Political Purge

"So, here's to the men who did what was considered WRONG, in order to do what they knew was right...what they KNEW was right."
--Benjamin Franklin Gates (National Treasure)

After Donald Trump and his close circle were hit by DOJ search teams, it appears that this administration is widening its nets. Tucker Carlson reports that subpoenas are in the process of being issued on dozens of Trump allies.

This is what a political purge looks like.

Obviously, this is meant to send a message ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, and to those who are considering involvement in the presidential election two years off.

Irreparably Compromised

"The wheels turn slow around here. Real slow. But they do turn."
--Detective Marie Mitchell (Hard Target)

What would it take to show that there was massive fraud and interference in an election--long after a 'winner' was originally declared. What if this fraud and interference cast serious doubt who really won? Or even worse, that a candidate originally deemed to have lost actually won?

How would the damaged candidate(s) seek and obtain relief?

My sense is that those who perpetrate election fraud are prone to do so boldly, under the assumption that if they can get to the point where the results are declared 'official,' then it will be next to impossible for a damaged candidate to obtain relief in a manner that society views as legitimate.

Not long after the 2020 election, these pages mused about this situation. That we're still musing more than two years later suggests a) that compelling evidence of fraud continues to surface, and b) the spectre of widespread recognition of irreparably compromised election has not been extinguished by the perpetrators.

Weaponized Agencies

Trim life shadows flicker and fall
But you still can't turn away
Get up and run before you stall
Before the edges fray
--Ric Ocasek

Given that the executive branch now includes dozens of agencies with strong armed capability, it should come as no surprised that influential politicians will seek to 'weaponize' those agencies against political opponents. The FBI, CIA, and IRS are particularly attractive in this regard.

McCarthy, JFK, Tea Party, et al.

In the recent years, there has been no better example of the weaponization of federal agencies than the concerted operations to take down Donald Trump. First as a candidate, then as sitting president, and now as a former president with future candidate potential. The FBI, CIA, DOJ, and even the military has been involved.

Yesterday's actions will be difficult for even many partisans to brush off as federal agents raided Trump's home in Florida.

Actions over the past few years have escalated to the stuff of authoritarian police states. The current administration is brazenly employing federal agencies to punish political opposition.

What authoritarians never seem capable of understanding is the extent to which their aggression strengthens the resolve of the liberty-minded.

Hiroshima Myth

"The principle of law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime...is guilty."
--Judge Dan Heywood (Judgment at Nuremburg)

On August 6, 1945, a United States B-29 dropped the world's first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later another A-bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Japan surrendered later that month to end WWII.

An estimated 120,000 perished in the two blasts with hundreds of thousands subsequently maimed or killed from radiation exposure. The lion's share of casualties were civilians--mostly women and children.

The popular myth trotted out to justify this carnage is that, by bombing the Japanese mainland and inflicting death and destruction to a degree that forced a surrender, the US subsequently avoided more than a million additional military casualties that would have resulted from the ongoing conventional war campaign--including an inevitable invasion operation of Japan.

As discussed in this article, this amounts to little more than the rationalization of atrocity.

The fact is that Japanese officials signaled their willingness to conditionally surrender earlier in 1945. Their condition was that Japanese emperor Hirohito would remain in power and not be subjected to criminal investigations after the war. The idea was to preserve as much Japanese culture as possible, and to provide continuity to facilitate economic and social functioning in post-war Japan.

Sadly, President Truman and his lackeys were unwilling to accept anything other than unconditional surrender--quite ironic since after the war Hirohito was indeed permitted to remain as emperor until his death in 1989. 

Why, then, were the bombs dropped?

The answer is that Truman and his staff, particularly his confidante and future secretary of state James Byrnes, had their eyes on Russia. Using atomic weapons would demonstrate US military strength to Russia and keep Stalin & Co at bay as the superpowers entered a 'cold war.' A secondary reason was that Congress could be assured that its secret appropriation for the Manhattan Project was bearing fruit that created near and longer term benefits.

