The Ignoble Lie - VDH

“Noble lies” are rarely spun for anyone’s interests other than those of the liars themselves.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

In a controversial passage in Plato’s Republic, Socrates introduced the idea of the “noble lie” (“gennaios pseudos”). 

A majestic fiction, he says, could sometimes serve society by persuading uninformed citizens of something good for them.

Ever since, many prevaricators have used the excuse that they lied for the common good.

Take Dr. Anthony Fauci, our point man on the COVID-19 epidemic. 

Fauci said he misled the country about mask-wearing during the pandemic by claiming they were of little use. But he argued that he lied in order that the public not make a run on masks, deplete the supply, and thus rob medical professionals of protective equipment. 

Fauci also told “noble” lies about the likely percentage of the public needing to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. He kept raising the bar—from 60-70 percent to 75-80 percent, to 85 percent. 

Apparently, Fauci feared a lower figure, even if accurate, might lull people into complacency about getting inoculated. 

Fauci also lied about his own role in routing U.S. aid money to subsidize gain-of-function viral research at the Wuhan virology lab—the likely birthplace of COVID-19. 

Either Fauci was hiding his own culpability or he believed the American people might not be able to fully accept that some of their own health officials were promoting the sort of research that was partially responsible for more than 700,000 American deaths. 

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has serially lied about the number of illegal immigrants who have crossed into the United States. He falsely claimed mounted agents were whipping migrants. He fibbed about the purported lack of federal data of apprehensions, detentions, and deportations. His assertion that the border was secure was a joke. 

Apparently Mayorkas believes the public would go ballistic or his own administration would be roundly despised, if he told the bitter truth about the border: by intent, the Biden Administration has deliberately left it wide open. 

And it will likely allow 2 million illegal immigrants into the country in the current fiscal year.

Lots of other unelected federal officials serially lied over the past five years by claiming or implying that harming the Trump Administration was in the public interest.

Former FBI directors Andrew McCabe and James Comey likely serially misled the nation. McCabe admittedly lied that he did not leak FBI information to the media. 

James Comey on over 240 occasions while under oath in congressional cross examinations claimed he did not know or could not remember basic facts about his own role in promoting the Russian collusion hoax. 

Apparently, Comey and McCabe believed that by being less than truthful, they might better emasculate Donald Trump. And that result would be beneficial to America.

Our former intelligence leaders may have been the most brazen liars. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admittedly lied to Congress. 

When caught in the untruth, Clapper reverted to the noble lie that he gave the least untruthful answer, apparently on the pretense that he did not wish to damage the reputation of an important intelligence agency. 

Ditto John Brennan, the former head of the CIA. On two occasions he lied under oath about the agency’s monitoring of Senate staffers’ computers and the deaths of civilians caused by U.S. drone assassination missions along the Afghanistan border. 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley lied for days about the details of an accidental drone strike that killed innocent women and children in Afghanistan. 

Either Milley is now lying when he says he warned Joe Biden about the disasters to come in Afghanistan or Biden is lying when he denies hearing any such advice. 

Many of the details of Milley’s conversations with authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa as reported in their recent muckraking book were abjectly denied by Milley.

The list of such lies could be vastly expanded. 

IRS functionary Lois Lerner never told the whole untruth about weaponizing the IRS. 

Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch spun an implausible yarn that she accidentally bumped into Bill Clinton on a tarmac in Phoenix and never discussed the then-current FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton.

Special counsel Robert Mueller told a whopper under oath, claiming to know almost nothing about the Steele dossier and the misadventures of Fusion GPS. Both were the two catalysts that prompted his entire investigation of “collusion” in the first place. 

In some of these cases, when caught and exposed, the liars will hedge by claiming temporary amnesia.  

But sometimes they admit they lied but suggest they did so for higher purposes like national security. 

In truth, in most cases there was nothing noble at all in their lying. They simply spread untruths to protect their own endangered careers by masking their own wrongdoing or fobbing it onto others. 

In other words, “noble lies” are rarely spun for anyone’s interests other than those of the liars themselves.

X22, Christian Patriot News, and more-Oct 28

 

Evening. Here's tonight's news.

Is This the End of the Republic?

It is time for those who wish to end this pervasive leftist onslaught to get off the sidelines.

by Carpe Diem for American Greatness

We have a border crisis, an economic crisis, an energy crisis, a supply-chain crisis, a health crisis, a crime wave, a labor shortage, inflation, and stranded Americans still in Afghanistan. All of these problems were not only preventable, but were caused, created, worsened, aided, and abetted by a man in the White House who’s an ailing, doddering, senile, cognitively impaired buffoon spewing lies and incoherent sentences practically every time he speaks.

