JASKN

The numbers suggest a trend of fewer people identifying themselves as religious in America. However, those with strong Christian faith (mainly Protestant), are reacting to the decline of Christianity. They are in rebellion. They have good reason to distrust the mainstream media. They are mostly white working families with children, longing for the security that their parents promised them, if only they would study hard in school and work hard. I share their sentiments, although I can be realistic enough to see that we are witnessing the decline of white Christian America. At the risk of seeming deterministic, I stop short of any fatalism.
Mine was one of those towns that caught fire this past summer. Jacob Blake was shot less than two miles from my home. I've seen first hand the results of these "peaceful protests," the social justice warriors, chanting, "No Justice; No Peace!" Eleven million dollars of municipal property damage later, the only thing that's changed is that otherwise sensible local merchants have particleboard covering the windows of their businesses, adorned with "BLM," and other platitudes of "unity," (presumed unity with the marauders who pillaged and, in some cases, looted their livelihoods.) A life-long student of history, I had to wonder if the Jews would have adorned their broken windows with swastikas and posters of Hitler after the Kristal Nacht. Both Trump and Biden visited for photo-ops, as if that made any difference. But Biden struck me the most, by pandering to the delusional Left, clearly sympathizing with the mob, those "peaceful protesters," and a man wanted for sexual assault charges, shot seven times after the police failed to subdue him by other means. I talked with shop-owners who defended their property from behind the glass doors of their stores, bearing arms, while another evacuated his inventory of used cars to safe locations. If it can happen in my town, it can happen in any town in America. And the mainstream media will respond by promoting the idea that the answer is to "de-fund the police."
As for the national conservative movement, their position of power in mainstream politics gives them an advantage, while their lack of authentic ideological argument erodes their "moral high-ground." So well stated in the article you presented, blind fealty to God and country have drown out any well-reasoned argument for reviving the founding values of liberty in America. I have no statistics to support the causes of right-wing mob violence, but it is evidently happening. I suspect that it's in part related to economic changes happening over the past forty years. Many have been stripped of their security, and someone has to be held to blame. When frightened ignorant people are desperate, the pitch-forks and torches come out. Trump used those pitch-forks and torches in an extremely cynical way, and told them, "We love you." I don't know who is included in his show of love, but it ain't me. I am among those caught in between the crossfire. I refuse to take sides with either irrational collectives, and remain steadfast to my individualism. Damn them all, and if I'm martyred for my isolated position, then, "give me liberty, or give me death." 

I read the article. It's great. I've been witnessing this transition toward integrating Church and state for years. Back in the day, I was willing to ignore it. I considered the evil of a leftist/socialist agenda to be the greater threat to American prosperity and stability. The left-wing agenda continues to be a monstrous threat. In 1980 and 84, I cast my votes to Ronald Reagan, believing that his support from the Moral Majority would not escalate to the threat to individualism and reason that it is today. The radical Christian conservative agenda now stands as large and menacing as a rival monster, eye to eye with the mystic monster of the Left. For this reason, I have abandoned my support for nearly all Republicans who exploits Christian value voters. My rejection of Trump doesn't mean that I support Biden. I vote with my conscience, and any third party candidate that presents no threat to individual liberty is fine by me. I show up at the polls, the respectable candidates have not. The American crisis of confidence has only radicalized the semi-literate electorate, playing on their fear and other emotions. Obama was a perfect example. I think very important issues were addressed in the past four years; some of Trump's policies were helpful. Some of his suggestions, (particularly his muted criticism against revisionist history in public schools), may yet have long term positive results. But overall, the recklessness of his language and management, his open displays of intimidation, his preference for authoritarian world leaders, I think the good does not outweigh the bad. It's quite unfortunate. Some good might come from all of this. I can only wait and see.

A silver lining is that this is an obvious example of what not to do for anyone who's actually interested in freedom and the legitimate rule of law.

