Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
In stock market investing, you’re supposed to be pessimistic when everyone else is optimistic, and optimistic when everyone else is pessimistic. Warren Buffett famously put it this way: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
The reason the aforecited principle applies well in stock market investing is that the herd instinct makes people buy or sell stocks because other people are buying or selling. The result is that the stocks get over-sold or over-bought, thereby driving their price too low or too high in relation to their real indicators of value – mainly their current and future profits.
Eventually, the herd drives the stock so high or so low that even dedicated herders cannot fail to miss the fact that the stock is mispriced in relation to objective value indicators. At that point, they finally change direction – they start buying while the herd is still selling, or vice versa – and the price trend reverses. The herd reverses direction, and stampedes off the other way. You can make money by being contrary to the herd. Be a bull when they’re a bear, and vice versa.
So, does the same principle apply in evaluating the state of a culture? Has the assessment of American culture become so bearish that it is surely too much so?
Scientists generally agree that the universe – defined as everything in existence – has not always existed. It came into existence with a bang about 13 billion years ago. This bang was a big one, so they named it the “Big Bang.”
Before the Big Bang, there was no space, no energy and no time – not even empty space, zero energy or stopped time. There was nothing.
And then everything was created out of this nothing. We call this everything “creation.” It’s the tangible universe around us, seen and unseen. It’s the energy, the matter, and the progression of time.
As a matter of logic, creation must have been created. And also as a matter of logic, whatever caused creation to be created is, by definition, the creator of it.
How the creator created creation, we haven’t a clue. Oh sure, there are theories that our universe is one of many “parallel” universes, blah blah blah, but there’s zero evidence for any of those theories. Those theories are mainly semantics games. They really just beg the question: If our universe is a “parallel” universe to some other one – some other creation – then how was that one created if not by a creator?
In short, if you acknowledge that the universe – creation – exists, you cannot deny that it was created by a creator. The rest of organized religion is just puny humans quibbling about the nature of this creator, in the tribal, shallow ways they do. They’re not striving for understanding; they’re arguing that their creator is better than yours.
Whatever.
On the other hand, if you deny that the universe exists, you should stop reading and immediately check yourself into the hospital.
Here’s where it gets interesting. In order to create the universe – in order to create creation – the creator must have been around (but around what?) before the universe came into existence. The laws of cause-and-effect go only one direction in time. Yesterday’s effect cannot be produced by today’s cause. The creation could not be caused by something occurring after it happened.
But the universe is defined to include everything, which includes a creator. And so, unless you deny the laws of cause-and-effect by contending that the creator was created in the creation and somehow cast a cause backward in time to create the effect of that creation, this creator must have existed before it existed. But how can something exist before it exists?
These violations, of not only physical laws but basic laws of logic and cause-and-effect, seem the very definition of a “miracle.”
Given that the creator created all of creation – and did so before the creator even existed, or, alternatively, the creator itself existed before it existed – I can only conclude that this creator is capable of anything. Virgin births, Red Sea partings, growing my hair back, you name it.
That the creator that created creation is omnipotent does not alone validate any particular religion – the mere fact that the creator is capable of something does not prove it did that something. It just says that, scientifically speaking, anything and everything is possible.
Remember all of that in this season of goodwill and at other times as well. Be merry – I have a hunch that our miraculous, puckish creator is. And humble.
The Biden administration made headlines last year when they boastfully appointed a certain personto a high level position at the Office of Nuclear Energy. This person is “non-binary” and refers to his/her/them/itself with ungendered pronouns.
OK, I get that. The person feels that he/her/it/they does (do?) not fit neatly into the anachronistic gender labels developed over about two million years of human history and prehistory as interpreted by science, medicine, genetics, sociology, biology, logic, anthropology and biochemistry promulgated by dead white European men – and dead men and women of color on the rest of the planet – consistent with the male/female dichotomy in the animal world.
Yes, I get it – this person is mentally ill. Note that this mental case is a card-carrying member of the political party that “believes in science.”
In a case argued at the Supreme Court this week, a Colorado website designer appealed a decision from lower courts requiring her to create wedding websites for gay couples in violation of her religious belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. The Court is likely to reverse the lower court decision, and allow her to decline to create such websites.
The liberal minority on the Court and the liberal media argue that such a decision will lead to a new Jim Crow era where the providers of public accommodation are allowed to refuse services to people on the basis of their sexual preferences or skin color.
That argument is incorrect and probably not even sincere. Here’s why.
The First Amendment of course prohibits the government from banning speech. Less recognized is that the First Amendment also prohibits the government from compelling speech. That means it’s unconstitutional for the government to prohibit you from voicing support for gay marriage and it’s equally unconstitutional for the government to require you to voice such support.
In a COVID panic, we told people to stop working. It became not only permissible not to work, it became a mandate. Sitting around the house watching daytime TV in pajamas became the responsible thing to do. With no one working, unsurprisingly, no work got done. It was like a two-year snow day. Or Ferris Bueller’s Two-Years Off. Democrats loved it, of course, because Democrats hate work.
COVID killed nearly a million Americans (though most had what the doctors euphemistically call “comorbidities”). And the lockdowns and mandates for masks, vaccines and social distancing (at least when one wasn’t rioting) were bad. And the lost year or two of learning for an entire generation was tragic (though we could make that up in four months if we improved the schools and tamed the teachers unions).
