“They hate the light because they want to sin in the darkness. They stay away from the light for fear their sins will be exposed and they will be punished. But those who do what is right come to the light gladly, so everyone can see that they are doing what God wants.” – John 3:20-21

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find compromises between the extremes that give us the benefits of both and the costs of neither? That’s what Carl Milsted attempts to do at HolisticPolitics.org. A former Libertarian, he now develops policy solutions to maximize not only liberty, but nature, morality, and equality. Like professor Johnathan Haidt of the University Of Virginia, he uses a dimensional paradigm for morality that does not take into account trump cards, but can still be very useful as a means of engaging with people to find solutions that most can agree with. There is a huge amount of material on there, including proposals for a negative income tax, which could replace welfare for those who need it yet without destroying the incentive to work and creating parasites. It is definitely worth a read for anyone sometimes dissatisfied by the Republicans and Democrats (most people).

Universities that try to protect their students from hearing controversial opinions do them a great disservice. One might be able to make the case that children should be shielded from certain ideas, but university students are adults!

If you are old enough to vote, you are old enough to discuss public policy. If you are old enough that no one should stop you from viewing pornography of your choice, then you are old enough that no one should stop you from listening to political opinions of your choice. If you are old enough to own a gun or join the military or police force, you had better damn well be mature enough to peacefully negotiate with those you disagree with. If you are old enough to be trusted with driving a car or raising children of your own, you are old enough to trust to fill out a ballot. It is time for university students to choose: Are you adults or children?

Did Trump incite a riot? How do we know? Some pundits say he did. Others say he didn’t. How do we even know there was a riot? How can we get to the truth?

Most media outlets I have heard making the claim that Trump incited a riot do so without citing any evidence whatsoever. We are simply supposed to take their word for it. It makes me suspicious.

After doing a search on YouTube, I was only able to find two videos citing evidence. Both of them showed the same clip of Trump speaking to his supporters and telling them to march to the capitol to encourage the Republicans in congress to come through for them by upholding the constitution. At no point did he mention violence or entering the building. What he said was an entirely normal thing for any politician or activist to say. Where was the incitement?

Absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence, but in this case it is. Since the media has every incentive to show evidence if they had it, and I have already gone out of my way to look, I can only conclude that no such evidence exists. It is not absolute proof, but the chances of there being something I have overlooked is very small.

Some pundits have opined that the mere fact that Trump claimed the election was stolen was enough to incite a riot. While it is certainly true that rioters might riot in response to hearing a controversial opinion, this is not enough to blame the opinion giver for the riot. Otherwise, any controversial opinion might start a riot. Claiming the election was NOT stolen could also be incitement.

I shouldn’t need to remind anyone that the Democrats claimed that the 2016 election was stolen by Russia, and that Antifa has been rioting for months. Does this mean that the Democrats are also guilty of incitement?

There have also been claims that at least some of the people that stormed the capitol were confirmed Antifa or Black Lives Matter members and that they entered the building to intimidate the Republicans into not coming through for Trump’s supporters. The riot did occur while they were in debate over accepting Arizona’s electors. We don’t actually know who these people were or what they wanted.

Some have even suggested that the riot was ordered by Nancy Pelosi. While I have absolutely no evidence tying Pelosi to the crime, that is exactly the same amount of evidence I have tying Trump to the crime.

Furthermore, just days before the vote that acquitted him, it came out that the riot was actually planned days in advance. I don’t know whether this is true, but if it is, then it is impossible that Trump incited it from the words he said at the rally just minutes before – at least, not without time travel. Either Trump incited a riot or else it was planned, not both, yet there are those who want to have it both ways, claiming (without evidence) that Trump helped to plan the riot and then later incited it at the rally.

Like the first Trump impeachment, the second Trump impeachment was a sham. Logic.

In politics, we play with the lives of other people. Those we vote for will put in place policies that might make the difference between life and death, imprisonment and freedom, or poverty and riches. Voting without being fully informed is the worst form of negligence. Listen to as many different news sources as you have time for. Seek out contrary opinions. Check your bias. Read history. Read science. Find a trusted analyst to sift the news for you, explain it, and put it in context. Look for errors in their logic. Ask for supporting evidence. Most of all, actually think.