Also there's an argument to the effect that, well look, the representatives in Congress deserve this. While, strictly speaking, this is correct, it doesn't follow merely from that fact that this is the right thing to do. Every member of Congress deserves to be huddled in their home in fear, as they would have the rest of us do the past few months. But part of a virtuous action is that it is done in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason. 
Consider someone performing some courageous act to impress an onlooker. Such an action isn't merely "doing the right thing for the wrong reason," it's literally not doing the right thing. This is an aspect of all agent-centered virtue ethics. The agent has to be in a certain state while performing the action. They cannot be counted as virtuous someone who does something by accident, in the same way consulting tea leaves and guessing the correct thing doesn't make some belief knowledge. See Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics II.4 for details.
So it's possible to believe that the "demand side" if you will, the "getting what you deserve" might be good in some small way. I mean it certainly is funny to see the viking at Pelosi's desk. However, the "supply side" if you will, is people yearning for a dictatorship and indulging in epistemic vice. The "demand side" wasn't even substantial enough to change anything about lockdowns other than, people now screaming about "sedition" and "insurrection." Expect more bipartisan surveillance, policing, internet censorship.

As America prepares to certify our next President, a large band of hooligans have taken upon themselves to storm the Capitol.  This in the name of Freedom?  Are these hooligans striving to look for their Fuhrer?  As a footnote, something like this happened in fiction- in Atlas Shrugged.

Yes, sounds sensible, James.
I would like to add one point about sexual orientations. When it comes to sexual orientation in the context of romantic love, and all the more in long-term romantic relationships, it is the whole person of the other, not only their sexual allures, that is paramount; and the relationship is above all a relationship of persons. Embodied, sexual, to be sure. But persons. That is shown in relationships, whatever the sexual orientation abiding in them, in the way couples continue to be in love and take care of each other years and decades after the sexual aspect has gone away due to sexual declines in the body. The persons continue in their special, towering love.
In the early ’90’s Allan Gotthelf wrote to me concerning my new philosophy journal Objectivity, and he inquired whether he perhaps knew me. I wrote to him and recounted what had transpired between us in ’78 and how things had gone on to Jerry’s death. I mentioned to him that in Jerry’s hospital room in the last hours and through his last heartbeat, I was alone with Jerry. And I wrote to Allan, “that is the way it was and that is how it ought to have been.” To have loved and been loved in that total way is a terribly fortunate thing, and it is a universe in which there is only you two persons.
 
 

I wear one when required, out of respect for the fact that a private business is required to enforce the mandate. I never decided on a consistent policy to use in situations where I have a choice. I go for walks in a public park and don't wear one, even though it's required as far as I know, because no one is around to enforce. I'm not interested in wearing one without having a good medical reason to believe they actually work. If this premise were somehow proven, and this was communicated through a source I respect, I would be more interested in wearing one, but right now I feel like this is subjugation with unproven quackery at the hands of health authoritarians. 

Defiant Michigan UP cafe owner told to shut down after serving indoor diners
Since November, bars and restaurants in Michigan have been limited to carry-out service or outdoor dining in an effort to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
Who is mandating the limitation (and by what means)?
Who's rights are being violated? Is it the people who chose not to frequent this establishment for CoViD-19 concerns? Is it the owner and voluntary workers at a restaurant violating a mandate to only fulfill carry out orders?
A patient checks into a hospital and the diagnosis turns out to be CoViD-19. How did the patient acquire it? Was the patient get infected at a restaurant, a gym, a grocery store, Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner with friends and/or family, the local hardware store, the local mall while buying christmas gifts? Assume the patient was wearing a mask, as mandated by most states and counties-townships-cities-etc., and second-handedly requested by most establishments not quashed by law to allow customers to frequent.
Keep in mind that this is by no means an exhaustive list. It is only intended to illustrative of another passage that comes to mind from Atlas Shrugged:
"You propose to establish a social order based on the following tenets: that you're incompetent to run your own life, but competent to run the lives of others—that you're unfit to exist in freedom, but fit to become an omnipotent ruler—that you're unable to earn your living by the use of your own intelligence, but able to judge politicians and to vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements of which you have no knowledge, over the gigantic industries where you, by your own definition of your capacity, would be unable successfully to fill the job of assistant greaser." Yes, social order can come into play, but not by means of folk that harbor a vision of man as incapable of acting rationally when a new virus is discovered. 
While a majority may serve as a deciding factor in a democracy, the morally decisive response requires a knowledge of what is the right recourse. Absent that, each individual should be granted the freedom to act according to their independent judgement, providing it does not infringe on anyone else acting according to their independent judgement.

