The Electoral College dispute exposes the Progressives’ world of lies
The Progressives’ current outrage about the Electoral College is only the latest example of the world of lies with which they surround themselves. This post examines a few of the more egregious lies that underpin Progressive demands for policy changes to bring America more closely in line with a Marxist paradise.
Before I begin, though, I’d like to set out my three favorite quotations about facts, as opposed to lies:
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” — John Adams, during the summation when he represented British soldiers in the Boston Massacre trial.
“Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” — Bernard Baruch
“When the law is on your side, argue the law. When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table.” — Legal adage
Progressives do an awful lot of table pounding.
Electoral College lies: The Electoral College has been a fixture in American elections since the beginning. Michael Ramirez perfectly explains why its proportionate representation is necessary:
In order to avoid a situation in which the most populous states have a choke hold on the presidency, the Founders determined that, once a candidate achieves a majority in a given state, the weight given to that candidate is a fixed number of votes in the electoral college. It’s irrelevant if the candidate won with 50.1 percent of the votes or 100 percent of the votes. It’s also irrelevant whether the number of votes over 50.1 percent is vast or small. That last point is especially important, because it means that highly populous states cannot run away with the election (see cartoon above). The same holds true, of course, for state representation in the House.
Faced with these unpalatable facts in an election played according to long-standing rules with which the Progressives, including Hillary, were completely familiar, the Progressives have managed to dig up a “constitutional” law professor who announces that the sole purpose behind the Electoral College is to serve as a racist instrument of Southern oppression. Only a Yale legal scholar could argue this type of historic crapola with a straight face:
The three-fifths compromise operates in the context of the Electoral College but is, in fact, directed at the various states’ representation in the federal government overall. Here’s the deal: At the end of the Revolutionary War, three out of five of the most populous states in the Union were slave states, with Virginia leading the list. These Southern states wanted their vast numbers to apply to their control over the entire federal government, from the House to the means of voting for the president.
To maintain this dominance, though, slaves would have to be counted among the general population in the Southern states. The Northern states, of course, which had no slaves to swell their population, and which disapproved of slavery generally, were unwilling to give the Southern states absolute dominance. Their opposition to Southern dominance was strengthened by the indisputable fact that the Southern states were cheating by demanding that people without any civil rights be included in the tally for determining power in the new federal government.
Given the Southern states’ power within the fragile new nation, the only thing that the Northern states were able to reach a compromise that beat the Southern states down a bit. This compromise insisted that slaves not be counted according to their full number but, instead, be counted at three-fifths of their total number, thereby diluting somewhat the slave states’ power.
It was a lousy compromise but, under the circumstances, it was the best the non-slave states could do. In other words, this hyper-politicized, much-respected Yale scholar has it bass ackwards because, like all Progressives, he believes that lies in the service of policy must always trump facts in the service of truth.
That first lie about the three-fifths compromise leads to another lie, which is the contention that the compromise is the reason for the Electoral College in the first place. It isn’t. As Alexander Hamilton made perfectly clear, the Founders (perhaps anticipating Democrats and Progressives) deeply distrusted the masses. The Electoral college was a hedge against the passions, ignorance, and stupidity of the hoi polloi:
It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.
It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.
It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief. The choice of several, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of one who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.
In any event, Hillary’s volte face on the subject of challenging the election is the best evidence that the Progressives’ current position is a lie. They were perfectly content with the Electoral College when they thought it would result in a Hillary victory. While Paul Joseph Watson can be a bit too conspiratorial for my tastes (he’s aligned with Alex Jones’ InfoWars, a site at which I take everything with a grain of salt), but he didn’t need to hunt for conspiracy theories when it comes to the Progressives’ current stance on the Electoral College and voting integrity:
Oh, and about that Jill Stein recount? Zero Hedge credibly suggests that it was a Soros project all along because the steady influx of vast amounts of cash is best explained by Bots, rather than humans, making contributions:
During Thanksgiving, Jill Stein’s grass roots campaign had $4,591,039.66 on hand at 06:11:44. By 22:52:24, that number swelled to $5,322,206.01. Money was raised at $730 per minute.
At 3:29:47 on 11/26, Jill Stein had $5,483, 727.60 on hand. As of right now, at 23:37, she has $5,532,782.53 on hand. Money is being raised at $40.87 per minute.
In summary, Jill Stein raised an enormous amount of money in the opening hours of her campaign to recount the votes in the all important swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Although she claimed her fund raising efforts were entirely grass roots, the facts suggest otherwise. By what I’m seeing here, big donors stepped in early to put her over the top — then the grass roots plebs stepped in to toss nickels at her — with donations shrinking from $4,800 per minute to just over 40 bucks now. Interestingly, the rate by which she’s raised funds have an inverse correlation to the amount of press she’s been receiving.
In other words, none of this makes any sense. Where did all of the early money come from?
