The Idiotic “Economic Blackout” Charade

CNN reported on the February 28, 2025 “economic blackout. In Today’s ‘economic blackout’ began from an unlikely source. But it’s tapped into Americans’ anger, CNN’s  Nathaniel Meyersohn reports:

In early February, John Schwarz, a self-described “mindfulness and meditation facilitator,” proposed a 24-hour nationwide “economic blackout” of major chains on the last day of the month.

Schwarz urged people to forgo spending at Amazon, Walmart, and all other major retailers and fast-food companies for a day. He called on them to spend money only at small businesses and on essential needs.

“The system has been designed to exploit us,” said Schwarz, who goes by “TheOneCalledJai” on social media, in a video to his roughly 250,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok. “On February 28, we are going to remind them who really holds the power. For one day, we turn it off.”

I posted this article to Facebook, with this commentary, slightly edited for clarity:

John Schwarz, the architect of the recent  “economic blackout” of major retailers and fast-food companies, says the purpose is to protest “the system [that] has been designed to exploit us.” Are these the same companies growing big by successfully “exploiting” us by providing mass market products that improve our lives and that we willingly buy? Is this the same system, called Capitalism, that grew out of the Founding principles of unalienable individual rights that make America great and moral and our lives so rich and free?

Schwarz demands that we “spend money only at small businesses and on essential needs.” Are these the same small businesses many of whom started the bait-&-switch practice of greeting us with a welcome sign for credit cards, only to then charge us a penalty for using them? And why only “essential needs?” Is poverty the goal of this guy? What makes our lives worth living is that we can afford much more than essential needs.

Schwarz’s ignorant crusade is, of course, Marxist nonsense. Companies no more exploit us than consumers exploit them. Companies engage in voluntary trade with their customers. Trade is win-win and thus non-exploitative. Count me out of this and other such idiotic, anti-American charades. I won’t join the army of useful idiots who blindly fall for it. Business—especially big business—is today’s most persecuted minority. We should be thankful for big business and instead be protesting the encroachment of big government on our lives and freedoms.  

The article puts MAGA as the inspiration for the protest. But undoubtedly it was probably inspired, at least in part, by Joe Biden’s Big Lie of blaming private enterprise for the inflation the Federal Government's own policies caused. Remember “shrinkflation,” “greedflation,” and “corporate Greed?”

Related Listening:

America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business by Ayn Rand, Recorded live at Chicago’s McCormick Place. [This talk was also published as an essay in Rand’s book Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal.]

Obama’s Fascist “Partnership” With Big Business

B of A's Debit Charges: It's About More Than Fees

Big Government vs. Big Business; or, Political Power vs. Economic Power

The Dollar and the Gun by Harry Binswanger

The Star-Ledger Exploits a Workers Death to Attack Big Business

Quora: ‘Is capitalism based on the exploitation of others?’

‘Ordinary citizen’ With ‘little chance of influencing elected officials’ Reaches 114,000 Readers

This letter appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger on 5/18/19 under the heading Murphy wrong to veto dark-money bill (no longer available online):

Once again we see politicians preventing the disclosure of the sources of campaign contributions (“No light to shine on hidden donors,” May 14). How could Gov. Phil Murphy veto a bill designed to increase transparency that passed both houses of the Legislature with only two dissenting votes?

Unfortunately, dark money and the corporate support unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has corrupted the political process. In doing so, ordinary citizens have little chance of influencing our elected officials.

As Justice Louis Brandeis said, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Let’s let the sunshine in and identify those making large political donations.

Jerry Jeglinski Woodbridge

“Dark money” is the buzzword that refers to anonymous donations to political advocacy groups like political action committees (PACs). It is meant to conjure up images of something sinister. 

But ‘dark money” is nothing more than private citizens exercising their rights to free speech in private. 

Keep in mind that the bill that Murphy vetoed does not apply to direct contributions to politicians. It applies to political donations for purposes of independent political advocacy. As of now, PACs have not been legally required to publish or reveal to the state or to the public lists of their donors, and have not done so voluntarily. To protect their donors’ privacy, they keep their donors private.

Jeglinski’s ridiculous charge that such donations “has corrupted the political process” amounts to the charge that running political ads for the purpose of persuasion is somehow corrupt. Consider what Jeglinski is saying: that people participating in election discourse in association with others through private donations should be illegal; that who said, not what is said, is primary; that the intellectual substance is irrelevant to the chance of influencing our elected officials; that privacy is corrupting to the political process!