When former President Trump left office in January, border crossings had been down for eight consecutive months. But Joe Biden’s refusal to enforce our border laws, including ending the successful “Remain in Mexico” policy, and stopping the construction of the wall along our southern border, has resulted in the worst border crisis in at least two decades. 

In September, U.S. Customs and Border Protection made 192,001 apprehensions along the southern border. Border agents arrested more than 1.7 million illegal border crossers in the fiscal year that ended in September. This after 208,000 migrants illegally crossed our border in August, and 212,000 migrants entered the country in July. And these are just the numbers of those who come into custody. Overall, border apprehensions are up almost 500 percent over last year.

But that’s not all.

We handed control of Afghanistan to middle-aged barbarians, watched helpless civilians fall from the sky, and as 13 U.S. military members senselessly died, hundreds of Americans were left stranded, $85 billion worth of weaponry and other military hardware was left behind for the Taliban—and the Biden Administration lauded the debacle as a massive success. 

As I write, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the national security advisor have more job security than unvaccinated police officers, firefighters, teachers, doctors, nurses, flight attendants, or Kyrie Irving.

We have a federal government that is actively seeking to undermine the interests of the people of this country. It weaponizes the FBI to investigate parents who don’t want their children to be indoctrinated with revisionist history and classifies them as “domestic terrorists.” A mere 48 hours before a judge ruled that a transgender teenager sexually assaulted a female student in a Loudoun County high school in May, former President Barack Obama said of outraged parents: “We don’t have time to be wasting on these phony trumped-up culture wars, this fake outrage that right-wing media peddles to juice their ratings.”

We have a vice president who was put in charge of immigration policy, put in charge of the fledgling Space Force, but who is instead AWOL on those tasks while lecturing us about equity, gender equality, climate change, the root causes of the immigration crisis, and participates in scripted theatrical eventsthat make her come across as even more unlikeable.

We have a press secretary who has redefined the term “gaslighting” and spins a web of misinformation and obfuscation, while she condescendingly scoffs and smirks in the rare instances when she’s asked legitimate questions. She gets a pass for “circling back” to protect her barely cognizant boss from a sycophantic press.

We have Big Tech “fact-checkers” that censor the truth about Hunter Biden’s corruption, deplatform Donald Trump, and limit freedom of expression while mainstreaming conspiracy theories and propaganda and assisting members of the Taliban and the Ayatollah in spewing their anti-American, anti-Israel vitriol. Little do they know that Trump’s Big Tech exile has only increased his popularity.

We have a corrupt, deceitful, propagandist, spineless, socialist corporate media that actively works to divide the country, and advocates for every single position the ruling class in Washington tells us will save our country from going under. Even as one policy disaster after another piles up from this White House, and blue state governors, the Fourth Estate doubles down, and tells us we need more of these experts to make decisions for us that will only further decimate our economy, create lawlessness, increase poverty, and lower the standard of living.

These economically illiterate Marxists tell us there’s no reason why we should not raise the debt limit, and no way to overheat our flailing economy, but plenty of room for more unlimited socialist spending. They echo the fool in the Oval Office who tells us that $3.5 trillion costs zero dollars, not $3.5 trillion. They tell us that taxing the hell out of billionaires, punishing job creators, and massive price increases in the form of gas, meat, poultry, appliances, and cars are not really a problem for working-class Americans.

We have a media that worked overtime to accuse Trump of being a Russian agent, a “white supremacist” inciting an “insurrection” and bearing responsibility for every single death from a Chinese virus, when all the while they ignored another president’s eulogizing of a former Klansman, pay for play schemes, silence on Black Lives Matter and Antifa violence, scripted press conferences, incomprehensible ramblings, frailty, incapacitation, belligerence, culpability for creating vaccine hesitancy, and intention to run our country into the ground.

After a year and half of COVID stupidity, the ruling class tells us everyone must continue walking around in face diapers, including those who are double and now triple vaxxed. They tell us that having to show proof of vaccination to eat at a restaurant, or play in an NBA game, or wear oxygen-sucking masks in school all day is the best way to defeat the virus, all the while shaming those who do not want to inject an experimental vaccine into their system. Anyone who refuses to obey the experts’ commandments must be shamed, persecuted, and humiliated, labeled a “murderer,” “simpleton” “rube,” “anti-vaxxer,” and “science denier,” these well-credentialed coastal elites tell us.