Allowed by whom? The "requirement" as you put it, is a straw man. If it were only that simple, only one's choice, such behavior is easy to follow, good hygiene and simple good manners (I've said).
You must have seen that the governments are strenuously enforcing masking and social distancing. With the threat underlying that if they so decide, we will return to a level of lock down, with large fines and possible arrests, therefore police powers. (Which has been enforced today by the South African Gvt. - drunk on power - because of slight new outbreaks at coastal vacation regions). You people didn't behave, so now the whole country must be punished.
Additionally, the social pressure to conform isn't pleasant, by those who are enshrining helpless victims, as is their favorite narrative, against the 'selfish' oppressors (The Granny killers). Those who rationally and selfishly want to live and work.
With these together, by fear of force and social intimidation/shaming, fewer people venture out, economic life is far from recovery and businesses are still failing around the world. More people are suffering further.
"Requirement"?

Interacting with people in public without any symptoms of disease or infection isn’t dangerous to the public.
The masks worn by the majority of the public have little or no medical efficacy. The majority of the public isn’t at risk of dying due to an infection.
Face diapers say you care for people who for whatever reason believe or act as if covid is an actual reoccurrence of the Black Death.

This mask (etc...) debacle has ironically made me friendlier to the general populace. I wear a mask begrudgingly only as required by businesses, but I find myself being nicer and smiling genuinely more to people, whether they're wearing the muzzles themselves or not. I think friendliness is very important right now. However, I have no tolerance or sympathy for tattlers or do-gooders, and if they stop me they get a sharp dismissive reply.

Properly fitted n95 and higher rated filtration devices could help prevent casual spread. Cloth mask efficacy doesn’t even come close. Any medical protection they provide against aerosolized virus particles is negligible.
Just as the article in the OP states, their efficacy is the political statement they convey.
There is very little that can be done in a practical way to stop viral spread, aside from physical isolation which is by definition impractical. Modalities that ensure air circulation to decrease viral load in the ambient environment would have more efficacy against spread. Regardless , concentrating energies on therapeutics and care for the medical consequences of infection should be the only political concern.
Virtue signally won’t get you any closer to the futile goal of stopping the spread .
It would be instructive to see how many cases of hospitalizations to treat pneumonia are currently from bacterial infections.Though given the level of trust I currently have in ‘official’ reports coming from our ‘institutions’, my confirmation bias will probably win out, lol.
I wear a cloth mask where it is required for entry or participation, but not because I think that action has much medical significance, just because it is required.

Wearing a mask is a basic health precaution that should be done anyway, regardless of CoViD-19? (rhetorical)
Near as I could tell, prior to mid-March 2020, masks were commonplace by surgeons in operating theatres, people working in areas where particles such as asbestos and other hazardous dust particles were present.
Currently, many businesses here are posting that masks are expected to be worn by patrons in compliance with state/county expectations. As a patron, I comply with the request of the company managements choice to comply with the guidelines, or go elsewhere, (not that much 'elsewhere' exists in the current culture.)
In addition to the article whYNOT provided in full, there have been several other independent assessments of a similar nature.
When laws, edict, or regulations on behalf of the state(s) are not uniform and objective, they are capricious. When the law givers and regulators engage in 'do as we say, not as we do' policies, how is that not a form of the irrational?
"Some people measure the risk much higher than you, and I think it's good to respect that and wear a mask."
Mathematics is the science of measurement. When you think it is good to respect that a risk has been declared to be measured as higher and wear a mask, is that a low evaluation of your mathematical ability paying homage to a result of a declared risk elevation, or do you have something that can definitively set aside my observations of most people virtue signalling by the wearing of masks while the reporting testifies to its ineffectiveness?

