by Bob Barr | May 4, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall The Democrat Party in 2020 subjected the United States to a truly grave disservice by hiding from the American electorate candidate Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. The question now is, can the damage to the country be contained; a predicament we have not faced for more than a century, if ever. There were telltale signs of Biden’s slips during the last campaign, but as a candidate he still did well enough in the debates (where the bar has become increasingly low) and in his limited public appearances, such that it seemed he had enough left in the tank to get through at least one term. In hindsight, it is clear he was already running on fumes. It is no secret that the emotional and physical stress of the presidency will rapidly age whoever occupies the office, regardless of how young or old he or she may be. One only need look at the before and after pictures of George W. Bush or Barack Obama – both relatively young men when first elected – to see the changes eight years in the Oval Office will bring. Biden, who at 78 was the oldest ever to be inaugurated, was already at a distinct disadvantage even before having to deal with the simultaneous challenges of a pandemic, a cratering economy, serious national security challenges in Afghanistan, and now an actual war between an ally and an adversarial superpower. The burdens of the past 16 months have taken a visible toll and we are not yet near the incumbent’s first term midpoint. His noticeable absences from key moments on the world stage has...
by Bob Barr | Apr 27, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Texas is home to the Alamo. It has given America such patriotic heroes as Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, both of whom died at the Alamo. Iconic business entrepreneurs, such as Ross Perot and Boone Pickens rose to riches in Texas. Many license plate frames warn tailgaters, “Don’t Mess With Texas.” Everything about Texas was over-sized, including its rugged individualism. But things are changing, and not in favor of the Lone Star State’s cowboy legacy. Earlier this month, for example, the Houston City Council approved an ordinance forcing businesses, including bars, nightclubs, sexually oriented businesses, convenience stores, and game rooms, to install exterior security cameras and government-approved lighting, and turn over captured video footage to law enforcement on demand and without any warrant. An ordinance like this would not be a shock were it enacted by Nanny Staters in New York City or San Francisco, but in Texas? Even considering the liberalism that has taken hold in almost every major American city today, a privacy-invasive ordinance such as this becoming law in Texas illustrates just how far leftward the state has shifted. Storied Texas politician Billy Clayton once said, “A born Texan has instilled in his system a mindset of no retreat or no surrender” – clearly not a political perspective that would succumb to a city government’s mandate forcing private businesses to serve as snoops for the police. It would be easy to blame policies such as this on the influx of refugees from California, or the hipsters who frolic in Austin, but it is not just urban liberals who are pushing Texas into the arms of Big Brother. Texas Governor Greg...
by Bob Barr | Apr 20, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall By any reasoned measure, Elon Musk should be a liberal icon. Among other accomplishments, he single-handedly moved electric vehicles from niche product into the automotive mainstream (granted, with a not-insignificant amount of government incentive), built what could be a cheap and efficient solution to internet connectivity in rural areas, and is the living embodiment of John F. Kennedy’s vision for the future of America’s space industry. Yet, the Left treats Musk like the villain from Harry Potter – he who should not be named! What reason has Musk given liberals to hate him so? None, other than growing wealthy from the products of his genius and labor. In the liberal world, where “profit” is a four-letter word, this is a cardinal sin. There are exceptions, of course, for members in good standing of the liberal tribe, where you can be fabulously rich so long as you kowtow to the party line, or stuff your wallet with mega speaking fees a la Stacey Abrams or misdirect donor funds to personal use like the former leaders of Black Lives Matter. Musk is a visionary entrepreneur and unapologetic capitalist who refuses to bow at the altar of liberalism. The South Africa-born naturalized U.S. citizen actually has contributed greatly to furthering many of the erstwhile goals of the Left, such as electric vehicles to replace those powered by fossil fuel, and in many ways more than any Democrat in the modern era. Still, he is treated by them as a pariah. Take, for instance, Musk’s appearance on Saturday Night Live last year. Despite the ratings bump he would bring to a wholly mediocre era of the show, cast members rushed to social...