They tell us we must continue to go along with this charade by a doctor who never turns down an interview and who seems to be making it up as he goes along.

They tell us not being allowed to go to the gym, open a business, or go to a house of worship, but being free to set fire to a church, smash windows, destroy property, loot, steal, burn the entire system to the ground is not only healing for the country but will foster a more perfect union.

They tell us a war on cops and border patrol, but leniency on crime, lawlessness, and drugs makes us safer and more compassionate. They tell us with a straight face that open borders, more illegal immigration, and no more sovereign nation is a net positive for the country.

They tell us we must be outraged and cancel comedians who make people laugh and tell the truth, while promoting humorless woke activists and calling it entertainment. They tell us we must refer to men as women and women as men.

They tell us we better get used to a supply chain crisis, and empty shelves that resemble 1970s Moscow, all the while the transportation secretary surreptitiously abrogates his duty for parental leave.

They tell us weeks of early voting, days of post-election voting, no voter ID requirements, universal mail-in ballots, drop boxes, and less in-person voting is the safest, most secure way to conduct an election.

They tell us the only cure to discrimination is more discrimination. They tell us teaching our children to hate our country, our founding principles, and their peers because of their skin color is just the kind of education we need to compete with the rest of the world.

How much longer will we stand for this, and what is the remedy?

There is no easy solution, but one thing is certain. It is time for those who wish to end this pervasive leftist onslaught to get off the sidelines.

It will take far more than Republicans in Congress ranting and raving on Fox News. It will take more than righteous anger at school board meetings. It will take more than cops, nurses, teachers and factory workers refusing to be vaccinated. It will take all of those who wish to defend liberty, and freedom against tyranny to insert themselves into the arena, and say, “enough is enough.”

If we remain silent now, then it will be the end of the republic.

Lefties outraged by ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ seem to have forgotten…

Lefties outraged by 'Let's go, Brandon' seem to have forgotten about 'teabaggers' and a lot more

John Sexton - Hot Air  Oct. 25, 2021 5:30 PM ET

This image released by NBC shows Rachel Maddow, host of "The Rachel Maddow Show," on MSNBC. (MSNBC via AP)

One of the most read opinion pieces in today’s Washington Post is this one by Paul Waldman titled “The Party of Thugs.” Needless to say, the party of thugs is the Republican Party. And the reason they are thugs is because they’ve adopted “Let’s go, Brandon” as a chant. If you’re not familiar with where this came from, the Post explained in a piece published Saturday:

In early October, a “F— Joe Biden!” cry broke out among the crowd at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway. Kelli Stavast, an NBC Sports reporter, was interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown live on air at the time, and she quipped, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go Brandon!’ ”

Here’s what Waldman says about this chant:

Conservatives have now turned “Let’s go Brandon” into a meme, something they can repeat with a giggle in contexts where swearing is still considered inappropriate…

…while people may be painting signs and leading chants of “F— Joe Biden” (or “Let’s go Brandon”), Biden himself is almost incidental. This is a means for conservatives to communicate with one another, and what’s being communicated more than anything else is “I take pleasure in flouting norms of polite behavior.”

This is now considered by many to be the way you establish your conservative bona fides. Your commitment to low taxes or light regulations is not nearly enough; you have to show that you’re willing to be rude and crude…

They create a phony “issue” such as critical race theory, work to get people as enraged as possible, then when that rage erupts in threats and intimidation of school personnel and board members, they defend it and celebrate its potential to yield them political benefits.

I’m not sure how old Paul Waldman is. If I had to guess based on this piece I’d say under 20. Because his sudden aversion to crude language in politics seems fresh, as if this is something he’s never heard or dreamed of anyone doing before.

But for those of us who were around about 12 years ago during the Obama administration, you may recall the Tea Party or, as many on the left referred to them with a smirk, the tea baggers. At the time, many media outlets had no problem adopting this double entendre. Fox News explained it back in April 2009:

Teabagging, for those who don’t live in a frat house, refers to a sexual act involving part of the male genitalia and a second person’s face or mouth…

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper interspersed “teabagging” references with analyst David Gergen’s more staid commentary on how Republicans are still “searching for their voice.”

“It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging,” Cooper explained. Gergen laughed, but Cooper kept a straight face.

MSNBC’s David Shuster weaved a tapestry of “Animal House” humor Monday as he filled in for Countdown host Keith Olbermann.

The protests, he explained, amount to “Teabagging day for the right wing and they are going nuts for it.”