Well, what exactly is the political process if not a battle of persuasion and debate over ideas? 

Political advocacy groups’ right to keep their donors private has long been backed by the courts. As SCOTUS ruled in 1958 in NAACP vs. Alabama, “compelled disclosure . . .  is likely to affect adversely the ability of . . . members to pursue their collective effort to foster beliefs” by exposing them to “economic reprisal, loss of employment, threat of physical coercion, and other manifestations of public hostility,” violating fundamental rights to freedom of association, privacy, free speech, and due process. The court held that “compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy” is of the same nature as "A requirement that adherents of particular religious faiths or political parties wear identifying arm-bands,” a favored practice of dictatorships.

NJ’s forced disclosure law is opposed across the political spectrum. Opposition comes from the Institute for Free Speech, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, and Americans for Prosperity. It is even opposed by New Direction New Jersey, a PAC that backs Gov. Phil Murphy, a “dark money” ban supporter whose veto of the bill is over technical, not fundamental, reasons.  New Direction New Jersey has adamantly refused to expose their donors to government officials or the public.

Political free speech is a crucial tool of private citizens to participate in the political process and to keep their political leaders accountable. Politicians have always hated accountability, and the attempt to ban private, anonymous political spending is one way for the political class to weaken citizen accountability. Note that NJ’s attempt to legally force the disclosure of the sources of campaign contributions had broad bipartisan legislative support. 

Political spending is integral to freedom of speech, which in turn is a vital ingredient of the political process and of the maintenance of a free society more generally. We must defeat any attempt to restrict freedom of speech, under whatever guise and however it is framed. Speech is much more important than the vote. 

Contrary to Jeglinski, the ‘Ordinary citizen’ has much less chance of influencing elected officials through his lone vote than through his speech. A single vote out of millions, while symbolically important, doesn’t extend beyond the single voter. But a letter to the editor of the New Jersey Star-Ledger, if printed, can potentially reach 114,000 readers--and that’s only the print circulation, which doesn’t include digital-only subscribers. Then there is blogging, social media like QUORA, and speaking as a group through donations that fund public political messaging. Engaging directly in or indirectly through associations is the far more effective way for ordinary citizens to influence elected officials than standing alone in a voting booth (which, by the way, is anonymous). 

That’s why politicians love “the right to vote” and hate “dark money”—by restricting free speech, they better control election discourse and thus maintain greater influence over voters. 

Don’t succumb to the fear tactics of the anti-free speech crowd. Reject all calls to ban “dark money.” Contra Jerry Jeglinski and his ilk, our ability to influence elected officials depends on it. 

Related Reading:

Murphy’s Veto of NJ’s ‘Dark Money’ Ban Should Be Unconditional

Kill New Jersey’s ‘Dark Money’ Ban

NJ’s ‘Dark Money’ Bill an Attack on Intellectual Freedom

NJ’s ‘Dark Money’ Bill is an Assault on Free Speech

The Anti-Free Speech Fallacy of ‘Dark Money’

‘Dark Money’ is Free Speech. Protect It

The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech--by Kimberley Strassel, especially Chapter 2, “Publius & Co.”

Campaign Finance: Free Speech, Not Disclosure, is the Main Issue

Making Private Donations Anonymously is a Right

Norcross’ Message to Graduates: Shut Up and Submit to the Elites

When I came across a New Jersey Star-Ledger guest column by George E. Norcross III, I perked up. The title is Norcross: You need a tough skin to be a responsible adult … and citizen | A 2022 commencement essay. I thought, great: Norcross’s message to college graduates would be an attack on cancel culture. 

Not so.

Instead, Norcross wants to strangle their expression by strangling their means of expression.

After admonitions to be treated like, and to act like, an adult, Norcross says

My advice to you is come into it with your eyes wide open to what our society is becoming — in New Jersey. In the United States and throughout the world. Being blunt — you need to have a thick skin because the culture we live in is increasingly unforgiving, even for minor errors — even for those who are just moving forward with their lives.

True. This is what we broadly call “cancel culture''. I’m not sure how much worse, if it is worse, our society has been in past eras compared to “what our society is becoming.” But it is horrible, especially since so many people are intellectually shallow, and allow themselves to be governed by emotion over reason. Of course, human culture has never been particularly forgiving. When has it not been good to have a thick skin? But at least Norcross is calling on young people to deal with it and fight back. Or at least I thought.