So it was the fault of civil disobedience coupled with a fundamental lack of understanding of how masks work among the infectious disease experts?

Un’aura amorosa (Così fan tutte)
Mozart
Josh Lovell
 

Several of the California ballot propositions, not just 22, turned out well - racial quotas, tax increases and new dialysis regulations among them: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/good-news-for-conservatives-from-california/. Oregon voted for a big drug decriminalization.

I don’t agree with this. Explaining why requires two distinctions.
- Dictatorial about government policy versus dictatorial to the USA’s people in general.
- A dictator personally versus a dictator institutionally.
Trump shows a strong desire to control government policy. However, his desire to control people in general doesn’t seem strong to me. Indeed, a prime counter-instance is the health insurance mandate. Obamacare made the mandate – that people in general (with a high enough income) must purchase health insurance, and they will be penalized (“taxed”) if they don’t. Trump got rid of the mandate, calling it the worst part of Obamacare.
Joe Biden shows little desire to be a dictator personally. However, it seems he has little reservation about having in his orbit others who are very dictatorial, e.g. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, Kamala Harris. If elected, his cabinet appointments will be very revealing. Another reason I say this is his persistent desire for higher taxes, even more spending, and more regulations. Implicitly or explicitly, he views a better world coming from government activism. Trump does not.
On the campaign trail, he has touted the “public option” regarding health insurance. If elected, I would not be a bit surprised to see him flip-flop to backing some form of Medicare for All (advocated by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris when they pursued the presidential nomination). Biden explicitly proposes to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Of course, the transition will be forced via government intervention – regulations and subsidies.
How often have you heard Biden praise private industry or advocate individual liberty?

 

I like one of the points Onkar Ghate made in his Study of Galt's Speech. The patience exercised on the behalf of the strikers. Consider the passages leading up to what Hugh Akston told Dagny: "
"Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right," said Hugh Akston, "but not the fact that we are certain. If you are not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don't be tempted to substitute our judgment for your own."
If someone does not agree with me, and I am right, why does the other guy have to have abandoned reason, or even be irrational. In fact, my being right (or anyone else's for that matter) does not depend on others agreeing with my conclusion. What should matter is what is right, and, if needed, why is it right.
Self-esteem comes from the reliance on one's ability to think. Did Hugh Akston or any of the others in Galt's Gulch consider Dagny irrational for not agreeing with them? Did they think she had abandoned reason to return to New York? While it was many in the world that had abandoned reason, Galt's broadcast was to those who had not.

Elections are a reminder that we have the power of choice. When the focus is on how bad the 'choices' are (Trump/Biden), instead of seeking to discover why election after election provides 'the lesser of two evils', the focus usually boils down to analyzing down to the minutia of what is right/wrong with this or that particular candidate. 
Lately, as I've listened and re-listened to Galt's Speech while cutting the grass or working out at the gym, I've noticed her emphasis, when directed toward such, is not so much on the irrational as it is honed in on identifying those who have abandoned reason. 
The canons of Objectivism champion reason. An admirable objective might be to not get sucked into the games those who have abandoned reason generate in order to attract others seeking to cut corners that ought be left intact. (Please pardon the poetic license.)
 

