is intellectual chaos. The left simply does not think well. To make choices, leftists use emotions and feelings rather than reason and logic.

Leftists are doing everything they can to obliterate civilization, whether it's Shakespeare or law and order. If they reject the wisdom of the ages, what are they left with? Starting from scratch?

Leftists simply hate civilization, one of the countless things they hate.

It is far harder to go from chaos to order than from order to chaos. It takes far longer to create civilization than to destroy it. Not recognizing the importance of civilization signals a disordered mind.

The left makes a mess of language. Leftists distort the meanings of words and rarely define the words they use. Douglas Murray observed recently that the left has its own secret dictionary — "equity means discrimination, fairness is unfairness, and justice actually means revenge."

Without clear and consistent definitions, ordered thinking is impossible, leaving intellectual chaos to fill the void. If you eliminate borders in one part of life, you diminish respect for borders everywhere. Borders, physical and mental, are necessary parts of order.

How is it possible for leftists to advocate socialism when the objective truth is that socialism leads always and everywhere to misery and tyranny?

Dennis Prager often reminds us that truth is not a left-wing value. Postmodernist leftists argue there's no such thing as objective truth. They teach that "truth" is a self-serving fiction of the oppressors. However, if truth does not exist everything is permitted. There are no boundaries to what can be thought or believed. Everyone has his "own personal truth." Reality is whatever one wishes it to be.

The left is like a bull in a China shop. A bull neither knows nor cares about the damage it does. Leftist politicians have that same attitude. A bull should not be in a China shop. Leftists should not be in control of our country.

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◼ The left's intellectual chaos October 21, 2021

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.