Why is it getting tougher out there? Maybe it’s because people are meaner, but I think there’s more to it than that. Social media platforms have made everyone a critic where there is no barrier to entry. It’s easy. It’s free. It’s immediate. And, it can be anonymous.

Yes. And that’s great. Social media has given the average person a platform from which to criticize powers-that-be, from politicians to mainstream media. More than that, people can advocate, express themselves, participate in national debates on the issues of the day, before wide audiences, like never before. Yes, some abuse that new-found power. But it is power—power to the ordinary person to call out politicians, big traditional media, and other prominent voices whose big megaphones allowed them to control the intellectual narratives. The free-wheeling intellectual discourse now open to untold millions of ordinary folks threatens that power of the elites.

And that’s what Norcross wants to stifle.

News organizations are held to a correctly high libel standard under the law. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Both as a subject of the media’s attention and as a publisher as I used to own The Philadelphia Inquirer. In let’s call it the mainstream media, it is very hard to attack with no basis when there is a libel standard.

But the protection isn’t there on today’s social media platforms. It’s a terrible mistake that Congress made in 1996 to exempt online platforms from liability based on content that people post on their sites. This must be corrected.

Social media platforms are not traditional newspapers. They are platforms, not publishers. Publishers are responsible for what they publish. On social media, the user is the publisher, not the company. What makes social media such free-wheeling free speech platforms is that the platform companies cannot be held liable for what the users—the actual publishers—say. And that’s how it should be. That’s justice.

Norcross says treat graduates like adults. But if social media loses its liability protection, it will be forced to police all content published by their users, for fear of being sued for what the supposed adults say. This will have the effect of stifling the free expression of ordinary folks, including the college graduates Norcross is addressing. “Why,” Norcross asks, “must this be corrected?” 

Because Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by not taking responsibility for the content posted on their sites are undermining democracy and making the lives of so many people truly miserable.

So freedom of expression, dissent, criticism, and public debate is “undermining democracy” if posted by ordinary people. What about those mainstream news organizations that Norcross sheds tears over? Have you ever seen the kind of viscous rubbage that they publish? And that’s fine, too. Just leave the rest of us the freedom to counter-speech.

Yes, ordinary people being able to express themselves is now easy, free, immediate, and, yes, anonymous. And that’s great. How in hell does that “undermine democracy?” True, it may undermine the political incumbents and mainstream media domination of the intellectual discourse. That’s great, too. And true, people post mean thoughtless stuff. Ignore it, or fight back with counterspeech--or libel lawsuits. Contrary to Norcross’s implication, social media publishers are subject to the same libel laws as traditional publishers.

Norcross laments that “Too often commencement addresses offer platitudes of leading a good life, seizing the opportunity and blah, blah, blah.” So what does he do? Worse. He uses his opportunity to push an anti-free speech political agenda, even citing former president Barack Obama’s call “for regulating these social media platforms to help save our democracy,” and which I critiqued as Obama's Disingenuous ‘Defense’ of the First Amendment. 

The 1996 law that Norcross deplores is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That law shields internet companies who merely supply the platform for publishers from liability for what the users publish. That protection must be maintained if we are to protect the new-found freedom of expression average people now enjoy. That’s how you treat new college grads as adults. Let them express themselves -- and take responsibility for what they say. Don’t silence them. Leave them to be the tough skinned responsible adults and citizens you wish them to be.

To be fair, Norcross does finish with some sound advice. In the absence of social media regulation, he urges, take on “the responsibility to act as adults in a democratic society.”

You don’t need to agree with my political views or those of your friends. But… you do need to behave responsibly. Being critical of policies you oppose is the duty you have as citizens. 

That means you’re going to need to have tougher skin and at the same time understand the difference between news and vindictive personal attacks on these platforms.

You also need to distinguish real news on your feed. . .

Know, too, that you can’t be afraid of attacks. You will need a tough exterior to bat away anonymous criticism that your friends and family will see as well. Be a responsible citizen. Use social media as a form of connecting with people but don’t confuse that content for news.

