The Patriot Post® · Monday Short Cuts

Insight

“Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.” —Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.-A.D. 65)

Upright

“The people in contemporary America who most pride themselves on their alleged commitment to science and public health are also the most superstitious and immune to evidence. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the debate over masking kids at school, an ongoing, flagrant example of collective irrationality. … Mask mandates should join the litany of cast-aside school mitigation measures. If we are worried about the welfare of teachers, there’s nothing to stop them from getting vaccinated and boosted, and the vast majority are indeed vaccinated. Meanwhile, kids are at very low risk, and parents should be free to send their children to school masked if that makes them more comfortable. But many on the left have a deep attachment to masks that isn’t based on evidence or on a calibration of costs-and-benefits but an a priori commitment to them as a totem of public safety and private virtue.” —Rich Lowry

“Health officials and the media have done more to corrode trust in science and government during the COVID era than any conspiracy theorist on social media. Americans aren’t sure where to turn, so they often turn to unreliable sources.” —David Harsanyi

“Why can’t the left comprehend the difference between ‘vaccines are good,’ and ‘vaccines are mandated’? Exercise, losing weight are healthy; church makes you happier; intact families prevent social chaos — should they all be forced on us? What is it about freedom they don’t get?” —Andrew Klavan

Breath of Fresh Air

“Lia [Thomas] has every right to compete. But I think, black and white right now, you compete as what you were biologically born until we get to a point where we’ve expanded opportunities. … There are other ways I think we can be accommodating and making opportunities for Lia without hurting … others. I just feel like we’re bowing to, in this particular instance, to one person. And really to the detriment of thousands of other athletes potentially. And I don’t think that’s right.” —Rice University swim coach Seth Huston

“I was in DC [last] weekend to support bodily sovereignty while Canadian truckers were rallying for their cross-country, peaceful convoy in support of the same thing. I believe nobody should ever be forced to inject their body with anything, against their will, under threat of: violent attack, arrest or detention without trial, loss of employment, homelessness, starvation, loss of education, alienation from loved ones, excommunication from society … under any threat whatsoever. This is not the way. This is not safe. This is not healthy. This is not love. I understand the world is in fear, but I don’t believe that answering fear with force will fix our problems.” —actress Evangeline Lilly

Re: The Left

“Joe Biden is formalizing a custom Democrats have implemented in the last four or five years of racial do-overs. Democrats opposed President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement to end Jim Crow Laws. Now, nearly 60 years after Republicans fought to eradicate racist laws, Democrats are taking a mulligan on racism. Led by Biden, Kamala Harris, and their allies in corporate media and Big Tech, Democrats are pretending 2022 is 1942, the year Biden was born, when numerous state laws reduced black people to second-class citizenship. Democrats are formally rewriting their own history. … Who needs the Klan when Democrats concocted a scheme to control, manipulate, and destroy black people through politics? Who needs blatant, in-your-face racism, when corporate media, social media, and Big Tech can manufacture an endless supply of faux racism?” —Jason Whitlock

Missing the Mark

“Our fixation with guns in our country is destroying our children.” —New York City Mayor Eric Adams

The Left’s fixation with eradicating the nuclear family is destroying our children.

The BIG Lie

“If your concern is prices in the economy right now, which is certainly a concern for the White House and this president, then the most immediate and direct action we could take is to lower costs that families are facing — child care, health care, prescription drugs — and do that in a commonsense way that’s fully paid for, doesn’t affect or put upward pressure on inflation. That’s what we’re trying to work with Congress to do and that’s what is the economic need for the country.” —National Economic Council Director Brian Deese regarding Build Bilk Back Better

SCOTUS Demagoguery/Race Bait

“The fact that [this] court decides whether women have control over our bodies, with two men on it like [Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas], is scandalous for a democracy.” —MSNBC’s Joy Reid

“I’m not sure if I remember this right, but when Clarence Thomas was confirmed, there was no discussion about his race as I recall. … He called it a high-tech lynching against him. He’s the one who brought race into it, I believe.” —"The View’s" Joy Behar

“But they’re already drooling to call us racist over a Supreme Court nominee who hasn’t even been announced yet.” —Jim Treacher

And Last…

“We need a Supreme Court justice who supports reproductive justice for all menstruating people with beards.” —Amber Athey