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☕️ MIND WARS ☙ Monday, June 1, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Jeff points out the major failure feature of the Fake News.

…Editors should have: separated real evidence from allegations, resisted parroting the framing of biased sources, brought in neutral independent forensic and archaeological voices, and updated headlines as the picture changed. In other words, basic journalism vanished like the alleged mass graves.

It was a complete failure of what is supposedly the media’s most important function: to separate interested gossip from facts. Maybe I should say, that used to be media’s most important function. Now, corporate media’s most important function appears to be distributing clever propaganda that destabilizes countries, spurs stochastic terrorism, and permits politicians to effect massive wealth transfers…

Earlier, on May 29, Jeff Childers wrote:

…Government researchers enrolled extremely vulnerable infants in an experimental RSV trial, did not obtain informed consent, continued dosing even as severe cases emerged, and two children died. Nobody was prosecuted or even fired. This is serious iatrogenic harm (injury caused by medical treatment) and a research‑ethics failure on its face, full stop.

The Times did its absolute best to cloak that very disturbing and all-too-familiar story in race. The two boys were black. “Most, if not all,” of the 31 kids in the trial group were black. Thus, the Times concluded: racism. What the Times didn’t say was that by the late 1950s and into the 1960s, Washington, D.C. had become a majority‑black city; black residents were the single largest racial group, and by 1970 had peaked at about 71% of the entire population.

That’s one problem for the Times’ unfounded racial hypothesis. Second, the NIH’s RSV trial was deployed through government-run or funded clinics. Both because blacks were in the majority in DC, and because of basic economics, most patients at these public clinics were also black. So we needn’t dream up some conspiratorial racial animus to explain the trial’s demographics.

Black folks were just unlucky enough to be living in DC in large numbers at the time. That’s it.

So, once again, the NYT’s dumb, woke narrative collapses with the most trivial inspection. But more interesting is why the Times leaned so hard into the race angle, despite having not a scrap of evidence. It’s because the last thing the big health agencies need right now is more scandals.

This is exactly the institutional reform RFK Jr. and Jay Bhattacharya were hired to deliver.

🔥 At some point during the Cold War, our big health agencies contracted a deadly disease. They are infected with a mind-virus called utilitarianism. The scandal here is not that the NIH gave experimental RSV shots to black infants without informing their black parents. The real scandal is that the NIH believes you can’t make a public health omelet without breaking a few babies.

In other words, the NIH’s secret trials of experimental vaccines would not have been more acceptable if the babies had been white, orange, or green.

Classic ethical philosophy based on Judeo-Christian principles says: “You may not use people purely as a means, not even for a huge benefit to others.” Utilitarianism rudely inverts that: if the benefit is big enough, and the expected risk is small enough, almost any use of human bodies as means can be rationalized.

At some point in the recent past, our public health agencies quietly slid from “we are here to protect people” to “we are managing a herd, sorry, a population,” and those are not the same posture. In other words, instead of thinking of themselves as healers, they think they are ranchers.

The Lot 100 episode illustrates this problem perfectly. Severe harms and even deaths of infants were tolerated by elite managers because the perceived collective value of “staying the course” was so high. Even fudging the numbers to hide the harms was considered virtuous.

Stalin’s stats were great too, until they weren’t.

In classic public‑health utilitarian fashion, the stated good was enormous —preventing a leading cause of infant mortality worldwide— so the “cost” of experimenting on a few dozen vulnerable infants in D.C. could be rationalized as small in comparison.

The reason progressives and public health types (but I repeat myself) stick like limpets to utilitarianism is that it is technocratic. The philosophy —which is a necessary foundation for communism— presumes it is possible to quantify, in hard numbers, the numeric value of human lives and flourishing. That makes it possible to compare political policies: which ones produce on balance the most human flourishing?

It is both sensationally attractive and completely perverted…

In the Lot 100 case, we find scientists who explicitly or implicitly calculated that infants were less valuable than adults, and that poor folks were less valuable than more economically privileged ones. After all, the NIH investigators recruited from public children’s clinics, not from the private practices their own children or colleagues might have used.

Put even more simply and uglier: the NIH bureaucrats didn’t experiment on their own kids.

🔥 I will say it: utilitarianism is an evil, reprehensible ideology that all good people should root out and shun.

Utilitarianism isn’t a neutral “science of compassion.” It’s a license for elites to convert other people’s lives into numbers and then quietly decide which ones are expendable. Once you agree that it’s acceptable to harm a few innocents to buy hypothetical benefits for the many, you haven’t elevated morality— you’ve simply replaced “thou shalt not” with “let’s run the model and see who dies.”

