Posted on 10/01/2024 9:12:08 AM PDT by Starman417
by el gato malo
If ever there were a contest to find the living avatar of the phrase “the clothes have no emperor,” I’d pick John Kerry and pit him against all comers.
I’m not sure there is an emptier suit in all the Beltway.
It’s like someone did a gain-of-function experiment on patrician stupidity and entitlement, slapped a politician haircut on top, jolted the neck bolts to life, and sent it tottering down the hill towards some unsuspecting heiress.
But such people are often useful, as they go to forums like the WEF and dazzle the Davos devotees with endless reprisals of “saying the quiet part out loud” because they don’t know any better, and the manic monocultures of assumptive right to rule that sit in such auditoriums actually applaud this.
have a listen:
(Video at link)
Transcript:
"And I think the dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing and growing. As part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue, it's really hard to govern today. You can't, you know. You know, there's no, the referees we used to have to determine what's a fact and what isn't. In fact, the kind of, you have been eviscerated to a certain degree, and people go and let people self-select where they go for their news or for their information. And then you just get into a vicious cycle.When the government starts talking about how “difficult” or “awkward” the Bill of Rights makes governing, there is only one answer:So it's really, really hard, much harder to build consensus today than at any time in that 45–50 years I've been involved in this. And, and there's a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities, in order to guarantee that you're going to have, you know, some accountability on facts, etcetera. But look, if people go to only one source, and the source they go to is sick and, you know, has an agenda, and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence.
So what you need, what we need, is to win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully having, you know, winning enough votes that you're free to be able to, to implement change. Now, obviously, there are some people in our country who are prepared to implement change in other ways. So you're questioning, really, if democracy can survive and related social media.
I think, I think democracies are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to deal with the challenges that we are facing. And to me, that is part of what this race, this, this election is all about. Will we break the fever in the United States?"
Good.
That’s quite literally the point. That’s quite literally the genius of the form of republic imagined and enshrined by our framers.
The individual stands paramount to the state. Our rights, derived from and imbued by our personhood, not from some proffered license from Leviathan, stand paramount to the state. And if that makes it impossible for the state to do something that it wants to do?
Tough noogies.
That’s almost certainly a sign that it’s something the state should never have been contemplating in the first place.
The job of a just state is to protect the rights of we the people and stay out of the damn way as we go forth to pursue our happiness.
“We need to take your rights for the collective good” is the mantra of the dictatorial demagogue.
Collective good is a lie. There is no collective good. It cannot be measured or foreseen. There is no valid fashion in which to measure trade-offs or ensure optimization. It cannot be maximized by diktat. “Collective good” is an entirely unknowable fiction conjured into being to convince a populace to sell itself down the river by adopting the “one size fits none” coercive solutions of elites, aristocracies, or technocrats (or perhaps worst of all, of a tyrannical majority).
The best way to make the demos think that your way is the best way is to lie to it about the facts and menace it with fabricated hobgoblins custom cut to sway and to frighten them into compliance.
Truth takes a distant back seat, if ever it manages to get in the car at all.
Katherine Maher, CEO of National Public Radio, lays out the media elite position here with perfect candor and admirable brevity:
(Video at link)
"I think our reverence for the truth might become, might have become, a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done."It’s not about truth. “Truth gets in the way of finding consensus and getting important things done.”
Yowsa.
Note the dovetail with Kerry:
“The referees we used to have to have to determine what is and is not a fact have been kind of eviscerated.”
Um, yes.
Exactly.
There’s your “referee” telling us in her own clear, simple words that she mistrusts “truth” and therefore “facts” and just wants consensus and a call to action.
This is not “saving democracy,” it’s buttressing the demagogues’ guild and making sure its members are the only ones speaking. They do not seek an era of openness or honesty; they seek a return to the bad old days of messaging monopoly and “it’s not news (or facts) until we say it is” while using your tax dollars to fund their manipulations.
The goal is not to erect logical arguments; it’s to pollute the logic of others with false salients to cause good reasoning to reach bad conclusions.
Garbage in, garbage out.
If I can monopolize your input data, bet your bottom dollar I can monopolize your downstream determinations as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net ...
Thought we were done with Kerry so why has he popped up again this past week?
When Gov't. actors criticize the US Constitution or Bill of Rights, it means that the Gov't actors want to restrict your guaranteed God-given Natural RIGHTS.
The US Constitution DOES NOT grant rights to the citizens, like the dimocrat party desparately wants you to believe.
For starters, howzabout a government that can be trusted. Howzabout firing a few idiots: Foaci; Strzk etc. Howzabout being truthful about the connections in Davos with government. Howzabout explaining how people go to Congress and end up multimillionairs in a few years. Screw consensus.
“..democracies are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to deal with the challenges that we are facing. ...”
Thinly-disguised China-love here.
No disguise there!
A true son of Castro.
Correct, the Constitution recognizes those God given rights exist and does not grant them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.