But Rachel Maddow really set the bar on this. She and guest Ana Marie Cox used the word teabag more than 50 times in a 7-minute segment which was one long string of double entendre jokes.

Salon also wrote about the incessant mockery from the left and even tracked down how it got started:

Maddow’s colleague David Shuster, discussing the role former Rep. Dick Armey’s group Freedom Works has played in organizing the demonstrations, cracked, “if you are planning simultaneous tea bagging all around the country, you’re going to need a Dick Armey.” And, of course, the liberal blogs have been all over the gag. In fact, to read the blogs, and to watch MSNBC, you’d think the only people not in the joke were the conservatives themselves.

Truth be told, though, for the most part conservatives haven’t actually been using the words in such a way as to lend themselves to double entendre. With one or two exceptions, almost all of it has actually been coming from the left, which seems to have adopted the joke en masse during an earlier round of these protests back in February. After many hours of investigative journalism — the kind that makes you wish you’d just gone to law school instead — I think I’ve traced the meme’s birth back to February 27th, when blogs like Instaputz and Wonkette started using it independently of one another. They were inspired by a photo that the Washington Independent’s David Weigel shot of one protester carrying a sign that was, if you knew that second meaning, pretty funny: “Tea bag the liberal Dems before they tea bag you !!” (sic).

To be clear, Weigel did kick start the joke by calling that sign the best one he saw, but later, after it was reported that President Obama himself had used it, Weigel said he didn’t use “teabagger” because it was a ” grotesque sexual slur.”

Granted that was a while ago, but it’s not like the left didn’t deploy all sorts of harsh language against President Trump over the past four years (I guess Paul Waldman missed that too). Just do a Twitter search for “F**k Trump” or if you prefer for “Tuck Frump” and you’ll see lots of results from people on the left who were not fans.

As for the rage erupting at school board members, Waldman also seems to have forgotten how the Indivisible movement made a habit of confronting conservative members of Congress at town hall events which, not surprisingly, coincided with a lot of death threats. Police showed up to a town hall held by Rep. Tom Garrett after he received calls describing how the callers planned to murder his wife and family. In Tennessee, a woman was charged for running Rep. David Kustoff’s car off the roadafter one of his town hall events. And a man in Tucson was arrested for making threats against Rep. Martha McSally.

Then there was the shooting at the Alexandria baseball practice by a deranged Bernie Sanders fan. And the assault against Sen. Rand Paul (by a progressive neighbor who claimed the assault wasn’t political) and the arrest of a man who threatened to chop up Sen. Paul’s family with an ax. By 2018, the death threats were being focused on Sen. Susan Collins. The left was furious at her over her vote to confirm Justice Kavanaugh.

Of course bad language and even death threats go both ways, unfortunately, and that’s really the point. Arguing that “Let’s go, Brandon” is some sort of new low in our public discourse, one that shows Republicans are thuggish, overlooks a lot of similar smirking insults and bad language (and bad behavior) that emanated from the left over the past decade. If you want to call people making these insults thugs that’s your choice, but don’t pretend we’ve never seen anything like on the other side of the aisle because we have.

Not OK, Boomer

How the Hippie-Left contributed to inequality and racial disparities.

by Thomas F. Hafer for American Greatness

I recently received my 50th college reunion class book. Amidst the otherwise pleasant memories was an article discussing the current abject state of the nation and ascribing its fall (of course) to Republicans. At first I was infuriated. But later I came to see it as a report card on my generation’s hallmark creation, the hippie.

I am a real Baby Boomer, born during the decade after World War II. America had real problems then: overt racial discrimination, the threat of nuclear war, Communist infiltration into our government, polio and Asian flu epidemics—but we also had national unity, a belief that America was a fundamentally good country and could lead the world to just, democratic values, a strong economy, and a time of relative tranquility, at least prior to our involvement in Vietnam. 

During my teens and 20s, the Civil Rights Act was passed along with various affirmative action policies and contracting set-asides that discriminated in favor of certain demographic groups. These provided enormous benefits for many people. So how did we get from there to where we are today, with large segments of the population disaffected and believing that we have more systemic racism, systemic inequality, and systemic injustice? 

Well, I’ll tell you how: We—my cohort—did it.

We no longer had the unifying goals of beating the Nazis and Imperial Japan. We wandered aimlessly looking for something to believe in, some choosing anti-Communism, some civil rights, some environmentalism, and still others occult religions. And then there were the Hippies, the low-key successors to the Beatniks but without the poetry, philosophy, and bongo drums. Originally, hippies were a small group whose main goal was to get stoned, but Vietnam War resistance broadened their goals, swelled their ranks and made them more acceptable to ordinary Americans. Eventually they became a way of life and a political force. 