I would be more blunt, and say what Norcross should have said. Don’t think about silencing people you disagree with by, for example, neutering Section 230. That's what the elites want. Instead, use your own internet freedom constructively. For those who might be tempted by Norcross’s and Obama’s calls for government involvement in this country’s intellectual discourse, I urge, “Instead, get off of your lazy mental ass and do the work of fact-checking, consulting of experts, considering of all opinions no matter how outrageous or offensive you may deem them, doing your own thinking, fighting back when necessary with your own counter-speech, and focussing on ideas.” 

That’s what “democracy”—or more precisely the democratic process in a constitutionally limited republic based on inalienable individual rights—actually demands. The government has no role in regulating the intellectual discourse of its citizens. Don't grant them that power.

Related Reading:

Obama's Disingenuous ‘Defense’ of the First Amendment

Trump Joins Biden in War on the Average Person’s Newfound Power to be Heard

Internet Free Markets and the false claim of Social Media Monopoly Power

Politicians Want to Destroy Section 230, the Internet's First Amendment: Four myths about the law that made the modern internet possible. -- ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN AND PAUL DETRICK for Reason

Social Media and the Future of Civil Society -- Jon Hersey for The Objective Standard

Many of the bureaucrats and commentators behind these laws and initiatives against social-media companies share essentially the same tactic. They blame social-media companies for not doing what governments are supposed to do—protect individual rights—and then rationalize that this supposed failure is grounds for doing what governments are not supposed to do—violate individual rights.

This Memorial Day, Remember that the Military Protects Our Borders, Not Our Freedom

American soldiers killed in action certainly deserve our gratitude and honor. But not for the usually recited reason. 

Memorial Day once again featured the mantra that soldiers died defending our freedom and individual rights. One popular song even includes the phrase, “At least I know I’m free, and I won't forget the ones who died who gave that right to me.” Yet today our rights are under attack on multiple fronts. We are just emerging from a wave of pandemic-related lockdowns imposed by politicians. The news is full of horror stories of business owners being fined and shut down, they and their employees’ livelihoods stripped away, price controls imposed under the guise of “anti-gouging, even their customers arrested, for defying orders by political leaders wielding “emergency powers”.Where’s the military? 

In the last 100 years, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers died on the battlefield. In that same 100 years, our general freedom, especially economic freedom, has steadily eroded due to the growth of the regulatory welfare state. While our First Amendment freedoms have fared somewhat better, they today face withering attacks on multiple fronts, as are the governmental checks and balances put in place by the Founders to protect us from tyranny due to concentration of government power. Bodily sovereignty is under attack, through vaccine mandates and abortion rights threatened. 

With our freedom and rights threatened or infringed in ever-wider ways, where was the military? Where is the military?

The fact is, contrary to Memorial Day propaganda, the military’s job is to protect our borders, not our freedom. The fight to establish, maintain, and defend freedom is a philosophical, not a military, fight. It is fought with words and ideas, not guns and tanks. It is fought within, not outside, our borders. It is fought among the civilian, not military, population. The fight for freedom requires, not military combat, but mind-to-mind combat. The Founding generation’s defeat of the British Army, heroic as that was, did not secure our rights. Our rights were secured afterward, on the battlefield of political philosophy and constitutional law. That battlefield—the one of ideas, not arms—is where our Founders took the first and most crucial steps toward fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence, the creation of a government “to secure these rights, drawing their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The enemies of freedom exist not only in foreign dictatorships, but among us right here in America. The military has done a fine job of protecting us from foreign enemies. We, the people of the United States, have done poorly in our job of protecting our rights. By the design of some, the neglect and complacency of others, and ignorance of many, we have granted our government more and more power to restrict our individual rights. We must abandon our false sense of security that we can rely on the military to preserve and restore our liberty. The U.S. military has given us a virtually impenetrable forcefield to live behind. But it did not give us those rights. And it won’t protect those rights. It is entirely up to we, as individual citizens, to secure and restore our freedom and make our rights inalienable.

The military protects our borders, giving us the protective wall we need to fight the moral and intellectual battle to preserve and protect our liberty rights.

Happy Memorial Day.  

Related Reading:

A Memorial Day Tribute

July 4, 1776: Words that Will Never Be Erased

The Declaration of Independence

Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence—Onkar Ghate

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

On This Veterans Day, Remember the Productive Americans Who Support the Greatest Military in History

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty – Timothy Sandefur

A New Textbook of Americanism — edited by Jonathan Hoenig

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Inspiring Climb to Supreme Court Nominee

I’m very concerned with President Biden’s court picks, especially for the U.S. Supreme Court. Biden’s constitutional views are contrary and reactionary, as are the views of the Democratic Party more generally. 

