Tag: Independence Day

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Independence Day 2023

George Noga

Independence Day 2023
We are moving rapidly toward two Americas
GEORGE NOGA
JUL 2, 2023

On this, my eightieth Independence Day, I am privileged to have lived at the best time to be an American – a view widely shared by those of my generation and of all political persuasions. However, my joy is tinctured with despair because, along with my contemporaries, I believe the future will be worse and our children and grandchildren will inhabit a multi-polar, dystopian world of wokism, climate madness, existential debt crisis, lost generation, geopolitical threats and a rapidly approaching decade horribilis. To cap it off, our beloved republic is splitting in two.

silhouette of Statue of Liberty under orange sunset

Twilight of liberty

On Independence Day 2023 America hauntingly resembles Yeats’ Second Coming, his apocalyptic poem about a nation coming apart and foretelling an impending crisis.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot  hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

In years past my regular July 4th posting, mimicking the theme of the movie Independence Day, was my readers’ all-time favorite. The theme was that migration from blue to red states was analogous to the aliens in the movie who, having laid waste to their home planet, plunder Earth and move on to despoil other worlds. Within the past few years, that migration pattern has changed 180 degrees. Now we are seeing moderates and conservatives fleeing blue states for red states. This presents an entirely different set of equally troubling problems for America.

Blue states are where safety, civility, culture and liberty go to die

Blue states suffer from over a half century of toxic progressive governance marked by identity politics, Kafkaesque regulation, sky-high taxes and living costs, forced unionization, crumbling infrastructure and vastly underfunded pensions. They are rife with graft and corruption. Their failed union-run schools are petri dishes for every possible social dysfunction and pathology. Crime is rampant and gun control is uber-strict. There is massive public debt, unfunded liabilities and tanking credit ratings. During the pandemic they locked down businesses, mandated vaccinations, shuttered schools and closed churches, but kept liquor stores open.

Blue states tolerate homelessness, open drug use and human filth and install vending machines with free crack pipes. They release dangerous felons and decriminalize shoplifting, looting and arson while defunding police and eliminating cash bail. They pit people against one another based on race, income, age ethnicity and gender identity. Their stagnating economies are hemorrhaging businesses and tax base along with their most productive citizens. They teach CRT, the 1619 project and encourage young children to question their gender while disrespecting parents. Housing is scarce, dilapidated and costly with rent control and eviction bans. Environmentalism runs amok and climate change wackiness doubles the cost of energy.

Slouching toward red and blue Americas

The point of no return in the blue to red migration may have been crossed in Chicago’s recent mayoral election. I had thought it impossible Chicago could have a worse mayor than Lightfoot, but Brandon Johnson’s victory by 20,000 votes was due to the departure of 175,000 people in the past two years from Cook County. Without that migration, Chicago would have a more moderate mayor.

Red states are becoming redder, blue states bluer and purple states disappearing. Like any vicious circle, it feeds on itself. As conservatives and moderates clamor for the blue state exits (along with their tax base), the remaining population is even more progressive causing blue states to further increase taxes, cut public safety, neglect infrastructure and enact even more wacky laws; that in turn causes even more people to flee and the circle keeps going round and round. The opposite occurs in red states where revenue pours in enabling even more tax cuts and better public services.

The phenomenon described above is illustrated by recent actions by Minnesota and Florida. The Minnesota legislature just enacted ultra progressive laws regarding increased rights for abortion, transgenders, illegal immigrants, felons and others. Meanwhile, Florida just passed laws cutting taxes, creating universal school choice, stopping gender reassignment surgery for children, restricting abortions, expanding gun rights, cracking down on illegal immigration and more.

How does it end?

We are headed for an America divided into two opposing groups of states. Where all this ends is yet unknown – as in The Second Coming, which ends with the question: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

© 2023 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com

MLLG

Best Time to Have Lived as an American

George Noga

From 1776 to 2022 – When was the best time to have lived as an American?

Special Independence Day Posting . . .

