Straight to the point

Reclaim the West
by Lori Weintz at Brownstone Institute

“Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft (in Salem, Massachusetts). He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion, which should teach us, among its other morals, that the influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob.“

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, First published in 1851

The “Influential Classes”

It’s striking to read a quote from a mid-19th-century author referencing the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 as an example of how “the influential classes” are just as prone to mob mentality and error as all the rest of humanity. Hawthorn reveals two truths 1) Humanity never changes much. Technology and education advance human conditions, but human nature is as prone to the same errors as it always has been. 2) People in authority often have a tendency to abuse power.

This concept was exemplified in the Stanford Prison Experiment put together by psychologist Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University in 1971. Zimbardo’s intent was to study people’s behaviors in a simulated prison environment. He built a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building, and recruited male college students as participants.

The experiment volunteers were randomly assigned as guards or prisoners – with both groups knowing the experiment was designed to last one-to-two weeks. “Prisoners” were given uniforms and instructed to abide by the rules. “Guards” were given uniforms and tasked with maintaining order in the prison. All participants knew it was only a simulation, but the “guards” began behaving authoritatively and sometimes abusively, and the “prisoners” largely became passive and obedient. Things got so out of hand, in terms of increasing cruelty, that the experiment was terminated after just six days.

Knowing that the “influential classes” are as prone to mob mentality as anyone else, and that people who believe they have authority have a tendency to abuse it, one is left to ask, “How do we protect ourselves against influential people who abuse their power?” The answer is multifaceted.

Oppression Gains Strength When People Are Silent

Protection against tyranny starts first and foremost with people who are willing to shine a light on it and push back when tyranny first appears, and secondly with laws and rules that prevent tyranny from taking root. That protection was the intent of the Founders of the United States of America. Having been subjected to the whims and edicts of monarchs, they were well aware of how miserable life is when the “influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people,” sink into self-indulgence and domination of others.

The American experiment has at its heart the idea that people tell the government what to do, and not the other way around. Government of the people, by the people, for the people has led to the most freedom and prosperity for the greatest number of people in the history of the world, but it created its own possibly fatal flaw: complacency. Citizens in the Western world have had freedom for so long, they assume it is the natural state of humankind, rather than the historical exception. In the U.S. we hear the phrase “Freedom isn’t Free,” but what that means to many is, “Our grandparents had to fight to save the world from Hitler in WWII,” and “We love our Troops,” truths that are often comfortably removed from personal effort or sacrifice.

Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, wrote in 2014, “[T]he Constitution cannot protect you, if you don’t protect the Constitution with your votes against anyone who violates it. Those government officials who want more power are not going to stop unless they get stopped.” In the same piece Sowell wrote, “They may not be consciously aiming at creating a totalitarian state, but shameless use of government power to crush those who get in their way can produce totalitarian end results.”

The Elites Would Like You to Be Quiet

And that’s where we are today, only it’s not just privileged government officials, or a king, or a dictator trying to return humanity to a state of serfdom. It’s also unelected multibillionaires, heads of NGOs, and leaders of international organizations, masquerading as concerned philanthropists. They feel called to rule, and compelled to preserve Earth’s resources – for themselves. They feel smarter, better, and more qualified, due to their wealth, education, and connections, and are so confident in their self-coronation as rulers of humankind, that they aren’t even bothering to hide their plans. Thus we are favored with these kinds of insights from our self-appointed overlords:

“We should have free speech, but if you’re inciting violence, if you’re causing people to not take vaccines…even the U.S. should have rules…Is there some AI that encodes those rules? Because you have billions of activity and, you know, if you catch it a day later, then the harm is done.”

Bill Gates

September 6, 2024

“There are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda, and whether they should be civilly, or even in some cases criminally charged, is something that would be a better deterrent…” 

Hillary Clinton

September 16, 2024

If people go to only one source, and the source they got to is sick and has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to just be able to hammer it out of existence.

