90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

If The Dutch Government Thought Its Farmers Would Submit To Environmental Statism Easily, It Was Wrong

In a bid to defend their property rights, Dutch farmers showed up in droves in the de facto capital of the Netherlands on Saturday to protest their government’s overreaching climate policies, which demonstrators say will impede their ability to make a living.

Gathered in The Hague, over 10,000 farmers protested against the national government’s plans to halve the country’s nitrogen emissions by 2030. Under the guise of climate alarmism, Dutch officials are seeking to cap “emissions of nitrogen oxides from farm animal manure and … ammonia in fertilizer” by closing up to 3,000 farms near so-called “environmentally sensitive areas” over the next year.

While the government has claimed these closures will initially be voluntary, the threat of compulsory land buyouts for those who fail to comply with the program by the fall makes it a clear attack on basic property rights.

“We see the farmers around us, and we know how important our farmers are. How will we eat if we don’t produce food?” one protestor told Rebel News. “For all those families, they [have been] there for centuries. It’s their country. They made it bloom.” Government officials are “lying to our faces. They’re trying to steal the companies from the farmers, and they’re trying to take our freedom away,” another said.

The Saturday demonstration was hardly the first of its kind. As The Federalist reported, an estimated 40,000 farmers in tractors and trucks participated in protests last year, clogging up major highways and blockading supermarket distribution centers in protest of the regulations.

In some instances, the government responded to protestors with brutal force, deploying tear gas and dogs to break up demonstrations in cities such as...

Visage à trois #1326

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #986

"It's as bad as we thought": House Oversight Committee chair says "We have bank records in hand" showing "Biden family was getting money from the Chinese Communist Party"

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) dropped a bomb on Fox News yesterday morning, claiming that four individuals with close business ties to the Biden family are now working with the committee, and that they now "have bank records in hand" showing CCP money flowing to the Bidens.

"We actually have bank records in hand. We have individuals who are working with our committee ... four individuals who had ties in with the Biden family on their various schemes around the world.

"So now we have, in hand, documents that show just exactly how the Biden family was getting money from the Chinese Communist Party, and I will tell you, it's as bad as...

Morning Mistress

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #2022

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Girls With Guns

They Are Intolerant, Divisive, And Anti-Liberty — Call Them Leftists, Not Liberals

Freedom-loving Americans should not give leftists the power of being called ‘liberal.’ The term ‘leftist’ better describes their intolerance and desire to overthrow the established order.

Democrats have moved so far to the left in recent years that they should no longer be called “liberals,” unless the true liberals among them start to stand up to the leftists who have taken over. The term is misleading, giving the impression that Democrats support individual freedoms and accept people of different viewpoints, when increasingly they do not. The word “liberal” gives yet more power to those who seek to take more of our liberties.

Right-leaning publications often use the term “liberal” when “leftist” would be better. On the other hand, left-leaning newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times like to use the word “liberal” to describe their own illiberal political views. It obfuscates how Democrats and their media allies have become more extreme, supporting censorship, authoritarianism, and racial division: Twitter staff who denied conservatives their right to free speech and eagerly complied with censorship demands from the federal government were described by the Post as milquetoast “liberal employees.” MSNBC says those pushing the tyranny of wokeness are just naughty-sounding “liberal rascals.”

To see how so-called liberals view themselves, we can look at The New York Times review earlier this year of Michael Walzer’s book “What Does It Mean to Be Liberal?” The book concludes the word is “an adjective, describing a state of mind common to people who think of themselves as liberals: ‘open-minded, generous and tolerant,’” according to the review.

It’s almost laughable. Does “tolerant” describe people who try to “cancel” those of different views, shouting them down, encircling their homes, and calling them disparaging names? Is it “open-minded” to try to force people to use so-called preferred pronouns as part of a transgender agenda? Or to block or hide conservatives’ social media accounts? Crisis pregnancy centers have been firebombed. A Christian cake artist in Colorado is still defending his right not to make a cake that celebrates transgenderism. Conservative scholars have even been physically attacked on college campuses. Last week, students at Stanford University disrupted a conservative judge’s speech with heckling.

It’s correct that the dictionary defines “liberal” as “open-minded” and “broad-minded.” But that’s hardly the right word for people who do not tolerate conservatives’ views on Covid-19 policies, abortion, climate change, transgenderism, and much else — this despite the fact there’s a growing consensus that state-mandated lockdowns don’t work, and that plying children with cross-sex hormones and cutting off their body parts is bad for their physical and mental health.

Walzer notes that so-called liberals don’t always manage to achieve their aspirations to be open-minded and tolerant. The Times’ article acknowledges, “That’s the idea, anyway, but we live in a world in which the illiberal right — and increasingly the left — no longer accept difference as legitimate.” But the conflation here is a lie; the right isn’t pushing for censorship or shouting down campus speakers. And it’s not just a few extremists within the ranks but the leadership of the Democrats who are condoning intimidation tactics and destruction of property — Vice President Kamala Harris and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer among them.

Democrats Headed Further Leftward

As the Times notes, the left is “increasingly” intolerant. Part of why “liberal” no longer works to describe Democrats is the party has moved leftward, as many have noted, including The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan, comedian and commentator Bill Maher, and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in her State of the Union response.

Since at least 2020, Noonan wrote, Democrats “have aligned with or allowed themselves to be associated with … the identity politics-wokeness regime. (It’s amazing we still don’t have an agreed upon word or phrase that fully captures this program.)” That regime consists of transgenderism, climate alarmism, and so-called anti-racism. “The Democrats are the party of the left. Progressive pathologies morph into Democratic ideologies, tagging the party as radical. Why do the Democrats allow...