Best Time to Have Lived as an American

By: George Noga – July 3, 2022

As I celebrate Independence Day 2022, I feel privileged to have lived at the best time to be an American. Regrettably, my joy is tinctured with sadness for reasons you will see infra. For years, I have heard an eerily similar refrain from people of my post-war generation and of all political persuasions. Most expressed it unsolicited and with fervor, i.e., the belief our generation has lived during the best time to be an American.

When my interlocutors express this view, invariably they are making a statement that is much more about the future than about the past. To a person – they believe the future will be worse and our children and grandchildren will inhabit a dystopian, multi-polar world of wokism and climate madness, combined with an existential debt crisis. America in 2022 hauntingly resembles Yeats’ The Second Coming; his apocalyptic poem describes a world coming apart and foretells of an impending crisis.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

There is a strong case that the period from WWII to the present was the best time to be an American. Although there were wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the post-war period was devoid of hot wars involving major powers. Astounding advances occurred in every field: medicine, genetics, transport, computers, consumer electronics and life expectancy. There were transformative advances for women, blacks, LGTBQ, elderly, and even animals. Economic progress was breathtaking and included the virtual elimination of poverty, increased leisure and an active period of retirement measured in decades. No prior period comes remotely close to such progress.

The time since WWII has indeed been great; but Americans always have believed, as an article of faith, that the future would be even better. Strikingly, not a single one of my interlocutors believes the future will be brighter for our progeny. Consequently, the belief that my generation lived at the best time to be an American has a profound and dark corollary, i.e. the conviction that America’s future will be worse – much worse.

There is a crisis of authority – turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Politics has become extreme; people demonize those with opposing views – the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. There will be a Clockwork Orange (blood-dimmed) future where our children’s innocence is drowned. Too many Americans (conservatives) lack the conviction to stop our drift to socialism while the worst of us (progressive ideologues) are full of passionate intensity.

All the institutions Americans always could fall back on in difficult times have become hopelessly corrupted and politicized. The media eschew truth and embrace advocacy; fact checkers distort and lie; truth is elusive. Science is politicized, including climate, pandemics and gender. Education, from kindergarten through college, is hyper-political and fails to teach. Sports is corrupted with wokism, BLM and gender issues. Our criminal justice system favors criminals with abolition of bail, decriminalization and prosecutors who won’t prosecute. Immigration is badly broken and politicized.

Our politics is extreme and caters to identity and to the lowest common denominator among us; it seeks to separate Americans by race, gender, income and age. Our election systems are wide open to fraud on a massive scale. Corporations have been infected with woke capitalism, substituting symbolic and rhetorical placebos for economic value. Our military has become woke and is afflicted by white privilege and transgender issues. Religion, including even the Pope, is confused about right and wrong. Climate madness spawns mass delusion. Economists embrace MMT and tell us we can borrow without limit and that the moon is made of Stilton.

All our trusted institutions have self-destructed and we are slouching toward socialism and ultimately to Gomorrah. I close with the final two lines of The Second Coming.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

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Next up on July 10th: Annus horribilis at the half way mark.

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Independence Day 2021

George Noga

People render their home world uninhabitable and then move on to despoil other worlds.

Independence Day 2021

By: George Noga – July 4, 2021

MLLG’s annual Fourth of July posting, Independence Day, is both the most popular and most forwarded of all time. We have updated the story for 2021. For readers needing a refresher, the 1996 movie Independence Day featured extraterrestrials who made their home planet unfit for habitation, failed to learn from it and invaded Earth with the intent to ravage it before moving on to savage yet other pristine worlds.

For 60 years liberals have ravished and ransacked blue states via toxic governance. They have made them as uninhabitable as would marauding ETs. They despoiled blue states via crippling taxation, Kafkaesque regulation, sky-high living costs, mandatory unionization, and crumbling infrastructure. Their failed government schools are petri dishes for every dysfunction and social pathology. They indoctrinate students with fake history and instill values antithetical and hostile to those of their parents.