by Bob Barr | Apr 13, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Gun control measures enacted in recent decades have failed to stop mass shootings. This has baffled Democrats in much the same way a dog chases its tail but never quite catches it. Even the liberal Los Angeles Times appeared exasperated by the latest criminal mass shooting near the state Capitol in Sacramento, lamenting that, while state “lawmakers have enacted the nation’s toughest gun control laws [they] remain confounded by how to stem mass shootings.” At least this one Democrat mouthpiece actually seemed for a brief moment to recognize that gun control is not the answer to criminal gun violence. Yet, they remain afraid to say so out loud. In this conundrum, what does the Left do? That’s an easy question to answer — they call on President Biden (as they did with presidents Obama and Clinton before him) to propose more gun control. This scenario confirms once again the definition of “insanity” often attributed to Albert Einstein, as “doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.” The latest gun-control boogeyman for the Left is the “ghost gun” — an apparition with no more actual substance than were the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future that tormented Ebenezer Scrooge. Unlike the ghosts in A Christmas Carol, however, the “ghost gun” apparition on which Biden now has seized, is a political maneuver rather than a morality play. The term “ghost gun” is a moniker conjured by gun control advocates to scare the uninformed into believing such devices are extremely dangerous, are the weapon of choice for mass murderers, and that if regulated, will stem the tide of such criminal activities...
by Bob Barr | Apr 6, 2022 | Townhall Article, Uncategorized |
Townhall Why has the U.S. Postal Service been permitted to develop a domestic spy arm? And will the Congress ever rein it in? Red flags were everywhere regarding the United States Postal Inspection Service’s Internet Covert Operations Program, or “iCOP” for short. But no one in Washington cared enough to heed them The first clue was that an agency supposed to deliver mail – that is, a postal service — was engaged in online surveillance. The next red flag was that in conducting surveillance, the postal service was employing controversial technology, including facial recognition, fake profiles, and social media scrapes of terms involving constitutionally protected activities (like “protest”). Finally, there was the fact that a recent audit by the USPS Inspector General concluded that none of this was legal to begin with. It gets worse. The most frightening aspect of the Post Office’s latest snooping program was not so much the tools the agency was using, but that their tactic, in the words of a Vice.com report, was “casting the widest net possible then working their way backwards” to determine who and what was a relevant catch in their high-tech fishing expeditions. This happens to be the polar opposite of what is constitutionally required of law enforcement agencies; namely, reasonable suspicion must at a minimum exist and precede an evidentiary search. Here, the postal inspectors would search for a potential target, and if one was found, work back from that to gather evidence justifying the search. Have we learned nothing about the nature of federal of law enforcement since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the National Security Agency? Apparently not, as in...
by Bob Barr | Mar 30, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched a website known as “TheFacebook” based on the value of enhanced human connectivity. Two decades later, however, Zuckerberg has a new project based on the complete opposite idea, something he calls “metaverse.” More than just “a place,” Zuckerberg intends for metaverse to be the centerpiece of “immersive digital worlds [that] become the primary way that we live our lives and spend our time.” In other words, Zuckerberg’s vision for the future is one in which humans are permanently tethered to digital technology, while the physical world becomes a secondary distraction around them. It would be easy to dismiss his vision as the moonshot project of a Big Tech CEO long detached from reality, but Zuckerberg’s comments should instead be viewed as a red flag that his nihilistic perspective of “living” is now entering the mainstream, especially and most concerning, among young people. The evidence of this is undeniable. Online dating, sex robots, remote work and schooling, and “streaming” church services have become popular alternatives to in-person experiences. While some do have benefits, for instance remote work helping save the economy from the worst ravages of Democrats’ COVID “lockdowns,” their cumulative cultural impact undermines the very essence of human-to-human connectivity. The use of technology as a surrogate for actual experience is rapidly turning into the same type of synthetic-sensory experience as that of “Feelies,” movie-like events in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where people are exposed to manufactured, full-sensory environments wherein they become conditioned against the ability to experience truly genuine emotion. When highly customized, on-demand experiences can be delivered instantly in a digital world,...