But whatever the Constitutional views of Biden's Supreme Court choice to replace Steven Bryer, Ketanji Brown Jackson’s limb to Supreme Court nominee is worth admiring. In PRESIDENT BIDEN’S SUPREME COURT PICK: “HOW KETANJI BROWN FOUND A PATH BETWEEN CONFRONTATION AND COMPROMISE”, Jack Limpert documents her amazing character and courage.

And an inspiring path it was. Her personal philosophy and career journey are quintessentially American Individualist. To sum up her message as I understand it: "Legalized discrimination died in the 1960s. Racism, robbed of its legal backing, has since been rendered culturally impotent. Now, get on with your life. To all dark-complexioned people, understand: Residual racism is 'random ridiculousness!' It can't stop you from succeeding, unless you let it." To give you a sense of what I mean, here are some lenghthy excerpts from Lambert's column:

 

“My parents set out to teach me that, unlike the many impenetrable barriers that they had had to face, my path was clear,” recalled Jackson, now 51 and a federal appellate court judge in Washington. “If I worked hard and believed in myself, I could do anything or be anything I wanted to be.”

 

“She was always the person trying to find the middle ground,” Simmons said. As other Black students at Harvard took to the streets to confront college officials about issues of race and equality, Jackson counseled moderation. “ ‘They’re not going to listen to us if we’re screaming at them,’ she’d say,” Simmons recalled. “She was always asking, ‘What are the facts we can use to persuade?’ ”

In 1988, in her first year at Harvard, Jackson had to choose a path. The college’s freshmen lived together in dorms surrounding Harvard Yard, and one of Jackson’s classmates hung a Confederate flag from his dorm room window.

As a new student who’d signed up with the Black Students Association, Jackson joined in reactions to this “huge affront,” she said in a 2020 speech at the University of Chicago. “We organized rallies; we passed out fliers; we circulated petitions; we planned sit-ins.”

But Jackson wasn’t all in on leaping into protest mode. “While we were busy doing all of those very noble things, we were not in the library studying,” she noted. “I remember thinking how unfair it was to us.” Black students saw the flying of the flag as an attack, and they were angry about what they saw as a lax response from university officials, but now, as a result of their protests, “we were also missing classes and could not just be regular students … like the rest of our peers,” she said.

And that, Jackson decided, was “exactly what the student who had hung the flag really wanted: For us to be so distracted that we failed our classes and thereby reinforced the stereotype that we couldn’t cut it at a place like Harvard.”

 

In that instance and numerous others, Jackson felt pulled in two directions — stand up for what’s right, or buckle down and work. Time after time, in almost every chapter of her life, according to interviews with more than 15 of her friends and colleagues and a review of more than 2,000 pages of her speeches and writings, Jackson refused to be distracted. She would press for her ideals, but she would pick her battles — and choose tactics designed more to persuade others than to announce her opposition.

“I just want to be clear about how I envision thick skin,” Jackson told a Black student group at the University of Chicago in 2020. “I am not asking you to put on blinders. … As a professional of color, there will inevitably be times when you will feel singled out, challenged, questioned, undervalued, and misinterpreted, and you will very much want to call out or cancel people who say and do discriminatory things. … But doing so takes time and effort, and if we are going to get to where we belong … we can’t keep stopping and fretting over random ridiculousness!”

“Random ridiculousness!” This says something profound about today’s American reality. Condoleezza Rice calls it "Somebody else's problem." John McWhorter calls it "Occasional inconvenience" [p. 218]. Racism is dead as a cultural and political force in America. Sure it exists, here and there. And when it is encountered, it can be insulting, offensive, and infuriating. But is it a roadblock to personal progress? Jackson’s attitude reminds me of the attitude expressed by a character in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, Howard Roark, “The question isn’t who will let me; it’s who is going to stop me?”

Jackson understood the power of activism. She’d heard about it from her parents back in Miami. “For Black Americans in particular, 1970 was a time of hope,” she said in 2020. “The hard work of the previous decade — the marches, the boycotts, the sit-ins, the arrests — had finally borne fruit. … Young Black professionals like my parents were finally on the verge of getting to enjoy the full freedom and equality that is promised to citizens of the United States. Change does happen, and that even the most dire circumstances can be overcome.”