How did the hippies get us to where we are today? By mainstreaming their mantra: “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”

Hippies discarded the social codes that frowned on indiscriminate sex and instead promoted the notion that sex, like pot and LSD, is just harmless fun, and “if it feels good, do it.” 

The resulting promiscuity produced Herpes, AIDS—and babies. And if the father was unwilling (or unknown), well, hey sweetheart, you don’t need a man, you can do it all yourself. Single-parent families now constitute 33 percent of white families and 66 percent of black ones. There are only 24 hours in the day, however, and you need some of them for eating, sleeping, and possibly even working. So there isn’t a lot of time for helping with the algebra homework or even for keeping track of where the kids are and what they are doing if there aren’t two adults cooperating in raising a family. These kids are brought up with the high odds of poverty, lack of discipline, and likelihood of being involved with crime all stacked against them. Poverty afflicts 30 percent of single mothers and their families, compared to 8 percent of married couples. 

Persons in poor households at or below the federal poverty level have more than double the rate of violent victimization as those in high-income households. The Brookings Institution found that “individuals incarcerated in their early 30s are much more likely to have grown up in poverty, in single-parent families.” Educational achievement is also degraded. Children from single-parent homes finish their education with over a year’s less schooling on average and graduate from college at less than half the rate of those from two-parent homes. If police were 100 percent racially neutral, this statistic alone would explain the disparity in their use of force on people of different races.

The greatest evil perpetrated by the hippie-Left, however, is the normalization of the use of narcotic drugs. Drugs are now a $100 billion a year industry in the United States. This money funds criminal empires and terrorists. More people in the United States die from drug overdoses each year than in all of the Vietnam conflict. 

Drug use affects both the user and his family, causing crime, poverty, encounters with the police, and sometimes prison sentences. Drug convictions can result in loss of federal benefits such as food stamps, difficulties in obtaining public housing, reduced likelihood of obtaining a job, difficulty in getting accepted to college, and restrictions on the type of employment available.

And then there’s rock and roll. What could be bad about that? Well, we’re not talking about “Wish They All Could Be California Girls” or “The Twist.” By itself, rock music is not so bad, and much of it is fun. Of course, it fostered teenage rebelliousness, but teens have always been rebellious. 

Rock and its successors also did two important things: First, it transformed music from entertainment to big business, with the ability to influence legislation and the Federal Communications Commission. In 1964, I could have gone to a Beatles concert for $5 (just under $50 in current dollars); in 2019, the average cost of attending a live concert was around $96. 

Second, popular music had the effect of degrading comity and moral standards further and further. In 1967, the Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together” was considered scandalous and many DJs wouldn’t play it. In the 1980s, Madonna attracted controversy for her teenage pregnancy ditty, “Papa Don’t Preach” (in which her protagonist affirmed, at least, that she had made up her mind and was keeping the baby.) 

Now we have Killer Mike singing: “I’m a bag of dicks, put me to your lips,” and Cardi B with Megan Thee Stallion climbing to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 letting the world know “there’s some whores in this house.” 

Just so you know what your kids are listening to.

Is there any mystery as to how these might lead to antisocial behavior, poverty, inequality, and adverse interactions with the law? To be clear, all of these things are the result of personal choices. Society does not force anyone to have indiscriminate sex, to take drugs, or to condone the values embodied in hip hop and gangsta rap. But these choices have consequences, many of which involve interactions with law enforcement. Some of these interactions will involve the use of force, especially if the subject does not comply with police orders. And some of those choices will lead to death. But it is not discrimination that causes this; it is the actions and choices of the individual—the same choices that the hippie-Left popularized.

Facebook changes its name to Meta in major rebrand

 

Facebook has changed its name to Meta as part of a major rebrand.

The company, which announced the change at its annual developer conference, said it would better "encompass" what the firm now does.

It also revealed plans for a metaverse - an online world where people can game, work and communicate in a virtual environment, often using VR headsets.

The name change follows a series of negative stories about Facebook, based on documents leaked by an ex-employee.

Frances Haugen has accused the company of putting "profits over safety".

In 2015, Google restructured its company calling its parent firm Alphabet, however, the name has not caught on.  

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59083601  

Left Unchecked, Biden’s Border Crisis Will Become The New Normal

Left Unchecked, 

Biden’s Border Crisis Will Become The New Normal

What happened on the U.S.-Mexico border this year is without precedent, and if states don’t act, it will become permanent.