Lot 100 was not a tragic mistake; it was utilitarianism doing exactly what it promises: sacrificing powerless babies in a D.C. clinic for the supposed good of a population they never got to join. [It continues]

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the “Father” of Modern Utilitarianism and progressive saint. His preserved head, anyway.

What is interesting is I had already put the following together about the philosophies of ‘value’ because I like Mises and Gary North. Gary passed away in February of 2022, at the age of 80 due to complications from prostate cancer.

Gary North RIP, 1942–2022

…He was by training an economic historian and had a strong commitment to Austrian economics. He greatly admired Mises and Rothbard. He once asked Mises how he had been able to publish his famous article of 1920 on socialist calculation in a journal edited by Max Weber. Mises answered, “Well, I knew him, and I sent it in.” Gary wrote a notable study of Marx, Marx’s Religion of Revolution, and a long and learned commentary on biblical economics. He was also a founder of the Christian Reconstruction movement, along with his father-in-law, R.J. Rushdoony.

He was on Ron Paul’s staff in 1976, and he and Dr. Paul were close friends. For many years, he spoke at Mises Institute conferences, and he was the best debater I have ever heard. In his speaking style, he was highly organized and relentless; but he was in conversation kind and friendly. When I saw him at conferences, we would exchange stories of the old days. Now, alas, I cannot do that anymore.

Gary’s Mises on Money is well worth the read. I featured it in an article called A PRIMER ON MONEY. The following article by Gary is another excellent read as he identifies the problems that are metastasizing in American thought.

But first the cancer we are fighting.

The Philosophy Of Karl Marx

The philosophical bases of Marx’s thought were laid early and remained unchanged throughout his life. As a student, Marx accepted the philosophy of Hegel as the only sound and adequate explanation of the universe. According to this philosophy, “the only immutable thing is the abstraction of movement.” The one universal phenomenon is change, and the only universal form of this phenomenon is its complete abstraction. Thus, Hegel accepted as real only that which existed in the mind. Objective phenomena and events were of no consequence; only the conceptions of them possessed by human minds were real. Ideas, not objects, were the stuff of which the universe was made.

If Objective Reality does not exist, than a little girl can become a boy or a cat or a dog. The people pushing this insanity are not going to tell you that it is based on Marxism but that is where it comes from.

The Purfuit of Happineff by Gary North

Old timers will recall this title as a memorable line in a memorable comedy album, Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Volume 1….

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO “PROPERTY”?

The phrase, “life, liberty, and property,” does not appear in the Declaration. The phrase is incorrectly attributed to John Locke. It was implied in Locke’s Second Treatise on Government (1690), but it does not appear. Locke used the word estate rather than property. He subsumed all three words under property.

Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of Nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it ( Sect. 87).

Protection of all three — life, liberty, property — is guaranteed in writing by the United States Constitution. This guarantee appears in Article 5 of the Bill of Rights, which was ratified in 1791. It has proven as reliable as other government guarantees of its own performance.

A similar phrase appears in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Burke wrote this of the revolutionaries:

To those who have observed the spirit of their conduct it has long been clear that nothing was wanted but the power of carrying the intolerance of the tongue and of the pen into a persecution which would strike at property, liberty, and life.

But there is no question that Jefferson substituted “the pursuit of happiness” for the more common term, “property.” Was there something ideological in this substitution? Was Jefferson a proto-socialist, as numerous contemporary historians argue?

Had he inserted “property,” this would have saved defenders of private property a lot of time and trouble when dealing with statist scholars, who are always searching for support for their position in the writings of famous defenders of democracy.

The pursuit of happiness is for modern academic man what the pursuit of truth is: a way to avoid the responsibility for discovering anything final. There is no objective truth for modern academic man, other than the truth against objective truth. Similarly, there is no objective happiness. There is only the subjective pursuit of such lofty goals by individuals. In this, as in virtually everything else, academics substitute process for objectivity. Defending the process is holy communion for modern academics. There is officially no holy grail, which would be much too objective.

Why this commitment to pursuit, trivial or otherwise? I suggest two reasons. First, academics do not officially believe in objective truth, which implies objective responsibility, which is decidedly old fashioned and even vaguely suggestive of the Christian doctrine of final judgment. The concept of objective responsibility implies objective standards and objective performance. Academics prefer to avoid both.

Second, modern academics control access to salaried participation in the process of the great search, especially in higher education. They control the implementation of the officially objective standards of tenure, institutional accreditation, and the flow of departmental funds. What Daniel Klein has described so well in the closed, self-certified world of Ph.D. economists operates in every academic discipline.

