Posted on 09/18/2021 4:18:28 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The authoritarian moment has arrived, the result of a decades-long evisceration of core American institutions.
Ben Shapiro’s new bestseller, The Authoritarian Moment, is about the death of authentic liberalism and the rise of left-wing authoritarianism.
He writes:
“I grew up in an America that made room for different points of view that could tolerate political differences. I grew up where we could attend ball games together without worrying about who voted for whom, where we could attend different schools and recognize our differences without trying to beat each other into submission… Most of all, I grew up in an America where we could all participate in a search for truth, without fear that the mere searching would end in our societal excommunication.”
That America is rapidly disappearing.
How did arrive at this moment? The roots go back a long way, but Shapiro lays much of the blame on Barack Obama and particularly his 2012 re-election campaign. As Shapiro tells it, Obama ran in 2008 (at least superficially) on a message of healing and bipartisanship. The public, not cognizant of his Alinskyite past, bought it. But by 2012, that act was no longer tenable. So he shifted gears and ran a very different campaign, cobbling together an intersectional coalition of identities.
“This strategy,” writes Shapiro, “pitted Americans against Americans, race against race, sex against sex. Obama domesticated the destructive impulses of authoritarian leftism in pursuit of power.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Maybe leftists should be the next inconvenient embarrassment that gets cancelled. They are the offensive ones who deserve it.
the role played by behavioural “experts” has flown under the radar:
18 Sept: Guardian: No 10 accused of sidelining behaviour experts on latest Covid measures
Exclusive: SPI-B scientists warn of lack of independent advice at a time when social norms are replacing laws
by Hannah Devlin, Science correspondent
Senior scientific advisers have publicly accused the government of sidelining behavioural experts and appearing unwilling to listen to “uncomfortable truths” on vaccine passports and masks during the pandemic.
The scientists told the Guardian that their input to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) was apparently no longer wanted owing to the expansion of in-house expertise...
Prof Robert West, a behavioural scientist at University College London who participates in Sage’s behavioural science subgroup, SPI-B, said that while the committee had not been formally stood down, he had the “strong impression it is no longer functioning”. “The sense I have is that there’s just no interest in evidence or science on the behavioural side,” he said...
Reicher said: “As we segue away from restrictions and say ‘it’s up to you’, the behavioural issues become absolutely critical. We’ve got the vaccines now. But vaccines are no good if people don’t get vaccinated.”
During the first year of the pandemic, SPI-B provided regular input on issues ranging from the likelihood of behavioural fatigue and public unrest to attitudes on vaccination. But during the past six months its activity has tailed off, with the most recent published evidence being a report dating to April.
Scientists said their offers to provide advice on the role of incentives in the vaccination programme had been declined on the basis that Public Health England and the government had recruited in-house behavioural experts. At the last full SPI-B meeting, in June, participants were told there would no longer be regular meetings...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/17/no-10-accused-of-sidelining-behaviour-experts-on-latest-covid-measures
Just imagine if everyone with an (R) after their name in the state legislatures had been a true conservative. Those cheat-by-mail-in ballots would have never been allowed in the first place. If everyone with an (R) after their name was a fighter like Trump, the Republican party would be unstoppable.
Take back the GOP from the RINO traitors, and we will take back America.
They are, but they are the Hall Monitors and they have all the hall passes.
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