John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist

The Biden administration quietly made history late last week when U.S. Customs and Border Protection released September data on apprehensions at the southwest border. Those exceeded 185,000 and put total southwest border arrests for this fiscal year at 1,659,206 — an all-time record.

Never before have federal authorities made so many arrests at the southwest border. The Border Patrol keeps records of southwest border apprehensions going back to the Eisenhower administration (and maintains records of total apprehensions, which include the northern border and the coasts, going back to 1925). This year topped the previous record in 2000 by about 15,000 illegal immigrants, marking a new milestone in what has become the dreary annals of America’s porous and crisis-stricken border.

But what you won’t find in the Border Patrol data tables, or the equivocating explainers in the corporate press, is a frank admission that, shocking as these totals are, they represent what will certainly become the new normal on the U.S.-Mexico border under the Biden administration.

In addition to the sheer numbers of illegal immigrants coming over — a 314 percent increase from 2020 and a 95 percent increase from the last border surge in 2019 — this year marks a shift in the usual seasonal pattern of illegal border-crossing. Typically, illegal immigration picks up in February as temperatures warm, peaks in May, then recedes during the hotter summer months. And no wonder: it gets very hot in south Texas during the summer, and crossing on foot as most migrants do can be dangerous, even deadly.

President Joe Biden, along with his courtesans in the press, tried back in March to dismiss what close observers could already see was an historic surge along the border, saying at a news conference, “The truth of the matter is, nothing has changed. It happens every single, solitary year. There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March. That happens every year.”

What Biden failed to mention is that even back in February border arrests had reached a 15-year high of 97,000. The historic surge was already underway, and it wasn’t following the usual pattern. Apprehensions kept climbing throughout the spring months, and then in June when we would expect the numbers to decrease, they kept climbing, hitting a 21-year high.

Then something really strange happened. In both July and August, typically slow months on the U.S.-Mexico border on account of the brutal heat, total arrests exceed 200,000. The number of unaccompanied children encountered at the border reached a record high in July.

This was unprecedented. Migration experts said they could not explain a mid-summer surge, which defied all previous patterns of border traffic. (The shift was not slight, either. For context, Border Patrol made nearly 87,000 more arrests this past July than it did in the July of the previous record year, 2000.)

Now, we have numbers for September, which is also typically a slower month on the southwest border because of the heat. Going back more than two decades, southwest border arrests in September have never exceeded even 100,000, let alone come close to 200,000 as they did this year.

There’s something else to note about the strangeness of this year’s border numbers. Typically, migrants from countries other than Mexico and the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Central America (Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador) make up a small share of border arrests. Not this year. About 378,000 migrants from places other than Mexico and Central America were arrested at the southwest border. That’s about 22 percent of the total, and represents a staggering increase compared to previous years.

Blue line is non-Mex/non-C. Amer illegal alien encounters at border. The world knows our border is open. #BidenBorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/sd8UtiF9La

— Lora Ries (@lora_ries) October 26, 2021

Understand that all these numbers represent the consequences of concrete policy choices made by the Biden administration. Illegal border-crossings didn’t surge during the hottest months of the summer because migrants suddenly decided they didn’t much mind the heat. Crossings surged, and are still surging, because migrants believe this is their best chance to get into the United States — and they’re right.

Under Biden, the vast majority of migrant families and children are allowed to remain in the United States while they pursue long-shot asylum cases that take years to complete. Even single adults subject to immediate expulsion under Title 42, a pandemic-related emergency health order instituted by Trump, are increasingly just processed and released. So many have been released in recent months, in fact, that border communities in south Texas have been overwhelmed, scrambling to find buses to move migrants released from federal custody out of town.

Making matters worse, many of those released don’t even have a court date before an immigration judge but are released with what’s called a notice to report (NTR). An NTR is nothing more than a request to report to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office within 60 days so they can get a court date and begin their asylum case. Migrants are expected to do this of their own volition whenever they get to where they’re going in the United States. To no sensible person’s surprise, many of them don’t.

Biden’s dereliction of duty doesn’t end at the border, it extends to the entire federal immigration apparatus. While historic numbers of people were crossing the border illegally this year, immigration arrests in the interior fell to their lowest level in more than a decade.

A report this week from the Washington Post’s Nick Miroff notes that “ICE arrests in the interior plunged after President Biden took office and set new limits on immigration enforcement, including a 100-day ‘pause’ on most deportations.”