Following the bombings, however, many officials, including Commander of the Third Fleet Admiral Bill Halsey, Fleet Commander Chester Nimitz, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff William Leahy, and atomic theorist Albert Einstein, condemned the action. 

This is when the propaganda machinery got into gear. Editorials and articles began to hit the pages of newspapers and magazines about the military necessity of the bombings. The myth has been continually reinforced, usually around this time of year, by political leaders and a complicit media. 

Perhaps in a brief moment of conscience, Henry Stimson, who was secretary of war at the time and chief propagator of the subsequent Hiroshima myth, wrote in his memoirs, 

"Unfortunately, I have lived long enough to know that history is not what actually happened but what is recorded as such." 

Indeed, Mr Stimson. My sense is that you and many of your contemporaries will face, quite literally, the trial of your lives on Judgment Day.

Keep Him Out

But you won't get too far
'Cause you got to blame someone
For your own confusion
We're on guard this time
Against your final solution
--Red Rider

Interesting thesis about why leftists, including many on the conservative side, cannot let Trump back in the Oval Office. The primary answer is that it is not Trump, but the tens of millions of 'country class' that he represents. 

The elite cannot afford to have give those rubes, Clinton's 'deplorables,' a voice in the political process. And to keep that from happening, the ruling class will stop at nothing to keep that from happening.

The author suggests that leftists have a string of plans in the queue to keep Trump out of office.

Plan A. Use the Jan 6 show trials to keep Trump from running/winning. By most accounts, however, that isn't working.

Plan B. Indict Trump for 'seditious conspiracy' using the DOJ and other machinery of the deep state. Of course, it will be difficult to convince a large fraction of Americans that any such charges hold a modicum of legitimacy.

Plan C. Declare Trump ineligible to run under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. The legitimacy issue still holds.

Plan D. Simply beat Trump at the ballot box. The trouble is Democrats have no obvious candidate that could compete with Trump head-to-head this time around.

Plan E. Cheat (again) in the election. There is no question that Democrats will do what they can get away with (again) this time around. The issue is, given the heightened public awareness about election process shenanigans, how much they will truly be able to get away with in 2024.

Plan F. Take to the streets and riot. Do this until the 'proper' regime is secured in the White House.

It is easy to see why leftists are husting to grab guns ahead of this cycle.

Institutional Confidence

Oh, but I gotta think twice
Before I give my heart away
And I know all the game that you play
--George Michael

New Gallup poll indicates confidence in many US institutions continues to decline.

Outside of small business and the military, the percentage of people expressing considerable confidence is below 50% and, in many cases, in the teens moving toward single digits.

Some institutions, including the presidency, are down more than 10 percentage points in a year.

While these results might concern members of those institutions, they are unlikely to surprise the average person on the street.

Pendleton Act

"You guys think you're above the law. Well, you ain't above mine."
--Nico Toscani (Above the Law)

In July of 1881, President James Garfield was shot and killed by an attorney who was furious that the president did not give him a job in the new administration. Operating on the theory that it had to eliminate the system of patronage in government if it was to prevent future assassinations, Congress passed the Pendleton Act.

Signed into law by Chester A. Arthur in 1883, the Pendleton Act created a permanent civil service that could not be undone each election cycle. The administrative, or 'deep,' state was born.

The Constitution does not provide for a permanent class of bureaucrats that possess authority outside of the three branches of government. The Pendleton Act created a layer of statist imposition that the democratic process cannot control.

Perhaps the original intent was to make the civil service class apolitical, but it has become anything but. Indeed, any political party worth its salt would endeavor to place operatives inside the administrative state so that agendas could be advanced regardless of who is in office.

We have seen this in the spades over the past few years as partisans installed at the highest levels of agencies such as the CDC, EPA, DOJ, Federal Reserve, FBI, and CIA render decisions that favor particular political agendas.

I don't know whether the constitutionality of the Pendleton Act has ever been challenged in court. If not, then it should be. This week's West Virginia v. EPA SCOTUS ruling moves in that direction.