John Kerry

WEF Sustainable Development Impact Meetings

September 2024

We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment. You can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation. It’s one thing to have differing opinion, but it’s another thing entirely to just say things that are false.

Rep. Alexandra Orcasio-Cortez

January 13, 2021

During the COVID-19 pandemic, falsehoods about masks, vaccines and “lockdowns” spread as fast as the virus itself, and were almost as deadly. (“Falsehoods” being anything that didn’t agree with the official pandemic response, which, by the way, has been proven wrong in almost every aspect.)

World Health Organization

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

October 13, 2024

There has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media platforms to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.

Sen. Kamala Harris

October 15, 2019

For the global business community, the top concern for the next two years is not conflict or climate, it is disinformation and misinformation, followed closely by polarization within our societies.

World Economic Forum

Davos, January 2024

Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President

Why are these people and organizations, who claim to be so concerned with making the world a better, safer place, so afraid of people speaking their minds? Because words are powerful, and the elites who are in charge don’t like the words of people who disagree with them. The first thing to go when tyranny gains control is freedom of speech. 

GB NEws reporter Bev Turner states, “Whenever governments try to control the behemoth that is the online world, every road leads to the suppression of free speech, and the ludicrous idea that someone somewhere, in a lavishly glazed office, can decide what is factual information and what is misinformation.”

The Founding Fathers knew that free and open discussion is the bedrock of freedom and self-rule. That’s why the First Amendment to the Constitution states that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, or the right of citizens to assemble and petition the government for a redress of their grievances. There is no caveat in the Bill of Rights saying they may be suspended in times of emergency.

Do Not Suspend Your Own Judgment about Right And Wrong

The Covid-19 pandemic response was not the start of our problems in the West, but served as a spotlight and accelerant – a turning point in a destructive movement embracing anti-freedom trends.

There is discussion today about the need to move on from the pandemic – to let it go and get on with things. “Forgive and forget, because we just did the best we could with what we knew at the time” say those who ruled. No. We didn’t do our best with what we knew at the time. We can’t just move on, not because we’re vindictive and have a desire for revenge, but because we were collectively abused, and caused to abuse each other, and that needs to be acknowledged. Untreated wounds fester, and bad behavior needs to be corrected, or it will be repeated.

Just as in the Stanford Prison Experiment, during the pandemic some enjoyed a reason for abusing and discriminating against fellow human beings who had been identified as “bad,” directing their ire against the questioners, the unmasked, and the unvaccinated. Many others just went along so as to deflect the anger and abuse from being directed at themselves and their families. However, history shows that when dealing with would-be tyrants, the tactic of keeping your head down to avoid trouble is not a good long-term strategy. No one really escapes the damage and abuse, regardless of which side of the equation they’re on.

Konstantin Kisin grew up in the Soviet Union, was there when it collapsed, and eventually immigrated to the U.K. as a student. Kisin recounts that his grandmother knew several gulag guards in her small town, who killed themselves after the end of Stalin’s regime. She said the guards allowed themselves to believe the Communist party knew what was right, so the neighbors they were beating, torturing, murdering, and raping in the camps “deserved it.” But once they were living side by side again with people they had abused and even tortured, they took their own lives.

Kisin states, “Do not suspend you own judgment about right and wrong, about morality, about truth and justice for the sake of some system, some oppressive ideology, for not being fired form work, or for convenience. Do not be a useful idiot, because you will regret it.”

American journalist and educator Milton Mayer conducted a post-WWII study of ordinary Germans who lived under Hitler’s Third Reich. An academic explained to Mayer how Nazism gradually took over in Germany, stating:

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise…Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside…in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest and certainly sees none…in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do, but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad,’ or ‘You’re seeing things,’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’ And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it…”

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy…and you see that everything, everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in – your nation, your people – is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit…is changed…Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.”

They Thought They Were Free, The Germans. 1933-45, by Milton Mayer

University of Chicago Press, copyright 1955, Chapter 13

The crimes perpetuated by Nazi Germany have long been widely acknowledged as evil. The Third Reich was a system that lost the thread of what it means to be human and humane. Post WWII, steps were taken to assure that such atrocities would never happen again, and an international emphasis was placed on the value of individual rights and human dignity. Yet somehow, 75 years later, the pandemic led to a great shift in Western democracies toward the violation of individual rights in the name of public health and safety. 