But the most destructive outcome of COVID was the destruction of the American work ethic. That’s the ethic — now considered a quaint notion — that work is good. It’s good for the pocketbook, good for the soul, and good for society.
A gunman entered a gay nightclub – or I guess they call them LGBTQ nightclubs now – in Colorado Springs last weekend and opened fire. Five people were killed and 18 were injured. He was finally stopped when a former army soldier pounced on him, kicked his gun away, and pinned him to the floor.
Then Democrats pounced. Not on the gunman, but on Colorado Springs. The New York Times declared that Colorado Springs:
“was known for years as the Vatican of Evangelicals — a home base for a well-funded, well-organized conservative Christian political movement that broadcast dire warnings about the dangers of homosexuality to the nation.”
Other liberal media outlets and prominent Dems piled on, including NBC, Daily Kos and, naturally, Nancy Pelosi.
The current fight between liberals and conservatives goes back to at least the 1640s when Levellers and Diggers unsuccessfully tried pushing Parliamentarians (who were fighting Royalists) towards policies we now call Communism. Though conservatives easily won that particular day, socialism remains popular in Western Democracies, particularly during hard times. In the USA our most dramatic swing leftward occurred during the great depression when Capitalism staved off the most radical socialist ideas with compromise social programs collectively known as The New Deal. Here’s an oversimplified version of what happened.
The GOP performance in the midterm elections is very disappointing, but here’s some good news. It would take a miracle for the Democrats to retain the House of Representatives. Let’s do the math.
According to Wall Street Journal and other credible sites, the GOP has won about 211 seats and the Dems have won 192. That means about 32 seats are still undecided. The GOP needs at least 7 of those 32 to reach the bare majority of 218.
It’s fair to assume that the odds on each of those races is about 50/50. If it were otherwise, they’d have been decided. They’re “toss-ups” because the odds are like the odds of getting heads or tails when you toss up a coin.
OK, so let’s run with that. We can calculate the odds of the GOP getting 7 or more of the remaining 32 toss-up seats by calculating the odds of getting 7 or more heads when you toss up a coin 32 times.
A few weeks ago, the Democratic candidate for Colorado’s Third Congressional District was accused of being blackmailed into changing his position on a matter of city policy while he was a city councilman in Aspen. He’s running against conservative firebrand Lauren Boebert, a person the liberal Aspen elite undisguisedly hate and would love to see beaten by Frisch.
The Aspen newspapers – part of that Aspen liberal elite – have mostly dismissed or buried the blackmail story, to the extent they’ve covered it at all. The Aspen Daily News finally published something over a week after the story broke elsewhere:
“The story — which Frisch, his family and his campaign deny — goes something like this: in May 2017, Frisch rode his bike to the storage unit owned by the local taxi company, which was caught on security footage. A staff member of the company subsequently found Frisch engaging in an extramarital activity in one of those units; a year later, when the city council was considering a “mobility lab” that Gardner found threatening to his business, the taxi company owner blackmailed Frisch into changing his vote, swinging the city council away from moving forward with a contract that would have brought rideshare companies such as Lyft more meaningfully to Aspen.”
The blackmail allegation glossed over by the newspaper is that the taxi owner has a video showing everything in the story except the sex in the storage unit; it’s undisputed that he sent that video to Frisch in an email; and the taxi owner himself says “it absolutely was blackmail.” It should be noted, but the newspaper article does not, that the blackmailer is no Boebert supporter — he calls her “clueless.”
Here are some questions that a real newspaper reporter might ask Frisch after his blanket denial:
You say you deny the story, but what part?
Do you deny that it was you in the video?
Do you deny that you waited for the woman in the video and then went into the storage building with her, as the video seems to show?
Do you deny having sex with her in the storage unit, as the taxi assistant says she witnessed?
Do you deny having received the taxi owner’s email attaching the video in the time frame during which city council was considering the mobility lab?
Do you deny that you failed to respond to the video with something like, “Huh? What’s this video?”
Do you deny that you failed to contact authorities to report what appeared to be an attempted blackmailing of you, as the taxi owner himself contends?
Do you deny that the blackmailing was successful – that the video changed your vote, as the taxi owner contends?
A fair reading is that Frisch implicitly admits the entire story, except the last point: He denies that the attempted blackmailing was successful. Rather, he apparently asserts that he was in the process of changing his mind anyway.
What Frisch is obviously eager to change now is the subject. But a real newspaper with real and unbiased reporters would not be so eager to oblige. A real newspaper with real and unbiased reporters would ask Frisch these questions. If he refuses to answer them, then a real newspaper with real and unbiased reporters would report his refusal.
Alas, apparently no such newspaper and no such reporters exist in Aspen.
The Supreme Court on Monday considered the arguments of Harvard and the University of North Carolina justifying their racial discrimination in admissions. The schools will probably lose.
The schools argue their racial discrimination (they refuse to call it that, of course) is just one of many factors they consider in admissions. But the data show it’s by far the most important one. For example, at UNC a white person with a given set of test scores, grade point average and other factors, with 10% chance of getting admitted, would have a 98% chance with the same qualifications if he were black.
At Harvard, the case was brought by an Asian student group. The data show that at Harvard an Asian needs an SAT score about 400 points higher than a black person with comparable other qualifications. That 400-point difference is huge. It’s the difference between an excellent student with a score of 1500 and an average one with a score of 1100, or a good student with a score of 1200 and a poor student with a score of 800.
the Aspen beat 