Meanwhile, people must continue to wake up to the reality that there is currently a fourth branch of the federal government, one that arguably possesses more power than the other three branches, that essentially operates at its own discretion, and that is largely untouchable by the ballot box.

Overreach Overturned Again

Forgotten lies aim to distract me
This mono mind must not connect
Purer nature will contain me
Free fall in air I will surpass
--The Fixx

Last week the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which sent the question of whether abortions should be legal to the various states. Today, in the case of West Virginia v. EPA, the high court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency was not specifically authorized by Congress to limit greenhouse gas emissions when the agency was established in 1970.

The court essentially sends the issue back to Congress. If it wants to enact sweeping regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions, then Congress must do so through the legislative process. 

The ruling makes it more difficult for climate change activists to circumvent the constitutional law-making process.

In both of these cases, the Supreme Court strikes blows against overreach. In Roe, it was the court itself writing law. In West Virginia, it was the executive branch working through one of its agencies (although one could argue that it was the rogue administrative, or deep, state acting out its own agenda.

The court's decisions place responsibility for both issues with elected legislators and, ultimately, with the voters who elect them. 

This, of course, is consistent with the intent of our founding ancestors. 

Roe Overturned

Always searching for the real thing
Living like it's far away
Just leave all the madness in yesterday
You're holding the key
When you believe it
--Michael McDonald

Yesterday the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Org, overturned the controversial 1973 high court opinion of Roe v Wade--that abortion was a constitutional right. The 6-3 decision was split along party lines, although, as usual, the political animal Chief Justice John Roberts, while concurring in judgment, argued for a compromise that would have prohibited a clean break from Roe.

Dobbs is a worthy read. The institutional challenge facing the court was how to reverse a longstanding albeit controversial and politically charged precedent. The solution, of course, is to stick to the law--something that the Roe court failed to do. 

The primary opinion authored by Justice Alito and supplemented by Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh demonstrates how to go about righting a past judicial wrong. The court first reviews the standards by which 'liberty' as referenced in the Fourteenth Amendment protects particular rights. The central conclusion of this analysis is that the Constitution makes no express reference to the right to obtain an abortion. 

Next, the court considers whether abortion can be construed as an essential component of 'ordered liberty' as reflected by its grounding in the nation's history. The judicial term commonly associated with this analysis is 'substantive due process.' A review of pre-American common law as well as American law all the way up to Roe clearly does not protect a right to abortion. In fact, the law generally specified abortion as a criminal act--often on the level of a felony or manslaughter.

Finally, the court considers the stare decisis issues associated with overturning a legal precedent--particularly a big one like Roe. The court applies several tests: the nature of the previous error, the quality of reasoning, the workability of rules resulting from the previous judgment, effects on other areas of the law, and interests that relied upon the previous decision. It also considered the dissent's claim that overturning Roe would create considerable political consequences and damage the court's legitimacy (Chief Justice Roberts seems particularly sensitive to these types of arguments). The central conclusion: stare decisis does not prevent righting wrongs, no matter how controversial the reversal might be.

In overturning Roe, the court does not make abortion illegal. Instead, it returns the decision to the various states. There, the citizens and their elected representatives must decide to what extent abortion should be permitted, regulated, or prohibited.

As Justice Thomas suggested in his concurring opinion, Dobbs might serve as a template for re-considering other previous high court decisions of questionable legal quality.

"You've Got to Go"

Ellis 'Zee' Pettigrew: LT, rules of engagement?
Lt A.K. Walters: We're already engaged.
--Tears of the Sun

Last week 19 children and two teachers were killed by an 18 yr old active shooter in a Texas elementary school. Evidence is emerging that local police were on the scene early, but they did not enter the building to neutralize the shooter. 

As shots continued to be fired from inside the school building, onlookers, including parents of the students, urged law enforcement to get in there. But they stayed put. In fact, some onlookers who attempted to breach the 'safe zone' in desperation to 'do something' were forcibly restrained by police.

It was not until a Border Patrol tactical unit showed up more than an hour after the initial arrival of local law enforcement that the school building was finally entered and the shooter taken down.