In contrast, “property” implies enforceable titles to identifiable units of ownership. This is altogether too objective for modern defenders of the political defense of the pursuit of happiness. They defend the democratic process, which affirms, “Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.” They want to believe in Jefferson the democrat, not Jefferson the defender of free market capitalism. They want to eradicate political restrictions on the confiscation of property by the State. The suggestion that politics exists so as to defend private property is only marginally less welcome than the suggestion that the Second Amendment to the Constitution actually means that civilians possess the right to keep and bear arms.

JEFFERSON WAS NOT ALONE

It was not only Jefferson who neglected to spell out in official detail his personal adherence to the private property social order. It was also Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations (1776), four months earlier, had placed the division of labor at the forefront of its economic attack on mercantilism, an attack that Jefferson made political in the Declaration. Smith’s pedagogical strategy backfired for the next 150 years. By failing to specify in Wealth of Nations the moral and philosophical foundations for private ownership, Smith handed the seemingly high moral ground over to Godwin and the socialists. The consequences of this decision have been chronicled in considerable detail by Tom Bethell in Chapter 7 of his book, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages (1998).

Jefferson was the supreme follower of Adam Smith among the American Revolutionaries. But by failing to specify property as the third pillar of the justification for civil government — a mistake Locke had not made — he made more difficult his ideological heirs’ defense of the private property order.

The pursuit of happiness is open-ended and non-specific. Liberty is just too vague to be defended systematically. What was needed in 1776 in both of those legendary documents was the insight made by Frederic Bastiat in 1850, in the midst of a European revolution that had begun in early 1848, a few weeks before Marx and Engels’ anonymous tract appeared, Manifesto of the Communist Party. Bastiat wrote in The Law, “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” Or, in the words of a previous defender of objective private property, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16b-17)

Gary North Mentions Bastiat. Here is part of an article about Bastiat and his philosophy.

Bastiat, Spoliation by Law

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) was one of the leading advocates of free markets and free trade in the mid-19 century. He was inspired by the activities of Richard Cobden and the organization of the Anti-Corn Law League in Britain in the 1840s and tried to mimic their success in France. Bastiat was an elected member of various French political bodies and opposed both protection and the rise of socialist ideas in these forums. His writings for a broader audience were very popular and were quickly translated and republished in the U.S. and throughout Europe. His incomplete magnum opus, Economic Harmonies, is full of insights into the operation of the market and is still of great interest to economists. He died at a young age from cancer of the throat.

LAW, Spoliation by

LAW, Spoliation by. What is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right of legitimate defense. Every man certainly has received from nature, from God, the right to defend his person, his liberty and his property, since these are the three constitutive or conservative elements of life, elements which complement one another, and which can not be understood, one without the other. For what are our faculties but an extension of our personality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every man has the right to defend, even by force, his person, his liberty and his property, a number of men have the right to concert together, to agree and to organize a common force in order to provide regularly for this defense. The collective right has its principle, and its reason of being, and bases its legitimacy upon the individual right, and the common force can not legitimately have any other end or any other mission than the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as an individual can not legitimately make any forcible attempt against the person, liberty or property of another individual, so, for the same reason, a community can not legitimately make use of force to destroy the person, liberty or property of individuals or of classes. For this perversion of force would be, in the latter case, as well as in the former, in contradiction to our premises.

Which brings us to capitalism which TradeBait2 discussed yesterday. This is looking at Capitalism from the point of view of an Atheist. For those who may not know Ayn Rand grew up in the Soviet Union.

Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal

Laissez-faire capitalism, according to Ayn Rand, is not just an ideal but an unknown ideal. Few grasp its meaning, history, economics, or moral justification. In Capitalism, Rand sets out to remedy that.

Rand argues that capitalism is “a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.” In practice, this means that a capitalist society is one in which the government performs a single function: it protects individual rights by banning “physical force from human relationships.”

Pure capitalism, she concludes, has never existed: but in the countries that approached it, with America in the second half of the nineteenth century leading the way, the individual was able to flourish. This is because capitalism is the only system that fully recognizes that man is the rational being who “has the right to exist for his own sake,” free from coercion by others.

Intrinsic Theory of Values

There are, in essence, three schools of thought on the nature of the good: the intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective. The intrinsic theory holds that the good is inherent in certain things or actions as such, regardless of their context and consequences, regardless of any benefit or injury they may cause to the actors and subjects involved. It is a theory that divorces the concept of “good” from beneficiaries, and the concept of “value” from valuer and purpose — claiming that the good is good in, by, and of itself.