Progressives render blue states uninhabitable with rampant crime, gun control, massive debt, corruption, unfunded liabilities and tanking debt ratings. They tolerate public homelessness, drug use and human filth. They decriminalize arson, looting and theft while defunding police and elevating rioters above law-abiding citizens. They abolish bail, release dangerous criminals and create sanctuary cities and states; they pit Americans against one another based on race, income, gender and ethnicity.

Blue state horrors include stagnating economies that are hemorrhaging people, jobs, tax base and red ink with hopelessly underfunded public pensions. Quality of life, happiness, civility, culture and freedom suffer. Housing is scarce, dilapidated and costly due to rent control, hyper-regulation, eviction bans and environmentalism run amok. Climate change wackiness makes energy more costly. The pandemic response was bollixed due to an orgy of big brother over-regulation and obeisance to teachers union demands that disproportionately harmed the most vulnerable Americans.

The failure of blue state governance is so radioactive it reached critical mass, setting off a mass exodus. People are voting with their feet, fleeing these dystopian wastelands in droves – making beelines for red states. Each and every one of the blue state horrors listed supra is much less likely to exist in red state America, and if it does exist, it is much less extensive and virulent. Life in red state America is freer, more humanistic and, as measured by Gini coefficient, much happier. The hordes abandoning blue states love life in their new homes and none ever returns to blue state snake pits.

Inexplicably however, many (if not most) of these transplanted liberals fail to make the connection and continue to vote for the same pernicious, destructive policies that laid waste to their home states. They seem hellbent on transmogrifying red states into the veritable hell holes they desperately fled. They are no smarter or better then the aliens in the movie that go from one planet to another – destroying each one in turn.

I recall an old Florida cracker expression that if someone moved from Florida to Georgia, it would raise the IQ of both states. Something similar happens when progressives move from blue to red states – only they lower the IQ of both states.

There is one critical difference between the movie and the nascent progressive looting of red states. The aliens in the movie had the technology to move on to new worlds after sucking all the life out of their temporary homes. Where can we go once progressives finish their pillage and rape of what today is red state America?

Next on July 11th, the science behind manmade climate change is unsettled.

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More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

Independence Day 2020

George Noga

Where can we go once progressives have raided, ravaged and ruined all the red states? 

Independence Day 2020

By: George Noga – July 4, 2020

           We have updated MLLG’s highly popular Fourth of July posting; it is inspired by the movie Independence Day, in which extraterrestrials, having despoiled their home planet, invade Earth with the objective of stripping it of all its resources, rendering it uninhabitable and then moving on to do the same to other worlds.

            An alien race plundering planets, leaving them dead, failing to learn from it and then replicating such behavior on other pristine worlds repulsed everyone who saw the movie. Yet, this same behavior pattern is being aped today by progressives.

         Progressives have pillaged and plundered blue states for over half a century. Their failed governance is characterized by sky-high taxes, mindless regulation, gun control, broken schools, senseless bureaucracy, mandatory unionization, high living cost, rampant crime, political corruption, massive debt, unfunded liabilities, sanctuary for criminal illegal aliens, crumbling infrastructure and homelessness including public drugs and filth. They even refuse to maintain law and order, elevate rioters and looters above law-abiding citizens, defund the police and release dangerous criminals without bail. They pit one group against another based on income, age, gender and race.

Will the last person out of Illinois please turn off the lights?

        When life becomes too toxic, people flee these dystopian wastelands for red states with lower taxes, less crime, fewer regulations, less bureaucracy, right-to-work laws, lower living costs, balanced budgets, modern infrastructure, better schools, gun rights, little homelessness, good public health, detention of criminal illegal aliens, law and order including bail for dangerous criminals. Life in red states is freer and more humanistic; citizens are treated as adults and are not pitted one against the other.

         Progressives, who move to red state America by the millions, love life in their new home; none ever return to their blue state snake pits. However, most transplanted liberals continue to vote for the same pernicious, destructive policies that laid waste to their home states, turning them into the hell holes they desperately fled. Inexplicably, most of them don’t make the connection between the policies that doomed their home states and the vastly different red state policies that attracted them.