A federal judge blocked Biden’s order, but the message from the White House was received loud and clear. ICE’s 6,000 enforcement officers averaged just one immigration arrest per month this year.

Only States Can Stave Of Biden’s ‘New Normal’

The only way this year’s ongoing border crisis doesn’t become the new normal under Biden is if border states take action on their own, if need be without the permission or cooperation of the federal government.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has talked big about doing just that, but there’s less to his go-it-alone border policy than meets the eye. While it’s true that Abbott authorized specially trained National Guard troops to arrest illegal immigrants on trespassing charges, something that’s never been done before, the entire operation is mostly theater, and might be worse than doing nothing.

For one thing, Texas National Guard troops are only arresting single men, the group most likely to be expelled by CBP under Title 42. These men are being arrested on criminal trespass charges and turned over to locally elected county attorneys for prosecution.

But as Democratic Val Verde County Attorney David Martinez recently told Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies, the vast majority of the 231 criminal trespass cases against migrants filed by Texas DPS in his county since July have not resulted in significant jail time for the charged migrants because of the significant expense to county taxpayers.

What’s more, Martinez said that once a migrant is released, ICE officers are not expelling them to Mexico under Title 42 as they would if Border Patrol arrested them. Instead, these men are being paroled to pursue asylum claims in the United States.

Rather than these half-measures, Abbott could pursue a much more aggressive strategy of using the National Guard not just to arrest illegal immigrants, but to return them to Mexico. The Texas State Guard, which is entirely under the control of Abbott, could be ordered to do the same, as could Texas state troopers.

Would this trigger a constitutional crisis between the states and the federal government? Almost certainly. But there’s a clear constitutional case that governors of border states have every right, even a duty, to secure their borders. The sooner that argument can be hashed out in public, the better.

There’s much else governors could do, from launching cross-border raids into Mexico against cartel operations that profit from illegal immigration and drug trafficking, to imposing a sanctions regime on corrupt Mexican officials who work for the cartels, to prohibitions on the use of state assets and facilities to house unaccompanied minors unless potential sponsors have passed background checks.

These measures might at first blush seem extreme, but they’re not nearly as extreme as the border regime Biden has put into place, which guarantees that the record-breaking levels of illegal immigration we saw in 2021 will become the new normal.

Why These Parents, Students, And Protesters Are Standing Up To The Loudoun County School Board

'They're telling me as a parent that the government cares more about my kids than I do, which is absurd, but at the same time they're sending sexual predators into the classroom.'

Elle Reynolds reporting for The Federalist

ASHBURN, Va. — Parents and other protesters braved wind, rain, and one of the coldest nights the area has seen this fall to gather at the Loudoun County School Board meeting on Tuesday and speak out against the board and Superintendent Scott Ziegler.

One of the administrators present told me that 120 people were signed up to speak. Many of them waited together in front of the building for their turns, holding homemade signs and speaking animatedly with each other.

A lineup of speakers took the stage of the parking lot rally, kicking off with a recital of the national anthem by one of the young girls in attendance. I heard someone chant “Let’s go Brandon” at another point.

Here’s what parents, students, and other protesters told me about why they showed up.

Chuck Izzo

Chuck Izzo, a U.S. Army veteran from Purcellville, showed up to give public comment at the board meeting and slammed “the way that the cover-up [of sexual assaults in the school district] happened, and just the lack of integrity” in the school board. “My intent is to go up there and just voice my opinion and say, ‘You were all either under duress or you knew about this and either way you lied and you’re not representing us effectively, so you have to go.'”

Izzo’s daughter, a senior at Woodgrove High School, participated in the walkouts that occurred throughout Loudoun County schools earlier in the day to protest the school board’s complicity in recent revelations of sexual assault. He noted problems within the school district that had frustrated him even before the assaults, however.

“The first thing that was brought to my attention was when [recently resigned school board member] Beth Barts and the other folks had their secret little Facebook group trying to doxx parents who were opposed to the policies … that’s really secret police kind of stuff,” he told me. “And then when the gym teacher came out and spoke his conscience in an open public forum and then was punished for it that added up, and when the news came out about the sexual assaults, it was just really shocking.”

Kara Dansky

Kara Dansky said she is a lifelong Democrat and self-described “radical feminist” from Washington, D.C. “We really want to see the school board rescind the policy, there is absolutely no justifiable reason to have a policy that allows boys into women’s bathrooms,” she said. “It’s just not acceptable, it’s anti-feminist, it’s misogynistic, it’s politically regressive.”