When she ran for class president in high school (she won three times), when she traveled the high school debate circuit and won a rack of prizes, or when she applied to Harvard despite her high school guidance counselor’s suggestion that she set her sights a bit lower, she felt “slings and arrows” of bias, yet decided not to care about “slights and misperceptions and underestimations that came my way. What I do remember is often thinking, ‘Hmm, well, I’ll show them.’ ”

“I’ll show them!” I love that. She has no sympathy for self-imposed victimism.

 

“There were always more-radical people who wanted to push her off the middle,” arguing for more-in-your-face confrontation, Simmons said. But Jackson argued against protests that might alienate the very people she wanted to persuade. And she would not let anyone steer her away from her studies, the roommate said.

“As a dark-skinned black girl who was often the only person of color in my class, club, or social environment, my parents knew that it was essential that I develop a sense of my own self worth that was in no way dependent on what others thought about my abilities,” Jackson said.

 

Another profound truth: ". . . my own self worth that was in no way dependent on what others thought about my abilities.” Her parents were wise people, indeed.

I probably will have deep disagreements with many of Jackson's judicial decisions, given she was chosen by Biden. But if her SCOTUS impact is anywhere close to consistent with her personal philosophy--and that of her parents--she would be a surprisingly powerful voice against Woke Nihilism. As a radical for American Ideals, I'm not expecting miracles. But the Left may be gravely disappointed. The last thing they need is a voice for self-responsibility. Based on her personal philosophy and trust that, in America, positive change can happen through rational argument and persuasion rather than activist disruption or "canceling", she has the makings of a great Supreme Court justice.

We’ll see -- and I’ll keep my fingers crossed. But one thing is for sure. Jackson is a great role model, not just for dark-complexioned young people, but for anyone who imagines "the system" is rigged against them.

Related Reading:

Joe Biden—the Real Protégé of Jefferson Davis

Identity Politics: America’s ‘Pre-Existing Condition’, and the Cure

AMERICA: A RACIST NATION? BY ANDREW BERNSTEIN

Leftist Supremacy, Not White Supremacy, is the Gravest Threat to Black Lives by Andrew Berstein

We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People by Jason D. Hill

The Founding Fathers, Not ‘Diversity,’ is the Solution to ‘Our Racialized Society’

Related Viewing:

John McWhorter: America Has Never Been Less Racist -- Reason interview

Behold, the Power of Principles

Events of the last two years have given us a bright lesson in the practical power of principles. 

Washington Post columnist Marc A. Thiessen recently lamented Canadian Prime Minister Justine Trudeau’s tyrannical turn. In Canada turns authoritarian to shut down the ‘Freedom Convoy’, Thiessen opens with 

Remember the outrage when the Trump administration sent the U.S. Park Police and other law enforcement officers to clear Black Lives Matter protesters from Lafayette Square? Well, some of those who criticized President Donald Trump then are now applauding Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for invoking never-before-used emergency powers to clear “Freedom Convoy” protesters from Ottawa’s Parliament Hill and provincial capitals across the country.

Theissen indicates a point that goes far beyond the hypocrisy of the Left: Principles have long-term consequences. When BLM violence was minimized, excused, and/or outright allowed without official resistance, the principle was established that civil violence is justified if the cause is "right". The violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol followed. After "peaceful" BLM protests “merely” blocked traffic and shut down commerce and business, the Canadian truckers' blockade of traffic, commerce, and business followed. So, after political powers across the world used "emergency powers" to lock down lives and livelihoods around the world over COVID, is it really any surprise when Justin Trudeau used “emergency power” to shut down dissent, protest, and livelihoods over the Trucker protests? 

Precedents and principles have consequences, whether anyone chooses to acknowledge them or not. It’s time to reign in the political class and demand that they do their basic jobs of securing our freedom and individual rights.

Related Reading:

The Scary Ease with Which Some Americans Accept Authoritarianism

Moral Rights and Political Freedom by Tara Smith 

NJ Governor Murphy’s COVID-19 Double Standard Toward the Demonstrators

Declaration of Independence

MAN’S RIGHTS; THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT by Ayn Rand

Why Should One Act on Principle? By Leonard Peikoff