A former Border Patrol agent who trained the team in active shooter scenarios was disturbed by local law enforcement's lack of urgency. "You go to the sound of gunfire," he said.

"Somebody's going to get shot in these scenarios--I mean, that's the whole point of an active shooter. And when you are a law enforcement officer and your job in the situation is to prevent any more innocent people from being wounded or killed--then you've got to go. Hopefully everything turns out OK, but you've got to go."

Active shooter situations dictate that law enforcement has to find a way in and neutralize the threat.

"If you're met with a hail of gunfire, then you've got to work your way around and figure out another way. If that means you retreat and port a window and go in, OK. The doors are locked, we can't get in, we don't have the tools to get in, then we've got to break the windows and go in. Driving a squad car through the side of the building--when you've got children being massacred inside of a building who gives a **** about a $50,000 squad car? Drive it through the wall.

"Because every shot that's fired is somebody either dying or getting wounded, you've got to go."

He suggests that officers on the scene bear a heavy burden for their failure to act.

"As far as I'm concerned, if there was any shooting going on, and there was law enforcement there failed to act for whatever reason, anybody that was there needs to turn in their badge and their gun, and they need to go away and hope they can live with the deaths of these children."

Pray for all involved, including those officers. And resolve that if you ever face one of these situations, then don't hesitate. You've got to go.

Burying Liberty...Again

"Why should I trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a king can."

--Benjamin Martin (The Patriot)

Judge Nap rails against the unconstitutional seizing of Russian property, the freezing of Russian bank accounts, and the barring of contractual trade with Russian partners--all done under the guise of sanctions imposed after the Ukraine invasion. These sanctions violate both the Fourth Amendment, which requires warrants specific to place and person before property can be detained, and the Fifth Amendment, which requires due process before property can be expropriated.

A common response to charges such as these is that the Constitution only protects US citizens and not foreigners. This is wrong. The wrongheadedness of this line of thought is revealed by considering the Constitution's conceptual basis.

The formation of the United States is grounded in natural law. Natural law posits that all men are created equal at birth, meaning that we all have equal rights to life, to the freedom to pursue our interests as long as we do not forcibly intrude on the pursuits of others, and to the property that our pursuits might generate.

These natural rights are granted to each of us by our creator and as a condition of our humanity. They are unalienable, meaning that we are free to exercise our natural rights unencumbered by government interference. This is the founding principle of liberty. 

Government's sole just purpose is to protect our natural rights. It can only interfere in an individual's pursuits when it is suspected that a person has forcibly compromised the natural rights of someone else. However, government must carefully follow just legal processes including those specified by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

If the natural law basis of the Constitution is to be upheld, then it makes no sense to limit its application citizens of the United States. Americans were not the only people born to the 'self-evident' truth that all men were created equal. All have been endowed with the same set of natural rights. When government tramples on the natural rights of any individual, it has done wrong.

As the Judge notes at the end of his column: "War is the health of the state and the graveyard of liberty." Actions of the US government taken under the auspices of the Ukraine conflict demonstrate once again America's lack of leadership in championing the very principles upon which our nation was founded.

War finds the United States burying liberty once again.

Lab Leak Suppression

Always slipping from my hands

Sand's a time of its own

Take your seaside arms and write the next line

Oh, I want the truth to be known
--Spandau Ballet

One of the better investigative journalism pieces in some time, published in Vanity Fair, details the great lengths to which Anthony Fauci and other officials colluded to suppress dissent on the question of natural vs lab origins of CV19. This group kept scientific papers from being posted on pre-print servers, held Zoom sessions meant to intimidate authors of studies with controversial conclusions, and energetically attempted to build a 'united front' that opposed the lab-leak theory.

While reviewing the article's findings, Jeff Tucker asks a central question: What motivated actions to suppress the emergence of lab leak evidence? He suggests some possibilities. Perhaps the Fauci cabal wanted to avoid culpability concerning a linkage between US funding of Chinese lab actions that created the virus. Or maybe they needed to forge a single narrative that would support widespread lockdowns.