Now a couple of years after the lockdowns, the mask mandates, the vaccines mandates, the ostracizing and persecution of the unvaccinated, and the overall trampling of human rights, far too many people look around and see the restoration of “the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays,” and feel grateful that things are back to normal. But they aren’t. Things may look the same, but the spirit has changed.

“Without Responsibility Even to God”

The academic quoted previously noted that Nazi Germany became a system “without responsibility even to God.” Do today’s influential classes value God, and should we care whether or not they do? The following quote from Yuval Noah Harari, at the 2018 Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), provides perspective on that question:

In the coming generations we will learn how to engineer bodies and brain and minds…Organisms are algorithms…[W]hen the infotech revolution merges with the biotech revolution, what you get is the ability to hack human beings…By hacking human organisms, the elites may gain the power to re-engineer the future of life itself…This will not be just the greatest revolution in the history of humanity, this will be the greatest revolution in biology since the very beginning of life four billion years ago… Science is replacing evolution by natural selection with evolution by intelligent design. Not by intelligent design of some god above us in the clouds, but our intelligent design and the intelligent design of our clouds, the IBM cloud, the Microsoft cloud – these are the new driving forces of evolution.

Harari’s musings stem from WEF founder Klaus Schwab’s vision of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Originally presented in a book he authored by that name in 2016, Schwab explains that “the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be driven largely by the convergence of digital, biological, and physical innovations…redefining and blurring the boundary between the digital and physical worlds.

During the pandemic, Harari stated at the October 2020 Athens Democracy Forum:

“Covid is critical because this is what convinces people, to accept, to legitimize total biometric surveillance… Yes, now they’re using it to see whether you have the coronavirus, but the same technology can be used to see what you think about the government…This is the kind of power that Stalin didn’t have…but in 10 years, the future Stalins of the 21^st Century they could be watching the minds, the brains of all the population all the time. And also they will have the computing power to analyze all that…Now you don’t need human agents; you don’t need human analyzers. You just have a lot of sensors, and an AI that analyzes it, and that’s it – you have the worst totalitarian regime in history.”

This may sound a bit fantastical to some, evoking a headshake and a “that will never happen” comment. However, a framework is being put into place worldwide to do just that – biometric surveillance and control of human populations.

In March 2022, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a new research program that analyzes preconscious brain signals. As explained by an online tech newsletter:

Under the premise of identifying people at risk of depression and suicide, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched the Neural Evidence Aggregation Tool (NEAT) program, which focuses on “aggregating preconscious brain signals to determine what someone believes to be true.”

Consider Executive Order 14081, “Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy.” Signed by Pres. Joe Biden on September 12, 2022, the Executive Order states:

“Although the power of these technologies is most vivid at the moment in the context of human health, biotechnology and biomanufacturing can also be used to achieve our climate and energy goals, improve food security and sustainability, secure our supply chains, and grow the economy across all of America.”

Something that has become apparent in the past few years, is every time the government, or some global group, comes up with a plan for more control of people, it’s couched in some claim of “improvement,” “safe and effective,” or “growth, sustainability, and security.”

Rather than sounding innovative, the Biotechnology Order sounds menacing and anti-human. This article on the Bioeconomy from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) states that the “USDA supports the development of circular bioeconomies, where agricultural resources are harvested, consumed, and regenerated in a sustainable manner.” The USDA is talking about farming as though it won’t happen without the government. Lofty executive orders and sciency-sounding words do not legitimize additional top-down intrusion into every aspect of human life.

Another passage from Executive Order 14081 states:

“We need to develop genetic engineering technologies and techniques to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers; unlock the power of biological data, including through computing tools and artificial intelligence; and advance the science of scale-up production while reducing the obstacles for commercialization so that innovative technologies and products can reach markets faster.”