Logic. Love. Liberty.

We have all heard the claims. Some say that the election was stolen. Others say that no evidence has been given that the election was stolen. How can one sort through the noise and get to the truth?

Unfortunately, I cannot be everywhere and know everything. That’s what news outlets are for. They might be lying to me about the basic facts. However, if the basic facts are true, the conclusion necessarily follows that the election was indeed stolen.

I’ll start with the most conclusive and easily-verified evidence. In all six of the contested states (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and Arizona) the election officials did not follow the election laws and conducted an illegal election. Following the laws makes it harder to conduct fraud, while not following them makes it easier. Coronavirus concerns were raised as a reason to change the laws, and this might have been a good reason, but not all agreed, and in zero of these states did the legislatures act to change the laws.

By definition, laws can only be passed, repealed, or changed by the legislature. In at least one state, the issue was brought to court ahead of the election and the court ordered that the questionable ballots be kept separate so their validity could be decided later, but the poll workers illegally mixed them in, tainting the whole batch. In at least two states, the legislatures sent official letters to congress claiming their own states to be out of legal bounds in assigning electors and that their electoral votes should not be counted. Since it is the state legislatures that assign electors under the constitution, this means that technically those votes do not exist.

In the meantime, Trump supporters also cast electoral votes from all six states. The joint session of Congress then counted the Biden votes without counting the Trump votes. Counting pretend votes from one side claiming legitimacy while not counting pretend votes from the other side also claiming legitimacy is corruption and favoritism of the highest order. The election was stolen.

The above argument requires no evidence that any specific act of fraud actually occurred. It relies only on the claim that these official letters exist and knowledge of how the constitution works. Only if I am wrong on either of those two things can my conclusion be wrong. Logic.

As for whether fraud occurred, I can only say that we all saw it right in front of us. Normally, we know by midnight on election night who has won, but this time was different. Instead, six states shut down early and stopped counting. The next morning, we still did not know who won, but the trend was heavily in Trump’s favor. Both Trump and Biden called the election for themselves and the news outlets began taking sides rather than waiting on the evidence.

When these six states began counting again, there was a massive spike in the number of ballots reported. There is no way that they could have counted so many ballots in such a short amount of time. Furthermore, these ballots broke so heavily for Biden that they defy statistical probability. In one state it was over 71%. In another it was almost 95%. The explanation that later ballots tended to support Biden (since these were mail-in ballots favored by Democrats) did not explain why after the spike, Trump continued to gain at a higher rate.

There are only three possible explanations: either there was fraud to artificially increase the number of Biden votes, or there was something wrong in the reporting system that had artificially suppressed Biden votes all night until correcting itself towards the end, or every chart I have seen is simply made up. Since I cannot be everywhere observing every polling place and counting every ballot myself, I must trust that the media is telling me the truth. Accepting these charts as true then leaves me with only the first two possibilities. Of these, pro-Biden fraud seems most likely.

Even if there is merely something wrong with the reporting system, this raises the question of how we know that what is being reported now is correct. For all we know, Kanye West won. In any case, something fishy happened that deserves a full investigation.

While everything stated above is more than enough to convince any sane person that the election was stolen, there are of course many other claims out there that are harder to verify. For example, in Pennsylvania there were allegedly more ballots found than the number of people recorded voting by such a huge number that it was more than enough to swing the election. There have also been claims of dead people voting, people voting in more than one state, ballot machines flipping large numbers of votes at a time, and ballot machines spitting out unread ballots used in Republican-leaning districts at a greater rate than those in Democrat-leaning districts. I cannot verify any of this, but I don’t have to. Based on what can be verified, Trump won. Logic.

In politics, we play with the lives of other people. Those we vote for will put in place policies that might make the difference between life and death, imprisonment and freedom, or poverty and riches. Voting without being fully informed is the worst form of negligence. Listen to as many different news sources as you have time for. Seek out contrary opinions. Check your bias. Read history. Read science. Find a trusted analyst to sift the news for you, explain it, and put it in context. Look for errors in their logic. Ask for supporting evidence. Most of all, actually think.

Logic. Love. Liberty.