But why would lockdowns be desirable? After all, prior scientific work leaned away from lockdowns as effective countermeasures. The Fauci group ignored customary practices for coping with infectious disease spread such as developing ways to keep vulnerable populations (e.g., nursing home residents) safe, and discovering therapeutics that minimize severity in the general population.

Tucker lightly hints at one plausible explanation. A presidential election was on the horizon, and lockdowns along with other atypical countermeasures would support partisan political objectives. To obtain public support for those countermeasures, the Fauci group felt that it could not afford to lend legitimacy to the lab leak theory.

If so, then the motivation for suppressing dissent about CV19's origin goes far beyond the maintenance of 'reputations and professional standing' that Tucker offers at the end of his piece. 

Suppression of the lab leak theory was a necessary precedent for committing crimes against humanity to achieve political gains.

War Crimes

"It is an easy thing to condemn one man in the dark. It is easy to condemn the German people to speak of the basic flaw in the German character that allowed Hitler to rise to power and at the same time positively ignore the basic flaw of character that made the Russians sign pacts with him, Winston Churchill praise him, American industrialists profit by him. Ernst Janning said he is guilty. If he is, Ernst Janning's guilt is the world's guilt--no more, no less."
--Hans Rolfe (Judgment at Nuremberg)

Judge Nap discusses the legitimacy of war crimes and associated prosecution. War crimes are prosecuted by the victors. They control the judicial apparatus which is slanted in manners that insulates victors from prosecution.

Using the post WWII Nuremberg trials as an example, war criminals are generally alleged to have violated unwritten laws--laws which are conveniently concocted for the purpose at hand. This is illegal in the US and in many other countries.

War tribunals seek legitimacy by claiming that they can rightly prosecute war behavior that is so heinous and obvious that the broken laws need not be codified.

However, the only 'obvious' uncodified law is natural law. Natural law is grounded in the non-aggression principle. The non-aggression principle posits that all aggression is wrong and violates the natural rights of the victim. 

This means that only defensive behavior in war is just. People or countries can defend themselves from invaders, but by using only the violence necessary to neutralize the threat. Pre-emption, or counter offensives violate the non-aggression principle.

In reality, of course, few wars involve one side acting purely in self-defense. The original defender commonly turns around and mounts offensives against the original invader, thereby reverse the roles.

Viewed from this perspective, many war crimes are committed during armed conflict and are perpetrated by people on all sides--even by those not firing shots.

Obviously, that's not how war crime tribunals typically proceed. Instead, war crimes constitute what's in the eyes of the beholder.

Treason Mania

"A toast...to high treason. That's what these men were committing when they signed the Declaration. Had we lost the war, they would have been hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, and--my personal favorite--had their entrails cut out and BURNED!"
--Benjamin Franklin Gates (National Treasure)

Glen Greenwald discusses the increased tendency to label people as 'traitors.' Out of concerns that treason term would be abused for political gain, the framers defined the limited scope of the crime in the Constitution itself. Per Article 3, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Treason was the only crime to be delineated in the Constitution. Why? Because the framers anticipated the grave danger of repressive governments seeking to silence criticism of, or opposition to, government policy by making it a capital crime.

Stated differently, they knew that liberal interpretations of treason would squash freedom of speech.

Given its constitutional limitations, treason has rarely been prosecuted in the United States, and less than 12 Americans have been convicted of treason in the nation's history.

Unfortunately, legal limitations have not prevented politicians and their media minions from shouting "Treason!" in the direction of those who behave in manners deemed unsupportive of consensus government policy.

Greenwald suggests that the Trump era elevated accusations of treason from a periodic transgression to a standard, reflexive way of criticizing political opposition. Indeed, the 'scandal' investigations that embroiled Trump's term can easily be seen as a protracted treason campaign. As Greenwald observes,

"The dominant narrative insisted that Trump and his allies were controlled by Moscow, subservient to the Kremlin, and were acting to promote Russian over American interests. That Trump was loyal not to the country that elected him but, instead, to an adversarial nation is something Democrats believe as an article of faith."