“All of the women standing behind me and near me are radical feminists, most of us are Democrats,” she told me, gesturing to about six other women standing beside her. “We are here because we are on the political left and we stand in support of female-only spaces.”

Dansky said she came to Loudoun in August for a rally the day before LCPS instituted its gender identity policy that allows co-ed bathrooms, after which a sexual assault by a “gender fluid” boy of a female teen in the girls’ bathroom was reported. “I was very proud to stand with Loudoun County parents and students and I’m very proud to stand with Loudoun County parents and students here today.”

Erin Roselle Poe

Erin Roselle Poe has a 10th grader and a fifth grader in Loudoun County Public Schools.

“I stood on these grounds 20 months ago and fought to get our schools open, and that like most parents opened our eyes to actually what was happening here in the county,” she told me. “When you have two kids here that are constantly exposed to everything going on, all you can do is fight.”

Poe also signed up to speak to the school board, to tell them “that they’ve failed this county, they’ve failed students, they’ve lied to our faces, they’ve left our children very vulnerable and unsafe, and they continue to preach policies that are more coverups for their actions.”

“We’ve got to get the evil out of the schools,” she added.

Anthony Mace

Anthony Mace used to be a Fairfax County resident, but moved to Loudoun County last year and has a son who is a senior in high school in LCPS. “I thought Fairfax was getting a little out of control so we moved out this way, and this is even more ridiculous,” he told me. “The longer I’m here I can’t believe what Loudoun has become. It’s just a shadow of itself.”

Mace, who considers himself an independent, said he was present “to really support the parents of Loudoun County that aren’t being heard.” For the school board “to blatantly lie to the parents, it’s criminal and they should all resign.”

“As long as I live in Loudoun I will be coming to the [school board] meetings, I will be supporting the parents,” he said. “They should have a say in their children’s education.”

Nick, Crunchy, and Maddy

Nick and Crunchy used to attend LCPS until about a year ago. “We’re here to support the cause against them,” Nick told me, gesturing to the school board’s building. “Especially Ziegler,” Crunchy piped in. “Especially against Ziegler, because he knew about that rape charge,” Nick finished. He showed me his red, white, and blue sign, emblazoned with the words “Dear NSBA and Ziegler, sorry ain’t good enough! You must be FIRED, you LIED to promote your agenda!”

Maddy is an eighth-grader who’s currently in private school but will be going to public school in Loudoun County soon. She’s been to board meetings before, but spoke for the first time at one of the meetings Tuesday night.

“I’m here because I’m concerned about the public safety of the public schools in Loudoun County,” Maddy said.

Her mom added that they started getting involved with the school system when schools closed during COVID, “and then I started seeing the behaviors of some of the board members.”

“When the sexual assaults came out now every day I think … do I have to worry about her safety?” she added. “This is definitely weighing on my mind.”

Erin Smith

I spoke with Erin Smith as she exited the building after giving public comment, and she told me the speakers were “annihilating” the board, while she hadn’t heard anyone speak in support of the school board. “Each person has their own little speech about what’s important to them,” she said. “There’s plenty of things to talk about.”

In her speaking time, she focused on “the email that Dr. Ziegler sent everyone on May 28.”

“Did anyone respond to the email? Did they just get the email and not care? Was it just a normal day to them to have an email about sexual assault in a high school and nobody care about it?”

“I’ve been fighting to get a voice heard with the LCPS for over a year now,” she said. “It started back last year when they promised to open schools and didn’t, it’s been a snowball effect ever since.”

Joe Mobley

The host of “The Joe Mobley Show” said he showed up “to urge the school board to resign, because they lie, about everything!” Mobley cited the email Ziegler sent on May 28 to the board acknowledging the sexual assault that happened that day, a month before the board publicly denied the crime’s existence.

“With all this COVID bullcrap, they’ve said ‘we care more about you than your parents do,’ and they’re telling me as a parent that the government cares more about my kids than I do, which is absurd, but at the same time they’re sending sexual predators into the classroom,” he said.

“I’m just one of many parents, I have four kids,” he added. “We’re lucky enough to homeschool but our kids are going to have to work and interact with these kids and we’d prefer for them not to be Marxist, but even if they are going to be Marxist, we have to insist that they’re taught truth and that truth is at least exposed to them.”

While the board’s recent policies only allow a few speakers inside the building at a time, many gathered outside to watch a livestream of the meeting on a projector in the parking lot. A small contingent of people supporting the school board and sporting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” signs also showed up, but were far outnumbered by the school board’s critics.

Beth Whitehead contributed to this report.