The Zero Hedge post is replete with hard data to support the above conclusion, and you’ll want to check it out to assure yourself that you’re not being lied to. Having said that, bots would certainly would explain the speed with which the money appeared, not to mention the constantly shifting financial goals, all of which seem dedicated to shifting wealth from a discredited Clinton syndicate into a new Progressive syndicate.
There’s another Big Lie the Left is currently pushing:
The Dakota Access Pipeline Protest: The more ardent Progressives on my Facebook page are in a daily state of hysteria about the Dakota Access Pipeline that now has a vast crowd of hippies violently protesting a long-standing pipeline project. My friends are useful idiots, who are focused on the feel-good emotions their Facebook virtue-signaling protest produces, but the people behind the protests are hard-core liars who ride roughshod over facts.
Shawn McCoy has looked at the facts as revealed by court filings and discovers that everything the Progressives are saying is false, including “and” and “the.” I’ll quote briefly from McCoy’s data-rich piece, but you really need to read the whole thing:
The record shows that Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, spent years working diligently with federal, state and local officials to route the pipeline safely and with the fewest possible disruptions. The contrast between the protesters’ claims and the facts on record is stunning.
Protesters claim that the pipeline was “fast-tracked,” denying tribal leaders the opportunity to participate in the process. In fact, project leaders participated in 559 meetings with community leaders, local officials and organizations to listen to concerns and fine-tune the route. The company asked for, and received, a tougher federal permitting process at sites along the Missouri River. This more difficult procedure included a mandated review of each water crossing’s potential effect on historical artifacts and locations.
Protesters claim that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to consult tribal leaders as required by federal law. The record shows that the corps held 389 meetings with 55 tribes. Corps officials met numerous times with leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which initiated the lawsuit and the protests.
Protesters claim that the Standing Rock Sioux pursued meetings with an unresponsive Army Corps of Engineers. Court records show that the roles in that story were in fact reversed. The corps alerted the tribe to the pipeline permit application in the fall of 2014 and repeatedly requested comments from and meetings with tribal leaders only to be rebuffed over and over. Tribal leaders ignored requests for comment and canceled meetings multiple times.
If you need a good argument for the Electoral College, the Progressives’ useful idiots who are now running around in North Dakota in winter are that argument.
The attacks conflating Trump and his supporters with antisemitism: While the Progressive medias (“news” and social) are doing their best to pin the “antisemitism” tag onto all Trump voters thanks to some weaselly little maw worm named Richard Spencer, along with his supporters who number in the low hundreds, the facts on the ground are that violent, offensive, continuous antisemitism has arisen on the Left: It’s been booming for years on America’s Leftist owned college campuses; through the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement; within the Black Lives Matter movement; from congressional Democrats; and through the newest Leftist poison of intersectionality.
Trump, by contrast, is easily the most philosemitic president we’ve had in at least eight years and possibly much longer. The most important figure in his campaign may well have been Jared Kushner, an orthodox Jew who is his son-in-law. Ivanka converted to Judaism to marry Kushner and they are raising their children to be Jews.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s Senior Strategist and Chief Counselor, is also being disgracefully slandered, as both Jews and Israel supporters (not always the same people) can attest. He’s never been heard saying anything anti-Jewish (except by his wife who came forward during a contentious divorce to claim Bannon didn’t want his children in a heavily Jewish school that they attended) and has been a longtime, stalwart friend of Israel.
Breitbart, the media empire that Bannon manages, is heavily staffed with Jews and is aggressively pro-Israel. Even Benjamin Shapiro, an orthodox Jew who had a huge fight with Bannon and really hates him, asserts that Bannon is not antisemitic. The antisemitism charge exists only among the Leftists, who hide real antisemitism on their own side of their aisle and distract attention by pointing everywhere else.
Other lies…. And then there are all the other Progressive lies: The Lancet lie about the number killed during the early days of the Iraq War; the endless data fraud to support the falsehood that the world is immolating thanks to anthropogenic climate change; the lies about America’s neonatal survival rate; the lies about America’s healthcare system as a whole, lies that were used to justify Obamacare; the lies that if you like your doctor or hospital or current premium and deductible, you can keep your doctor or hospital and enjoy the benefits of lower premiums and deductibles; the lies about America’s alleged gun problem (and other nation’s “lack” of gun problems); the lies about George W. Bush’s military service; and on and on, ad inifinitum and ad nauseum.
The Progressives never stop. They’re always pounding away at those tables, obscuring facts and law in their efforts to bring America to heel. Trump is a serial exaggerator, but when he’s placed next to the Left, whether the collective Left or it’s dishonest individuals (Obama, Hillary, etc.), he suddenly starts looking like a boy scout.
Being out of power will not stop Progressive lies. Indeed, as we’ve already seen, being out of power accelerates the lies. It is imperative that we never stop challenging the lies and exposing the facts.