Note the phrase “We need to develop genetic engineering technologies and techniques to be able to write circuity for cells and predictably program biology.” Do we need that? Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Combing a “circuitry for [human] cells,” and “programming biology,” with products that can be commercialized and “reach markets faster,” rings of profits, and has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of each human being.

The Order basically considers humans as a resource for biological data, just as Harari described. The whole 11-page document is full of lofty plans to harness “biotechnology and biomanufacturing R&D to further societal goals,” and involves many government agencies including Homeland Security, Defense, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Management and Budget, and several other agencies with unrecognizable acronyms such as APNSA, APEP, and the APDP. Quite frankly, it’s a mess of obfuscation and confusion.

It has become very obvious to the observant, that many of our leaders have largely gone off the rails. Making themselves the new “gods in the clouds,” they’ve lost the thread of what makes life worth living, as they plan and write into law a future that is anti-human, setting societal goals for citizens who have not been consulted.

Harari, who seems mostly fascinated, but also slightly horrified, by the prospect of the biotechnological digital tyranny, states his opinion that most human beings will be superfluous in the future. Harari foresees a world where “smart people” and the “common people” actually develop into different species. “We just don’t need the vast majority of the population,” Harari mused in a 2022 interview, because “the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering. Most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant and will make it possible to replace the people.”

This godless view of human beings as blights on the earth, and nothing more than hackable bioengineered products is not inspiring, ennobling, or accurate. Disturbingly, there are multiple international organizations intent on restructuring human life as we know it, for the “greater good.”

The Elites Merge the WEF, U.N., and G20

At the May 2022 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme Achin Steiner said, “Our future is digital. If you’re not part of it, you’re out of it.” This supremely cold and arrogant statement exemplifies an elitist view that they know what’s best for everyone else. Steiner surrounded his dystopian anti-human statements with terms like ’empathy’ and the ‘power of one.’

Lest anyone dismiss the WEF as just a self-made organization, full of unelected eccentrics, it’s important to note that each annual meeting is attended by many government, corporate, NGO, and international leaders. They are singing from the same hymnbook, so to speak, and using the same playbook. For example, on June 13, 2019, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum entered into a formal partnership to “accelerate the implementation of Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.” The Agenda is a “plan of action for people, planet and prosperity,” and incorporates the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which include positive-sounding statements about ending poverty and hunger, providing clean water and sanitation for all, gender equality, and protecting the planet from degradation.

The problem is these goals are being imposed, not recommended, which means they’re not goals – they’re mandates. In addition, human beings are not seen as being of any more value than the soil or bugs and, in fact, are considered exploiters of the planet and spreaders of disease.

Take for example what is currently happening in Europe where governments, attempting to reach climate “goals” are imposing zero carbon emission zones and License Plate Recognition (LPR), allowing for fines against those who enter. In Holland they are removing thousands of parking spaces, imposing car-free “15-minute cities,” and limiting parking permits. In addition to installing “smart meters” that regulate energy usage in homes, they are building noisy transformers in residential areas, forcing a switch from gas to electricity, and promoting unsustainable wind and solar programs. 

These top-down changes are a result of the governments complying with the EU-imposed Horizon 2020 and Green Deal programs, which harken back to the WEF’s Agenda 2030 and the U.N’s SDGs.

The number of people, organizations, and agencies working toward the top-down imposed agendas only continues to grow. In June 2019 at the G20 meeting in Japan, Agenda 2030 was officially merged with the principles of the WEF’s Fourth Industrial Revolution in the presentation of Society 5.0 by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. 

Take note of the highly invasive technological aspects that have been added to the SDG “goals.” For example, added to #3 Good Health and Well-being, is this text: “Developing early warning system for the prevention of infectious disease by combining different types of monitoring data.” So…surveillance. Got it.