In reality, of course, many of those who have accused Trump of treason seem to possess little affinity for the fundamental institutions that underpin the United States and, in fact, seem hell bent on overthrowing them. As such, the Trump Treason narrative seems another ironic act of projection by this group. 

In any event, thanks to the Trump Treason years, "an entire generation has been trained to believe that 'treason' is the crime of expressing views that undermine Democratic Party leaders, diverge from the US security state, and/or dispute the consensus of the US corporate press."

Enter, now, the Ukraine conflict. Russia's invasion of Ukraine three weeks ago has taken treason mania to another level. (Although Greenwald calls it 'never-before-seen,' I suspect that we have, judging from what I've gathered about the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, as well as the Wilson and FDR years). People suggesting that NATO expansion or any other factor beyond 'Putin' helped spark this conflict, or that Ukrainian borders are not vital enough interests to the US to warrant American involvement, are reflexively labeled 'traitors.'

Our founding ancestors lived this accusation. By speaking out against the King of England they were deemed traitors for voicing legitimate political opposition to the crown. They understood that the hallmark of tyranny is intolerance of voices that questioned official government policy, and to criminalize them if possible by equating dissenting voices with treason.

That's why the framers articulated the First Amendment, and a limited criminal scope for treasonous behavior. 

If you've been labeled a 'traitor' for dissenting from the party line on Ukraine, then find comfort that you're on the right side of history and of reason. Don't take the insults personally.

Better yet, pray for them.

Strategic Behavior in Institutional Environments

One doubt
One truth
One war
One truth
One dream
--Peter Gabriel

In a previous post, we proposed that the strength of institutional environments depends on preference among individuals for legitimacy and on the legitimacy that individuals accord rule making entities and processes. When these factors are present in high degrees, then more isomorphic behavior should be expected. At lower levels of these factors, individuals should act more strategically, meaning that they will circumvent institutional pressures in pursuit of personal interests.

Oliver (1991) elaborated several antecedents likely to influence the extent to which organizations act strategically in response to institutional processes. These antecedents are linked to five institutional factors: cause, constituents, content, control, and content.

Cause concerns why organizations are being pressured to conform to institutional rules and expectations. Some pressures may cause organizations to become more socially fit (e.g., pollution and health regulations) while others improve economic fitness (e.g., accounting and budgeting norms). The greater the perceived fitness to be obtained, then the more likely that organizations will acquiesce to institutional pressures. More isomorphism and less strategic behavior should be expected.

Constituents are the entities who exert institutional pressures on organizations. Various constituents can impose laws, regulations, and expectations, including the state, professions, interest groups, and the general public. Passive acquiescence should be difficult to achieve when multiplicity (i.e., the degree of multiple, conflicting expectations) is high among constituent groups is high. Strategic behavior that seeks to compromise, avoid, defy, or manipulate institutional expectations is likely. The extent to which organizations depend on these constituents also influences resistance to institutional pressure. High levels of dependence discourage strategic behavior.

Content involves the norms or requirements that organizations are expected to conform to. Institutional norms or requirements that are inconsistent with the internal goals and objectives of an organization encourage resistance and strategic behavior. Rules that restrict discretionary decision-making should similarly reduce passive conformance and isomorphism in favor of defiant behavior.

Control is about the means or mechanisms that exert institutional pressure. Legal coercion is likely to drive acquiescence because organizations will be reluctant to break laws and face the strong arm of the state. Institutional pressures can also be diffused voluntarily through non-legal means. Oliver posits that high voluntary diffusion should similarly drive more acquiescent behavior--primarily because their broad acceptance should drive a 'contagion of legitimacy.' Perhaps, but I believe this proposition is contestable. If diffusion is voluntary, then organizations face less aggressive pushback for nonconformance. More theoretical nuancing seems appropriate here to tease out the role of violent sanction on strategic response.