Tony, this horse we children would ride out in the country belonged to that man I spoke of who went to school only through the third grade. He was the second husband of our mother. He was a cattle rancher; paratrooper and aircraft mechanic in North Africa and Italy during WWII; he knew his Catholic catechism. He read newspapers and did his own thinking. He did not need any advice in discerning a con man or discerning human depravity or goodness or in determining who would get his vote. Neither did the children on that horse in their adulthood.

A difference between paying a bribe and paying a fine is that a bribe is conditioned on the recipient performing an action, and charity is not. If I charitably pay your fine, you are free to thank me or not, to vote or not… The term “bribe” is a specific legal term, though it is metaphorically used to describe giving any incentive. Bribery, which is illegal, requires an offer to a public servant, where the offer is not authrized by law, and the intent is to influence an act in the official discretion of the public servant. None of this describes paying a fine for a felon.

A more apt description is vote-buying, which is a federal felony under 18 USC 597:

 
That is why the offer has to be an unconditional act of charity. There’s no question that Bloomberg hopes that convicts will vote as a consequence of his charity, and maybe will vote a specific way, but as it stands, his efforts in this direction are legal. Gaetz’s implication is legally inept: “bribery” is in a different paragraph in the pertinent Florida statute from “anything of value”. Still, nothing wrong with a little criminal investigation just to be sure, and maybe even to expand the power of the government to restrict politically-motivated actions (not!).
 

Coronavirus -- NY Times biased statistic

 

I meant what I said. In the examples that I gave, his orders clearly violated well-established law, though perhaps you are not happy about with the law on these points. Your response is mostly part directed at a different question, namely whether it is reasonable to ignore the law. Given that the purpose of a president in our republican form of government is to implement the law, Trump is dysfunctional. This is a basic divide within the population of those calling themselves Objectivists: some consider law to be optional, others consider it to be fundamental to living in a civilized society. There’s a really simple explanation for lots of Trump’s behavior: he sees himself as being above the law; the law impedes him getting what he things we need.

It may be that the political rhetoric in Austria is more overtly based on the appeal “we must sacrifice ourselves for that group”, but that is not the rhetoric used in the US. Appeal to “the greatest common good” underlies the government’s response, but “sacrifice” in US political rhetoric refers to “something necessary for an end, but not an immediately desirable end itself”. When soldiers, police and firemen die in the line of duty, or doctors work long hours at personal risk to save lives, it is termed a “sacrifice”, because the immediate outcome is certainly not desirable (taking a risk, working long hours), but the end towards which these people are working is certainly a value. Instead, the covid-related government actions have been justified as being necessary: although “justified” is really a strong term, since the myriad executive declarations simply assert “it is necessary, and I have the power”.
It is crucial for the covid-facists that issues of scientific fact be kept out of the discussion. Ignorance has been politically weaponized to a stunning level, instead we must trust our elected executive official (unless he’s a Republican), who we assume has sound scientific and economic reasons to believe that these actions are necessary and sufficient for reaching that end. The public perception of “what is necessary” with the further provision that it should be sufficient is totally divorced from science. The science of the problem is, very simply, we don’t know, there are a lot of plausible stories that can be told. It is also vital that we not delve deeply into the question of what that end is – it changes frequently. For a while it was “flattening the curve”. Now it is “masks stop covid”. If you closely watch the media, you can detect the next wave of restrictions, which will result in greater rigidity about the kind of masks and how they are worn. (This is a concern for me because I can’t breathe, and businesses are now prohibited from serving unmasked customers).
My response to covid-facists is to criticize them for hypocrisy. They demand that I must sacrifice myself for their personal benefit – they are being selfish (we know that is not so, but we’re dealing with rhetorical contradictions). They have no right to restrict my life so that they can continue to enjoy theirs. This is an easy argument to make, because when you ask “Why do you support such-and-such governmental restriction”, 99 times out of 100 it reduces to the emotional assertion “I don’t want X” – I don’t care what you want, what about what I want? Or when the assertion is collectivist “We don’t want X”, I point out that there has been no determination of what “we” want.