Getting to the truth is difficult when different news sources say different things. How can we tell what to believe?

The accusation has been made that Trump interfered in the affairs of another country (Ukraine) by threatening to withhold a loan unless they were able to dig up some dirt on Biden’s family. It was said that this was an abuse of power meriting impeachment.

Put in such simple terms, it sounds bad, but let’s dive into the details: What precisely was the action that was wrong?

Was it the fact that Trump “interfered” in the affairs of another country by threatening to withhold a loan? It can’t be. No country is entitled to a loan from another and nations use carrot-and-stick tactics in negotiation all the time. It is not only normal and perfectly legal, it is a fundamental part of the president’s job description to do exactly this. He was only doing his job! One might think he was doing it poorly, but that is not an impeachable offense.

Was it the fact that Trump asked for help in securing dirt on a political rival? It can’t be. Politicians, campaigns, and investigative reporters dig up dirt all the time. So long as privacy rights are not violated, and everything reported is true, there is no crime and the voters have a right to know. If the Biden family was doing something illegal, they should be investigated. Not only is this normal and legal, it is the job of the head of the executive branch to do exactly this.

Was it the fact that Trump used his privileged position to do this? Well, if Trump used the power of his station in government (which is supposed to be neutral) to go after a rival in a way that his rival could not also go after him (especially if privacy rights are involved), then there might very well be a problem. Is this what happened?

A careful reading of the original transcript of Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president that started the whole controversy in no way supports the idea that Trump was looking for dirt. Trump simply asked if the president would look into the truth of the claims being made. What claims?

This is why one must consume multiple news sources. Some outlets only covered one side of things, conspicuously leaving out Trump’s stated reasons for investigating Biden’s family. A curious person who loves truth would ask why Trump wanted an investigation. Was there reason to be suspicious that an actual crime had occurred? Was there a reason to believe that Biden might have been compromised and therefore unfit for office in the future? Or was there no other reason than that Trump hoped to find something he could use against him? But how could he find anything if there was nothing to find? Shouldn’t we be more concerned that there might have been something to find?

It turns out that Joe Biden had bragged on camera that he had once used his position as vice president to interfere in the affairs of another country by threatening to withhold a loan – exactly what Trump was then accused of doing. I saw the video myself. Biden spun this as a good thing, claiming he was taking a stand against corruption by demanding that a certain prosecutor be fired. Maybe he was. Who knows? The point is that the voters have a right to know whether any of this actually happened or whether Biden was just bragging about nothing.

Furthermore, it had already come out that this very same prosecutor that Biden allegedly got fired had been at the time investigating the very same gas company that Biden’s son was on the board of. Some people speculated that there was a good reason to investigate, and that this was the real reason Biden interfered. In any case, the voters have a right to know.

Whether Biden is actually innocent of any crime, there is a clear reason for suspicion and a clear justification for Trump to ask Ukraine to look into the truth or falsehood of Biden’s claims. Thus, Trump was only doing his job. He would have been negligent NOT to look into things. Nothing he did was impeachable.

Logic dictates that if Trump did anything wrong by withholding a loan, then so did Biden, since he (allegedly) did essentially the same thing.

Furthermore, logic dictates that if the Democrats in congress did no wrong by investigating Trump for his “misdeeds,” then Trump did no wrong by investigating Biden for his.

Either way, there is no legitimate way to impeach Trump. The impeachment was a sham.

I don’t need to get into the weeds of all the claims and counterclaims made. I don’t need to address the claim that it was never proven that Trump threatened to withhold the loan. It doesn’t matter if he did or didn’t. By looking only at the basic facts that everyone agrees to or that are easily verifiable, I can prove that there is no basis for impeachment. This is how to cut through the media nonsense. Logic.

In politics, we play with the lives of other people. Those we vote for will put in place policies that might make the difference between life and death, imprisonment and freedom, or poverty and riches. Voting without being fully informed is the worst form of negligence. Listen to as many different news sources as you have time for. Seek out contrary opinions. Check your bias. Read history. Read science. Find a trusted analyst to sift the news for you, explain it, and put it in context. Look for errors in their logic. Ask for supporting evidence. Most of all, actually think.

Logic. Love. Liberty.