Finally, context concerns the general backdrop within which institutional pressures are exerted. Environmental uncertainty, defined as the degree to which future states of the world can be anticipated and accurately predicted, is one element of context. Oliver proposes that high uncertainty discourages strategic behavior. This proposition is also contestable. Oliver argues that uncertainty causes organizations to relinquish illusions of control. Moreover, uncertainty fosters more mimicry as organizations copy the behavior of others hoping to achieve more stability. 

While some of this resonates (think mindless imitation of masking policies during the pandemic), there is an argument to be made that uncertain situations stimulate novel behavior that enables adaptation in changing environments. Perhaps both perspectives should be combined temporally, such longer periods of uncertainty cause organizations to be less imitative and more innovative in search of behavior that allows them to stabilize resource flows.

Another dimension of context is interconnectedness. Interconnectedness refers to the density of interorganizational relationships among occupants of an organizational field. Here, the proposition is much more intuitive. The greater the degree of interconnectedness, the higher the likelihood of passive acquiescence. 

My suspicion is that interconnectedness may constitute the key factor in explaining the high levels of institutional isomorphism observed during the CV19 pandemic. Technology has driven tighter coupling among organizations. Coupling drives more groupthink. Interconnectedness may have created a pandemic network of conformance.

I wonder whether high degree of interconnectivity might render many of these other factors moot.

Reference

Oliver, C. (1991). Strategic responses to institutional processes. Academy of Management Review, 16: 145-179.

War on Dissent

Trim life shadows flicker and fall
But you still can't turn away
Get up and run before you stall
Before the edges fray
--Ric Ocasek

Glenn Greenwald nicely frames the growing war on dissent. Dissent is disagreement with collective norms, particularly as they apply to politics. 

In any social environment, there will be institutional pressure to conform to norms, resulting in movement toward sameness in behavior (a.k.a. 'isomorphism'). Pressure to conform can be peaceful, taking the form of public opinion/persuasion or threat of exclusion from group activities.

However, pressure to conform can be coercive and involve force. For example, dissenters who gather in protest could be assaulted or arrested.

Greenwald suggests that government action against dissent, which is by definition forcible, has been increasing in western societies. Western societies are grounded in political frameworks that, at least on paper, tolerate dissent. In the US, for example, the Constitution guarantees that no law will prohibit or abridge freedom of speech.

Government-sponsored coercion against dissent is easy to spot in other countries. Thus, when Russia moves to freeze bank accounts of political dissenters, headlines in western countries howl in uproar.

However, when western countries do the same thing, as is currently happening, among other places, in Canada, the response is much more muted.

What Greenwald fails to mention is that this inconsistency is explainable by social identity theory. Simply stated, bad behavior by outsiders is punished or berated, while similar behavior by insiders is condoned or rationalized. 

As such, dissenting speech by insiders is legitimate protest to be respected, while dissenting speech by outsiders is disinformation or sedition to be silenced.

Greenwald's main point, however, is that war against dissent in western societies is increasing. He posits that  heads of western governments are stepping away from rule of law in favor of discretionary rule. By definition, discretionary rule is prone to inconsistency and hypocrisy, and requires violence to keep behavior in check.

Fortunately, citizens (read: voters) wake up politically when their freedoms are being trampled. Consequently, as western governments wage war on dissent, the dissenters appear to be organizing their own campaign aimed at ballot boxes.

Scandal Escalating

You run, run, run away
It's your heart that you betray
--Scandal

The Durham investigation into possible spying of the Trump campaign and presidency has filed a motion in which it was divulged that contractors and tech experts essentially spied on Donald Trump during his presidential campaign and while he was in office.

According to Durham, a tech company gained access to Trump servers and "exploited this arrangement by mining [Trump domain] traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump." Who precisely benefitted from this information was not specified in the filing, but dots can be readily connected between the tech firm and Hillary Clinton.

The implications were not lost on the former president, who issued a 'vindication' statement of sorts.

On in lead in to her Sunday morning program, Maria Bartiromo stated that she hopes "Donald Trump will sue them all for everything because they damaged his reputation throughout his four years in office. So much so that he was constantly on the defense...Every American should be outraged by this."