        Progressives aren’t the only ones mimicking Earth-invading aliens. Muslims are deserting their home countries in droves to immigrate to western democracies. They flee their noxious homelands so they can speak, vote, live and worship in liberty and build a better life for their children. Incomprehensibly, they copy the plundering aliens and attempt to turn their new homes into replicas of the entropic rats’ nests they fled including Sharia law, genital mutilation, honor killings and subjugation of women.

          Puerto Ricans, mimicking space aliens, progressives and Muslims, also are bent on denuding their home world and then fleeing to Florida. There are 5 million Puerto Ricans living in the US while only 3 million remain in Puerto Rico. You guessed it; most continue to vote for the same failed policies that depredated their troubled island. The same is true of Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

       It’s impossible to distinguish between planet-destroying, marauding aliens of Independence Day and progressives, Muslims and Puerto Ricans. They each have despoiled and gutted their own worlds and have moved on to loot new worlds.

       There is one critical distinction: the aliens of Independence Day, after destroying Earth, moved on to other planets. Where do we go after progressives have raided, ravaged, robbed, razed, ravished, ransacked, rifled and ruined all the red states?

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY 2020 – AMERICA’S 244TH BIRTHDAY!

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Next on July 12th, in a MLLG first, we publish a post by a guest blogger. 
More Liberty Less Government  –  mllg@mllg.us  –  www.mllg.us

Independence Day 2019

George Noga
What do marauding extraterrestrials, progressives and Muslims have in common?
Independence Day 2019
By: George Noga – June 30, 2019

        This is an update of our most popular July 4th posting inspired by the movie Independence Day, in which extraterrestrials, having despoiled their home planet, invade Earth with the objective of stripping it of all its resources, rendering it uninhabitable and then moving on to do the same to other planets. An alien race plundering planets, leaving them dead, failing to learn from it and then replicating such behavior on other pristine worlds repulsed everyone who saw the movie. Yet, this exact same behavior pattern is being aped today by progressives and others.

         Liberals have despoiled their blue state homes via decades of failed progressive governance including sky-high taxes, mindless regulation, gun control, failed schools, mandatory unionization, rampant crime, political corruption, high living cost, massive debt, huge unfunded liabilities and sanctuary for illegal immigrants. After rendering their home states uninhabitable, they flee these bleak dystopian wastelands where everyday life can be toxic. They invade red states with much lower taxes, less crime, fewer regulations, right-to-work laws, lower cost of living, balanced budgets, better schools, gun rights and where everyday life is freer and more humanistic.

          The transplanted liberals, who move to red states by the millions, love life in red state America; none ever return to their blue state snake pits. However, just like the marauding aliens in Independence Day, most transplanted progressives continue to vote for the same pernicious and destructive policies that turned their home planet (blue states) into the veritable hell holes they desperately fled. Inexplicably, most invaders from blue states don’t make the connection between the policies that doomed their home states and the different red state policies that attracted them.

        Progressives aren’t the only ones mimicking the Earth-invading aliens. Muslims are deserting their home countries in droves to emigrate to western democracies. They flee their noxious homelands so they can speak, vote, live and worship in liberty and build a much better life for their children. Instead, they copy the marauding aliens and attempt to turn their new homes into replicas of the entropic rats’ nests they fled including Sharia law, genital mutilation, honor killings and subjugation of  women.

         There are other groups impersonating aliens bent on destroying the planet. Today, there are over 5 million Puerto Ricans living in the US (1.2 million in Florida) while only about 3 million remain in Puerto Rico. Most vote for the same failed policies that depredated their troubled island. Political dysfunction caused much more devastation than Hurricane Maria. Then there also are El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.

       It’s hard to draw distinctions between planet-destroying aliens of Independence Day and progressives, Muslims and Puerto Ricans. They each have despoiled their own world, moved on to new worlds and are despoiling them. There is one critical distinction: the aliens of Independence Day, after destroying Earth, could move on to other planets; that option is not yet available to us. When will they ever learn?

Next on July 7th, we begin our popular summer series, Montana Moments.  

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