The subjectivist theory holds that the good bears no relation to the facts of reality, that it is the product of a man’s consciousness, created by his feelings, desires, “intuitions,” or whims, and that it is merely an “arbitrary postulate” or an “emotional commitment.”

The Good

There are, in essence, three schools of thought on the nature of the good: the intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective. The intrinsic theory holds that the good is inherent in certain things or actions as such, regardless of their context and consequences, regardless of any benefit or injury they may cause to the actors and subjects involved. It is a theory that divorces the concept of “good” from beneficiaries, and the concept of “value” from valuer and purpose — claiming that the good is good in, by, and of itself.

The subjectivist theory holds that the good bears no relation to the facts of reality, that it is the product of a man’s consciousness, created by his feelings, desires, “intuitions,” or whims, and that it is merely an “arbitrary postulate” or an “emotional commitment.”

The intrinsic theory holds that the good resides in some sort of reality, independent of man’s consciousness; the subjectivist theory holds that the good resides in man’s consciousness, independent of reality.

The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of “things in themselves” nor of man’s emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by man’s consciousness according to a rational standard of value. (Rational, in this context, means: derived from the facts of reality and validated by a process of reason.) The objective theory holds that the good is an aspect of reality in relation to man — and that it must be discovered, not invented, by man. Fundamental to an objective theory of values is the question: Of value to whom and for what? An objective theory does not permit context-dropping or “concept-stealing”; it does not permit the separation of “value” from “purpose,” of the good from beneficiaries, and of man’s actions from reason.

GOOGLE AI: Ayn Rand intrinsic value

Value Requires a Valuer and a Purpose

Rand asked the fundamental question: Of value to whom and for what? [1]

• Because she rejected intrinsic value, she maintained that an object cannot have value without someone to value it.
• For a thing to have value, it must play a specific causal role in achieving a goal for an individual. [1, 2, 3]

The Ultimate Standard of Value

Rand argued that the concept of “value” only makes sense because living organisms face the alternative of life or death. Therefore, the ultimate standard of value is an individual’s own life. An object or action is considered “good” or “valuable” if it serves to sustain and further that specific individual’s life. [1, 2, 3]

Explore the Intrinsic Theory of Values in the Ayn Rand Lexicon to read her exact definitions and arguments. [1]

Commentary: Remember Khrushchev’s Prediction in 1959?

Khrushchev was right.

With the support of the Democratic Socialists, his prediction is coming true.

Also, I remember him beating his shoe on the desk in the UN saying,”We will bury you”….

A reminder of Khrushchev comments September 29, 1959: THIS WAS Russian Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev’s ENTIRE QUOTE from that day:

“Your children’s children will live under communism, You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright; but we will keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you will finally wake up and find you already have Communism. We will not have to fight you; We will so weaken your economy, until you will fall like overripe fruit into our hands.” “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

Do you remember or know all of what Russia’s Khrushchev said in 1959?

How do you create a Socialist State?

There are 8 levels of control; read the following recipe:

1) Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people.

2) Poverty – Increase the poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them.

3) Debt – Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.

4) Gun Control – Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state.

5) Welfare – Take control of every aspect (food, housing, income) of their lives because that will make them fully dependent on the government.

6) Education – Take control of what people read and listen to and take control of what children learn in school.

7) Religion – Remove the belief in God from the Government and schools because the people need to believe in ONLY the government knowing what is best for the people.

8) Class Warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. Eliminate the middle class This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to tax the wealthy with the support of the poor.

Fast forward to 2021.

Is this parallel to the Democrat Socialist Agenda???? 

With an open mind, you can draw your own conclusions.

One last historical fact that needs to be remembered: In 1964, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Democrats held the longest filibuster in our nation’s history, 75 days. All trying to prevent the passage of one piece of legislation. You guessed it: THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT.

Amazing how the CIA reading room hides all of this:

Approved for release 1/22/2002 Khrushchev We will bury you

LYRICS

None shall sleep,

None shall sleep!

Even you, oh Princess,

In your cold room,

Watch the stars,

That tremble with love

And with hope.

But my secret is hidden within me,

My name no one shall know,

No… no…

On your mouth,

I will tell it,

When the light shines.

And my kiss will dissolve

the silence that makes you mine!

(No one will know his name

and we must, alas, die.)

Vanish, o night!

Set, stars! Set, stars!

At dawn,

I will win!

I will win!

I will win!