Of course, only some Americans will be outraged by this. Others will choose to look the other way. 

But as Durham continues to pile up the evidence, the scope of this scandal is growing toward proportions that will be difficult for all but the most partisan to ignore.

Maria made another nice point this morning. She wondered whether all of the noise being made by the Biden administration about a Ukraine invasion by Russia might be more fiction than fact--i.e., a distraction to keep public attention away from an escalating political scandal. 

Interesting speculation, particularly as new trickles out that Ukraine and Russian officials claiming that war is not imminent.

One for Two

I'm falling down a spiral
Destination unknown
Double crossed messenger
All alone
--Golden Earring

Yesterday the Supreme Court blocked the federal government's vaccine mandate for large employers while upholding the mandate for health care organizations receiving federal funding.

The judges were one for two.

Private employers, i.e., those with no strings attached to government, should be able to set the terms for using their property. If those terms include a requirement for employees to be vaccinated against a particular pathogen, then private employers are within their rights as property owners to do so. 

Stated differently, employers should be allowed to discriminate as to how their property is utilized. They can discriminate between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals--just as they should be able to peacefully discriminate on any other factor--including race and skin color. If this discrimination is ill-advised, then markets will punish their poor decision-making.

It is, of course, completely within worker rights to discriminate as well. Individuals can discriminate against producers with vaccine mandates by not seeking work with these employers, or by resigning when their employers pass distasteful policies. 

While private enterprises can establish their own internal health care mandates, the state has no standing to forcibly impose its own mandates or interfere with the rules governing private labor market transactions. 

Of course, it is questionable whether many 'private' enterprises are truly private anymore. When businesses receive resources from government (e.g., government contracts or subsidies), or are subject to favorable regulatory treatment, then they are by definition receiving government support or sponsorship. The more beholden organizations are to government, the more likely they are to do the bidding of government in exchange for political favor.  

This brings us to the second part of yesterday's ruling. The high court declared that health care facilities that receive federal funding must comply with federal vaccine mandates. Health care organizations that receive federal funding are poster children for organizations that are beholden to the feds.

Because of their dependence on federal government resources, health care organizations are extensions of the federal government acting as de facto government agencies. 

The Bill of Rights gives such federal agencies far less leeway to discriminate compared to private entities. Whereas a private employer can justly create policies that favor particular groups, federal government entities cannot. Doing so would violate individual rights to religion, speech, assembly, association, privacy, et al--all of which are expressly protected from federal government interference under the Constitution.

Thus, a federal mandate that requires vaccination for employees of organizations beholden to the federal government is blatantly illegal and unjust, regardless of what six high court justices claim.

End Zone View

"Crazy. I mean, like so many positive waves, maybe we can't lose."
--Oddball (Kelly's Heroes)

Optimistic piece by Alex Berenson that CV19 madness may be coming to an end. He bases his thesis on seven pillars:

1) Daily death counts are no longer a focus.

2) The percentage of kids aged 5-11 yrs old appears to already have peaked at 15%--only a month or so after kid jabs were approved.

3) Political movements for childhood vax mandates have ground to halt.

4) Federal district courts have all ruled Biden's vaccine mandates unconstitutional.

5) Speculation that the Supreme Court will rule the same.

6) Widespread suspension of vaccine mandates in the corporate world.

7) Lack of public support for public health complex (which includes mainstream media) attempts to rewrite history to read that vaccine boosters were planned all along.

He also shares a headline from a recent Atlantic piece observing that many Americans, outside of major metropolitan areas inhabited by professional classes, are already behaving like the pandemic is over.

Fitting piece for this Season of Hope.

Hard Left

A time to build up
A time to break down
--The Byrds

Two things seem increasingly clear about the actions of today's left. One is that they are trying to get away with whatever they can. Regardless of the law, they seek to jam thru their agendas and hope that, somehow, people will let them.

The other is that leftists seem focused on collapsing the system. Economic and social chaos appears to be their goal. It also seems apparent that they believe that they will emerge from the chaos as victors.