To #2 Zero Hunger is added this explanation of what that means to the globalists: “An increase in product manufacture by the development of ‘smart agriculture’ using the Internet of Things, AI and Big Data. An improvement in the nutrition state due to the use of ‘smart food’ produced by advanced biotechnological methods.” These are smart-sounding words for taking over the world’s food supply. If that sounds like a conspiracy theory, consider the assault by the government on farmers in the Netherlands, and the directives to Irish farmers to cull tens of thousands of cows from their herds to meet climate goals.

On September 22, 2024, at the United Nation’s Summit of the Future, the Pact for the Future was approved, with the intent to accelerate the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which are intended to all be achieved by the year 2030. As GB News reporter Bev Turner explains in this 12-minute video, the UN’s Pact for the Future is another step toward ending the sovereignty of individual countries and establishing global governance. Turner states:

“It is not possible to achieve these utopian ideas without a deliberate, perhaps forced redistribution of food, goods, property, and rights…Just like good old fashioned communism, the ambition for equal outcome for everyone always results in the very rich getting supremely richer – the very poor, perhaps, being lifted up a little, but the billions in the middle getting colder, poorer, hungrier, and enslaved within their digital prison.”

As Turner and others have explained, the U.N.’s Agenda 2030 is all about control. Turner notes, “Leaders lacking empathy are not troubled by reducing humanity to a mere data set upon which they can keep tabs, and at that point, we the people are nothing more than a commodity which can be monetized.”

An enlightening perspective on the “Shapers of the Future” was provided by Dr. Jacob Nordangard on March 7, 2023. His 40-minute presentation is available here. In introducing Nordangard’s speech, biochemical engineer and author Ivor Cummins states, “I genuinely believe that without internalizing the content of a talk like this, you really can’t have the proper context for what’s been happening the last few years and what will happen in the coming years.”

Combining Our Efforts to Prevent Dystopia

It can feel overwhelming, as we realize the huge national and global forces that are intent on restructuring the lives of all humanity in accordance with their elitist, dystopian visions, but each of us has the power to push back. It starts with educating ourselves, but equally important is speaking up, and refusing to comply when we feel that something isn’t right. In Holland, citizens have been showing up to Town Halls to say not to the changes being imposed on them, and there is also a significant movement to use cash for purchases, rather than cards, to prevent the government move toward digital currency. 

GB News commentator Neil Oliver states:

“If the world around you just feels wrong at the moment, if it makes you uncomfortable in your skin, it’s not because you’re going mad, but because you know the difference between right and wrong, and so much is so wrong. It’s absolutely not the job of governments and leaders to make so many people so unhappy, so frightened of the future. It’s utterly wrong that meaningful influence is in the process of being ceded to transnational bodies comprised of unelected unaccountable placemen and women – the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum. It’s time to assess whether they’re fit for purpose – NATO, the United Nations, and the rest. Any and all groups can and do go wrong, and when they do, it’s the responsibility of everyone to say so and to do something about it.”

When writing about what happened in Germany in the 1930s, political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann coined the term Spiral of Silence. Author Eric Metaxas explains the Spiral of Silence “refers to the idea that when people fail to speak, the price of speaking rises. As the price to speak rises, still fewer speak out, which further causes the price to rise, so that fewer yet will speak out, until a whole culture or nation is silenced.” (Letter to the American Church, Salem Books, p. 52) We cannot allow that to happen.

In evaluating these past five years, we would do well to learn from the lessons of the past. The right to self-determination is what is at stake in our lives today, as those who govern and those who have taken upon themselves to be unelected leaders of humanity, abuse power while attempting to mold the world into their dystopian view of the future.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts.”

The battle between good and evil that is being waged in the world today tasks us with the responsibility to examine that line passing through each of our hearts, and with a choice to act or silently comply. We are under attack, but we don’t have to go along with the elites’ globalist agendas. We can choose to defend our families, faith, and freedom. It starts by speaking up and pushing back as encounter anti-human, anti-freedom agendas in our own communities and countries.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Reclaim the West
by Lori Weintz at Brownstone Institute – Daily Economics, Policy, Public Health, Society

Source: Brownstone Institute Read the original article here: https://brownstone.org/